Week in pictures: space, wildfires and war dominate the news
From the silence of outer space to the roar of artillery in eastern Ukraine, this week delivered images that stopped people mid-scroll. A historic spacewalk, burning forests in the heart of Europe, and relentless Russian drone attacks — the world didn’t slow down for a moment.
Sophie Adenot makes history outside the ISS
On Tuesday, astronaut Sophie Adenot floated out of the International Space Station’s airlock and into the record books. She became the first French woman ever to conduct a spacewalk, spending just over seven hours outside the station at roughly 400 kilometres above Earth. The images beamed back were extraordinary — Adenot’s helmet visor reflecting the curvature of the planet below, her gloved hands gripping the station’s exterior framework with practiced calm. France’s space agency CNES called it a defining moment for European human spaceflight. And it’s hard to argue with that.
Drone strikes kill dozens across Ukraine
The week brought no respite for Ukrainian civilians. Russian forces launched a wave of drone and missile strikes targeting residential areas in Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Kyiv, killing at least 14 people and wounding dozens more in a single 48-hour period. Footage from the ground showed emergency crews pulling debris away from collapsed apartment blocks, dust still hanging in the air. Children’s toys visible in the rubble. A local emergency official said rescue teams worked through the night, but that some areas remained too dangerous to enter.
It’s the kind of destruction that photographs struggle to fully capture, yet this week’s images came close.
Wildfires tear through Belgium and southern Europe
Belgium isn’t a country most people associate with wildfire, but this week it burned. Dry conditions and unusually high temperatures for the season fuelled fires in the Ardennes region, forcing the evacuation of several villages and scorching hundreds of hectares of forest. Firefighting aircraft worked through the smoke while residents watched from roads clogged with cars. Further south, fires continued burning across parts of Portugal, Greece and Spain, where emergency services have been stretched thin since early summer. Climate scientists were quick to note that fire seasons across Europe are now measurably longer than they were two decades ago.
Torrential rain floods the Philippines
While Europe baked and burned, the Philippines went under. A powerful weather system dumped more than 200 millimetres of rain on parts of Luzon in under 24 hours, triggering flash floods that swept through low-lying communities north of Manila. Residents waded through chest-deep water carrying children and plastic bags of salvaged belongings. At least 8 people were confirmed dead by Friday, with search operations ongoing.
It’s a week that felt, in many ways, like a compressed version of everything the world is currently dealing with — conflict, climate, ambition, survival. The images don’t offer easy answers. But they do demand attention, and that’s rarely a small thing.
