Monday breaks the record for the hottest day ever on Earth
By: Sibi Arasu And Seth Borenstein
(AP) – Monday was the hottest day ever globally, beating a record set the day before, as countries around the world from Japan to Bolivia to the United States continue to feel the heat, according to the European climate change service.
Provisional satellite data published by Copernicus on Wednesday shows that Monday was 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.1 degree Fahrenheit) hotter than Sunday.
Climate scientists say it’s plausible that this is the warmest it has been in 120,000 years because of human-caused climate change. While scientists cannot be certain that Monday was the very hottest day throughout that period, average temperatures have not been this high since long before humans developed agriculture.
But it’s a difficult determination to make, said University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann, because data from tree-rings, corals and ice cores don’t go back that far.
The temperature rise in recent decades is in line with what climate scientists projected would happen if humans kept burning fossil fuels at an increasing rate.
Netanyahu’s visit sparks wave of protests in DC, with all sides criticizing the Israeli leader
By: Ashraf Khalil
WASHINGTON (AP) — The arrival of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has touched off a flurry of protests in the nation’s capital, including a sit-in at a congressional office building that ended with multiple arrests.
Some of the demonstrations have condemned Israel, but others have expressed support while pressing Netanyahu to strike a cease-fire deal in the war with Hamas and bring home the hostages still being held by the militant group.
The Capitol Police said about 200 people were arrested Tuesday on charges stemming from the sit-in at the Cannon House Office Building. Jewish Voice for Peace said many more than that were arrested, rabbis among them.
Workers on Wednesday erected a black metal fence around the White House as Washington braced for more protests ahead of Netanyahu’s speech before a joint session of Congress. Police have significantly boosted security around the Capitol and closed multiple roads for most of the week.
Russian man is among those arrested in plots targeting Paris Olympics
By: Barbara Surk And Angela Charlton
PARIS (AP) — French authorities have foiled several plots to disrupt the 2024 Olympics, including arresting a Russian man in one of them, officials said Wednesday, just days before the opening ceremony of the Summer Games in Paris.
France has been on high alert over the past few weeks as preparations to host the Olympics hit the final stretch. The Games officially kick off with a lavish and high-security opening ceremony on the River Seine on Friday.
Paris prosecutors said Wednesday that they had arrested a 40-year-old Russian man Tuesday at his Paris apartment on suspicion of planning to “destabilize the Olympic Games.”
He was charged with “conducting intelligence work on behest of a foreign power” with an aim to “provoke hostilities in France,” crimes punishable with 30-year sentence in France, according to a statement from the Paris prosecutor’s office.
During an official search of the suspect’s home in Paris, police agents found items that “raised fears of his intention to organize events likely to lead to destabilization of the Olympic Games,” prosecutors said.
Trump rally gunman flew a drone 200 yards from the stage hours before the event, FBI chief testifies
By: Eric Tucker
WASHINGTON (AP) — Just hours before opening fire, the gunman in the attempted assassination of Donald Trump flew a drone roughly 200 yards (180 meters) from the rally stage where the Republican former president would later stand, viewing and livestreaming the footage, FBI Director Christopher Wray told congressional lawmakers on Wednesday.
The FBI recovered the drone and a controller from the car of 20-year-old shooter Thomas Matthew Crook and is analyzing it as agents investigate his background and motive.
Wray’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee represents his most detailed comments to date about the July 13 shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, which has thrust the FBI into a political maelstrom, with the bureau probing the most serious attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981.
The details about Crooks’ use of a drone just hours before Trump took the stage for the rally add to the questions about the security lapses preceding the event.
Wray pledged to lawmakers that the FBI would “leave no stone unturned” in its investigation of a shooting that he called despicable and horrific.
2024 Election Latest: Trump and Harris hit campaign trail as Biden prepares to address the nation
(AP) – After dropping out of the presidential race, Joe Biden will address the nation on Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET. Vice President Kamala Harris has accepted Biden’s endorsement and is building momentum ahead of the DNC in Chicago.
On the campaign trail, Harris will head to the solidly Republican state of Indiana, and Donald Trump is holding his first public campaign rally since Biden’s exit from the 2024 race.
Plane crashes just after takeoff from Nepal’s capital, killing 18 people. Pilot is lone survivor
By: Binaj Gurubacharya
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — A plane crashed Wednesday just after taking off from Nepal’s capital, killing 18 people and injuring a pilot who was the lone survivor.
All the people aboard the Saurya Airlines flight including the co-pilot were Nepali except for one passenger, who was a Yemeni national, the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal said. Authorities have pulled all 18 bodies from the wreckage, police official Basanta Rajauri said.
The Bombardier CRJ 200 plane was heading to Nepal’s second-most populous city of Pokhara for maintenance work and most of the passengers aboard were either mechanics or airline employees, airport officials said. They were speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.
The pilot has injuries to his eyes but his life is not in any danger, said a doctor at Kathmandu Medical College Hospital, where the pilot is being treated. The doctor spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to reporters.
The plane took off from the Kathmandu airport at 11:11 a.m. local time and turned right but crashed moments later in the eastern section of the airport, the Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement.
CrowdStrike blames bug for letting bad data slip through, leading to global tech outage
(AP) – CrowdStrike is blaming a bug in an update that allowed its cybersecurity systems to push bad data out to millions of customer computers, setting off last week’s global tech outage that grounded flights, took TV broadcasts off air and disrupted banks, hospitals and retailers.
CrowdStrike also outlined measures it would take to prevent the problem from recurring, including staggering the rollout of updates, giving customers more control over when and where they occur, and providing more details about the updates that it plans.
The problem involved an “undetected error” in the content configuration update for its Falcon platform affecting Windows machines, the Texas company said.
A bug in the content validation system allowed “problematic content data” to be deployed to CrowdStrike’s customers. That triggered an “unexpected exception” that caused a Windows operating system crash, the company said.
NASA telescope spots a super Jupiter that takes more than a century to go around its star
By: Marcia Dunn
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A super Jupiter has been spotted around a neighbouring star by the Webb Space Telescope — and it has a super orbit.
The planet is roughly the same diameter as Jupiter, but with six times the mass. Its atmosphere is also rich in hydrogen like Jupiter’s.
One big difference: It takes this planet more than a century, possibly as long as 250 years, to go around its star. It’s 15 times the distance from its star than Earth is to the sun.
Scientists had long suspected a big planet circled this star 12 light-years away, but not this massive or far from its star. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. These new observations show the planet orbits the star Epsilon Indi A, part of a three-star system.
Astronomers directly observed the incredibly old and cold gas giant — a rare and tricky feat — by masking the star through use of a special shading device on Webb. By blocking the starlight, the planet stood out as a pinpoint of infrared light.
The planet and star clock in at 3.5 billion years old, 1 billion years younger than our own solar system, but still considered old and brighter than expected, according to Matthews.
The star is so close and bright to our own solar system that it’s visible with the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere.
Meta takes down thousands of Facebook accounts running sextortion scams from Nigeria
By: Barbara Ortutay
(AP) – Meta says it has taken down about 63,000 Facebook accounts in Nigeria that were engaging in financial sextortion scams — along with groups and pages that were trying to organize, recruit and train new scammers.
Sexual extortion, or sextortion, involves persuading a person to send explicit photos online and then threatening to make the images public unless the victim pays money or engages in sexual favours. Recent high-profile cases include two Nigerian brothers who pleaded guilty to sexually extorting teen boys and young men in Michigan, including one who took his own life, and a Virginia sheriff’s deputy who sexually extorted and kidnapped a 15-year-old girl.
There has been a marked rise in sextortion cases in recent years, fuelled in part by a loosely organized group called the Yahoo Boys, operating mainly out of Nigeria, Meta said, adding that it removed Facebook accounts and groups run by the group under its “dangerous organizations and individuals” policy.
