BBC
Western France is facing a "heat apocalypse", experts have warned, as extreme temperatures continue to hit much of Europe.
Temperatures could reach record levels in 15 regions of the southwest, with firefighters battling wildfires and thousands forced to evacuate.
Blazes in Spain, Portugal and Greece have forced thousands more to flee.
Wildfires in France in recent days have forced over 24,000 people to flee, with emergency shelters set up for evacuees.
Gironde, a popular tourist region in the southwest, has been hit particularly badly, with firefighters battling to control fires which have destroyed over 14,000 hectares (34,000 acres) of land since last Tuesday.
Jean-Luc Gleyze, president of the Gironde region, told the BBC the fires had continued to grow in La-Teste-de-Buch and Landiras because of the hot and windy weather, making it difficult for firefighters to contain them.
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BBC
Ghana has confirmed its first two cases of the deadly Marburg virus, a highly infectious disease in the same family as the virus that causes Ebola.
It says both patients died recently in hospital in the southern Ashanti region.
Their samples came back positive earlier this month and have now been verified by a laboratory in Senegal.
Health officials in the West African nation say 98 people are now under quarantine as suspected contact cases.
These include relatives, medics and mortuary workers who came into contact with the two patients.
Bangkok Post
JAKARTA: Indonesia urged tech companies on Monday to register under new licensing rules, or run the risk of having their platforms blocked, with data showing many big tech firms such as Google and Meta had yet to comply days out from July 20 deadline.
The requirement to register is part of a set of rules, first released in November 2020, that will allow authorities to order platforms to take down content deemed unlawful, or that "disturbs public order" within four hours if considered urgent, and 24 hours if not.
In a text message to Reuters, Communications Minister Johnny G. Plate urged companies to register before sanctions were applied. His ministry said last month that platforms could be blocked if they did not comply.
Deutsche Welle
Russia has been employing mercenaries from the private military contractor Wagner to reinforce its regular troops fighting on the front line in Ukraine, according to the British Defense Ministry.
In its daily intelligence update, it said the Wagner Group had lowered its recruitment standards and started hiring convicts and individuals who had previously been blacklisted.
UK officials said this change, along with the limited training given to new recruits, would "highly likely impact on the future operational effectiveness of the group and will reduce its value as a prop to the regular Russian forces."
The fact that the head of Wagner, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, had recently received a high national honor for his military performance might also aggravate tensions between Russia's military and the mercenary group, the update said.
Deutsche Welle
Climate change has cost Germany an average of €6.6 billion ($6.7 billion) per year since 2000, a study commissioned by the country's ministry for economic affairs and climate action has found.
Environment Minister Steffi Lemke said the "horrifying scientific data" illustrated the "enormous damage and costs" of the climate crisis.
"The numbers sound the alarm for more prevention when it comes to the climate," she added.
The study was released on Monday at the start of the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin, where senior officials from 40 countries discussed the fight against climate change and its impact ahead of this year's UN climate summit in Egypt.
At the same event, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock described climate change as the world's "biggest security problem."
"We are all in the same boat, which means that we can only turn the tide together," said Baerbock.
Al Jazeera
Two top Ukrainian officials have been suspended pending investigations but have not been formally dismissed, a senior presidential aide has said.
On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ivan Bakanov had been removed as head of the SBU domestic security agency and Iryna Venediktova had been removed as prosecutor general, citing dozens of cases of collaboration with Russia by officials in their agencies.
Bakanov, 47, is a childhood friend and former business partner of Zelenskyy. He helped run Zelenskyy’s media business during his television career and then led the campaign that saw Zelenskiy shift from playing the president on a sitcom to being elected in a landslide victory in real life.
Zelenskyy appointed him to head the Security Service of Ukraine (Sluzhba Bespeky Ukrayiny, or SBU) in August 2019.
Venediktova, 43, the first woman to serve as Ukraine’s prosecutor general, has won international praise for her relentless drive to gather war crimes evidence against Russia.
Al azeera
As the Russia-Ukraine war grinds on, Poland is becoming an increasingly valuable NATO member.
Firmly on Kyiv’s side, the central European nation shares borders with Ukraine, Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad, and Belarus, and is a bulwark against Moscow’s aggression on the NATO alliance’s eastern flank.
Along with the United States, United Kingdom and Baltic states, Warsaw supports policies that aim to sanction and punish Moscow for its devastating war on Ukraine.
“Poland is at the tip of NATO’s spear against Russia at this juncture,” Theodore Karasik, a fellow for Russian and Middle Eastern Affairs at the Jamestown Foundation, told Al Jazeera.
“With Poland bordering on the Kaliningrad oblast, there is increasing concern about how this geography will play out as Russia continues its aggressive attempts to expand its ‘sovereignty,’” he said.
Le Monde, fr
Firefighters have been tackling each new fire non-stop since early morning, and still a black plume that can be seen from miles around rises high above the dunes. Through the smoke, fire-fighting planes can be seen trying to tame the flames, which rise several meters high and have now reached the edge of the ocean south of La Teste-de-Buch, in Gironde in the south-west of France.
Shortly before 4 p.m. on Sunday, July 17, from the crowded beach of Moulleau in Arcachon, one thing was certain: the fire raging through the forest was not under control, and was becoming more intense. At 6 p.m., 80 kilometers (50 miles) away, in the Landes forest near Landiras, commanding officer David Brunner was patrolling the road between the villages of Villandraut and Origne, surrounded by an alarming crackling sound. He looked on as the flames crept down the trees from top to bottom, producing a thick, black cloud blocking out the searing sun over Gironde, where the temperature has reached more than 40°C (104°F). Aided by a wind that refuses to abate, the flames are spreading quickly.
The Guardian
A judge in West Virginia blocked enforcement of the state’s 150-year-old abortion ban on Monday, opening the door for abortions to resume in the state.
The Kanawha county circuit court judge, Tera L Salango, granted the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia a preliminary injunction against the ban, saying that in the absence of action by the court, the state’s sole abortion clinic and its patients, “especially those who are impregnated as a result of a rape or incest, are suffering irreparable harm”.
The Republican attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, lamented “a dark day for West Virginia”. He said his office will appeal to the state supreme court.
West Virginia has a state law dating back to the 1800s making performing or obtaining an abortion a felony punishable by up to a decade in prison. It provides an exception for cases in which a pregnant person’s life is at risk.
The Guardian
Generations of the royal family have concealed details of assets worth more than £180m through a series of legal applications that have been granted in total secrecy.
The assets are outlined in 33 wills that were drawn up by members of the Windsor family over more than a century.
The family have been able to keep secret the contents of the wills by securing a special carve-out from a law that normally requires British wills to be published.
The sealing of the wills has enabled the Windsors to avoid the public seeing what kinds of assets – such as property, jewels and cash – have been accumulated by members of the royal family and how these were then distributed to, for example, relatives, friends or staff.
The Guardian
The Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has called for a windfall profits tax, arguing the idea is a “no-brainer” that has been taken off the table due to the influence of big companies.
Stiglitz made the comments to reporters during a tour of Australia after personally lobbying the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, to introduce the tax and warning that excessive interest rate rises could push Europe, the US, and then Australia into recession.
At a press conference on Monday the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, again ruled out a windfall profits tax despite a new report from the progressive thinktank Australia Institute finding rising profits are helping to drive inflation.
The Guardian
Germany’s energy crisis has led the coalition government to toy with ideas that have long been seen as politically taboo, such as extending the life of unpopular nuclear power plants and – perhaps even more divisive – imposing a speed limit on the autobahn in the hope it will reduce fuel usage.
As the country braces for a winter of uncertainty amid fears that Russian gas could be cut off completely and electricity may be in short supply, the three-way coalition of the Social Democrats, the Greens and the pro-business FDP are looking for ways to ease the situation.
Central to the debate is also how Germany hopes to maintain its climate goals, particularly after a
recent decision – backed by the Green economics minister – to reignite highly polluting coal-fired power plants for a limited time.
NPR
NASA released a new photograph of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 last week which depicts a cluster of galaxies in space invisible to the human eye.
The image was captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, a $10 billion satellite that took decades of research and innovation to develop.
As most of the world collectively gasped, Reddit user pizzafourlife's reaction to the images was: That's it?
"I was bummed," pizzafourlife wrote. "Without context, [it] is just a space picture."
For thousands of people on Reddit and Twitter, that context was provided by an interactive tool created by John Christensen. The web app aligns images created by the Hubble Space telescope and Webb telescope, allowing users to compare them side by side in real time.
NPR
A new report on the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, is shining a light on law enforcement's delayed and disorganized response to the attack that killed 19 children and two teachers in May.
The Texas House committee investigating the shooting at Robb Elementary School released a 77-page preliminary report on Sunday, outlining what it calls the "systemic failures and egregious poor decision making" among local, state and federal officers during the incident. Here are four key takeaways from its findings, which the committee says are incomplete as multiple investigations remain ongoing.
[...]
Democratic state Rep. Joe Moody of El Paso, one of the lawmakers on the committee, sees their job as laying out the facts, and hopes the report will be a "solidifying piece" of evidence that lawmakers can use to improve policy going forward — particularly when it comes to gun control measures.
He hears from critics that if someone really wants to do something dangerous, they will figure out how to do so regardless of gun control laws. But he says the story of the Uvalde shooter shows that these laws really do matter.
CNN
More extreme water cuts are all but certain in the Southwest starting next year -- including new water cuts for California -- according to the latest government forecast for the Colorado River and Lake Mead, the country's largest reservoir.
Lake Mead, which provides water to roughly 25 million people in Arizona, Nevada, California and Mexico, is losing water at an alarming rate amid an extraordinary, multi-year drought made worse by the climate crisis.
Because of the reservoir's plummeting level, states that rely on water from the lower Colorado River were already subject to the cuts that accompany
a Tier 1 shortage beginning in January 2022, which have mainly impacted agricultural water use.
But this year did not bring much-needed precipitation to the river basin. The latest report from the US Bureau of Reclamation shows Lake Mead at just over 1,040 feet above sea level in July, having dropped nearly 10 feet in just two months, and is currently at just 27% of its maximum capacity.
The crew of the Overnight News Digest consists of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Rise above the swamp, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.