BBC
At least 30 people have now died in the Appalachia region of eastern Kentucky, as the region braces for more rainfall.
At least six children - including four siblings, aged one to eight, who were reportedly swept from their parents' grip - are among the dead.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said the death toll would continue to rise as "hundreds" remain unaccounted for.
More than 12,000 households remain without power, and hundreds of homes and businesses have been flooded.
The damage to roads, bridges and other infrastructure will take millions to repair, the governor said on Monday.
The Guardian
The risk of global societal collapse or human extinction has been “dangerously underexplored”, climate scientists have warned in an analysis.
They call such a catastrophe the “climate endgame”. Though it had a small chance of occurring, given the uncertainties in future emissions and the climate system, cataclysmic scenarios could not be ruled out, they said.
“Facing a future of accelerating climate change while blind to worst-case scenarios is naive risk management at best and fatally foolish at worst,” the scientists said, adding that there were “ample reasons” to suspect global heating could result in an apocalyptic disaster.
The international team of experts argue the world needs to start preparing for the possibility of the climate endgame. “Analysing the mechanisms for these extreme consequences could help galvanise action, improve resilience, and inform policy,” they said.
NPR
Crews battling the largest wildfire so far this year in California braced for thunderstorms and hot, windy conditions that created the potential for additional fire growth Sunday as they sought to protect remote communities.
The McKinney Fire was burning out of control in Northern California's Klamath National Forest, with expected thunderstorms a big concern Sunday just south of the Oregon state line, said U.S. Forest Service spokesperson Adrienne Freeman.
"The fuel beds are so dry and they can just erupt from that lightning," Freeman said. "These thunder cells come with gusty erratic winds that can blow fire in every direction."
This is an open thread where everyone is welcome, especially night owls and early birds, to share and discuss the happenings of the day. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
C/NET
Two members of Congress have called on the Federal Trade Commission to tackle a digital threat that privacy watchdogs have been concerned about for years: Virtual private network companies continue to profit from rising surveillance fears by advertising largely unverifiable promises not to log users' online activity.
In their July letter, Democrats Rep. Anna Eshoo, of California, and Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden address what may finally be a tipping point in the fight for VPN transparency -- more abortion-seekers are now turning to VPNs for protection while risking imprisonment in pursuit of life-saving health care. The letter's concerns about VPNs include the following, some of which are also issues ExpressVPN has publicly dealt with, and all of which are issues affecting how VPNs are reviewed.
First, ethically dubious VPN companies armed with outsized advertising budgets often fund glowing faux-reviews disguised as unbiased consumer advice. Even among editorially independent reviewers, though, properly testing a VPN already means grappling with the complexities of not just encryption tech but the industry's overall resistance to investigation. This muddies the waters for consumers and may potentially conflict with US advertising regulations.
BBC
The world is one misstep from devastating nuclear war and in peril not seen since the Cold War, the UN Secretary General has warned.
"We have been extraordinarily lucky so far," Antonio Guterres said.
Amid rising global tensions, "humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation", he added.
His remarks came at the opening of a conference for countries signed up to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The 1968 deal was introduced after the Cuban missile crisis, an event often portrayed as the closest the world ever came to nuclear war. The treaty was designed to stop the spread of nuclear weapons to more countries, and to pursue the ultimate goal of complete nuclear disarmament.
Almost every nation on Earth is signed up to the NPT, including the five biggest nuclear powers. But among the handful of states never to sign are four known or suspected to have nuclear weapons: India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan.
Deutsche Welle
Grain shipment leaving Odesa a 'beacon of hope'
Martin Frick, the director of the World Food Program in Germany, has welcomed the departure of the first shipment of Ukrainian grain following an agreement that was struck between Moscow and Kyiv last month.
A cargo ship loaded with more than 26,000 tons of corn left the southern Ukrainian port of Odesa on Monday morning bound for Lebanon, according to the UN.
"This is certainly a beacon of hope to see a ship leaving the port after almost five months," Frick told DW in an interview. "I think it's early to say the crisis is over … but with every ship leaving, I hope that normality will come back."
Both Ukraine and Russia are major exporters of wheat and corn, but shipments from Ukraine had been blocked since the start of Moscow's invasion. That led to significant concerns about food security in some countries in the Middle East and Africa that rely on these grains.
Frick said the number of acutely hungry people around the world had been increasing even before the war started.
Deutsche Welle
Serbs in North Kosovo have removed barricades that blocked part of the border. The EU has invited both sides to Brussels for talks after Pristina wanted to introduce new rules for its border crossing.
Over the weekend, the Kosovo government accused Belgrade of instigating unrest in order to destabilize the country that declared independence from Serbia in 2008.
Serbian Foreign Minister Nikola Selakovic said Kosovo was guilty of making unacceptable "unilateral actions" in order to target the small country's Serb population, urging Pristina to change course.
"It is not only about I.D. cards and registering vehicle plates. It is about the way of behavior," Selakovic said. "If someone is really oriented to search for the peaceful solution for all the existing issues, then that one should not act in the way they been acting."
Kosovo's authorities on Monday moved to ease mounting tensions by delaying an order on vehicle license plates and identity cards that triggered riots among minority Serbs.
Following the postponement of the measures, Serbs in North Kosovo removed barricades they had previously put up along two border crossings between the neighboring countries.
Al Jazeera
Liz Truss, a right-wing politician of the Conservative Party, is currently favourite to become Britain’s next prime minister, to replace scandal-hit Boris Johnson.
The 47-year-old entered Parliament in 2010, and by 2014, she settled into her first cabinet position – secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs under David Cameron.
She since served under Theresa May and Johnson in various positions. In 2021, she was handed the top role of foreign secretary.
But she has not always been a Conservative. Raised by left-wing parents, she was a teenaged member of the centrist Liberal Democrats, and at 19, called for the abolition of the monarchy.
Now, “Truss is on the [Conservative] party’s right, and she is an instinctive free-trade libertarian and is not a natural supporter of levelling up,” David Jeffery, lecturer in British politics at the University of Liverpool, told Al Jazeera, referring to a policy touted by Johnson aimed at reducing inequality.
Al Jazeera
Kyiv, Ukraine – Oleksiy Vadatursky was known as a “grain tycoon” who helped make Ukraine a key wheat exporter.
A Russian missile killed him and his wife Raisa in their house in the southern city of Mykolaiv on Sunday, raising suspicion among Ukrainian politicians and pundits who called their death a calculated murder aimed at stalling the resumption of exports.
Unlike other oligarchs – a group of super-rich and unpopular Ukrainians with immense political clout who gained control of key industries after privatising Soviet-era plants and factories – Vadatursky was widely respected as a self-made man.
Bangkok Post
The captain of the Nok Air flight that slid off the runway at Chiang Rai airport will be summoned by regulators to explain why passengers were kept on board the aircraft for about an hour after the accident.
Suttipong Kongpool, director general of the Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand (CAAT), said on Monday that the chief pilot of flight DD108 will be ordered to defend the decision.
The rationale behind the decision is what the CAAT needs to hear from the captain," Mr Suttipong told the "Inside Thailand" news programme.
The Don Mueang-Chiang Rai flight with 164 passengers and six crew slid off the runway and its undercarriage collapsed as it landed in heavy rain at Mae Fah Luang in the northern province on Saturday night. There were no injuries.
The Guardian
A New Zealand man who helped build a US-based pornography empire by coercing young women into filming adult videos has pleaded guilty in San Diego federal court to one count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking.
Matthew Isaac Wolfe, 40, admitted to his part in a scheme that recruited women to perform in videos for GirlsDoPorn, on the promise the films would not be shown in the US and would not be uploaded online. Wolfe is the fourth defendant to plead guilty in connection to the case.
The adult subscription service launched in 2006 by New Zealander Michael Pratt and was operated by
Ruben Garcia and Wolfe, who moved to the US in 2011 to help Pratt. Pratt’s websites generated more than US$17m in revenue.
The Guardian
Beyoncé has confirmed that she will remove an offensive term for disabled people from the lyrics of hew new album,
Renaissance, after it was called “ableist” and “offensive” by disability charities and activists.
In the song Heated, co-written with Canadian rapper Drake, Beyoncé used a derogatory term for spastic diplegia, a form of cerebral palsy. A representative for the musician told Insider that the lyric will be changed. “The word, not used intentionally in a harmful way, will be replaced,” the statement said.
In June, the US musician Lizzo was also called out for using the same term in the song Grrrls, from her new album Special. After a swift backlash, Lizzo apologised and replaced the lyric, saying that she had never wanted to “promote derogatory language” and adding: “As a fat Black woman in America, I have had many hurtful words used against me so I understand the power words can have (whether intentionally, or in my case, unintentionally.)”
The Guardian
Food inflation has soared across much of the developing world since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and has trapped several richer countries in a cycle of rising prices, a report by the World Bank has found.
The Washington-based development organisation said the war in eastern Europe would hit many countries with an increase in food bills worth more than 1% of their annual national income (GDP), while others would fail to contain the impact and be plunged into a full-blown debt crisis.
CNN
The United States killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone strike, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
Zawahiri, who just turned 71 years old, had remained a visible international symbol of the group, 11 years after the US killed Osama Bin Laden. At one point, he acted as bin Laden's personal physician.
The US government has not yet confirmed his death. President Joe Biden will speak at 7:30 p.m. ET on "a successful counterterrorism operation" against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the White House said Monday.
"Over the weekend, the United States conducted a counterterrorism operation against a significant Al Qaeda target in Afghanistan. The operation was successful and there were no civilian casualties," a senior administration official said.
NPR
The field of Alzheimer's research is branching out.
After decades of focusing on the sticky amyloid plaques and tangled tau fibers associated with the disease, brain researchers are searching for other potential causes of impaired memory and thinking.
That search is on full display this week at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in San Diego, where sessions are exploring factors including genes, brain injury, clogged arteries and inflammation.
A group of researchers from Seattle even unveiled a highly detailed atlas showing how different types of brain cells change in Alzheimer's. The goal is to help scientists identify new approaches to treatment.
"Certainly, plaques and tangles are a hallmark," says Maria Carrillo, chief science officer of the Alzheimer's Association. "It doesn't mean plaques are the cause of cell death."
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.