The climate crisis is driving an exponential rise in the most extreme wildfires in key regions around the world, research has revealed.
The wildfires can cause catastrophic loss of human life, property and wildlife and cause billions of dollars of damage. Scientists say this is climate change “playing out in front of our eyes”.
The scientists also found that the intensity of the worst wildfires had doubled since 2003, and that the six years with the biggest numbers of extreme fires had all occurred since 2017. On average across the globe, extreme wildfires have more than doubled in frequency and intensity over the past two decades.
San Diego police said the body of Diem Le Nguyen, 50, was found on Monday about a quarter of a mile (400m) off the Black Mountain trail, hours after she had made a distress call to fellow hikers saying she was "extremely hot and needed water".
Her death follows several in Colorado and Arizona this month, and a number of near-fatal incidents across the country, as it struggles under a "heat dome" and some popular trail areas hit highs of 114F (about 46C).
In Colorado, Marsha Cook of Iowa collapsed and died on 10 June while attempting the "moderate to steep" hiking trail to the Colorado National Monument.
In Sedona, Arizona, a 44-year-old Pennsylvania woman collapsed and died of heat exhaustion on 14 June while hiking with her husband and two daughters.
Two days later, a 41-year-old man died on the Bright Angel Trail in the Grand Canyon.
A month out from the summer Olympics in Paris, air conditioning is an increasingly hot topic.
In their effort to host what they’re calling the “greenest ever Games,” organizers chose not to install air conditioning at the complex where thousands of athletes and officials will stay throughout the season.
Instead, the Athletes' Village will be cooled by a system of water pipesrunning beneath the floorboards.
This village was designed to avoid the need for air conditioning, even in very, very high temperatures, in order to maintain comfortable temperatures," Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said in March.
France was among the European countries that saw record-breaking heat waves last summer, which was the joint-hottest ever recorded on the continent. More than 5,000 people died in France last year as a result of extreme heat.
NPR
Last summer, New Mexico state special agents inspecting a farm found thousands more cannabis plants than state laws allow. Then on subsequent visits, they made another unexpected discovery: dozens of underfed, shell-shocked Chinese workers.
The workers said they had been trafficked to the farm in Torrance County, N.M., were prevented from leaving and never got paid.
“They looked weathered,” says Lynn Sanchez, director of a New Mexico social services nonprofit who was called in after the raid. “They were very scared, very freaked out.”
They are part of a new pipeline of migrants leaving China and making unauthorized border crossings into the United States via Mexico, and many are taking jobs at hundreds of cannabis farms springing up across the U.S.
Al Jazeera
Palestinian medics and rights advocates have denounced the killing of a top medical official in Gaza by the Israeli military, accusing Israel of systematically targeting the health system in the besieged enclave.
Israel bombed a clinic in Gaza City late on Sunday, killing Hani al-Jaafarawi, Gaza’s director of ambulances and emergency, and four other people.
The targeted clinic, which offered general health, paediatric and dental services, was also put out of commission by the Israeli attack.
“The Israeli war jets bombed the clinic and destroyed its rooms completely,” said Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Ismail Algoul, reporting from Gaza City.
“The blood of the people who were targeted is still on the floor, while now, thousands of patients are in danger after the clinic lost all of its facilities as a result of the Israeli raid.”
Al Jazeera
IThe new military plan is expected to focus on domestic security threats and armed fighters crossing over from Afghanistan, amid mounting tensions between Islamabad and the Taliban rulers in Kabul. A statement issued by Sharif’s office on June 22 referred to plans to “intensify” efforts to curtail “terrorists” through regional cooperation with Pakistan’s neighbours.slamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan’s top leadership has approved the launch of a new military operation aimed at quelling a surge in violence.
Called Azm-e-Istehkam, meaning Resolve for Stability in Urdu, the operation was announced after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif led a review of the country’s “counterterrorism” operations over the weekend, especially the National Action Plan adopted in the aftermath of the December 2014 attack on Peshawar’s Army Public School. More than 140 people, predominantly students, were killed in the attack, which was claimed by the Pakistan Taliban, known by the acronym TTP.
Deutsche Welle
UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health Tlaleng Mofokeng presented her fourth independent report to the UN's Human Rights Council on Monday. In it, she analyzed the US-led "War on Drugs" and its impacts on people's well-being, while the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called the campaign a "clear failure."
"The enforcement of drug laws and policies compounds other forms of discrimination and disproportionately affects certain individuals," she stated. "International drug control conventions have negatively affected the availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality of certain drugs used as medicines."
Addressing the issue of equality, Mofokeng said: "All stakeholders must respect people who use drugs, people with drug use disorders and people whose health and well-being is affected by drug laws and policies."
The report highlights the need to look more closely at the disproportionate negative impact that current policy has on "at-risk" groups in society that are often targeted by drug laws and the policing thereof.
Deutsche Welle
North Korea has again taken to launching what appear to be trash-laden balloons south, according to South Korea's military.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff on Monday said in a statement that North Korean balloons were moving in a southerly direction.
"Citizens are advised to be cautious of falling debris," the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. "If you find any fallen balloons do not touch them and report them to the nearest military unit or police station."
City authorities Seoul also issued a warning to residents late on Monday, saying at least one of the balloons "has been confirmed to have entered Seoul's airspace.
Tensions are always high between the two neighbors, still not formally at peace following the Korean War of the early 1950s.
But Russian President Vladimir Putin's first trip to North Korea in more than 20 years last week, signing a strategic partnership deal that's said to include a mutual defense clause, prompted fresh concern in the South.
The Guardian, International
Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has described in explicit terms his active effort to annex the West Bank to Israel, days after the Guardian revealed how the pro-settlement politician and his allies had quietly gained significant new legal powers to that end.
Speaking at a meeting of his Religious Zionism party, Smotrich told colleagues that he was “establish[ing] facts on the ground in order to make Judea and Samaria [an Israeli term for the occupied West Bank] an integral part of the state of Israel”.
“We will establish sovereignty … first on the ground and then through legislation. I intend to legalise the young settlements [illegal outposts],” Smotrich said in comments reported by Haaretz. “My life’s mission is to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
The Guardian, UK
The crisis of poverty that has taken root in the UK over the past 14 years has been laid bare in two reports that reveal the devastating effects low wages and price increases on the lives of 900,000 children.
With both main parties proposing tough welfare spending plans, reports have highlighted the link between rising child poverty and slow wage growth under five Conservative governments since 2010 – the slowest growth since the second world war.
Research by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) found that over the past 14 years, an additional 1,350 children a week in households with at least one working parent had been dragged into poverty.
The Guardian, US
A former employee of Donald Trump’s pre-presidency organization has publicly claimed that he once made jokes about Nazi “ovens” while Jewish executives were in the same room.
Barbara Res – a lead engineer on the construction of Trump Tower and author of a memoir, Tower of Lies, about her almost two decades working for the former president – told MSNBC on Sunday that her erstwhile boss would make “ridiculous remarks”.
“We had just hired a residential manager, a German guy,” Res said. “And Donald [Trump] was bragging among – to us executives, there were four of us – about how great the guy was and he was a real gentleman, and he was so neat and clean. And he looked at a couple of our executives who happen to be Jewish, and he said, ‘Watch out for this guy – he sort of remembers the ovens,’ you know, and then smiled.
The Guardian, Australia
Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art has relegated part of its Picasso collection to a female toilet cubicle, after a court ruling that it must admit men to a female-only exhibition.
Artist Kirsha Kaechele, the wife of Mona’s billionaire owner, David Walsh, posted a video on social media on Monday showing at least two paintings by the late Spanish artist hanging in a toilet.
Picassos were among the artworks previously hanging in the museum’s Ladies Lounge, a women-only area created by Kaechele which included, as part of the artist’s intent, men’s experiences of exclusion.
But in April, The Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (Tascat) found that the Ladies Lounge was discriminatory after a complaint lodged by a man who was denied entry in 2023.
The museum was given 28 days to cease refusing entry to the Ladies Lounge based on gender. The exhibition has been closed ever since.
Reuters
WASHINGTON, June 24 (Reuters) - WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange is due to plead guilty this week to violating U.S. espionage law, in a deal that will end his imprisonment in Britain and allow him to return home to Australia, ending a long legal odyssey.
Assange, 52, has agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defense documents, according to filings in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.
Assange is due to be sentenced to 62 months of time already served at a hearing on the island of Saipan at 9 a.m. local time on Wednesday (1900 EDT/2300 GMT on Tuesday). He is expected to return home after that hearing.
A lawyer for Assange did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
WikiLeaks in 2010 released hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. military documents on Washington's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - the largest security breaches of their kind in U.S. military history - along with swaths of diplomatic cables.
USA Today
"Pirates of the Caribbean" actor and lifeguard Tamayo Perry has died at age 49 after an apparent shark attack.
The Honolulu Medical Examiner's Office confirmed Perry's death in an email to USA TODAY on Monday. The cause and manner of death are pending autopsy results, the agency reported.
The attack reportedly occurred off the island of Oahu, Hawaii, on Sunday afternoon, authorities told The Associated Press and CNN.
The Honolulu Ocean Safety department and other responders arrived on the North Shore of Oahu to find Perry, who was an ocean safety lifeguard, after a call came in about a man in the water who appeared to be fatally injured by a shark attack. Emergency responders pronounced him dead on the scene, authorities told the outlets.
CNN
CNN —
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars media empire will be shut down and sold off, a bankruptcy court-appointed trustee said in an emergency court filing Sunday, signalling the end of the notorious far-right outlet that Jones has used to spread dangerous misinformation and lies.
Earlier this month, a bankruptcy judge ruled that Jones’ personal assets would be liquidated to help pay off the nearly $1.5 billion he owes the families of victims of the Sandy Hook massacre. But at that time, the judge ruled Jones’ media company Free Speech Systems, the parent of Infowars, would not be liquidated partly because the process would be costly and lengthy.
The dismissal of the bankruptcy case against the outlet meant that the families were free to go after Jones’ assets, including Infowars, in state court. Since Jones is the owner of Free Speech Systems, a court appointed trustee was put in charge of the company.
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