At least thirteen deaths amid flooding in Accra, Ghana.

At least thirteen people have died and a further seven are missing following flooding in the Ghanaian capitol, Accra, following a heavy rainstorm overnight between Sunday 28 and Monday 29 June 2026, with over 38 800 people from more than 7750 households displaced by floodwaters. The worst affected areas of the city is Ga East, where five people are known to have died, and another 2000 people have been displaced from their homes, and Ayawaso Central three people have died and one is missing, while about 3020 people have been displaced. Another three people have died in Tema West, where about 3450 have been displaced. In Ledzokuku one person has died and around 1200 have been displaced by the flooding. 

In Ga Central over 1800 people have been displaced, but there are no reports of any fatalities of missing persons, while in Ga West about 2300 people have been displaced, again with no reports of fatalities or missing persons. About 1850 people have been displaced from their homes in Adentan, while about 6500 have been displaced from  Korle Klottey. About 2620 people have been displaced by flooding in Okaikwei North, while in Okaikwei South the figure is about 3450 people. In Tema Metropolis about 3600 people were displaced, but no casualties have been reported. About 2200 people have been displaced by flooding in La Dadekotopon, and about 1100 in Krowor.

Officials from the Ghanaian National Disaster Management Organisation and soldiers from the 48 Engineer Regiment of the Ghana Armed Forces rescue people trapped by floodwaters in Accra, Ghana. National Disaster Management Organisation.

Outside of Accra, twenty houses are reported to have collapsed due to flooding in the Cape Coast Metropolis, with five people killed inside one of these buildings when it collapsed, and a sixth person drowning in a separate incident. Two people were killed in another building collapse in Mfantsiman, with another person drowning separately, and in Gomoa Central one person was killed in a building collapse and another drowned. Altogether, 58 houses are reported to have been destroyed in Central Region, with flooding also reported in the Volta and Western North regions.

June falls in the middle of the rainy season in Accra, with the city receiving an average of 175 mm of rain during the month. West Africa has a distinct two season climatic cycle, with a cool dry season during the northern winter when prevalent winds blow from the Sahara to the northeast, and a warm rainy season during the northern summer when prevalent winds blow from the Atlantic Ocean to the southwest. These warm winds from the Atlantic are laden with moisture, which can be lost rapidly when the air encounters cooler conditions.

Rainfall and prevalent winds during the West African dry and rainy seasons. Encyclopedia Britanica.

However, this year's rains have been far heavier than usual, with 169.2 mm of rain falling in 24 hours on Sunday 28 March, the fourth highest level of rainfall in a single day ever recorded in Ghana, and 593.2 mm of rain falling in June, the wettest month ever recorded in the city. The previous record-holding year was 2002, when 420.6 mm of rain fell in Accra during June, a figure which this year has exceeded by more than the average rainfall for the month. These rising rain levels are linked to greater sea surface temperatures over the Atlantic Ocean as the global climate warms, which leads to greater levels of evaporation from the sea, followed by increased precipitation on land.

Nevertheless, the high rainfall levels are not thought to be the main cause of the flooding which Accra has been suffering this week. Instead, local authorities are blaming the city's lax building controls, which have led to buildings and settlements spreading over and covering up drainage systems, as well as covering areas that were formally open soil with concrete, preventing water from soaking away. This has led to orders fir several illegally built properties to be demolished in the wake of the floods, though local community groups are asking for more consultation before any such plans are implemented, as in the past authorities have demolished properties without any plan to resettle their occupants, resulting in the rebuilding of properties once the authorities have left.

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Kissing Elephants Archway on the Maltese Island of Comino collapses.

The Kissing Elephants Archway, a famous sea arch on the island of Comino, Malta, collapsed into the Mediterranean Sea at about 7.30 local time on Saturday 27 June 2006. The archway collapsed after a tourist, described as a 32-year-old American man, jumped from it into the sea, although this is unlikely to have been the cause of the collapse. Tragically, a couple were passing under the archway on a jet ski at the time of the collapse, with one of them, described as a 26-year-old Chinese man being killed and the other, a 27-year-old Chinese woman, being severely injured.

The Kissing Elephants Archway before it fell. Malta Boat Trips.

Sea arches are dramatic features, and long-lived by Human standards, but are formed by coastal erosion and have a finite lifetime. Sea arches are formed when an exposed headland has a softer rock at its base than above (in this case a soft clay limestone beneath a harder coralline limestone), which causes the arch to be hollowed out as the underlying stone is washed away. Obviously this is an unstable situation, and eventually the arch becomes so undermined that it collapses into the sea.

Archway collapses are usually associated with storm events, which can batter already weakened structures and cause them to collapse. However, the Kissing Elephants Archway collapsed during a period of calm, but extremely hot, weather, during an unprecedented heatwave which has affected much of western Europe, and which has been associated with more than 1300 deaths so far. Though less obvious than storms or even frosts (which can crack rocks when water in crevices freezes and expands), extreme heat can also fracture rocks as the different minerals from which rock is made up expand and contract at different rates as they are heated and cooled. This is something which Humans have exploited since the palaeolithic, with rocks often being placed into fires to make them easier to crack.

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Trachischium lalremsangai: A new species of Worm-eating Snake from Mizoram State, India, and Chin State, Myanmar.

Members of the Natricid Snake genus Trachischium are commonly known as Slender Snakes or Worm-eating Snakes. They are fossorial in nature (live underground in burrows) and are distributed in the montane forests of India, Nepal, Bhutan, China, Myanmar, and Bangladesh, typically at altitudes of between 800 and 2500 m above sealevel. Their lifestyle and habitat makes studying (or indeed finding) them difficult, and they are subsequently one of the least well known groups of Snakes. The genus Trachischium currently contains ten species, including two which were previously assigned to the genus Blythia; the two genera having been merged in 2024 on the basis that their defining criteria overlapped.

In a paper published in the journal Herpetozoa on 19 May 2026, Virender Bhardwaj, Amit Bal, and Chhangte Tluanga of the Developmental Biology and Herpetology Laboratory at Mizoram University, and Zeeshan Mirza of the Max Planck Institute for Biology, describe a new species of Trachischium from Mizoram State, India, and Chin State, Myanmar.

The new species is described on the basis of a specimen collected by Bhardwaj et al. in the Murlen National Park in 2025. A second specimen, which was collected in Chin State, Myanmar, in 2003, and now sits in the collection of the California Academy of Sciences, where it has been classified as Blythia reticulata (a species currently reassigned to Trachischium as Trachischium reticulata) on the basis of a scale pattern and colouration which matches the new species, but is atypical for Trachischium reticulata. 

Bhardwaj et al. name the new species Trachischium lalremsanga, in honour of Hmar Tlawmte Lalremsanga of Mizoram University for his contributions to herpetology in Northeast India, his guidance to numerous students, and his facilitation of research throughout the region and the Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot. The species is described from two specimens, both male, one 409 mm in length and the other 506 mm, which makes it one of the larger species of Worm-eating Snakes. The dorsal surface of these Snakes is dark brown with a lustrous blue iridescence throughout, the front quarter of the ventral surface is a creamy white, the remainder brown with white speckles.

Trachischium lalremsangai, holotype male, MZMU 3757, in life. Bhardwaj et al. (2026).

The specimen Bhardwaj et al. collected was found moving along a road, close to the village of Murlen on the fringe of the Murlen National Park, 1560 m above sealevel, at about 9.30 in the evening, and shortly before a period of rain. This area forms part of the India-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot, and contains a mixture of tropical, semi-evergreen, and montane forests, with a dense canopy cover. Annual rainfall varies between about 2500 mm and about 3000 m, and the temperature varies between about 5°C in the winter and about 35°C in the winter. The area where the Snake was found has a diverse vegetation, including Oaks, Quercus spp., Needlewood, Schima wallichii, Birches, Betula spp., Champak, Michelia champaca, Khasi Pines, Pinus khasiana, Cherries, Prunus spp., Bayberry, Myrica spp., Rhododendrons, Rhododendron spp., dense stands of Thorny Bamboo, Arundinaria callosa, Cane Grasses, and a rich array of Orchids. The specimen collected in Myanmar was found at a site about 90 km away in a straight line, with a similar environment. Based upon this, Bhardwaj et al. estimate that the species may be present across northeast Mizoram and adjoining Manipur in India, as well as within the similar elevation realms of the Chin Hills.

The phylogeny of the genus Trachischium is still somewhat uncertain, and in need of thorough revision. Many species are described from single specimens, with only vague locations recorded. The genus is found from Jammu and Kashmir in the west to Arunachal Pradesh in the east, south as far as northern Myanmar and north as far as Tibet. At least one widely distributed species, Trachischium fuscum, is likely to be a species complex (group of closely related, yet reproductively isolated, and similar-appearing species). The genus Blythia was incorporated into the genus Trachischium as a junior synonym in 2024, yet this group of Snakes remain distinctive in appearance and this may be revised again; it is to this Blythia-group that the new species, Trachischium lalremsanga, belongs. Genetic data is available for only a single specimen of many species.

With this in mind, Bhardwaj et al. carried out a phylogenetic analysis for Trachischium lalremsanga using the mitochondrial 16S rRNA and cytochrome b genes and the nuclear oocyte maturation factor mos and recombination activating gene 1 genes, and comparing these to publicly available sequences from the GenBank database. 

This analysis found that the genus Trachischium can be split into three distinct subgroupings, which Bhardwaj et al. refer to as Clade 1, Clade 2 (which corresponds to the Blythia-group), and Clade 3. Clade 2 and Clade 3 are more closely related to one-another than either is to Clade 1, which forms an outgroup, so while Clade 2 could potentially be taken out of the genus Trachischium and returned to its original name, this would also require the renaming of Clade 3, with the designation Trachischium limited to Clade 1, which contains the type species for the genus, Trachischium fuscum (a type species is the species which defines a genus; other species are determined to belong or not belong to the genus on the basis of how closely they are related to that genus).

Maximum likelihood phylogeny based on concatenated two nuclear (c-mos and RAG-1) and two mitochondrial (16S and cyt b) genes of selected Natricine Snakes showing relationships within the genera Trachischium and Blythia. Numbers at nodes show maximum likelihood clade support. The new species from Murlen National Park is highlighted in red text. Bhardwaj et al. (2026).

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Three dead and two missing following flash flood in Arunachal Pradesh.

Three people have been confirmed dead and another two are missing following a flash flood in the Keyi Panyor District of Arunachal Pradesh State, India, on Wednesday 24 June 2026. A further 54 families have been displaced by the incident, in which waters from the Rangandani River Dam Lake over-topped a wall surrounding a residential camp for employees of the North Eastern Electric Power Corporation working on the Panyor Lower Hydroelectric Project (also known as the Rangandani Dam), following days of heavy rain associated with the Summer Monsoon. 

Damage caused by a flash flood which swept through a residential block for workers at a hydroelectric dam in Arunachal Pradesh, India, on 24 June 2026. ANI.

About thirty houses were destroyed at the dam workers colony, with another ten houses destroyed and fourteen damaged in related incidents in neighbouring communities, which have also been hit by flooding and landslide events caused by heavy rains in the area. Landslides are a common problem after severe weather, as excess pore water pressure can overcome cohesion in soil and sediments, allowing them to flow like liquids. Approximately 90% of all landslides are caused by heavy rainfall. Several major roads in the area have also been damaged, and the heavy rains are making air transport difficult, hampering the efforts of rescue workers.

Arunchal Pradesh has a monsoon season that begins around the end of April or beginning of May and ends around September, bringing 2-4000 mm of rain to the region each year. In the twenty four hours prior to the incident, 74 mm of rainfall had fallen in the area, which is high, but should not have been sufficient to cause flooding at a camp with flood defences on a dam lake where the water level can be controlled to some extent by releasing water from the dam. This has led to speculation that an earlier incident, such as a landslide, may have temporarily blocked the flow of the river upstream of the dam lake, and that when this temporary blockage failed, a large amount of water surged downstream overcoming the colony's flood defences.

Monsoons are tropical sea breezes triggered by heating of the land during the warmer part of the year (summer). Both the land and sea are warmed by the Sun, but the land has a lower ability to absorb heat, radiating it back so that the air above landmasses becomes significantly warmer than that over the sea, causing the air above the land to rise and drawing in water from over the sea; since this has also been warmed it carries a high evaporated water content, and brings with it heavy rainfall. In the tropical dry season the situation is reversed, as the air over the land cools more rapidly with the seasons, leading to warmer air over the sea, and thus breezes moving from the shore to the sea (where air is rising more rapidly) and a drying of the climate. 

Diagrammatic representation of wind and rainfall patterns in a tropical monsoon climate. Geosciences/University of Arizona.

This situation is particularly intense in South Asia, due to the presence of the Himalayas. High mountain ranges tend to force winds hitting them upwards, which amplifies the South Asian Summer Monsoon, with higher winds leading to more upward air movement, thus drawing in further air from the sea. However, despite the incidents in Arunachal Pradesh this week, the Indian Monsoon is predicted to be be week this year, due to a developing el Niño system over the southern Pacific Ocean, leading to concerns that the country could suffer widespread droughts and famine this year.

The el Niño is the warm phase of a long-term climatic oscillation affecting the southern Pacific, which can influence the climate around the world. The onset of el Niño conditions is marked by a sharp rise in temperature and pressure over the southern Indian Ocean, which then moves eastward over the southern Pacific. This pulls rainfall with it, leading to higher rainfall over the Pacific and lower rainfall over South Asia. This reduced rainfall during the already hot and dry summer leads to soaring temperatures in southern Asia, followed by a rise in rainfall that often causes flooding in the Americas and sometimes Africa. Worryingly climatic predictions for the next century suggest that global warming could lead to more frequent and severe el Niño conditions, extreme weather conditions a common occurrence.

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Are all known specimens of Homo naledi female?

In 2013 a large number of skeletons belonging to a previously unknown Hominin species were discovered in a newly discovered chamber within the Rising Star Cave System in the Cradle of Humankind at Maropeng, South Africa. This new chamber was named the Dinaledi Chamber (Chamber of the Stars in Sotho), and the new Hominin species was given the name Homo naledi ('naledi' meaning 'star'). A number of subsequent specimens assigned to the same species have been found in nearby chambers. Some of the specimens have been dated to between 335 000 and 236 000 years before the present, although it is possible that the total chronological range of all the specimens is longer.

Homo naledi is an unusual species, with a mosaic of modern and archaic traits. It has a small brain size, more comparable to that of an Australopithecene than an Archaic Human. The bones of the trunk and shoulders of Homo naledi also resemble those of Australopithecenes, yet the hands, lower limbs, and face of the species are far more Human. 

A recent study of the teeth of Homo naledi found that they showed remarkably little variation, and concluded that this might indicate that all known specimens might belong to a single sex. However, estimating the sex of a specimen on bone-or-tooth morphology is a remarkably difficult process, particularly where there isn't a dimorphism (i.e. two consistently different forms) within the known specimens of that species.

Sex determination can also sometimes be achieved using ancient DNA recovered from specimens. However, DNA, while this has been used on some ancient Hominins from cool climates, DNA tends to degrade rapidly in warmer environments, such as South Africa.

In a paper published in the journal Cell on 24 June 2026, a team of scientists led by Palesa Madupe of the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen, the Human Evolution Research Institute at the University of Cape Town, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, present the results of a study in which they assessed the sexes of all known specimens of Homo naledi using palaeoproteomic analysis of dental enamel.

The study focuses on amelogenins, a type of protein which helps to direct the mineralisation of tooth enamel. This the DNA which is used to make this protein is principally found on the X-chromosome, however, unlike many other genes, this has not been lost from the Y-chromosome, with the effect that there are two distinct forms of amelogenin, Amelogenin X, which drives from the version of the gene on the X-chromosome, and which is produced by all Humans, and Amelogenin Y, which is derived from the version of the gene on the Y-chromosome, and which is found only in males (albeit only making up about 10% of the total. This tool has previously been used to determine the sexes of other Pleistocene Hominins, making it a realistic choice for establishing the same in Homo naledi. 

Madupe et al. began by taking surface etchings from four teeth, then processing them. All of the samples yielded the Amelogenin X variant, but none produced Amelogenin Y, indicating that all four were female. The samples were then subjected to a more destructive round of testing, crushing the teeth completely and then analysing the whole sample. This yielded identical results, indicating that the less destructive test was sufficiently reliable.

Location and layout of the Rising Star cave system. (A) Map of South Africa zoomed in (insert), showing the position of the area known as the Cradle of Humankind, approximately 50 km northwest of Johannesburg, where the Rising Star cave system is located. (B) The Rising Star cave system within the Cradle of Humankind. (C) Layout of the Rising Star System and the Dinaledi subsystem and Lesedi Chamber, where all the specimens were recovered, and the photos of the four Homo naledi specimens initially micro-destructively sampled by acid etching, then sectioned for enamel growth analysis and subsequently sampled destructively. Madupe et al. (2026).

Following this success, Madupe et al. carried out an analysis of another nineteen Homo naledi teeth, using the non-destructive method (i.e. using surface etchings, not whole teeth). This included all 20 known Homo naledi specimens within the experiment. The Amelogenin X variant was again found in seventeen specimens, while the Amelogenin Y variant was again not detected. Two specimens yielded such low protein levels that they were excluded from the study, although these specimens also yeilded Amelogenin X variant at low levels and no Amelogenin Y variant. The Amelogenin Y variant was detected in all the controls used for the study, which comprised fifteen male Homo sapiens, two male Paranthropus robustus, a male Australopithecus africanus, a male Denisovan, and a male Homo antecessor. 

The Amelogenin X protein found in Homo naledi showed no variation, something which would be considered extra-ordinary in a modern Human population, suggesting that either the species Homo naledi was remarkably genetically homogeneous, or that all of the individuals were very closely related. The individuals come from locations up to 145 m from one another within a complex cave system, and are not thought to have been deposited at the same time, making the former diagnosis more likely.

Madupe et al. identify eighteen confidently identified informative single amino acid polymorphisms on the Hominid Amelogenin X protein, two of which are notably different in Homo naledi and Modern Humans. One of these, a phenylalanine amino acid molecule at position 141 on the protein, is the same as that seen in present day Strepsirrhini (Lemurs, Galagos, Pottos, and Lorises) and Cercopithecidae (Old World Monkeys), but differs from the position in Modern Humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans, all of which have a tyrosine amino acid at this point. The second, a proline amino acid at position 635, is the same character state as in all living non-Human Primates, but differs from the situation in Modern Humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans, all of which have an alanine amino acid at this point. This location has not been recovered in any Homo antecessor, Homo erectus, or Australopithecus africanus specimen to date, but has been identified in two Paranthropus robustus specimens, both of which both had a proline amino acid in this position.

Analysis of the Amelogenin protein has previously been shown to be a useful way to identify the sex of a variety of Pliocene and Pleistocene Hominins. Application of this test to Homo naledi failed to identify any males among the 20 individuals currently known, nor any intra-specific variation on the protein, both highly unusual states. Notably, the study included individual UW 102a, popularly known as 'Neo' (pronounced ney-oh), the most complete Homo naledi specimen known, who has previously identified as male on the basis of a relatively robust skeleton (fortunately, the name Neo, which is Sotho and means 'gift', can be applied to either sex). 

The cranium of Homo naledi specimen popularly known as 'Neo'. Nutcracker Man.

Since the method has previously been applied to individuals from South Africa as much as two million years old, and all of the male controls used within the study were identified as such, Madupe et al. do not believe there was anything wrong with the methodology being used. On this basis, they conclude that the Amelogenin Y variant was not present in any of the specimens, either because they were all female, or because of a mutation which prevented the expression of this protein in male Homo naledi. However, if the previous study on the dentition of Homo naledi is taken into account, it does raise the likelihood of all specimens being female.

Mutations which lead to the deletion or non-expression of the Amelogenin Y protein are known. They are more common in some Human populations than others (in one population in Pakistan, 8% of men did not produce this protein), and has been observed in a Neanderthal individual from Siberia. However, such mutations are typically extremely rare. 

Since there is no reason to believe the sex ratio in living Homo naledi populations was anything other than 1:1, a random accumulation of 20 female specimens is incredibly unlikely. However, such a ratio is not inconsistent with the previously-made suggestion that the presence of Homo naledi specimens in the Rising Star Cave System may have been the result of deliberate mortuary practices rather than a random accumulation. 

The Dinaledi Chamber is notoriously hard to access, to the extent that following its discovery, lead scientist Lee Berger assembled a team of physically small female palaeontologists and archaeologists with caving experience in order to carry our excavation work there. In theory, the cave could have been equally inaccessible to male Homo naledi, leading to a bias in the preservation of individuals there. However, ten of the known individuals are juveniles who died before their second molar erupted, an age at which it is unlikely that sex-related size-differences would have been sufficient to prevent males entering the site.

Exclusively female funerary sites are not known from any Modern Human population. The closest we have are the Neolithic Panoría site in Spain and Edcoural Cave site in Portugal, where females make up 70% and 67% of the population respectively, something which has been thought to reflect the greater importance of females in a matrilineal society. However, the Neolithic inhabitants of Iberia were still Modern Humans, very different to Homo neledi, a Pleistocene Hominin not interpreted to have been closely related to us, and the two groups cannot be expected to have had similar funerary practices (if Homo naledi indeed had these at all).

The expression of archaic amino acid variants in Homo naledi further supports the idea that this species was not closely related to Modern Humans, although the absence of data from archaic Homo species, such as Homo erectus or Homo antecessor, makes it hard to work out how distant a relationship this implies. Gathering such data for more Human and Australopithecene species may help to resolve the phylogentic position of Homo naledi. The less destructive sampling method used by Madupe et al. in this study should make such sampling easier that the earlier form of this technique, which required the destruction of whole teeth, a highly precious resource for extinct Hominins.

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