A 6.0-magnitude earthquake hit Afghanistan’s eastern region near the Pakistan border on Sunday, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

USGS reported that the quake occurred 27km (16.77 miles) north-east of Jalalabad, in Nangarhar Province, and at a depth of 8km (4.97 miles). It struck at 11:47 p.m. local time. USGS models estimate the shaking could result in hundreds of fatalities.

Nearly half a million people likely felt strong to very strong shaking, which can result in considerable damage to poorly built structures, according to the USGS.

At least nine people were killed and 25 others were injured in Nangarhar, Reuters reported, citing Ajmal Darwaish, spokesman for the province’s health department.

“Unfortunately, tonight’s earthquake has had human casualties and financial damages in some of our eastern provinces,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid posted on X.

“Right now, local officials and residents are making all the efforts to rescue affected ones. Support teams from the capital and nearby provinces are also on their way. All available resources will be used for the rescue and relief of the people,” he added.

Around 20 minutes after the quake struck, a 4.5-magnitude aftershock hit the same region, according to USGS, later followed by a 5.2-magnitude aftershock — both at a depth of 10km (6.21 miles).

An orange alert was issued by the USGS PAGER system, which predicts economic and human loss after earthquakes.

“Significant casualties are likely and the disaster is potentially widespread. Past events with this alert level have required a regional or national level response,” it said.

Ahmad Zameer, 41, a resident in Kabul, told CNN the earthquake was strong and jolted his neighborhood more than 100 miles from the epicenter. He added that everyone from the nearby apartment buildings rushed to the street in fear of being trapped inside.

In October 2023, more than 2,000 people died after a powerful 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck western Afghanistan – one of the deadliest quakes to hit the country in recent years.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

iOS 26 is coming, and it’s set to be a big deal. The new operating system gets an all-new naming scheme, doing away with the version numbers and sticking to numbers based on the upcoming year instead. But it’s not just the naming convention that’s changing. iOS 26 brings with it a series of major new features, an all-new design, and more. In fact, it could well be the biggest iOS update in many years.

So what are the most important new features to look forward to? I’ve been using the beta version of iOS 26 since the end of June. Here are my favorite new features.

A unified Phone app

Liquid Glass is the big new design language across all of Apple’s software — but Liquid Glass itself isn’t really a feature. It does, however, bring with it a series of secondary design changes across Apple’s apps, like the new Phone app.

In the new Phone app, the tab bar at the bottom of the screen is transformed into a pill-shaped bar with only three tabs: Calls, Contacts, and Keypad. So where are your voicemails and favorites? They’re integrated into the main “Calls” tab, where you can view voicemails attached to any recent calls, and see your favorite contacts at the top of the screen. It helps make the Phone app feel less cluttered, but if you prefer the old way, you can switch back to the “Classic” view to separate things out again. Before you do so, note that you can filter the calls in the Calls tab — so you can filter the view to only show voicemails, without having to scroll endlessly through all those spam calls just to find a voicemail that was left last week.

Call screening

Credit: Christian de Looper / Apple

The iPhone is also doing a better job of keeping spam calls at bay. There’s a new call screening feature that gives you some control over what happens when a call comes in from someone who’s not in your contacts. It can be accessed by opening the Settings app, scrolling down the Apps, and selecting Phone. From there, you’ll be able to choose from three call-screening options under the title “Screen Unknown Callers.”

The first option is to never screen, which basically means that your phone will always ring, whether the call is from an unknown person or not. The second option is “Ask Reason for Calling,” which means that a caller will be asked a few questions about why they’re calling, before your phone rings, and you’re provided with a transcript of their answers so you can decide for yourself whether or not to answer. The last option is “Silence,” which essentially silences all calls from unknown numbers and sends them straight to voicemail. 

Better Visual Intelligence

Credit: Christian de Looper / Apple

Apple Intelligence may not have quite lived up to the hype from last year’s iOS 18, but it’s still getting better. In iOS 26, you’ll notably get better Visual Intelligence features. Visual Intelligence essentially gives Apple Intelligence access to the world around you, using the iPhone’s camera — so you can point it at a sign for translation, for example. In iOS 26, the big change is that it won’t just help you better understand the world around you, but also what’s on your iPhone, through the ability to use Apple Intelligence with screenshots. 

To use this feature, all you need to do is take a screenshot, after which you’ll be able to save it to your Photos, like you always have, but you’ll also be given new “Ask” and “Search” buttons in the bottom corners. These are the same buttons you’ll see on the regular Visual Intelligence screen. Tap one of them depending on what you want to do.

Spatial Scenes on your lock screen

Credit: Christian de Looper / Apple

Spatial Scenes uses AI to give your photos a whole new depth. Basically, Spatial Scenes can take 2D photos and give them depth by taking objects in the photo and creating layers, then filling in some of the missing information with AI. When a Spatial Scene is created, you’ll be able to tilt your phone to see the image shift. It’s a neat effect, and definitely adds a whole new dimension to photos. And, to be clear, you can do this with many photos straight from the Photos app.

But my favorite use case for the feature is putting them on the lock screen. To do this, simply hold down on your lock screen to customize it. Along the way, you’ll see a new hexagonal button, which is the button for creating Spatial Scenes. You can toggle it on or off, and the effect should show up in real-time, so you can preview it before you save it.

Backgrounds in iMessage chats

Credit: Christian de Looper / Apple

iMessage is getting a little more customizable, too. In iOS 26, you’ll be able to add backgrounds to your chats, which can be a photo, a simple color, or one of the preset images of the sky, water, and so on. It isn’t a major change, but it’s a neat way to add a little more customization to your iMessage chats.

To add a background to a chat in iMessage on iOS 26, open the chat and tap on the name of the contact or group chat at the top. Then tap on the Backgrounds tab and choose from one of the options. The background will be visible for all participants in the chat who are running iOS 26 or later, so keep that in mind.

Safari is more minimalistic

Credit: Christian de Looper / Apple

Another app that’s getting the Liquid Glass minimalism treatment is Safari. In iOS 26, Safari gets out of the way and puts the content on the web page front and center. When you first open Safari in iOS 26, you’ll see the same buttons, but turned into hovering bubbles instead of a standard menu bar. You’ll get the buttons for forward and back, the three-dot menu button, and the main URL bar. As you scroll down a web page, however, all of those controls shrink down to just a small representation of the URL bar, maximizing the space that the web page can take up on the screen.

The trade-off is that the controls aren’t quite as accessible. To get the controls back on the screen, scroll up a little or tap on the small URL bar. Having used iOS 26 for a few months now, I can say that it hasn’t really interrupted how I use the web on mobile much. I tend to open and close tabs as I go, so I’m not using the URL bar or controls beyond that initial navigation to a web page. But others may not have the exact same experience. 

Live Translation

Yet another phone call feature in iOS 26 comes in the form of Live Translation, which does exactly what it sounds like. With the feature, you’ll essentially be able to have phone calls in two different languages. When the person on the other end of the call speaks, an AI voice will say the translation in your language, and you’ll see the translated words on the screen. Then, when you talk, your words will be translated, and the person on the other end of the call will hear a translation of what you’re saying.

Perhaps the best thing about this feature is that it all happens on your iPhone. That means that the other person in the call can be on any random phone — your iPhone does the translating and sends audio of your translated voice in place of your actual voice. The feature only works for one-on-one calls, and supports English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish — though it’s likely other languages will be added down the line.

The Phillies have signed right-hander Walker Buehler, The Athletic’s Matt Gelb reports.  The deal will become official once Buehler (who is represented by Excel) passes a physical, and Buehler is eligible for inclusion on a playoff roster because he is joining the Phillies before September 1.  Gelb reported Philadelphia’s interest in Buehler earlier today.

It was just two days ago that the Red Sox released Buehler, bringing an early end to their partnership after Buehler signed a one-year, $21.05MM free agent deal last winter.  Roughly $3.4MM remains on that contract, but the Sox will remain responsible for most of that money, as the Phils will owe Buehler just the prorated portion of the MLB minimum salary.

The signing is a flier to see if Buehler can bounce back in Philadelphia after a rough year in Boston.  Buehler has struggled to a 5.45 ERA, 16.5% strikeout rate, and 10.8% walk rate over 112 1/3 innings this season, and opposing batters have taken him yard 22 times.  The numbers aren’t far removed from Buehler’s regular-season performance over 75 1/3 innings with the Dodgers in 2024, when Buehler was returning to action after missing the entire 2023 campaign due to Tommy John surgery.

That was the second TJ procedure of Buehler’s career, and given how shaky he has looked in the aftermath, it remains to be seen if the righty can ever return to his past All-Star form.  However, Buehler showed some flashes of his old self during the Dodgers’ playoff run in 2024, throwing 10 shutout innings over his last three appearance to help Los Angeles capture the championship.  Most notably, Buehler even picked up the save to close out the clinching Game Five.

As Gelb notes, the Phillies are probably viewing Buehler as a bullpen contributor again for the playoffs given how the team already has its postseason rotation set.  While losing Zack Wheeler for the season blew a big hole into the Phils’ pitching plans, there’s still plenty of starting options available in Cristopher Sanchez, Ranger Suarez, Jesus Luzardo, Aaron Nola, and Taijuan Walker.  The Phillies were considering a six-man rotation for September when Wheeler was still available, so Buehler could potentially make a start or two just to help ease the innings burden on the other starters, and then slide into a relief role in October.

With a healthy 6.5-game lead over the Mets in the NL East, the Phillies have some breathing room to use September as a bit of a laboratory to figure out their optimal playoff roster.  If Buehler’s struggles continue, the Phils could just leave him off a postseason roster entirely, with no cost to the team apart from his minimal salary.

A bigger-picture look at Buehler’s free-agent future should wait until his 2025 season is actually over.  Buehler is still just 31 and probably wants to keep trying to re-establish himself as a starter, so he’ll likely sign another one-year deal (worth far less than $21.05MM) with a team in need of rotation help.  Should Buehler pitch well as a reliever in Philadelphia, however, it might add an interesting wrinkle to the situation, as exploring a full-time role change would add more interest to Buehler’s market.