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  • Melting ice reveals remains of climber lost on glacier 37 years ago | CNN

    Melting ice reveals remains of climber lost on glacier 37 years ago | CNN

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    Berlin
    CNN
     — 

    The remains of a German mountain climber who went missing 37 years ago while hiking along a glacier near Switzerland’s iconic Matterhorn have been recovered, as melting glaciers lead to the re-emergence of bodies and objects thought to be long lost.

    Climbers hiking along the Theodul Glacier in Zermatt on July 12 discovered human remains and several pieces of equipment, police in the Valais canton said in a statement Thursday.

    “DNA analysis enabled the identification of a mountain climber who had been missing since 1986,” police said in a statement. “In September 1986, a German climber, who was 38 at the time, had been reported missing after not returning from a hike.”

    Police said that searches for the disappeared climber at the time proved unsuccessful.

    The climber’s remains underwent a forensic analysis at Valais Hospital, allowing experts to link them to the 1986 disappearance, police added Thursday.

    Police did not provide additional information of the German alpinist’s identity nor on the circumstances of his death.

    Authorities released a photograph of a lone hiking boot with red laces sticking out of the snow, along with some hiking equipment that had belonged to the missing person.

    “The recession of the glaciers increasingly brings to light missing alpinists who were reported missing several decades ago,” police concluded in the statement.

    The discovery of the remains of the German climber comes as scientists revealed earlier this week that this month is on track to be the planet’s hottest in around 120,000 years.

    Glaciologist Lindsey Nicholson at the University of Innsbruck, in Austria, told CNN Friday that shrinking glaciers due to climate change have led to the discovery of bodies of climbers who disappeared.

    “As the glaciers retreat, any material – including people who have fallen into or onto them and have been buried by subsequent snow – will emerge. All glaciers are melting very fast and receding across the European Alps,” Nicholson said.

    Last year, Swiss glaciers recorded their worst melt rate since records began more than a century ago, losing 6% of their remaining volume in 2022, nearly double the previous record of 2003, Reuters reported.

    The melt was so extreme in 2022 that bare rock that had remained buried for millennia re-emerged at one site while bodies and even a plane lost elsewhere in the Alps decades ago were recovered.

    In 2015, the remains of two Japanese climbers who went missing on the Matterhorn in a 1970 snowstorm were found and their identities confirmed through the DNA testing of their relatives.

    “The glaciers are undergoing a long-term trend of melting,” Nicholson said, adding the trend is expected to continue, with “low snow years” contributing to the problem.

    “The reduced snow amount is also partly coupled to the change in temperatures, because what happens is some of the precipitation that … would have come in the form of snow, now comes in the form of rain. That does not help the glaciers, it works against them,” she added.

    Even if ambitious climate targets are met, up to half of the world’s glaciers could disappear by the end of the century, according to recent research.

    “If we continue with the emissions we are transmitting now, we are looking at a largely deglaciated Alps region for generations to come – and that is very sad,” Nicholson warned.

    The disappearance of glaciers will have cascading impacts.

    Glaciers play a vital role in providing fresh water for nearly 2 billion people and they are also a key contributor to sea level rise.

    “Some regions of the world are much more dependent on the glacier mountains than we are here – in some cases they are much more vulnerable than the Alps,” Nicholson added.

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  • Inside efforts to avert environmental ‘catastrophe’ in the Red Sea | CNN

    Inside efforts to avert environmental ‘catastrophe’ in the Red Sea | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.



    CNN
     — 

    Moored five miles off the coast of Yemen for more than 30 years, a decaying supertanker carrying a million barrels of oil is finally being offloaded by a United Nations-led mission, hoping to avert what threatened to be one of the world’s worst ecological disasters in decades.

    Experts are now delicately handling the 47-year-old vessel – called the FSO Safer – working to remove the crude without the tanker falling apart, the oil exploding, or a massive spill taking place.

    Sitting atop The Endeavor, the salvage UN ship supervising the offloading, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen David Gressly said that the operation is estimated to cost $141 million, and is using the expertise of SMIT, the dredging and offshore contractor that helped dislodge the Ever Given ship that blocked the Suez Canal for almost a week in 2021.

    How to remove one million barrels of oil from a tanker

    Twenty-three UN member states are funding the mission, with another $16 million coming from the private sector contributors. Donors include Yemen’s largest private company, HSA Group, which pledged $1.2 million in August 2022. The UN also engaged in a unique crowdfunding effort, contributing to the pool which took a year to raise, according to Gressly.

    The team is pumping between 4,000 and 5,000 barrels of oil every hour, and has so far transferred more than 120,000 barrels to the replacement vessel carrying the offloaded oil, Gressly said. The full transfer is expected to take 19 days.

    The tanker was carrying a million barrels of oil. That would be enough to power up to 83,333 cars or 50,000 US homes for an entire year. The crude on board is worth around $80 million, and who gets that remains a controversial matter.

    Here’s what we know so far:

    The ship has been abandoned in the Red Sea since 2015 and the UN has regularly warned that the “ticking time bomb” could break apart given its age and condition, or the oil it holds could explode due to the highly flammable compounds in it.

    The FSO Safer held four times the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez off Alaska in 1989 which resulted in a slick that covered 1,300 miles of coastline. A potential spill from this vessel would be enough to make it the fifth largest oil spill from a tanker in history, a UN website said. The cost of cleanup of such an incident is estimated at $20 billion.

    The Red Sea is a vital strategic waterway for global trade. At its southern end lies the Bab el-Mandeb strait, where nearly 9% of total seaborne-traded petroleum passes. And at its north is the Suez Canal that separates Africa from Asia. The majority of petroleum and natural gas exports from the Persian Gulf that transit the Suez Canal pass through the Bab el-Mandeb, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

    The sea is also a popular diving hotspot that boasts an impressive underwater eco-system. In places its banks are dotted with tourist resorts, and its eastern shore is the site of ambitious Saudi development projects worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

    The first step of the mission was to stabilize and secure the vessel to avoid it collapsing, Gressly said. That has already been achieved in the past few weeks.

    “There are a number of things that had to be done to secure the oil from exploding,” Gressly told CNN, including pumping out gases in each of the 13 compartments holding the oil. Systems for pumping were rebuilt, and some lighting was repaired.

    Booms, which are temporary floating barriers used to contain marine spills, were dispersed around the vessel to capture any potential leaks.

    The second step is to transfer the oil onto the replacement vessel, which is now underway.

    exp Yemen tanker United Nations cnni world 072611ASEG1_00001402.png

    Oil being removed from tanker near Yemen in Red Sea

    After The Safer is emptied, it must then be cleaned to ensure no oil residue is left, Gressly said. The team will then attach a giant buoy to the replacement vessel until a decision about what to do with the oil has been made.

    “The transfer of the oil to (the replacement vessel) will prevent the worst-case scenario of a catastrophic spill in the Red Sea, but it is not the end of the operation,” Gressly said.

    While the hardest part of the operation would then be over, a spill could still occur. And even after the transfer, the tanker will “continue to pose an environmental threat resulting from the sticky oil residue inside the tank, especially since the tanker remains vulnerable to collapse,” the UN said, stressing that to finish the job, an extra $22 million is urgently needed.

    A spill would shut the Yemeni ports that its impoverished people rely on for food aid and fuel, impacting 17 million people during an ongoing humanitarian crisis caused by the country’s civil war and a Saudi-led military assault on the country. Oil could bleed all the way to the African coast, damaging fish stocks for 25 years and affect up to 200,000 jobs, according to the UN.

    A potential spill would cause “catastrophic” public health ramifications in Yemen and surrounding countries, according to a study by researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine. Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Eritrea would bear the brunt.

    Air pollution from a spill of this magnitude would increase the risk of hospitalization for cardiovascular or respiratory disease for those very directly exposed by 530%, according to the study, which said it could cause an array of other health problems, from psychiatric to neurological issues.

    “Given the scarcity of water and food in this region, it could be one of the most disastrous oil spills ever known in terms of impacts on human life,” David Rehkopf, a professor at Stanford University and senior author of the study, told CNN.

    Up to 10 million people would struggle to obtain clean water, and 8 million would have their access to food supplies threatened. The Red Sea fisheries in Yemen could be “almost completely wiped out,” Rehkopf added.

    The tanker has been an issue for many people in Yemen over the past few years, Gressly said. Sentiment on social media surrounding the removal of oil is very positive, as many in Yemen feel like the tanker is a “threat that’s been over their heads,” he said.

    The tanker issue remains a point of dispute between the Houthi rebels that control the north of Yemen and the internationally recognized government, the two main warring sides in the country’s civil conflict.

    While the war, which saw hundreds of thousands of people killed or injured, and Yemen left in ruins, has eased of late, it is far from resolved.

    Ahmed Nagi, a senior analyst for Yemen at the International Crisis Group think tank in Brussels, sees the Safer tanker issue as “an embodiment of the conflict in Yemen as a whole.”

    “The government sees the Houthi militias as an illegitimate group controlling the tanker, and the Houthis do not recognize (the government),” Nagi told CNN.

    The vessel was abandoned after the outbreak of the Yemeni civil war in 2015. The majority of the oil is owned by Yemeni state firm SEPOC, experts say, and there are some reports that it may be sold.

    “From a technical point of view, the owner of the tanker and the oil inside it is SEPOC,” Nagi said, adding that other energy companies working in Yemen may also share ownership of the oil.

    exp un yemen oil spill tanker achim steiner vause intv FST 071912ASEG2 cnni world_00003204.png

    U.N. begins high-risk operation to prevent catastrophic oil spill from Yemen tanker

    The main issue, Nagi added, is that the Safer’s headquarters are in the government-controlled Marib city, while the tanker is in an area controlled by the Houthis. The Safer is moored off the coast of the western Hodeidah province.

    Discussions to determine the ownership of the oil are underway, Gressly said. The rights to the oil are unclear and there are legal issues that need to be addressed.

    The UN coordinator hopes that the days needed to offload the oil will buy some time for “political and legal discussions that need to take place before the oil can be sold.”

    While the UN may manage to resolve half of the issue, Nagi said, there still needs to be an understanding of the oil’s status.

    “It still poses a danger if we keep it near a conflict zone,” he said.

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  • Unprecedented ocean heat is changing the way sharks eat, breathe and behave | CNN

    Unprecedented ocean heat is changing the way sharks eat, breathe and behave | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Sharks have been made villains in most stories, whether it’s fact or fiction. But as the planet’s climate and oceans rapidly change, these boneless, aquatic, apex predators are also misunderstood victims — under severe environmental pressure yet historically capable of incredible adaptation.

    Sharks are among the most endangered marine animals on the planet, with 37% of the world’s shark and ray species threatened with extinction, primarily due to overfishing, coupled with habitat loss and the climate crisis, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List.

    And as ocean temperatures climb, researchers say many sharks are beginning to change their behaviors — shifting where they live, what they eat and how they reproduce — which could cause cascading effects for the rest of the marine ecosystem.

    “Sharks and rays are fascinating species that have been misunderstood and underappreciated for far too long,” Heike Zidowitz, shark and ray expert at the World Wildlife Fund-Germany, told CNN, noting that they are essential for the health of the oceans.

    “If these beautiful animals were to be wiped out from our oceans, it would not only be a heartbreaking loss, it would trigger ocean imbalances with ecosystem consequences that we cannot yet imagine.”

    The oceans are heating to record levels this year — a shocking temperature increase that shows no sign of ceasing. Rising ocean surface temperatures began to alarm scientists in March. Temperatures then skyrocketed to record levels in April, leaving scientists scrambling to analyze the heat’s potentially dire ripple effects.

    As with most creatures, sharks need certain conditions to thrive. With the climate crisis impacting the temperatures and acidity of the oceans, these agile ocean creatures are sheering off their normal paths and traveling to unknown, often taxing, territories.

    Valentina Di Santo, an ecophysiologist and biomechanist who studies swimming performance in fish, said temperature changes play a dominant role in the ways they breathe, digest food, grow and reproduce.

    For sharks in particular, these physiological processes speed up as ocean temperatures get warmer, doubling in speed every 10 degrees, according to Di Santo’s research.

    “An increase in metabolic rates means that sharks are using more energy to just be alive and swim,” Di Santo told CNN. “Every activity needs extra energy. An increase in digestion rates often mean that they absorb fewer nutrients as digestion becomes less efficient and they possibly need to eat more frequently.”

    Sharks always seem to be on the hunt, maneuvering their way through the water in search of new fish or other sharks to eat. But research has shown that warming oceans have pushed many fish populations northward to cooler waters, which has disrupted the ocean’s availability of food. Some fish species are not able to find new, suitable habitats, which causes a decline in their population. Overfishing also intensifies the issue by pushing fish stocks to drop.

    Di Santo said understanding the interplay between predator and prey behavior is critical when considering how sharks respond to the climate crisis.

    “It is important to consider that sharks are very much tuned in the behavior of their prey,” Di Santo said. “Therefore, it is not surprising that they may track the geographic shifts of their preferred food sources.”

    A great white shark swims just off the Cape Cod National Seashore in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on July 15, 2022.

    Di Santo also said that sharks respond to ocean warming in two ways: shifting their latitudinal range or choosing deeper, cooler waters to enhance their physiological processes.

    A climate vulnerability assessment from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that sharks off the Northeast coast have a high likelihood of shifting their distributions or expanding into new habitats to follow preferable ocean conditions.

    “These small-scale movements can be just as crucial for their survival as poleward relocations,” Di Santo said. But “the shift in depth has been found to be more pronounced than the latitudinal shift,” and some temperate species are already exhibiting seasonal shifts toward deeper waters.

    As the climate crisis escalates, sharks’ paths will only become further strained, Zidowitz said, which could ultimately close off vast swaths of the ocean to sharks.

    But sharks also have “a remarkable history of survival,” Di Santo said, having withstood all five major mass extinction events in the last 400 million years. It’s the never-before-seen compounding consequences of overfishing, climate change, prey scarcity and habitat destruction that has shark experts worried about whether they can adapt and survive these huge planetary changes.

    Zidowitz said progress on conservation to protect shark species is “too slow to keep pace” with the numerous threats they face, yet she remains hopeful.

    “If we can find the last remaining refuges around the world where the most threatened sharks and rays live, and work together with local communities, we can bend the curve towards their recovery,” Zidowitz said.

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  • Typhoon Doksuri kills at least five as Philippines battles floods and landslides | CNN

    Typhoon Doksuri kills at least five as Philippines battles floods and landslides | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A powerful typhoon brought widespread flooding and landslides to the Philippines on Wednesday, killing at least five people, authorities in the country said.

    Typhoon Doksuri, known as Egay in the Philippines, has caused flooding across five regions and more than a dozen rain-induced landslides, according to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.

    One victim was killed in the central region of Calabarzon and four died in the mountainous Cordillera region, another two people were injured elsewhere in the country, the agency said.

    The storm made landfall at 3:10 a.m. local time (3:10 p.m. ET) near remote northern Fuga Island, said Pagasa, the Philippine weather bureau.

    Though it has weakened from super typhoon strength, Doksuri arrived with winds of about 220 kilometers per hour (140 mph), according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center – equivalent to a category 4 Atlantic hurricane.

    Pagasa warned that violent and life-threatening conditions were expected in some areas of Luzon, the Philippines’ largest and most populous island, as torrential rains rains swept the country.

    The typhoon unleashed up to 16 inches (0.4 meters) of rain, with the potential to reach 20 inches (0.5 meters) from its 680-kilometer (420-mile) rainband, Pasgasa said.

    Authorities also warned of tidal surges up to 3 meters (nearly 10 feet).

    Local governments on Tuesday began evacuating some people living in the storm’s path in anticipation of winds reaching 200 kph (124 mph).

    The governor of Cagayan province, which suspended schools and closed offices, said more than 12,000 people were evacuated from coastal and mountain towns by Tuesday evening.

    “It’s a powerful typhoon and we want to take as many preemptive measures as possible,” Gov. Cagayan Manuel Mamba told CNN.

    Officials also canceled at least a dozen domestic flights from Wednesday through Friday.

    Strong winds knock down a tree in Cagayan province in the Philippines on July 25, 2023.

    The typhoon is expected to weaken as it heads northwest – though Taiwan and China are bracing for potentially heavy rainfall and strong winds.

    The typhoon prompted Taiwan to cancel some of its annual military drills Tuesday as it faced the prospect of what could be the strongest storm to hit the self-governing island in four years.

    The typhoon’s outer bands are beginning to impact eastern Taiwan, according to the island’s Central Weather Bureau. It is expected to continue to weaken to the equivalent of a category 1 Atlantic hurricane as it tracks northwest, potentially making a second landfall in the next two days on China’s southern coastline.

    China’s National Meteorological Center raised its typhoon emergency warning to the highest level on Wednesday as Doksuri is projected to land by Friday along the southeast coast where Fujian and Guangdong provinces meet.

    Chinese authorities have told fishing boats to return to port immediately and warned farmers to take preventive measures to avoid flooding of crops.

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  • Smoke from hundreds of Canadian wildfires blankets northern US cities with air pollution | CNN

    Smoke from hundreds of Canadian wildfires blankets northern US cities with air pollution | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Smoke from more than 1,000 wildfires burning across Canada has wafted over the northern US, bringing poor air quality and pollution that threaten residents’ health to northern US cities including Chicago, Illinois, and Minneapolis, Minnesota.

    Chicago, Minneapolis and Detroit, Michigan, are now among at least three major US cities that are ranked in the top 20 most polluted cities in the world, according to global pollution tracker IQAir.

    The smoke has drifted over the Great Lakes region, in particular, as about 1,090 active fires blaze throughout Canada, more than 670 of which are considered “out of control,” according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. That’s up from more than 880 fires there last week.

    The bulk of the country’s wildfires are burning in British Columbia, where more than 460 fires are ongoing, the agency reports.

    In the US, the National Weather Service (NWS) has issued air quality alerts for millions of people across Michigan and parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana.

    The blanket of hazy skies follows a belt of Canadian wildfire smoke which stretched across the US last week, triggering air quality alerts for more than a dozen states from Montana to Vermont, with some smoke reaching as far South as Alabama.

    The smoke is expected to shift eastward through the Great Lakes region through Tuesday and disperse by Wednesday – just as the upper Midwest is forecast to see some of its hottest temperatures so far this year. Minneapolis could reach 100° and Chicago will be in the upper 90s.

    The EPA in Illinois has declared an “Air Pollution Action Day” through Tuesday due to the “persistent” wildfire smoke causing elevated air pollution in the region. Similar advisories have been declares in Michigan and Wisconsin.

    The city is recommending that those with chronic respiratory issues limit their activities outdoors and is advising against strenuous activity for children, teens, seniors, people with heart or lung disease, and pregnant people.

    “All Chicagoans may also consider wearing masks, limiting their outdoor exposure, moving activities indoors, running air purifiers, and closing windows,” the city said in a release Monday.

    Wildfire smoke is packed with tiny pollutants – known as particulate matter – that can infiltrate the lungs and blood stream if inhaled. Particulate matter can commonly cause difficulty breathing and eye and throat irritation, but has also been linked to more serious long-term health issues such as lung cancer, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    The US is likely to see the downwind effects of Canada’s prolonged wildfires as the country continues to experience its worst fire season on record.

    Almost 29 million acres of Canadian land have been scorched so far this year, according to the national fire center. Smoke from the blazes this summer have so far touched the American South and traveled across the Atlantic and into Europe.

    The crisis has elicited a flood of international support, as fire and emergency response personnel have deployed to the country from nations including the US, Australia and Brazil. At least two Canadian firefighters have died while battling the flames.

    Hard-hit British Columbia will receive federal assistance from the Canadian Armed Forces, Public Safety Canada announced last week.

    Hundreds of British Columbia’s fires have been ignited by lightning strikes from thunderstorms, according to the British Columbia Wildfire Service. Some of those thunderstorms were “dry,” producing insufficient amounts of rain to help quench any fires – a dangerous prospect in a province experiencing severe drought.

    As the human-driven climate crisis intensifies, scientists expect wildfire seasons will increase in severity, especially as droughts and heat become more common and more severe across the world.

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  • Tourists flee Rhodes wildfires in Greece’s largest-ever evacuation | CNN

    Tourists flee Rhodes wildfires in Greece’s largest-ever evacuation | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A large wildfire tearing through the Greek island of Rhodes forced thousands of tourists to flee their hotels in what Greek officials said was the largest evacuation effort in the country’s history.

    Those caught up in the blaze described chaotic and frightening scenes, with some having to leave on foot or find their own transport after being told to leave.

    The wildfire in the central and south part of Rhodes – a hugely popular island for holidaymakers – has been burning since Tuesday. It is the largest of a number of blazes in Greece, which is sweltering due to a heat wave that experts say is likely to become the country’s longest on record.

    Amy Leyden, a British tourist in Rhodes, told Sky News she was told she had to leave her hotel immediately or her and her family “would not make it.”

    “It was just terrifying,” she said. “We’ve got our 11-year-old daughter with us and we were walking down the road at two o’clock in the morning and the fire was catching up with us.”

    Cedric Guisset, a Belgian tourist, fled Saturday with nowhere to go. “We told the hotel about the messages we had received on our phones to evacuate the area, but they didn’t even know about it,” he told public radio station RTBF.

    “We really just took our identity cards, water and something to cover our faces and heads.”

    The Greek government said nearly 19,000 people had been evacuated on Rhodes since Saturday.

    Boats were used to take some tourists to safety.

    The government called the operation “the largest such effort Greece has ever seen,” and said 16,000 people, including tourists and residents, were transported by land and 3,000 by sea.

    According to the local fire service, there are currently three active fronts firefighters are focusing on in the central and south part of the island.

    The blaze is burning near the areas of Kiotari and Lardos, not far from the Lindos archaeological site. The site has not been threatened so far.

    Hotels, schools, sports centers and conference centers have been activated in safe parts of the island to host evacuees in need.

    Greece’s foreign ministry will set up a dedicated helpdesk to assist tourists on their return to their respective countries, according to the Greek government. Tour operators have additionally ordered charter flights to land in Rhodes without passengers “in order to pick up travelers who wish to leave the island,” it said.

    Eight people have been taken to hospital with respiratory problems, according to fire officials.

    British airline Jet2 canceled all flights and holiday offers to Rhodes on Sunday. Holiday group TUI has also canceled all holiday packages to the Greek island up to and including on Tuesday due to the ongoing wildfires, both companies have said in statements.

    According to the Greek Ministry of Civil Protection, 13 departments, including the Attica region where the capital city of Athens is located, were under red alert for wildfires Sunday, which is the highest state of alarm due to the extreme risk of fire.

    In Athens, visiting hours for the Acropolis and other archaeological sites have been revised due to soaring temperatures. Staff at some sites are on strike to protest working conditions.

    “We will probably go through 15 to 16 days of a heat wave, which has never happened before in our country,” the Director of Research at the National Observatory of Athens Kostas Lagouvardos told CNN.

    He told CNN that the streak could go beyond those days, but at the moment “it’s hard to predict.”

    The longest continuous heatwave that Greece has faced was 12 days long, back in July 1987, Lagouvardos said.

    Lagouvardos said temperatures in Athens this summer could possibly break the city’s all-time record, which was set in June 2007, when Athens registered 44.8 degrees Celsius (112.64 degrees Fahrenheit).

    A tourist cools off with ice cubes at the entrance to the Acropolis in central Athens.

    Large parts of the northern hemisphere have seen fierce temperatures, with Europe seeing dramatic shifts from one form of extreme weather to another.

    Italy’s northern region of Veneto was pounded with tennis-ball sized hail overnight on Wednesday, injuring at least 110 people. Emergency services responded to more than 500 calls for help due to damage to property and personal injuries, the Veneto regional civil protection said.

    The country also experienced record-breaking heat, with capital Rome hitting a new high temperature of 41 degrees Celsius on Tuesday. Earlier in the year the country was hit by devastating floods.

    In the Balkans, severe thunderstorms storms claimed several lives after hitting on Wednesday, CNN’s affiliate N1 reported Thursday.

    Scientists are warning that the extreme weather may only be a preview of what’s to come as the planet warms.

    “The weather extremes will continue to become more intense and our weather patterns could change in ways we yet can’t predict,” said Peter Stott, a science fellow in climate attribution at the UK Met Office told CNN.

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  • Deadly extreme heat is on the rise in national parks — a growing risk for America’s great outdoors | CNN

    Deadly extreme heat is on the rise in national parks — a growing risk for America’s great outdoors | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Extreme heat appears to be killing people in America’s national parks at an alarming pace this year, highlighting both its severity and the changing calculus of personal risk in the country’s natural places as climate change fuels more weather extremes.

    More people are suspected to have died since June 1 from heat-related causes in national parks than an average entire year, according to park service press releases and preliminary National Park Service data provided to CNN. No other year had five heat-related deaths by July 23, park mortality data that dates to 2007 shows, and the deadliest month for heat in parks – August – is yet to come.

    The deaths reported so far are still under investigation, but all five died in temperatures that hit 100 degrees, a searing microcosm of a much more widespread pattern of extreme heat that has broken more than 3,000 high temperature records across the US since early June.

    That kind of heat has proven an indiscriminate killer in the nation’s parks:

    • A 14-year-old boy died on a trail in southwest Texas’ Big Bend National Park in 119-degree heat, his 31-year-old father died seeking help to save him.
    • A 65 year-or-older man died hiking on June 1 in Big Bend.
    • A 57-year-old woman died hiking a trail in Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park.
    • A 71-year-old man collapsed and died outside a restroom in California’s Death Valley National Park after park rangers believe he hiked a nearby trail.
    • A 65-year-old man was found dead in his disabled vehicle on the side of the road in Death Valley National Park, with park rangers suspecting he succumbed to heat illness while driving and then baked in temperatures as high as 126 degrees.

    Heat is the deadliest type of weather, killing on average more than twice as many people each year as hurricanes and tornadoes combined. But heat deaths are notoriously difficult to track in the US, with one 2020 study estimating that they were undercounted in some of the most populous counties.

    The National Park Service faces the same challenges, and told CNN that the true toll of this year’s extreme heat and recent past heat may be even higher. They need to collect and corroborate death reports with hundreds of individual parks and the equally vast and complex web of local and state officials that medically determine cause of death.

    As a result, some of the most recent death statistics from 2020 to 2023 could “change significantly,” park spokespeople said.

    That’s already proven true. Two of this year’s five deaths happened after the park service provided the data to CNN in early July. Still, the current statistics offer a glimpse into the deadly potential of this unrelenting heat, especially in its epicenter: the Southwest.

    All of this year’s suspected heat-related deaths took place in just three national parks: Grand Canyon, Death Valley and Big Bend. These three parks are also responsible for more than half of the 68 heat-related deaths reported by the park service since 2007.

    And that’s no surprise – all three parks are located in the nation’s oven, the Southwest, and all but one of the deaths happened west of the Mississippi River.

    It’s normal for the Southwest to be hot. But the heat this year, especially the longevity of it, is far from normal. Phoenix, just a few hours south of the Grand Canyon, shattered its record for consecutive days at 110 degrees-plus and only dropped to 97 degrees overnight at times during the streak, a record warm low temperature.

    A recent report from Climate Central, a non-profit research group, found that the Southwest heat wave in the first half of July was made at least five times more likely by human-caused climate change.

    Average annual temperatures across the Southwest increased by 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit between 1901 and 2016, according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, the federal government’s periodic climate change report. The climate crisis has also worsened the region’s most severe drought in centuries, which created an ongoing crisis over water supplies from the river that etched the Grand Canyon into the earth. And projections show that temperatures will continue to rise to the tune of 8.6 degrees – resulting in 45 more days over 90 degrees each year for parts of the region by 2100 under the worst-case scenarios.

    The country’s national parks are ground zero for this warming. A 2018 study found that they had warmed twice as fast as the rest of the US from 1895 to 2010 due to human-caused climate change.

    National parks in the Southwest and in Alaska were the “most severely damaged by human-caused climate change” and experienced the most pronounced warming, said Patrick Gonzalez, climate scientist at the University of California at Berkeley and the study’s author. But he also said that damage was happening “all across America and all across our national parks.”

    “Carbon pollution from cars, power plants and deforestation – human sources – has already damaged our national parks, and in years like this we see the potential acute damage, severe one year damage,” Gonzalez told CNN.

    Heat risk and damage to national parks will only increase if unabated carbon pollution continues, Gonzalez said. That’s changing the personal risk calculus for summer recreation now and in the future in increasingly hotter national parks.

    The 300 million-plus people who visit the parks each year are already encountering warmer temperatures and are at a greater risk for heat illness as a result. Park visitation also peaks during the summer, furthering that risk.

    The park service doesn’t universally keep track of heat-related illnesses that don’t result in death, but multiple park representatives said the number of heat illnesses was much greater than heat mortality. Multiple medical responses a week that are “probably heat-related” happen during the summer at Death Valley National Park, park spokesperson Abby Wines told CNN.

    Grand Canyon National Park doesn’t track heat-specific illness, but carries out hundreds of rescues and so-called “hiker assists” for less-severe issues most commonly because of “lack of physical conditioning,” park spokesperson Joelle Baird told CNN.

    Baird said they see a spike in ranger responses to heat-related illnesses when temperatures reach 95 degrees on trails at the midway point between the top and the bottom of the canyon.

    Extreme heat can trigger heat illness in as little as 20 to 30 minutes for people doing anything strenuous outdoors, like hiking, because heat acts as a “perfect storm,” which overloads the body until it eventually short-circuits and shuts down, Dr. Matthew Levy, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told CNN.

    Hiking was the most common cause of heat-related death in the national parks data, representing more than 60% of all deaths. Park spokespeople said that typically, less-experienced hikers find themselves in compromising situations by overestimating their abilities or underpreparing for the heat, but heat illness and death can and has happened in experienced hikers, too.

    Maggie Peikon is a self-proclaimed “avid hiker” who has climbed some of the country’s highest mountains and even scaled an active volcano in Indonesia.

    She said part of the allure of hiking for experienced hikers is to “challenge my will.” But even so, she said, hiking in this kind of heat isn’t worth it.

    “Most of the challenges I’ve pushed myself to do, there’s a level of enjoyment there, and it just feels like a punishment to go out when it’s that hot,” said Peikon, who works as the manager of communications at the American Hiking Society.

    “I think I’ve just learned what I’m capable of, and that’s not just from a physical standpoint, hiking is very mental as well,” Peikon told CNN. “That was something that has stuck with me on every single hike that I do, especially the challenging ones: What you’re capable of is entirely up to you.”

    Tourists stand next to an unofficial heat reading at Furnace Creek Visitor Center during a heat wave in Death Valley National Park.

    Personal responsibility weighs heavily in the policy direction the individual national parks take when dealing with the heat.

    Parks proactively message visitors about the heat online and in signage posted at the trails that warns of the dangerous and “tragic” consequences of high temperatures. Death Valley posts bright red “STOP Extreme Heat Danger” signs at low elevation trailheads, which urge people to stay off trails after 10 a.m. and to hike only at high elevations, where temperatures are lowest.

    “People are responsible for their own safety,” Death Valley spokesperson Abby Wines told CNN. “We try to get information out to people so they’re aware, but one of the problems with heat, I think, is that often people think it’s a matter of being tough enough. They think ‘oh, I might be uncomfortable, but that’s all and I can push through it.’ But heat is deadly.”

    It’s so hot in Death Valley that the park warns visitors that it can’t and won’t rescue people.

    “We don’t want to put our own staff at risk of heat fatality by doing a physical carry out in extreme heat conditions,” Wines said, adding that the medical helicopter can’t get enough lift to take off because temperatures are so hot.

    That was the case in the most recent death in Death Valley on July 19 when the temperature was 117 degrees, a park release notes.

    What parks seem to rarely do is close trails because of the heat. The park representatives CNN spoke to said there is no national policy or guidance to close if temperatures reach a certain level.

    Trails do close because of other kinds of extreme weather, including winter storms and tropical systems. Park officials said those decisions are made at the individual park level based on the hazards there and that it was technically possible individual parks could choose to close trails or limit access if the heat got too extreme.

    Trails in Lake Mead National Recreational area in Arizona and Nevada do close seasonally because of the heat, and Grand Canyon National Park has at least entertained the idea to close trails.

    “It is something that I’ve heard come up every single year, this time of year, so I don’t think it’s beyond the National Park Service or Grand Canyon,” Baird, Grand Canyon National Park’s spokesperson, told CNN. “I think the thought and stance has always been to push out more hiker education to try to change and influence people’s behavior rather than having a reactionary decision to close trails, because people can hike successfully. We just have to provide enough information and tools for them to be successful.”

    Grand Canyon is the deadliest park for extreme heat with 16 deaths since 2007, the preliminary data from the National Park Service would suggest, a toll Baird said would be “much higher” if the park didn’t also have one of the most robust and proactive responses to heat.

    Grand Canyon pioneered a Preventative Search and Rescue team after a particularly dangerous and taxing year for rescue teams in 1996.

    Emergency Services Coordinator James Thompson observes and directs operations during a search and rescue training exercise at the Grand Canyon.

    The teams are medically trained and meet hikers at the start of trails to make sure they are adequately prepared for the journey, provide assistance with water or snacks and even contact and check in with hikers once they’re on the trails.

    This preventative approach has decreased the number of expensive, “last resort” search and rescues that are typically done via helicopter. But despite these efforts, there are still between 300 and 350 search and rescues each year at Grand Canyon and there have been 172 so far this year, with around 70 coming since Memorial Day.

    “Grand Canyon is an amazing place, everyone should hike into the canyon if they have the ability to do so,” Baird said. “However, this time of year is not optimal.”

    Park officials and hiking experts recommended checking the weather and park alerts before going out on the trail, to get acclimated to heat before your trip and know your personal limits, to shorten activities outdoors, carry more water than you think you might need, find shadier trails, tour the park by air-conditioned car or even just skip the hike altogether to reduce the chance that heat continues to turn deadly.

    “It’s not worth the risk of experiencing heat illness because of the outcomes,” Andrea Walton, Southeast Region Public Affairs Specialist for the park service, told CNN. “At minimum you’re going to feel really bad the next day” or worse, “potentially ending up in the hospital, or worst case, experiencing a fatal incident.”

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  • Kentucky governor declares emergency after heavy rainfall causes widespread flooding | CNN

    Kentucky governor declares emergency after heavy rainfall causes widespread flooding | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Kentucky’s governor declared an emergency Wednesday after heavy – and potentially record-setting – rain caused widespread flooding throughout the state.

    The western town of Mayfield saw 11.28 inches of rain from early Wednesday to 1 p.m., the National Weather Service in Paducah said.

    If verified, that would establish a new 24-hour rainfall record for the state, the service said. The record heading into Wednesday was 10.48 inches of rain, set in Louisville in 1997, the weather service said.

    “An incredible amount of water in a very short duration unfortunately,” the weather service said.

    “Please pray for Mayfield and areas of Western Kentucky impacted by significant flooding from last night’s storms,” Gov. Andy Beshear said in a news release. “We’re working to assess the damage and respond. Just like every challenge we’ve faced, we will be there for all those affected. We will get through this together.”

    Mayfield still is recovering from a devastating tornado in 2021 that left at least 80 people dead in Kentucky. The tornado was one of at least 50 that struck several states that December.

    Wednesday morning, the whole town was covered in water.

    Officials received the first calls for assistance around 4:30 a.m., Mayor Kathy Stewart O’Nan said, and first responders began knocking on doors to help residents evacuate.

    The sun was shining again by Wednesday afternoon, and most roads had reopened by the evening, O’Nan said.

    “By mid-morning no one had checked into a shelter, so we are counting our blessings,” the mayor said.

    Tia Nalani Nathaniel Rhodes, who lives with her family in Mayfield, said she first noticed the neighborhood was flooding around 3 a.m. Wednesday. A nearby creek overflowed and added to the flash flooding, she said.

    “The water reached the front door of my home,” Rhodes said. “The insides of many cars and trucks were also flooded and everyone’s yard furniture is floating around. Mayfield is a disaster area.”

    A dozen roads were closed following the floods and others were washed out, the Graves County Sheriff’s Office said.

    It urged “extreme caution” on roads with washouts, where the asphalt has broken and fallen away.

    The sheriff’s office called it “major flooding like many have never seen.”

    Beshear urged residents to keep themselves and their families safe.

    “Remember, we can replace stuff and we can rebuild homes. We don’t want to lose any lives,” Beshear said in a video as he signed the emergency declaration.

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  • Xi says China will follow its own carbon reduction path as US climate envoy Kerry meets top officials in Beijing | CNN

    Xi says China will follow its own carbon reduction path as US climate envoy Kerry meets top officials in Beijing | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    China will follow its own path to cut carbon emissions, leader Xi Jinping vowed Tuesday, as US climate envoy John Kerry called for faster action to confront the climate crisis in a high-profile visit to Beijing.

    Xi told a national conference on environmental protection that China’s commitment to its duel carbon goals – reaching a carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060 – is “unwavering,” according to state news agency Xinhua.

    “But the path, method, pace and intensity to achieve this goal should and must be determined by ourselves, and will never be influenced by others,” he said.

    The comments came as Kerry met China’s Premier Li Qiang and top diplomat Wang Yi Tuesday, with Washington and Beijing – the world’s two largest polluters – resuming their long-stalled climate talks amid scorching heat waves across much of the globe.

    In the meeting with Li, Kerry stressed the “need for China to decarbonize the power sector, cut methane emissions, and reduce deforestation,” a spokesperson for the US State Department said in a statement.

    He also urged China to “take additional steps to enhance its climate ambition in order to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.”

    China has invested heavily in clean energy in recent years. Its solar capacity is now greater than the rest of the world combined, and the country is also leading the world in wind capacity and electric vehicles.

    On the other hand, it has accelerated the approval of new coal plants due to a renewed focus on “energy security,” sparking concerns from environmentalists that these new projects will make the shift away from coal slower and more difficult.

    But Xi’s remarks at the conference suggest that China has no desire to be pushed, or be seen to cave to pressure – especially from the United States.

    China and the US are the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters, so any attempt to address the climate crisis will need to involve deep emissions cuts from these two powerhouse nations.

    China’s emissions are more than double those of the US, but historically, the US has emitted more than any other country in the world.

    China and other fast developing nations have long argued that the world’s richest countries, especially those in the West, were able to become wealthy while churning out huge carbon emissions for decades.

    Relations between the US and China are at their worst in years with the world’s two largest economies feuding over a host of issues, from geopolitics to trade and technology.

    The US has said climate cooperation with China should be a standalone issue, separate from their disputes.

    But Beijing views it differently. Last year, it cut off climate talks with the US in protest at then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan – in the middle of the worst heat wave China had seen in six decades.

    It also halted cooperation on other common causes issues, including communications between military and law enforcement.

    That difference in views has been on full display in Beijing, even as the two sides return to the table to restart talks.

    When meeting Wang, China’s top diplomat, on Tuesday, Kerry stressed the two countries “cannot let bilateral differences stand in the way of making concrete progress” on climate cooperation.

    But Wang insisted this cooperation “cannot be separated from the overall environment of Sino-US relations.” He urged the US to pursue a “rational, pragmatic and positive policy toward China” and “properly handle the Taiwan issue,” referring to the democratic self-ruled island that Beijing claims sovereignty over.

    On Wednesday, Kerry reiterated his message to Chinese Vice-President Han Zheng that climate should be handled separately from broader diplomatic issues, Reuters reported.

    Acknowledging the diplomatic difficulties between the two sides in recent years, Kerry said climate should be treated as a “free-standing” challenge that requires the collective efforts of the world’s largest economies to resolve, according to Reuters.

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  • Biden administration suspends funding for Wuhan lab | CNN Politics

    Biden administration suspends funding for Wuhan lab | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Biden administration has suspended funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology following a monthslong review that determined that the Chinese research institute “is not compliant with federal regulations and is not presently responsible,” according to a memo from the Department of Health and Human Services.

    HHS, which conducted the review, also proposed barring the Wuhan Institute from doing business with the federal government going forward, according to the memo, which is dated to Monday and was first reported by Bloomberg.

    The lab has not received any federal funding from the US National Institutes of Health since July 2020, according to an HHS spokesperson.

    The determination came after the research institute failed to provide the National Institutes of Health with requested documents amid reported safety concerns at the lab.

    “This action aims to ensure that WIV does not receive another dollar of federal funding,” an HHS spokesperson said in a statement. “The move was undertaken due to WIV’s failure to provide documentation on WIV’s research requested by NIH related to concerns that WIV violated NIH’s biosafety protocols.”

    In Monday’s memorandum, HHS’s deputy assistant secretary for acquisition concludes that the Wuhan Institute’s “disregard of the NIH’s requests” and the NIH’s conclusion that the institute’s research likely violated biosafety protocols present a risk that the institute “not only previously violated, but is currently violating, and will continue to violate, protocols of the NIH on biosafety.”

    “Therefore, I have determined that the immediate suspension of WIV is necessary to mitigate any potential public health risk,” the official, whose name is redacted, writes in the memo.

    The Wuhan Institute of Virology is at the center of a theory that Covid-19 escaped from the lab in late 2019, triggering the global pandemic.

    The US intelligence community has yet to reach a conclusion about where the virus originated. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a declassified report last month that stated the US intelligence community could not determine whether researchers at the lab who fell ill in the fall of 2019 were infected with Covid-19, but identified safety and security issues at the lab. Many other experts say evidence suggests that the coronavirus likely emerged naturally and spread to humans in a Wuhan seafood market.

    The National Institutes of Health notified EcoHealth Alliance – a US-based organization that received a 2014 grant from NIH that was partly funneled to the Wuhan Institute – in April 2020 that it was reviewing allegations linking the Wuhan Institute to the coronavirus pandemic. And in July of that year, NIH told EcoHealth it had received reports of “biosafety concerns” at the lab.

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  • Mystery cylinder on Western Australia beach likely space junk, authorities say | CNN

    Mystery cylinder on Western Australia beach likely space junk, authorities say | CNN

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    A mystery object that washed ashore on Australia’s western coast sparking a flurry of local excitement and speculation over its origin is most likely space junk, police said Tuesday.

    Since it has turned up on a beach at Green Head, a coastal town 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Perth, the copper-colored cylinder had drawn in curious local residents eager to catch a glimpse of the unidentified object.

    Speculation also erupted online with people posting a host of theories about where it might have come from.

    The Western Australia Police Force said in a statement on Tuesday that the item is believed to be “space debris”, echoing similar comments from the country’s space agency which was working on the same hypothesis.

    Police were initially cautious, throwing up a cordon around the object and telling locals to keep away.

    But in a new update on Tuesday, police said an analysis by the Department of Fire and Emergency Service and Chemistry Centre of Western Australia had found the object to be safe, posing no current risk to the community.

    Police added they were discussing ways with relevant agencies to safely remove and store the object, while working on finalizing their findings.

    But space junk looks the most likely explanation.

    “The object could be from a foreign space launch vehicle and we are liaising with global counterparts who may be able to provide more information,” the Australian Space Agency tweeted on Monday.

    The bulky cylinder, which stands taller than a human, appears to be damaged at one end and is covered with barnacles, suggesting it has spent a significant amount of time at sea before washing up.

    The space agency urged people to avoid handling and moving the object due to its unknown origin and to report any further discovery of suspected debris.

    Police said previously that the item did not appear to originate from a commercial aircraft and vowed to guard it until its removal.

    Alice Gorman, a space archaeologist from Flinders University in Adelaide, said the cylinder is likely the third phase of a polar satellite launch vehicle previously launched by India.

    “It is identical in dimension and materials,” Gorman told CNN, comparing it with launch vehicles used by India since 2010.

    Space rockets are multi-stage, meaning they are made up of various compartments carrying fuel, each of which are dumped in a sequential order when the propellant runs out, with much of the debris falling back to Earth.

    Gorman also said the largely intact color and shape of the cylinder suggests that it did not reach outer space before it detached, sparing it from intense burn with the atmosphere on re-entry. It may have landed in the ocean about five to 10 years ago until a recent deep sea storm pushed it to the shore, she added.

    Gorman said the cylinder runs on solid fuel, which only releases toxic substances under high temperature. But she advised local residents to err on the side of caution.

    “Just as general rule, you don’t touch space junk unless you need to,” she said.

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  • The fight for the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota takes center stage in the documentary ‘Lakota Nation vs. United States’ | CNN

    The fight for the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota takes center stage in the documentary ‘Lakota Nation vs. United States’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Jesse Short Bull grew up a mile from an Indian reservation in South Dakota not realizing the ground he was stepping on was once soaked with the blood of his ancestors.

    Less than a century ago, the Indigenous people of the Lakota Dakota Nakota Nation were killed defending themselves from the United States government, which broke a treaty that vowed the sacred lands, including the Black Hills, would belong to the tribes forever.

    “I was like any other kid in America. The real history didn’t exist to me. I had no clue, and the truth was never taught to us,” Short Bull, whose Lakota name is Mni Wanca Wicapi (Ocean Star), told CNN. “When I became older, I wanted to understand what happened and why, and I started to fill in all the missing pieces.”

    These missing pieces, which led to Short Bull’s revelation of the violent injustices that led to the creation of South Dakota, is the topic of his documentary, “Lakota Nation vs. United States,” which was released Friday.

    The documentary, co-produced by actor Mark Ruffalo, is an in-depth and seldom-heard account of American history – a history that begins with the theft of land and the sacrifice of the Indigenous people who refused to surrender it.

    “This film is very much a push for land back, for the return of land, there’s no misunderstanding that’s what they’re looking for,” said film co-director Laura Tomaselli.

    Woven together by interviews with community leaders and activists, historical footage and racist Hollywood film depictions, the IFC Films documentary is split into three parts: extermination, assimilation and reparations.

    “It’s not about being angry, it’s not about being bitter. It’s about a lot of people appreciating this country and its constitution. Not realizing our treaty, which was bound to that constitution, is negated to being an old dusty antique that has no meaning,” Short Bull said. “Nothing exists to them from our country or our land or our people. But to us, it exists. We’re real.”

    The documentary, elegantly narrated by Oglala Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier, begins with a string of broken treaties by the federal government.

    Within the land legally protected by these treaties are the Black Hills, a holy site described in the film by Milo Yellow Hair, an Oglala Lakota elder and activist, as “our cradle of civilization, the heart of everything that is.”

    The Black Hills are a place of emergence, the birthplace of dozens of Indigenous tribes who consider it to be the most sacred place in the world.

    “It is one of the oldest places on the Earth, over 5 billion years old,” Yellow Hair said. “So we say from the Black Hills and the Wind Cave is that place, that opening on this mother Earth that breathes.”

    When gold was discovered on this land in 1851, war broke out for 17 years, forcing Indigenous leaders to fight gun-holstered soldiers with bows and arrows.

    In 1868, in efforts to make peace after consistently losing battles against Indigenous tribes, the US government signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie. The treaty designated millions of acres west of the Missouri River for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of the Great Sioux Nation, which encompasses over a dozen tribes.

    The treaty says the US government “solemnly agrees that no person, except those herein designated and authorized so to do…shall ever be permitted to pass over, settle upon, or reside in the territory described in this article.”

    But it became another broken promise.

    In 1980, the US Supreme Court ordered over $100 million to be paid to the Great Sioux Nation because of the broken treaty. But the nation hasn’t taken the money. Since 1980 that original $100 million has accrued interest and grown to more than $2 billion.

    The Black Hills of South Dakota, a holy site for dozens of Indigenous tribes who are fighting to see the land returned to them.

    But despite the poverty they face, the Great Sioux Nation still refuses the money. Because the land was never for sale.

    “We are nothing without the Black Hills, that’s why the Black Hills are not for sale, because we are not for sale,” Sicangu Lakota historian Nick Estes says in the documentary. “How can you sell your very identity of what makes you an Indigenous person?”

    The documentary also offers in-depth analysis into forced assimilation tactics deployed by the US government to weaken Lakota Dakota Nakota tribes who were still fighting back. One method was killing off their buffalo and depleting their resources, so they began to starve and had no choice but to depend on the government, according to the film.

    Another method was taking away their children and enrolling them in boarding schools, stripping them of their Indigenous names and clothing, banning them from speaking their languages and forcing them to cut their hair. If they resisted, they were punished, often violently.

    With the intention of conquering their people by destroying their culture, says Oglala Lakota activist Nick Tilsen, “they outlawed our language, they made our ceremonies illegal, they criminalized us for living our way of life.”

    After premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2022, “Lakota Nation vs. United States” has played on the screens at Indigenous reservations where the tragic story takes place.

    At Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, nearly 200 people, including elders who still carry stories of dark days, attended the screening, and many were in tears, says Hunkpapa Lakota elder Cedric Good House.

    “We were impressed with Jesse and everybody else because it took real bravery to do this, a lot of courage,” Good House told CNN. “It’s coming at a time when people think they can know it all in a matter of a minute. They’ll read a little clip on Facebook and that’s it.”

    “But here is this lengthy documentary and people are getting captivated by the truth, and after they finish watching they can see this is still applicable to us today. We can point it out for them,” he continued. “Look what’s happening today here and here and here, we are still fighting.”

    The Standing Rock Sioux have been recently entangled in another battle against the federal government, mainly the US Army Corps of Engineers, the agency responsible for approving the Dakota Access Pipeline.

    A violation of the Treaty of Fort Laramie, the pipeline is a 1,172-mile underground conduit that would transport some 470,000 barrels of crude oil a day – stretching across North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois.

    The Standing Rock Sioux, whose reservation resides near where the pipeline runs, say it will not only endanger their main source of drinking water – the Missouri River – but also their sacred tribal grounds.

    “This movie is about our history, but here in the present we see nothing has changed,” Good House said. “This is our sacred land, and we try to get ourselves into the process, but the process still doesn’t address us.”

    In a desperate fight to protect their land and Unci Maka, or Mother Earth, Native tribal members alongside non-Indigenous allies and environmentalists demonstrated for years against the construction of the oil pipeline until they were forcibly removed from the protest site in 2017.

    “We’re not here to chase people off land. We’re not here to take over their farms and ranches and start charging people for crossing our territory,” Good House said. “We are protecting this Earth, we’re not here to do what the government has done to us.”

    In the land where ceremonies were once held and their ancestors bones now lay, Indigenous holy sites are still being exploited for profit, elders and activists say in the film.

    After killing those who attempted to protect it, the US government has turned stolen land into tourist attractions, Short Bull says, making money off the ongoing pain and suffering of Lakota Dakota Nakota tribes.

    Deep in the Black Hills stands a mountain known as the Six Grandfathers, or Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe, whose peaks were blown up to carve the faces of four presidents – now known as the Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

    Mt. Rushmore, in Keystone, South Dakota, is carved into the Black Hills, which had been occupied by Lakota Sioux Natives.

    “Mount Rushmore represents and is the ultimate shrine to White supremacy,” activist Krystal Two Bulls of the Northern Cheyenne and Oglala Lakota says in the film. “Our sacred mountain, the Six Grandfathers, of course they carved four racist White men into our sacred mountain, who believed in slavery, who actually removed us from our lands.”

    Today the children of the Indigenous leaders who died to preserve whatever land they could continue their ancestors’ purpose: demanding their land back.

    And as the world suffers a climate crisis where Indigenous traditions, like controlled burning, are now being used to fight it, “it’s a no brainer” to return the land to those who can actually care for it, says Tomaselli, the film’s co-director.

    “If you are a non Indigenous person and you’re concerned about the climate, it should be obvious to throw all of your energy behind people that were living here before any of our ancestors showed up, tribes who have been taking care of this environment better than anyone has before,” Tomaselli said.

    As calamities happen around them for the sake of money, Short Bull says – gold mining, coal mining, the pipeline development, deforestation – the Indigenous people living there still have no say.

    But with their demand for land back comes a warning.

    “I want people to remember that there is bloodshed on Earth and our relatives’ blood is on this ground,” Short Bull said. “This planet was not created for you to just take, take, take. The Earth is an extension of you, and if you’re not going to take care of it, disaster is coming.”

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  • Italy issues ‘extreme’ health warning for 16 cities as heat wave grips Europe | CNN

    Italy issues ‘extreme’ health warning for 16 cities as heat wave grips Europe | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Italian authorities have issued an “extreme” health risk for 16 cities including Rome and Florence this weekend as a heat wave that is baking Europe threatens to bring record temperatures.

    Climate scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA) say temperatures could reach 48 degrees Celsius (118.4 degrees Fahrenheit) on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, “potentially the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Europe.”

    Rome could get as hot as 44 degrees Celsius (111 degrees Fahrenheit).

    Italian authorities have issued the second-highest heat warning to nine other cities. The country’s health ministry is advising the public to stay hydrated, eat lighter meals and avoid direct sunlight between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m.

    The ESA warned that Europe’s heat wave has only just begun with Spain, France, Germany and Poland expected to see extreme weather, just as the continent welcomes what is expected to be a record-breaking number of tourists coming for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Greece shut the Acropolis of Athens for a second straight day Saturday amid fierce temperatures. Local police helped a tourist who got into difficulty on Friday.

    There is particular concern over those working outdoors after a 44-year-old construction worker in Italy died after collapsing on a roadside earlier in the week.

    Authorities in Spain warned the heat wave is not just hitting the usual frying pan areas in the south, but also affecting the country’s typically cooler north.

    In the south, temperatures in the cities of Seville, Cordoba and Granada have reached 40 degrees Celsius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

    Spain’s national weather service says it’s also sizzling on Spain’s resort island of Mallorca in the Mediterranean Sea with highs of 36 degrees Celsius, or 97 degrees Fahrenheit.

    Meanwhile, even the normally mild region of Navarra in the north is seeing up to 40 degrees Celsius.

    A wildfire that broke out on La Palma Island in Spain’s Canary Islands burned several homes and forced the evacuation of 500 people, the Canary Islands regional government tweeted Saturday morning.

    Heat is one of the deadliest natural hazards – more than 61,000 people died in Europe’s searing summer heat wave last year.

    The current heat wave – named “Cerberus” by the Italian Meteorological Society after the three-headed monster that features in Dante’s “Inferno” – has prompted further fears for people’s health, especially as it coincides with one of the busiest periods of Europe’s summer tourist season.

    Europe is not the only place facing extreme temperatures. A dangerous weekslong heat wave in parts of the western United States is set to worsen this weekend, with more than 90 million people under heat alerts.

    The extreme weather is even taking affect as far afield as Australia, with Sydney experiencing unseasonably warm weather for its winter months, according to the country’s Bureau of Meteorology.

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  • Killings of 3 women in Long Island went unsolved for more than a decade. Here’s how authorities tracked down the suspect | CNN

    Killings of 3 women in Long Island went unsolved for more than a decade. Here’s how authorities tracked down the suspect | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    After the remains of four women were found near a beach in Long Island, New York, more than a decade ago, investigators say DNA evidence and cellphone data now point to a murder suspect – a local architect whose internet history showed him often searching the status of the case and details about the victims.

    Rex Heuermann was arrested in New York City on Thursday, more than a year after a police task force explored his possible connection to the cold case known as the “Gilgo Four,” named for the beach where the remains were found.

    Heuermann, 59, was indicted on one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder in each of three of the killings – Melissa Barthelemy in 2009, and Megan Waterman and Amber Costello in 2010, according to the indictment. He pleaded not guilty Friday during his first court appearance on Long Island and was remanded without bail.

    The defendant, who told his attorney he did not carry out the killings, is also the prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance and death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, according to a bail application from Suffolk County prosecutors. Heuermann has not been charged in the case, but the investigation “is expected to be resolved soon,” the document states.

    “Rex Heuermann is a demon that walks among us. A predator that ruined families. If not for the members of this task force, he would still be on the streets today,” Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said during a news conference Friday, and offered his condolences to the victims’ families.

    “To the family members of Amber Costello, Melissa Barthelemy and Megan Waterman. I can only imagine what you’ve had to endure over the last decade regarding knowing that your killer was still loose. God bless you,” Harrison said before hugging a few people standing behind him.

    Authorities had been left with little information after a search for a missing woman in 2010 led to the discovery of multiple sets of human remains at Gilgo Beach. By the time the remains of the missing woman, Shannan Gilbert, were found the following year, at least 10 sets of human remains had been recovered across two Long Island counties.

    As they searched for a suspect in the “Gilgo Four” case, investigators combed through phone records from both midtown Manhattan and the Massapequa Park area in Long Island – places where the suspect is believed to have used a burner phone, court documents show.

    “For each of the murders, he got an individual burner phone, and he used that to communicate with the victims. Then shortly after the death of the victims, he then would get rid of the burner phone,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said during a news conference Friday.

    In February 2022, Harrison created a task force to focus on solving the cold case. By mid-March, Heuermann’s name showed up on authorities’ radar after a New York state investigator identified him in a database, according to Tierney.

    Investigators say they narrowed cell tower records from thousands of possible individuals down to hundreds and then to a handful of people. Next, authorities focused on residents who also matched a physical description provided by a witness who had seen the suspected killer.

    As the search pool narrowed, they zeroed in on anyone with a connection to a green pick-up truck a witness had seen the suspect driving, according to two law enforcement sources with knowledge of the case. Later, authorities learned Heuermann drives a green pickup truck registered to his brother.

    Eventually, investigators found Heuermann matched a witness’s physical description, lived close to the Long Island cell site and worked near the New York City cell sites where other calls were captured.

    Cell phone and credit card billing records show numerous instances where Heuermann was in the general locations as the burner phones used to call the three victims “as well as the use of Brainard-Barnes and Barthelemy’s cellphones when they were used to check voicemail and make taunting phone calls after the women disappeared,” Suffolk County prosecutors allege.

    The defendant’s next court appearance is scheduled on August 1.

    A major factor in the case that helped point investigators to Heuermann as a suspect is DNA evidence, which was made possible due to the latest scientific innovations in the field.

    After Heuermann was identified as a suspect in March 2022, authorities placed him and his family under surveillance and would obtain DNA samples from discarded items. A team later gathered a swab of Heuermann’s DNA from leftover crust in a pizza box he threw in the trash, according to Tierney.

    During the initial examination of one of the victims’ skeletal remains and materials discovered in the grave, the Suffolk County Crime Laboratory recovered a male hair from the “bottom of the burlap” the killer used to wrap her body, according to prosecutors. Analysis of the DNA found on the victim and the pizza showed the samples matched.

    Additionally, hair believed to be from Heuermann’s wife was found on or near three of the murder victims, prosecutors allege in the bail application, citing DNA testing. The DNA came from 11 bottles inside a garbage can outside the Heuermann home, the court document says.

    The hairs, found in 2010, were degraded and DNA testing at the time couldn’t yield results. But as technology progressed, mitochondrial DNA testing allowed investigators to make the connection, Tierney explained.

    The victims’ remains “were out in a tough environment for a prolonged period of time. So, there was not a lot of forensic evidence,” Tierney told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Friday, and credited the FBI and one of its agents for a “phenomenal job” with extracting the evidence.

    Evidence shows Heuermann’s wife and children were out of the state when the three women are believed to have been killed, Tierney said during Friday’s news conference.

    A search of Heuermann’s computer revealed he had scoured the internet at least 200 times, hunting for details about the status of the investigation, Tierney added. Heuermann’s internet history also turned up searches for torture porn and “depictions of women being abused, being raped and being killed,” Tierney said.

    Heuermann was also compulsively searching for photos of the victims and their relatives, and he was trying to track down relatives, the district attorney said.

    Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello and Megan Waterman

    While the 10 sets of human remains found are all being investigated as victims of suspected homicide, four of the women found have garnered specific attention due to the similarities found in their deaths.

    The victims known as the “Gilgo Four” were all last seen alive between 2007 and 2010, and their remains were found along a quarter-mile stretch of road in a span of three days in December 2010.

    The women, who all worked in the sex industry, were also buried in a similar fashion, Tierney noted.

    “All the women were petite. They all did the same thing for a living. They all advertised the same way. Immediately there were similarities with regard to the crime scenes,” he said. The killer concealed their bodies by wrapping them in camouflaged burlap, the type used by hunters.

    Authorities have said they believe the death of Gilbert, whose disappearance sparked the searches that found the other victims, may have been accidental and not related to the other killings.

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  • Seven dead and thousands evacuate homes in South Korea due to heavy rain | CNN

    Seven dead and thousands evacuate homes in South Korea due to heavy rain | CNN

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    Seven people have died and thousands have evacuated their homes in South Korea due to heavy rain.

    Three others were missing, the country’s Yonhap News Agency reported Saturday, citing the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters.

    In Nonsan, South Chungcheong Province, two people died Friday after their building collapsed due to a landslide, it reported, adding that one person was killed in a mudslide in the central part of the country.

    Across South Korea, more than 1,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes and seek temporary shelter on Saturday, Yonhap reported. In addition, some 8,300 households in four provinces are experiencing power outages.

    Prime Minister Han Duck-soo ordered authorities to evacuate those in landslide-prone regions and to carry out rescue efforts, according to the South Korean news agency.

    Last year, the South Korean capital Seoul logged record downpours that inundated homes, roads and subways, killing at least nine people.

    Scientists have warned the frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall is increasing across East Asia as the human-caused climate crisis accelerates the probability of extreme weather events.

    The newest round of heavy rains in South Korea come just days after devastating floods wreaked havoc in neighboring Japan, killing at least six people and injuring 19.

    Torrential rain in southwestern Japan prompted the country’s weather agency to issue emergency warnings at the start of the week for the Fukuoka and Oita prefectures, on Kyushu, the country’s third largest island.

    Earlier this month, heavy downpours also caused flooding in southwest China, killing at least 15 people in the city of Chongqing.

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  • Burner phones. Pizza crust. DNA on burlap. A New York architect was charged with killing 3 women in Gilgo Beach serial killings cold case | CNN

    Burner phones. Pizza crust. DNA on burlap. A New York architect was charged with killing 3 women in Gilgo Beach serial killings cold case | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A New York architect was charged with murder in connection to the killings of three of the women who became known as the “Gilgo Four,” according to the Suffolk County District Attorney, in a case that baffled authorities for more than a decade in suburban Long Island.

    Rex Heuermann – who told his attorney he is not the killer – was taken into custody for some of the Gilgo Beach murders, an unsolved case tied to at least 10 sets of human remains discovered since 2010, authorities said.

    The case was broken open thanks to cell phone data, credit card bills and DNA testing, which ultimately led them to arrest Heuermann, 59, authorities said.

    Heuermann was charged with one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder in each of the three killings – Melissa Barthelemy in 2009, and Megan Waterman and Amber Costello in 2010 – according to the indictment. A grand jury made the six charges, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney.

    He is also the prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance and death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, according to a bail application from prosecutors. Heuermann has not been charged with that homicide but the investigation “is expected to be resolved soon,” the document says.

    This is the first arrest in the long-dormant case, which terrorized residents and sparked conflicting theories about whether a serial killer was responsible.

    Tierney said authorities, fearing the suspect might be tipped off they were closing in, moved to arrest him Thursday night.

    “We were playing before a party of one,” he told reporters. “We knew the person responsible for these murders would be looking at us.”

    See our live coverage here

    Authorities said once Heuermann was identified in early 2022 as a suspect, they watched him and his family and got DNA samples from items that were thrown away.

    During the initial examination of one of the victims’ skeletal remains and materials discovered in the grave, the Suffolk County Crime Laboratory recovered a male hair from the “bottom of the burlap” the killer used to wrap her body, according to the bail application.

    A surveillance team later gathered a swab of Heuermann’s DNA from leftover crust in a pizza box he threw in the trash, the district attorney said.

    Hair believed to be from Rex Heuermann’s wife was found on or near three of the murder victims, prosecutors allege in the bail application, citing DNA testing. The DNA came from 11 bottles inside a garbage can outside the Heuermann home, the court document says.

    Evidence shows Heuermann’s wife and children were outside of the state at the times when the three women were killed, Tierney said.

    The hairs found in 2010 were degraded and DNA testing at the time couldn’t yield results but improvements in technology eventually gave investigators the DNA answers they needed.

    Heuermann was in tears after his arrest, his court appointed attorney, Michael Brown, said Friday.

    “I did not do this,” Brown said Heuermann told him during their conversation after his arrest.

    Rex Heuermann

    Heuermann was remanded without bail. He entered a not guilty plea through his attorney. His next court date is scheduled for August 1.

    Police were still searching his home Friday night, according to a CNN team outside the house.

    Heuermann, who a source familiar with the case said is a father of two, is a registered architect who has owned the New York City-based architecture and consulting firm, RH Consultants & Associates, since 1994, according to his company’s website.

    In 2022, Heuermann was interviewed for the YouTube channel “Bonjour Realty.” He spoke about his career in architecture, and said he was born and raised in Long Island. He began working in Manhattan in 1987.

    CNN has reached out to Heuermann’s company for comment.

    The remains of the Gilgo Four were found in bushes along a quarter-mile stretch of Ocean Parkway in Oak Beach over a two-day period in 2010.

    The skeletal remains of Barthelemy were discovered near Gilgo Beach on December 11. Barthelemy, who was a sex worker, was last seen July 12, 2009, at her apartment when she told a friend she was going to see a man, according to a Suffolk County website about the killings.

    The remains of three other women were found on December 13, 2010: Brainard-Barnes, who advertised escort services on Craigslist and was last seen in early June 2007 in New York City; Amber Lynn Costello, who also advertised escort services and was last seen leaving her North Babylon home in early September 2010; and Waterman, who also advertised as an escort and was last seen in early June 2010 at a Holiday Inn Express in Hauppauge.

    Tierney said of the women, “They were buried in a similar fashion, in a similar location, in a similar way. All the women were petite. They all did the same thing for a living. They all advertised the same way. Immediately there were similarities with regard to the crime scenes.”

    Tierney said the killer tried to conceal the bodies, wrapping them in camouflaged burlap, the type used by hunters.

    The suspect made taunting phone calls to Barthelemy’s sister, “some of which resulted in a conversation between the caller, who was a male, and a relative of Melissa Barthelemy, in which the male caller admitted killing and sexually assaulting Ms. Barthelemy,” according to the bail application.

    The court document alleges cell phone and credit card billing records show numerous instances where Heuermann was in the general locations as the burner phones used to call the three victim,s “as well as the use of Brainard-Barnes and (Barthelemy’s) cellphones when they use used to check voicemail and make taunting phone calls after the women disappeared.”

    The district attorney said the killer got a new burner phone before each killing.

    The case against Heuermann came together in the two years since the restart of the investigation by Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison, authorities said.

    Harrison put together a task force including county police detectives, investigators from the sheriff’s office, state police and the FBI.

    Tierney said the task force held its first meeting in February 2022.

    “Six weeks later, on March 14, 2022, the name Rex Heuermann was first mentioned as a suspect in the Gilgo case,” Tierney said. “A New York state investigator was able to identify him in a database.”

    Investigators had gone backward through phone records collected from both midtown Manhattan and the Massapequa Park area – two areas where a “burner phone” used by the alleged killer were detected, according to court documents.

    Rex Heuermann is seen purchasing extra minutes for one of the burner cell phones connected to some of the crimes at a cellphone store in Midtown Manhattan, prosecutors allege.

    Authorities then narrowed records collected by cell towers to thousands, then down to hundreds, and finally down to a handful of people who could match a suspect.

    From there, authorities worked to focus on people who lived in the area of the cell tower who also matched a physical description given by a witness who had seen the suspected killer.

    In the narrowed pool, they searched for a connection to a green pickup a witness had seen the suspect driving, the sources said.

    Investigators found Heuermann, who matched a witness’s physical description, lived close to the Long Island cell site and worked near the New York City cell sites where other calls were captured.

    They also learned he had often driven a green pickup, registered to his brother. But they needed more than circumstantial evidence.

    When investigators searched Heuermann’s computer, they found a disturbing internet search history, including 200 searches aimed at learning about the status of the investigation, Tierney said Friday.

    His searches also included queries for torture porn and “depictions of women being abused, being raped and being killed,” Tierney said.

    The DA said the suspect was still compulsively searching for photos of the victims and their relatives.

    Heuermann was trying to find the relatives, he added.

    The murder mystery had confounded county officials for years. In 2020, they found a belt with initials that may have been handled by the suspect and launched a website to collect new tips in the investigation.

    Police said some victims identified had advertised prostitution services on websites such as Craigslist.

    The mystery began in 2010 when police discovered the first set of female remains among the bushes along an isolated strip of waterfront property on Gilgo Beach while searching for Shannan Gilbert, a missing 23-year-old woman from Jersey City, New Jersey.

    An aerial view of the area near Gilgo Beach and Ocean Parkway on Long Island where police have been conducting a prolonged search after finding 10 sets of human remains in April 2011 in Wantagh, New York.

    By the time Gilbert’s body was found one year later on neighboring Oak Beach, investigators had unearthed 10 sets of human remains strewn across two Long Island counties.

    The grim discoveries generated widespread attention in the region and sent waves of fear across some communities on Long Island’s South Shore.

    Authorities later said they believe Gilbert’s death may have been accidental and not related to the Gilgo Beach slayings.

    Still, Gilbert’s disappearance led to the discovery of others.

    Crime scene investigators use metal detectors to search a marsh for human remains in December 2011 in Oak Beach, New York.

    Additional remains were uncovered in neighboring Gilgo Beach and in Nassau County, about 40 miles east of New York City. They included a female toddler, an Asian male and a woman initially referred to as “Jane Doe #6,” investigators said.

    In 2020, police identified “Jane Doe #6” was as Valerie Mack, a 24-year-old Philadelphia mother who went missing two decades earlier.

    Mack’s partial remains were first discovered near Gilgo Beach in 2000, with additional dismembered remains found in 2011, according to the Suffolk County police.

    John Ray, a lawyer who represents the family of Shannon Gilbert – whose disappearance and search led to the discovery of “Gilgo Four” and other remains – said Friday he does not know if Heuermann is also responsible for her death.

    “We breathe a great sigh of relief,” Ray said. “We’re happy the police are finally taking a positive step in this respect, but this is just the beginning … This is just the edge of a bigger body of water, shall we say, of murder that has taken place.”

    Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello and Megan Waterman

    Ray also represents the family Gilgo Beach victim Jessica Taylor.

    “We don’t know if he is connected to Jessica Taylor’s murder,” he said.

    Jasmine Robinson, a family representative for Taylor, said she’s “hopeful for the future and hopeful that a connection is made” to resolve the other cases.

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  • India shoots for the moon with historic Chandrayaan-3 mission | CNN

    India shoots for the moon with historic Chandrayaan-3 mission | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    India is bidding to become only the fourth country to execute a controlled landing on the moon with the launch Friday of its Chandrayaan-3 mission.

    Chandrayaan, which means “moon vehicle” in Sanskrit, is expected to take off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center at Sriharikota in southern Andhra Pradesh state at 2:30 p.m. local time (5 a.m. ET).

    It’s India’s second attempt at a soft landing, after its previous effort with the Chandrayaan-2 in 2019 failed. Its first lunar probe, the Chandrayaan-1, orbited the moon and was then deliberately crash-landed onto the lunar surface in 2008.

    Developed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Chandrayaan-3 is comprised of a lander, propulsion module and rover. Its aim is to safely land on the lunar surface, collect data and conduct a series of scientific experiments to learn more about the moon’s composition.

    Only three other countries have achieved the complicated feat of soft-landing a spacecraft on the moon’s surface – the United States, Russia and China.

    Indian engineers have been working on the launch for years. They are aiming to land Chandrayaan-3 near the challenging terrain of the moon’s unexplored South Pole.

    India’s maiden lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, discovered water molecules on the moon’s surface. Eleven years later, the Chandrayaan-2 successfully entered lunar orbit but its rover crash-landed on the moon’s surface. It too was supposed to explore the moon’s South Pole.

    At the time, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the engineers behind the mission despite the failure, promising to keep working on India’s space program and ambitions.

    Just before Friday’s launch, Modi said the day “will always be etched in golden letters as far as India’s space sector is concerned.”

    “This remarkable mission will carry the hopes and dreams of our nation,” he said in a Twitter post.

    India has since spent about $75 million on its Chandrayaan-3 mission.

    Modi said the rocket will cover more than 300,000 kilometers (186,411 miles) and reach the moon in the “coming weeks.”

    India’s space program dates back more than six decades, to when it was a newly independent republic and a deeply poor country reeling from a bloody partition.

    When it launched its first rocket into space in 1963, the country was no match for the ambitions of the US and the former Soviet Union, which were way ahead in the space race.

    Now, India is the world’s most populous nation and its fifth largest economy. It boasts a burgeoning young population and is home to a growing hub of innovation and technology.

    And India’s space ambitions have been playing catch up under Modi.

    For the leader, who swept to power in 2014 on a ticket of nationalism and future greatness, India’s space program is a symbol of the country’s rising prominence on the global stage.

    In 2014, India became the first Asian nation to reach Mars, when it put the Mangalyaan probe into orbit around the Red Planet, for $74 million – less than the $100 million Hollywood spent making space thriller “Gravity.”

    Three years later, India launched a record 104 satellites in one mission.

    In 2019, Modi announced in a rare televised address that India had shot down one of its own satellites, in what it claimed was an anti-satellite test, making it one of only four countries to do so.

    That same year ISRO’s former chairman Kailasavadivoo Sivan said India was planning to set up an independent space station by 2030. Currently, the only space stations available for expedition crews are the International Space Station (a joint project between several countries) and China’s Tiangong Space Station.

    The rapid development and innovation has made space tech one of India’s hottest sectors for investors – and world leaders appear to have taken notice.

    Last month, when Modi met US President Joe Biden in Washington on a state visit, the White House said both leaders sought more collaboration in the space economy.

    And India’s space ambitions do not stop at the moon or Mars. ISRO has also proposed sending an orbiter to Venus.

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  • Climate change is making our oceans change color, new research finds | CNN

    Climate change is making our oceans change color, new research finds | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The color of the ocean has changed significantly over the last 20 years and human-caused climate change is likely responsible, according to a new study.

    More than 56% of the world’s oceans have changed color to an extent that cannot be explained by natural variability, said a team of researchers, led by scientists from the National Oceanography Center in the UK and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, in a statement.

    Tropical oceans close to the equator in particular have become greener in the past two decades, reflecting changes in their ecosystems, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

    The color of the ocean is derived from the materials found in its upper layers. For example, a deep blue sea will have very little life in it, whereas a green color means there are ecosystems there, based on phytoplankton, plant-like microbes which contain chlorophyll. The phytoplankton form the basis of a food web which supports larger organisms such as krill, fish, seabirds and marine mammals.

    It’s not clear exactly how these ecosystems are changing, said study co-author Stephanie Dutkiewicz, senior research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and the Center for Global Change Science. While some areas are likely to have less phytoplankton, others will have more – and it’s likely all parts of the ocean will see changes in the types of phytoplankton present.

    Ocean ecosystems are finely balanced and any change in the phytoplankton will send ripples across the food chain. “All changes are causing an imbalance in the natural organization of ecosystems. Such imbalance will only get worse over time if our oceans keep heating,” she told CNN.

    It will also affect the ocean’s ability to act as a store of carbon, Dutkiewicz said, as different plankton absorb different amounts of carbon.

    While the researchers are still working to unpick exactly what the changes mean, what is clear, they said, is that the changes are being driven by human-induced climate change.

    The researchers monitored changes in ocean color from space by tracking how much green or blue light is reflected from the surface of the sea.

    They used data from the Aqua satellite which has been monitoring ocean color changes for more than two decades and is able to pick out differences that are not visible to the human eye.

    They analyzed color variation data from 2002 to 2022 and then used climate change models to simulate what would happen to the oceans both with additional planet-heating pollution and without.

    The color changes matched almost exactly what Dutkiewicz predicted would happen if greenhouse gases were added to the atmosphere – that around 50% of our oceans would change color.

    Dutkiewicz, who has been running simulations that showed the oceans were going to change color for years, said she is not surprised at this finding.

    “But still I found the results very sobering; yet another wake-up call that human induced climate change [has] significantly impacted the earth system,” she told CNN via email.

    Dutkiewicz told CNN it was difficult to say whether color changes could become visible to humans if the process continues.

    “If a big tipping point was reached in some places: maybe. Though you’d have to study the colors for a while to be able to pick up on the changes,” said Dutkiewicz.

    Next up, Dutkiewicz will try to better understand the color changes in different ocean regions, as well as looking into what might be causing them, she said.

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  • Italy swelters under deadly ‘Cerberus’ heat wave which could break European temperature records | CNN

    Italy swelters under deadly ‘Cerberus’ heat wave which could break European temperature records | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A blistering and deadly heat wave in Italy this week could break records, with temperatures predicted to soar past 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) in some parts of the country.

    The Italian Meteorological Society has named the heat wave Cerberus after the three-headed monster that features in Dante’s Inferno as a guard to the gates of hell. “The earth has a high fever and Italy is feeling it firsthand,” Luca Mercalli, head of the Italian Meteorological Society, told CNN.

    The heat has already claimed at least one life. A 44-year-old road construction worker died in hospital on Tuesday after he collapsed by the side of the road in the northern Italian city of Lodi, according to politician Nicola Fratoianni, who has petitioned for regulations to protect workers during the ongoing heat wave.

    “We are facing a wave of abnormal heat at unbearable levels. Perhaps it should be the case that during the hottest hours all useful precautions are taken to avoid tragedies like the one that happened today in Lodi,” Fratoianni wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.

    In Rome, several tourists collapsed due to heat stroke on Tuesday and early Wednesday, including an unnamed British tourist who passed out in front of the ancient Roman Colosseum on Tuesday, according to Rome’s civil protection head Giuseppe Napolitano.

    The high temperatures, which extend over swaths of Europe, are caused by a “heat dome” – created when an area of high pressure stays over the same place for an extended period of time, trapping hot air underneath.

    Very high temperatures in central and southern Italy are predicted for Friday, when the capital could see record-breaking temperatures between 40 and 45 degrees Celsius (104 to 113 Fahrenheit). Italy’s Health ministry has issued a red alert (meaning “risk of death”) in 27 cities this week, including Rome, Florence and Bologna.

    Heat waves are one of the deadliest natural hazards. The warning comes on the heels of a report published in Nature on Monday, which found that last year’s heat wave killed 61,672 people in Europe. Italy had the highest fatality rate with around 18,000 deaths attributed to heat last year, according to the report.

    Mercalli warned that vulnerable people with no access to air conditioning were at the highest risk. Fewer than 10% of homes in Europe have air conditioning, compared to around 90% of homes in the United States.

    Humidity is expected to climb as well, adding to the misery across Italy. The government has issued warnings to stay indoors, stay hydrated and avoid alcohol.

    Businesses have been told to try to avoid sending people to work outside between noon and 5pm during the next two-week period and some summer camps for children have suspended activity.

    Tourist-heavy cities like Rome are also providing cooling stations near major attractions including misting tents, free water and health-care officials on hand to deal with heat stroke.

    Tourists use umbrellas to shelter from the sun as they line up to enter the Pantheon in Rome, July 8, 2023.

    Excessive heat in the country is also expected to increase starting on Friday when Cerberus is replaced by a new front called Charon, another Greek figure who ferried the dead from the gates of hell, which could see temperatures soar even higher next week.

    They could even approach the 48.8 degrees Celsius (120 Fahrenheit) record for the highest temperature in European history, which was set on the island of Sicily, on August 11, 2021, according to the Italian government.

    The heat wave is also affecting other European countries including France, Germany and Spain.

    Spain is particularly hard hit. The national weather service AEMET warned on Wednesday that temperatures could reach 44 degrees Celsius (111.2 Fahrenheit) in parts of the country.

    This heat wave follows another one in Spain in April, which saw temperatures soar to 38.8 degrees Celsius, smashing the previous national monthly record. Scientists found that this heat wave – which also affected Portugal, Morocco and Algeria – was made 100 times more likely by the human-caused climate crisis.

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  • Storms turning streets into rivers, trapping drivers and forcing rescues across the Northeast evoke memories of Hurricane Irene | CNN

    Storms turning streets into rivers, trapping drivers and forcing rescues across the Northeast evoke memories of Hurricane Irene | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Multiple rounds of intense rainstorms have turned streets into gushing rivers, trapped drivers and forced water rescues and evacuations across the Northeast – and it’s bringing back memories of Hurricane Irene in deluged Vermont as the flood threat continues Tuesday.

    Over 4 million people are under flood alerts across the Northeast on Tuesday, including parts of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

    Slow moving showers with intense rainfall rates are expected to further inundate streets with rain in parts of northern Vermont and far northeast New York – two states that suffered severe flooding Monday. The flooding left at least one person dead in New York’s Orange County.

    A high risk of excessive rainfall covers much of Vermont, “highlighting the potential for catastrophic flooding that has not been seen in this part of the country since 2011,” the National Weather Service said.

    “We have not seen rainfall like this since Irene, and in some places, it will surpass even that,” Vermont Gov. Phil Scott said Monday. Vermont is under a state of emergency due to the dangerous flooding that forced dozens of rescues and evacuations Monday.

    Two areas in the state, Weston and South Londonderry, were left inaccessible due to flooding, and search and rescue teams were working to regain access and perform welfare checks Monday, Vermont’s Urban Search and Rescue team coordinator Mike Cannon told reporters.

    Vermont State Rep. Kelly Pajala said she woke up Monday morning to flood water already at the front step of her Londonderry apartment. She and her son packed up their two cats and evacuated to higher ground.

    “For people that were here during Irene, it feels like a very similar experience,” she said. Hurricane Irene brought destructive flooding to the state in 2011, leaving whole communities under water and damaging major infrastructure.

    Numerous rivers across Vermont have been rising amid the downpours, with some swelling higher than levels reached during Hurricane Irene. The Winooski River at Montpelier had risen nearly 14 feet Monday and passed major flood stage as the water continued to climb, threatening further flooding.

    With water in downtown Montpelier running from knee to waist deep, residents stranded in their homes and businesses and roads closed, Montpelier City Manager William Fraser told CNN the situation is looking much worse than it did in the 2011 flooding.

    Nearly a dozen different areas across Vermont, from the Connecticut River in the south to the Missisquoi River in the north, were expected to see moderate or major flooding before rivers begin dropping later Tuesday.

    Two dams in Vermont, the Ball Mountain Dam and the Townshend Dam, are expected to overflow their spillways early Tuesday morning and “release unprecedented quantities of water,” the US Army Corps of Engineers warned Monday night.

    Warning of “severe flooding,” the agency urged residents in threatened low-lying areas of nearby Vermont and New Hampshire communities to evacuate.

    In New York, where six counties are similarly under a state of emergency, a 35-year-old woman died after being swept away by floodwater as she tried to evacuate her Orange County home Sunday. The flooding has caused “easily tens of millions of dollars in damage,” county Executive Steve Neuhaus said Monday.

    Some areas in New York were hammered with more than 8 inches of rain within a 24-hour period.

    New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state will very likely meet the threshold of $37 million in statewide damages and become eligible to receive funding from FEMA.

    “You can see highways, roads and bridges that are still unpassable, homes that have been destroyed. We still have people without power and as we talked about earlier, one woman actually lost her life, so it is still treacherous in many of these regions,” Hochul said.

    Main Street in Highland Falls, New York is seen Monday.

    Seven-day rainfall totals across much of the Northeast are already at 300-500% of normal levels, according to the Weather Prediction Center.

    Widespread rainfall of 2 to 4 inches have fallen across the Northeast from eastern Pennsylvania and northern New Jersey into Vermont and New Hampshire. Isolated rainfall totals higher than half a foot have been seen in several states.

    In Vermont, the storms battered Mount Holly Heights with a whopping 8.66 inches of rain and Tyson with 8.40 inches.

    Meanwhile, Stormville, New York, received 8.61 inches while West Point – where drivers had to swim out of their cars Sunday – got 8.12 inches.

    Rainfall in West Point totaled more than 7.5 inches in a six-hour period Sunday afternoon, according to preliminary data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That’s a 1-in-1,000 year rainfall event for the area, according to a CNN analysis of NOAA’s historical rainfall frequency data.

    Elsewhere, South Kent, Connecticut, got 6.80 inches, and West Lawn, Pennsylvania got 6.69 inches.

    A man carries belongings through floodwaters from a home in Bridgewater, Vermont, on Monday.

    Betsy Hart called 911 when the floodwaters suddenly started rising fast Monday at the basement of her Chester property in Windsor County, Vermont.

    “Water was rising quickly after being pretty tame most of the morning,” Hart told CNN’s Miguel Marquez. “All of a sudden it was in the house.”

    Hart said she’s never experienced flooding like what she saw Monday. “It was too close for comfort,” she said.

    “With Hurricane Irene, the water was raging like this but it never really got to the house,” she said, standing on a road near her home as water rushed nearby.

    Flood water could be seen gushing between homes in Chester, where some structures were visibly damaged and trucks were wheels-deep in water.

    Don Hancock, dripping in water from head to toe, told CNN he has only lived in his Chester house for less than a year and watched floodwater enter the basement and garage of his new home.

    “I was a firefighter in New York. I’ve been there many of times to help people out but I’ve never lived this side of it,” Hancock said.

    Now, he’s just waiting for the water in his neighborhood to recede. “Once the water goes down we go day by day, clean it up and move on. What can we do?” Hancock said.

    Windham and Windsor counties have been the hardest hit by the flooding, according to Cannon, from the state’s Urban Search and Rescue Program.

    Officials have made 50 rescues across Vermont, including using boats to help people trapped in their homes or in cars that were swept away in fast-moving waters.

    The state of California is also deploying urban search and rescue personnel to assist emergency response efforts as Vermont grapples with flooding, according to a Monday tweet from the Office of the Governor of California.

    Crews from Michigan, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Connecticut are on their way to assist as well.

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