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Tag: international-health and science

  • A doctor known for assessing Covid risk fell ill with the virus. Here’s what he wants you to know | CNN

    A doctor known for assessing Covid risk fell ill with the virus. Here’s what he wants you to know | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A doctor known for advising people on the risks of Covid-19 got a double surprise: He got Covid, and he wound up needing stitches because of it.

    Dr. Robert Wachter, who chairs the Department of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, said he had not tested positive for Covid until last week, according to posts from his Twitter account. He said he was fully vaccinated and had received his second bivalent booster in April.

    He said his symptoms started with a dry cough on July 9, and by that night, he had a fever, chills and a sore throat. Wachter said he made a mistake the following day when he took a shower while feeling these flu-like symptoms.

    “I work (sic) up in a bloody pool on my bathroom floor,” he wrote on Twitter. “There was a dent in the lid of a trashcan, likely where my head had hit. I remembered nothing. As I managed to get up, it was clear that my face was going to need stitches, and more than a couple.”

    Wachter said he required stitches on the back of his head and on his forehead, which he shared in a photo of himself with a black eye. He declined an interview to go into more detail about his illness and recovery.

    Wachter became a highly followed doctor on Twitter for sharing his own risk gauging and Covid advice during the pandemic, and he has urged people to get vaccinated. He said his Covid “case is a cautionary tale” and warned people to avoid the shower mistake he made.

    “While the instinct to take a shower when you’re sweaty and gross is understandable, stepping into hot water when you’re dehydrated and flu-ish can cause your blood vessels to dilate, leading to a dangerous drop in blood pressure,” Wachter wrote, adding that was exactly what happened to him earlier this week.

    He said he was lucky to have his future son-in-law available to drive him to the UCSF emergency room. He was admitted to the hospital.

    Doctors sent him for two CT scans and later an MRI, due to the extent of his injuries on the front and back of his head, he said.

    He said a head CT scan showed a subdural hematoma, which happens when blood collects between the brain and the skull. A neck fracture appeared in one of his vertebrae in another CT scan.

    Wachter’s MRI didn’t show any additional damage, he said. He added a message of thanks for his colleagues who stitched him back together.

    This is Dr. Robert Wachter that the world is used to seeing in an appearance on CNN in April 2022.

    “Luckily, at my age a few scars don’t bother me much, and I believe my wife likes me for reasons other than my previously seamless brow,” he said.

    After 24 hours in the emergency department, Wachter tweeted that he is home and isolating. He said he’s taking the anti-viral medication Paxlovid to help lessen the severity and duration of the illness, as well as the chance of long Covid.

    As far as future brushes with Covid, Wachter said he doesn’t think he will change his behavior, as long as cases remain low. “I’ll continue being relatively careful, but no more than I’ve been,” he said.

    While he has not treated any Covid patients, Wachter said he wears a KN95 mask in clinical settings. Sometimes he’s removed his mask in non-crowded meetings, he added.

    “I will, however, be more careful about showering or taking a hot bath or hot tub when dehydrated. That’s one important takeaway from this mess,” he said.

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  • Three Israeli civilians wounded, one seriously, in West Bank shooting | CNN

    Three Israeli civilians wounded, one seriously, in West Bank shooting | CNN

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    Jerusalem
    CNN
     — 

    One Israeli man was seriously wounded and two young girls were hurt in a shooting in the West Bank, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israeli emergency services said Sunday.

    The trio were injured after shots were fired from a moving vehicle at the Tekoa Junction, south of Bethlehem, the IDF said.

    The wounded man, an approximately 35-year-old civilian, is conscious and in and in serious but stable condition with gunshot wounds, the Magen David Adom (MDA) rescue service said.

    The girls, aged 9 and 14, were mildly injured in the incident. All three are being taken to Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, the MDA said.

    Israeli troops are searching for the attackers, the army said.

    The shooting took place in the southern West Bank, which is normally calmer than the north, which includes Jenin and Nablus.

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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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  • Lisa Marie Presley died of complications from prior weight-loss surgery, autopsy report shows | CNN

    Lisa Marie Presley died of complications from prior weight-loss surgery, autopsy report shows | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A report by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner states Lisa Marie Presley’s death in January was caused by a “sequelae of a small bowel obstruction.”

    A small bowel obstruction is a blockage in the small intestine, often because of things like scar tissue, a hernia or cancer. Without surgery, it can cause bowel tissue to die or perforate, leading to death.

    Presley’s autopsy report, obtained by CNN on Thursday, included the official opinion of deputy medical examiner Dr. Juan M. Carrillo, who attributed her small bowel obstruction to “adhesions (or, scar tissue) that developed after bariatric surgery years ago. This is a known long term complication of this type of surgery.”

    Carrillo also stated that he reviewed the autopsy toxicology results, which showed “therapeutic” levels of oxycodone in Presley’s blood – i.e., levels that are in the range of medically helpful, and not dangerous. He added that quetapine metabolite (used to treat depression, schizophrenia or manic episodes) and buprenorphine (a painkiller that can also be used to treat opioid addiction) were present but “not contributory to death.”

    “There is no evidence of injury or foul play. The manner of death is deemed natural,” Carrillo concluded.

    Dr. Michael Camilleri, a consultant and professor in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the Mayo Clinic, told CNN on Thursday that the medications found in Presley’s may “have slowed down the motility of the intestine and would have made it perhaps more likely” for it to get “obstructed by the adhesions.”

    “Unfortunately, adhesions can happen to anybody,” he added. “And just because there were these other medications on board doesn’t necessarily mean that the person was more prone to develop the complications.”

    Lisa Marie Presley, the only daughter of the late Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley, died hours after being hospitalized following an apparent cardiac arrest on January 12. The medical examiner’s report also detailed that she was complaining of abdominal pain on the morning of her death.

    Dr. Folasade P. May, associate professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and director of the Melvin and Bren Simon Gastroenterology Quality Improvement Program, told CNN Thursday that she suspects Presley “developed a cardiac arrest because she had a severe complication from the small bowel obstruction.” Neither doctor interviewed by CNN for this report was directly involved in Presley’s case.

    She was 54.

    Video shows Lisa Marie Presley on the Golden Globes red carpet

    “Priscilla Presley and the Presley family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Lisa Marie,” the family said in a statement at the time. “They are profoundly grateful for the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during this very difficult time.”

    Lisa Marie Presley’s last public appearance just days before her death was at the Golden Globe Awards, which she attended with her mother to support the Baz Luhrmann film “Elvis,” about her late father.

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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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  • Republican block leaves major branch of US military without a confirmed leader for first time in over a century | CNN Politics

    Republican block leaves major branch of US military without a confirmed leader for first time in over a century | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A major branch of the US military does not have a Senate confirmed leader for the first time in more than a century, as a result of a Republican senator refusing to lift his block on military nominations.

    Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger relinquished command on Monday after holding a private retirement ceremony, after more than 40 years of service. His successor, Gen. Eric Smith, has not yet been confirmed to take over due to the hold on senior military nominations by Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville.

    Speaking at Berger’s relinquishment of command ceremony on Monday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made a point to mention the hold and its impact on “stable and orderly leadership transitions,” and military families.

    “We have a sacred duty to do right by those who volunteer to wear the cloth of our nation,” Austin said. “And I remain confident that all Americans can come together to agree on that basic obligation to those who keep us safe. I am also confident that the United States Senate will meet its responsibilities. And I look forward to welcoming an outstanding new commandant for our Marine Corps, and to adding many other distinguished senior leaders across the joint force.”

    Berger agreed just moments later, saying, “We need the Senate to do their job so we can have a sitting Commandant that’s appointed and confirmed.”

    “We need that house to be occupied,” Berger said in reference to the Commandant’s house. “We ask the Senate to do that.”

    In his last interview as commandant, Berger argued military officers should be left out of the hold, which is being maintained as a protest of Pentagon reproductive health policies announced earlier this year that provide additional support to service members and dependents who must travel out of state to receive an abortion.

    “This needs to get resolved,” Berger told CNN. “We need to leave the military out of the politics of it. The whole department – the military people wearing a uniform, should not be drug into an issue that’s a policy issue, for which we don’t deal with. … The military uniform people that we want left out [of] politics are being dragged into it, and that’s not healthy at all.”

    Tuberville told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source” Monday night that when lawmakers are in the minority party in the Senate, “the only power we have is to put a hold on something.”

    Asked by Collins whether he knows better than seven former defense secretaries who penned a letter in May arguing the hold was “harming military readiness and risks damaging US national security,” Tuberville said: “They were nominated, they weren’t elected. I was elected to represent the people of Alabama in this country.”

    “I’m a senator,” Tuberville added, “I can hold any confirmation I want until we get some kind of confirmation of why you’re doing this” from the White House and Pentagon.

    The Alabama Republican had told CNN’s Manu Raju earlier Monday that he would not back off of his hold, saying he doesn’t buy concerns about the impact on military readiness “whatsoever” and arguing “this is not a risk.”

    While Tuberville’s hold continues, Smith has the authority to act as the commandant in his current role as the assistant commandant. Maj. Jim Stenger, a spokesman for the Marine Corps, said Smith will remain the assistant until he is confirmed by the Senate.

    Smith will have the authorities he needs to do the job, Berger said, but he’ll be left without a second-in-command to assist him because of the hold.

    “He can’t do both jobs at the same time, nor can anyone else because they don’t have the authorities because all the promotions are held up,” Berger said. “So he’s going to have to do his job in a very different way than I was able to, because I could travel, he was here, he could travel, I was here. Now only one of him, so it affects the way he does his job.”

    Democratic Sen. Jack Reed, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CNN that denying Smith’s promotion “in this partisan manner is an insult to the Marine Corps and every service member.”

    “Gen. Smith has faithfully served the country for 36 years,” Reed said. “He has fought and bled in our nation’s wars and led fellow marines with courage, honor, and distinction. He earned this promotion. He deserves Senate action without political obstruction that has nothing to do with his command.”

    Smith is one of more than 200 general and flag officers whose nominations are currently stalled in the Senate due to a hold led by Tuberville over his protest of the new Pentagon reproductive health policies.

    Defense officials expect more than 600 senior officers to be up for nomination by the end of the year.

    Typically, those nominations are approved in a routine process known as unanimous consent, which approves hundreds of nominations at once. Tuberville’s hold prevents that, meaning the Senate would need to take a vote on each nomination individually – a process one Democratic Senate aide previously told CNN would take months to complete.

    Tuberville told CNN earlier Monday that he didn’t know why the Senate hadn’t yet taken up the votes individually on the floor.

    “Why don’t we vote on these people one at a time? We could do that, but they don’t want to do that for some reason,” he said, adding later that it’s “very easy to do.”

    Tuberville doubled down Monday night, telling Collins that he’s “not stopping anybody from being confirmed.”

    “I’m just stopping them from confirming hundreds at a time,” he said. “They can confirm as many as they want during the day, we’re just sitting around twiddling our thumbs most of the time during the week and should be confirming people.”

    Berger said that in the last few months, he’s had to do something he “never thought I would have to do as a service chief: tell people who had already served 30 years, and their family has served 30 years … I’d like you to think about not retiring.”

    “These are families who have already done this for 30 years,” he said. “They’ve given up a lot in those 30 years, and I’m asking them would they be willing to stay longer, indefinitely.”

    And Smith is far from the only senior Marine Corps officer to be impacted by the holds. Among the other positions are the commanders of the I and III Marine Expeditionary Forces. Both are positions held by three-star generals, but could be temporarily filled by a one-star if their successors aren’t confirmed by the Senate.

    Smith raised concerns about I Marine Expeditionary Force commander slot being filled by a one-star in his Senate confirmation hearing in June. In response to a question from independent Maine Sen. Angus King, Smith said that if the current commander did not have a confirmed replacement by the time he retires in August, a “fairly new” one-star general would be “in charge of that 48,000-person Marine Expeditionary Force.”

    “And that compromises readiness and decision making and the effectiveness of that division?” King asked.

    “Sir, it does,” Smith responded.

    Outside of questions about how a lasting hold would impact internal military processes, officials have also raised concerns about the message the hold projects to allies and adversaries alike.

    Berger told CNN it would be “naïve to think that the US military isn’t considered a world leader, and when the world leader can’t promote its officers on a regular basis – kind of like when [you] can’t pass a budget – confidence goes down.”

    “I won’t be surprised if confidence [is] affected by that,” he said.

    A Marine official who spoke on condition of anonymity pointed to the III Marine Expeditionary Force commander slot, saying that the general officer in that position regularly meets with important allies and partners in the Pacific. The official said it would be “embarrassing” for the US to send a one-star, acting commander to meet with more senior ranking foreign allies in a region that is so critical for the Pentagon.

    “It wouldn’t be a good look for a key ally to be meeting with a one-star,” the official said.

    Democratic Rep. Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts, a member of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the US and China, told CNN that Tuberville’s hold is playing into China’s hands.

    Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “core message is the United States, specifically and the West broadly, are in decline and dysfunction,” Auchincloss said.

    “It’s one guy who is single handedly handing a public relations gift to Xi Jinping,” he added. “It’s especially unfortunate, because we’ve actually had a lot of success recently on our military posture in the Indo-Pacific … And as we’re doing this pivot to Asia, pivot to the Indo-Pacific maybe more precisely, we’re stubbing our toe because of Tommy Tuberville.”

    Though the policies included things like extending the timeline for service members to have to notify commanders of a pregnancy, and travel allowances for troops seeking in vitro fertilization (IVF) and intrauterine insemination (IUI), they also included a travel allowance for service members seeking an abortion.

    “Our service members and their families do not control where they are stationed, and due to the nature of military service, are frequently required to travel or move to meet operational requirements,” a February news release announcing the new policies said. “The efforts taken by the Department today will … ensure service members are able to access non-covered reproductive health care regardless of where they are stationed.”

    Tuberville “believes the Pentagon is circumventing the role of Congress and flouting existing federal law, which narrowly restricts the use of taxpayers funds” for abortions, a news release from his office said. Under current law, the Defense Department cannot pay for abortions unless the health of the mother is at risk, or if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

    Those three cases remain the only instances in which Pentagon facilities can provide an abortion.

    Ultimately, Berger echoed concerns from other DOD officials about the impact an ongoing hold would have on the military’s readiness and warfighting capabilities.

    He said the holds put the Marine Corps in “a risky place, because from a warfighting perspective, you want the most experienced, most proficient leader commanding that organization,” and in some cases a less experienced leader will be in charge.

    “You want the very best leaders day-to-day leading those organizations, training those Marine units, getting them ready for whenever a conflict comes. So day-to-day, increase risk, because we don’t have the right person in the right job because I can’t promote them,” Berger said. “The second part is in a conflict or in a crisis or a war, same thing — people’s lives are at stake. You want the very best person in position. I can’t do that right now.”

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Warnings are in effect for potentially ‘catastrophic’ flash flooding across southeastern New York | CNN

    Warnings are in effect for potentially ‘catastrophic’ flash flooding across southeastern New York | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Meteorologists have issued a flash flood emergency for parts of the Lower Hudson Valley in southeastern New York, warning that powerful thunderstorms have dumped several inches of rain and are causing “life threatening” and catastrophic flash flooding.

    Flash flood warnings were in effect Sunday evening for several areas in the region, including southeastern and central Orange County, western Putnam County, northern Westchester County and Rockland County, which has seen the heaviest rainfall, according to the National Weather Service. Parts of northeastern New Jersey were also under a flash flood warning, the service said.

    “Move to higher ground now! This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation. Do not attempt to travel unless you are fleeing an area subject to flooding or under an evacuation order,” the service warned Sunday evening.

    Meanwhile, a system of heavy rain and thunderstorms was also making its way east and expected to reach the New York City metro area Sunday night, the weather service said, stressing the potential of “torrential downpours.”

    A flood watch is in effect citywide until 6 a.m. Monday morning, the city said on its website, adding that areas that were low-lying, had poor drainage or are close to creeks, streams or rivers are particularly at risk for flash flooding. An “excessive rainfall event” is expected to begin around 7 p.m. Sunday, the city said.

    The heavy rain coming in Sunday “may cause rapid, life-threatening flooding to basements,” the city’s emergency notification officials said on Twitter. “Prepare now to move to higher ground if needed. If you must travel, exercise caution and avoid flooded roadways.”

    In nearby Rockland County, New York State Police said “numerous roadways consisting of State Route 9W and Palisades Interstate Parkway are experiencing heavy flooding and washouts. The Palisades NB is closed from exit 14 to Long Mountain Traffic circle. Avoid The Area!!!”

    The county’s government urged residents to stay home Sunday evening, warning there was “tons of flooding” in the Stony Point and Lowland Hill areas and Lowland Park.

    Later Sunday evening, Rockland County Executive Ed Day said in a statement emergency responders had helped get conditions under control, and rain was anticipated to stop at nighttime.

    “Until then, we urge residents to remain indoors in a safe location,” he said.

    In a Sunday update, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul urged residents to be particularly vigilant of road conditions.

    “My biggest concern is the fact that most people’s lives that are lost during a flood event occur because they’re in their vehicles – not in their homes, but in their vehicles,” she told a Spectrum News reporter. “And I want people to be very cautious about not going into a road that’s closed or if you see any running water, because it doesn’t take much for a vehicle, just two feet … of water can actually sweep a car away and you lose all control, and you could actually lose your life.”

    Flooding at the United States Military Academy West Point, which is in Orange County, has forced people to swim out of their cars, a West Point Military Police spokesperson told CNN Sunday.

    People who had been trapped in their cars in one part of the academy’s campus swam out of their cars to get to safety, the spokesperson said, adding it is unclear at this time if anyone had been injured.

    Also in Orange County, officials for the town of Cornwall issued a “No travel Advisory,” following multiple roads that had been flooded and people that had to be rescued from their stranded cars. The town’s emergency management office also warned the storms had caused mudslides and debris.

    “TRAVEL IS IMPOSSIBLE,” the office said on Twitter. “GET TO HIGHER GROUND. IF SAFE, STAY WHERE YOU ARE.”

    The flash flood threats will remain in parts of New England Monday morning and could become “extremely dangerous” in parts of Vermont, where mudslides are also possible, and the Champlain Valley bordering New York, the Weather Prediction Center said.

    Vermont Gov. Phil Scott on Sunday declared a state of emergency ahead of the storms and the potential flooding and said water rescue teams are already in areas where they may be needed.

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  • IAEA chief ‘completely convinced’ it’s safe to release treated Fukushima nuclear wastewater | CNN

    IAEA chief ‘completely convinced’ it’s safe to release treated Fukushima nuclear wastewater | CNN

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    Tokyo
    CNN
     — 

    Japan’s plan to release treated radioactive water into the ocean is safe and there is no better option to deal with the massive buildup of wastewater collected since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog told CNN.

    Japan will release the wastewater sometime this summer, a controversial move 12 years after the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown. Japanese authorities and the IAEA have insisted the plan follows international safety standards – the water will first be treated to remove the most harmful pollutants, and be released gradually over many years in highly diluted quantities.

    But public anxiety remains high, including in nearby countries like South Korea, China and the Pacific Islands, which have voiced concern about potential harm to the environment or people’s health. On Friday, Chinese customs officials announced they would ban food imports from ten Japanese prefectures including Fukushima, and strengthen inspections to monitor for “radioactive substances, to ensure the safety of Japanese food imports to China.”

    Speaking in an interview during a visit to Tokyo Friday, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said that while fears over the plan reflect a “very logical sense of uncertainty” that must be taken seriously, he is “completely convinced of the sound basis of our conclusions.”

    “We have been looking at this basic policy for more than two years. We have been assessing it against … the most stringent standards that exist,” he said. “And we are quite certain of what we are saying, and the scheme we have proposed.”

    Grossi told CNN he had met with Japanese fishing groups, local mayors and other communities affected by the 2011 disaster – and whose livelihoods may be hurt by the release – to listen to those concerns.

    “My disposition … is one of listening, and explaining in a way that addresses all these concerns they have,” he said.

    “When one visits Fukushima, it is quite impressive, I will even say ominous, to look at all these tanks, more than a million tons of water that contains radionuclides – imagining that this is going to be discharged into the ocean. So all sorts of fears kick in, and one has to take them seriously, to address and to explain.

    “This is why I’m here, to listen to all those who in good faith have questions and criticism and question marks, and to address them.”

    On Tuesday, Grossi formally presented the IAEA’s safety review to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The report found the wastewater release plan will have a “negligible” impact on people and the environment, adding that it was an “independent and transparent review,” not a recommendation or endorsement.

    exp iaea fukushima lyman intvw 070512ASEG3 cnni world_00035521.png

    IAEA approves plan for Fukushima’s wastewater

    Japanese authorities have said the release is necessary because they are running out of room to contain the contaminated water – and the move will allow the full decommissioning of the Fukushima plant.

    The 2011 disaster caused the plant’s reactor cores to overheat and contaminate water within the facility with highly radioactive material. Since then, new water has been pumped in to cool fuel debris in the reactors. At the same time, ground and rainwater have leaked in, creating more radioactive wastewater that now needs to be stored and treated.

    That wastewater now measures 1.32 million metric tons – enough to fill more than 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

    Japan has previously said there were “no other options” as space runs out – a sentiment Grossi echoed on Friday. When asked whether there were better alternatives to dispose of the wastewater, the IAEA chief answered succinctly: “No.”

    It’s not that there are no other methods, he added – Japan had considered five total options, including hydrogen release, underground burial and vapor release, which would have seen wastewater boiled and released into the atmosphere.

    But several of these options are “considered industrially immature,” said Grossi. For instance, vapor release can be more difficult to control due to environmental factors like wind and rain, which could bring the waste back to earth, he said. That left a controlled release of water into the sea – which, Japanese officials and some scientists point out, is frequently done at nuclear plants around the world, including those in the United States.

    The IAEA will also remain on site for years to come, with a new permanent office set up in Fukushima to help monitor progress.

    “We have the benefit of science,” Grossi said. “Either you have a certain radionuclide in a water sample or you don’t have it … it’s a measurable thing. We have the science, we have the laboratories … to ensure the credibility and the transparency of the process.”

    Japan fukushima 12 years later reactors stewart pkg contd intl hnk vpx_00023612.png

    CNN goes inside the Fukushima nuclear plant where wastewater is being treated

    But some critics have cast doubt on the IAEA’s findings, with China recently arguing that the group’s assessment “is not proof of the legality and legitimacy” of the wastewater release.

    Many countries have openly opposed the plan; Chinese officials have warned that it could cause “unpredictable harm,” and accused Japan of treating the ocean as a “sewer.” The Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum, an inter-governmental group of Pacific island nations that includes Australia and New Zealand, also published an op-ed in January voicing “grave concerns,” saying more data was needed.

    And in South Korea, residents have taken to the streets to protest the plan. Many shoppers have stockpiled salt and seafood for fear these products will be contaminated once the wastewater is released – even though Seoul has already banned imports of seafood and food items from the Fukushima region.

    IAEA chief Rafael Grossi during an inspection in Fukushima, Japan, on July 5, 2023.

    International scientists have also expressed concern to CNN that there is insufficient evidence of long-term safety, arguing that the release could cause tritium – a radioactive hydrogen isotope that cannot be removed from the wastewater – to gradually build up in marine ecosystems and food chains, a process called bioaccumulation.

    While Grossi said he takes these objections seriously, he added that he “cannot exclude” the possibility some are driven more by politics than science.

    “We understand that there is a political environment … which is tense. Geopolitical divisions are very, very strong these days so we cannot exclude these things,” he said.

    Grossi also denied media reports that the IAEA had shared a draft of its final report with the Japanese government ahead of its publication. “It’s absurd,” he said. “This is the DNA of the IAEA – to be the nuclear watchdog for nuclear operations, the nuclear watchdog for nuclear safety and security. When we come to a conclusion, it is our independent conclusion.”

    And more broadly, the future of nuclear as an alternative energy source relies on the success of the Fukushima release, he said. Though there has been heightened public alarm toward nuclear plants recently – for instance, regarding the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia plant in Ukraine – “the problem there is war, the problem is not nuclear energy,” Grossi said.

    “If there was one lesson that came clearly after the Fukushima accident, it’s that the nuclear safety standards should be observed to the letter,” he added. “If you do that, the probability of having what happened in Fukushima is extremely low.”

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  • The planet saw its hottest day ever this week. The record will be broken again and again | CNN

    The planet saw its hottest day ever this week. The record will be broken again and again | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    This week saw the hottest global temperature ever recorded, according to data from the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction.

    On Monday, the average global temperature reached 17.01 degrees Celsius (62.62 Fahrenheit), the highest since records began. On Tuesday, it climbed even further, to reach 17.18 degrees Celsius. The previous record of 16.92 degrees Celsius was set in August 2016.

    Experts warn that the record could be broken several more times this year. Robert Rohde, lead scientist at Berkeley Earth, said in a Twitter post on Tuesday that the world “may well see a few even warmer days over the next 6 weeks.”

    This global record is a preliminary one, but it’s another indication of how fast the world is heating up, as the arrival of the natural climate phenomenon El Niño, which has a warming effect, is layered on top of climate change-fueled global heating.

    “It’s not a record to celebrate and it won’t be a record for long, with northern hemisphere summer still mostly ahead and El Niño developing,” said Friederike Otto, senior lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment in the UK.

    This year has already seen heat records broken around the world, with devastating consequences.

    In the US, Texas and the South sweltered in a brutal heat wave in late June, with triple-digit-Fahrenheit temperatures and extreme humidity. Soaring temperatures in Mexico have killed at least 112 people since March.

    A searing heat wave in India killed at least 44 people across the state of Bihar. China, too, has experienced several blistering heat waves and it registered the highest number of hot days – where the maximum daily temperature exceeded 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) – over a six-month period since records began.

    This is what happens to your body when temperatures soar

    The UK recorded the hottest June since records began in 1884, according to the country’s national weather service, the Met Office. The average temperature for the month was 15.8 degrees Celsius (60.4 Fahrenheit), breaking the previous record by 0.9 degree Celsius.

    “Alongside natural variability, the background warming of the Earth’s atmosphere due to human induced climate change has driven up the possibility of reaching record high temperatures,” Paul Davies, Met Office climate extremes principal fellow and chief meteorologist, said in a statement.

    As the climate crisis intensifies, scientists are clear that record-breaking heat waves are set to become more frequent and more severe.

    The new global average temperature record is another wake-up call, Otto told CNN. “It just shows we have to stop burning fossil fuels, not in decades, now. This day is just a number, but for many people and ecosystems it’s a loss of life and livelihood.”

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  • Shooting in Fort Worth leaves at least 3 dead and 8 others wounded | CNN

    Shooting in Fort Worth leaves at least 3 dead and 8 others wounded | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A shooting that erupted just before midnight Monday in Fort Worth, Texas, left at least three dead and eight others wounded, police said.

    Ten of the victims are adults and one a minor, according to a news release from the Fort Worth Police Department’s homicide unit.

    Officers discovered multiple people shot in a parking lot in the Horne Street area of the Como neighborhood, police said. Several victims were brought to local hospitals by private vehicles, while others were transported by ambulance, authorities said. One victim was pronounced dead at the scene.

    “We had a shooting. It appears that we had multiple victims that were shot. Probably three of them were transported to Harris Southwest,” police Capt. Shawn Murray said during a news conference. “Five more victims were transported to John Peter Smith.”

    It’s too early to tell if the shooting was gang related, a domestic dispute, or something else, police said.

    There was a large crowd in the neighborhood when police responded, Murray said.

    “Traditionally, the Como neighborhood, July 3 is their big celebration,” Murray said. “They have their parade, and July 3 in the evening, they gather up as a neighborhood and come together.”

    Last year, a gunman opened fire on a July Fourth parade in Highland Park, Illinois, killing seven people between the ages of 8 to 85 and injuring dozens more. The ensuing manhunt paralyzed the Chicago area before a suspect was arrested later in the day.

    The deadly gunfire in Fort Worth is one of at least six mass shootings in the first three days of July and one at least 341 mass shootings in the nation this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The archive, like CNN, defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are shot, not including the shooter.

    Police are also investigating a mass shooting in Philadelphia they believe left five people dead and two children injured Monday evening. They have arrested a suspect who they say had a bulletproof vest, an AR-15 style rifle and a handgun.

    This is a developing story and will be updated.

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  • First professional female athlete diagnosed with degenerative brain disease CTE | CNN

    First professional female athlete diagnosed with degenerative brain disease CTE | CNN

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    Brisbane, Australia
    CNN
     — 

    Scientists in Australia have diagnosed the world’s first case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in a professional female athlete, with implications for millions of girls and women who play contact sport.

    Heather Anderson, an Australian Football League (AFL) player, was found to have low-stage CTE during an autopsy by scientists at the Australian Sports Brain Bank, whose peer-reviewed findings were published last week in the medical journal Acta Neuropathologica.

    CTE is a neurodegenerative disease that can occur after repeated traumatic brain injuries or hits to the head, with or without a concussion, and to date it has only been diagnosed in professional male athletes.

    But the rise of women’s participation in the same sports over the past two decades means they too are susceptible, the paper said, and especially so given research indicates that women are more vulnerable to concussion than men.

    “Colleagues overseas been watching the professionalization of women’s contact sports over the last 10 years, and the surge in popularity and surge in participation by women in contact sports, so we’ve all been sort of thinking sooner or later, this disease is going to pop up,” said neuropathologist Michael Buckland, the paper’s co-author.

    “It’s a bit like smoking and lung cancer. Early on lung cancer was enormous in men … and then women took up smoking in equal numbers. Then 20 years later, there was a big surge in women’s lung cancer,” said Buckland, a clinical associate professor at the University of Sydney.

    “So I think we’re at the start of seeing the consequences of that surge in participation, both at the amateur and professional level.”

    Anderson started playing football when she was five years old and went on to play contact sport for 18 years across two codes – AFL and rugby league – before her death by suicide at 28 last November, according to the paper.

    Her professional career included 8 games over the 2017 season with AFL Club the Adelaide Crows, before she suffered a shoulder injury that ended her sporting career. She also worked as a medic for the Australian Defence Force.

    Originally from Darwin, Anderson was known for wearing a bright pink helmet on the pitch so her vision-impaired mother could see her play. Scientists say helmets and headbands can prevent skull fractures but don’t keep the brain from moving around inside the skull when someone is hit.

    During her career, Anderson had one confirmed concussion, and suffered another suspected four, according to her family, who donated her brain to the Australian Sports Brain Bank for more answers as to why she died.

    According to the paper, Anderson had no known history of alcohol or non-prescription drug abuse and had not exhibited any signs of depression or unusual behavior in the months before her death.

    “While there are insufficient data to draw conclusions on any association between CTE and manner of death, suicide deaths are not uncommon in the cohorts where CTE is sought at autopsy,” the paper said.

    Buckland said Anderson’s diagnosis shows women’s contact sports also need CTE minimization plans to reduce players’ exposure to cumulative head injuries, and those plans need to start at the junior level.

    “I don’t think any child should be playing the contact version of a sport before high school,” he said. Other ways to reduce exposure include restricting contact during training, playing just one contact sport, and taking time off after a game when players have suffered hits, he said.

    Awareness of the risks of head injury in sport has been growing over the past two decades, and scientists are still working to examine the impact of repeated knocks on the brain.

    The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says “the research to date suggests that CTE is caused in part by repeated traumatic brain injuries, including concussions, and repeated hits to the head, called subconcussive head impacts.”

    Repeated knocks can lead to the degeneration of brain tissue and an unusual buildup of a protein called tau, which is associated with symptoms such as memory loss, confusion, impulse control problems, aggression, depression, impaired judgment and suicidal behavior.

    In the United States, the most recent research from the Concussion Legacy Foundation and Boston University’s CTE Center found that nearly 92% of 376 former NFL players who were studied were diagnosed with the brain disease. It’s also been found in the brains of former boxers, and ice hockey and soccer players.

    In Australia, lawyers representing dozens of former professional AFL players have filed a class action suit against the Australian Football League (AFL), seeking compensation for injuries caused by alleged negligence.

    The AFL has acknowledged a link between head trauma and CTE and says it’s committed to mitigating the risks. It was one of dozens of parties to provide submissions to an Australian government inquiry into the issue that is due to report on August 2.

    The AFL Player’s Association, which represents the athletes, is pushing for greater support for current and former players, many of whom are living with the impact of successive brain injuries.

    But Buckland said with so many other competing priorities, including broadcast rights and ticket sales, the industry can’t be expected to self-regulate, and an outside body needs to set the rules to ensure they’re followed.

    CTE has been diagnosed in people as young as 17, but symptoms usually don’t appear until years later.

    In 2019, about 15% of all US high school students reported one or more sports- or recreation-related concussions in the previous year, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Boys’ football, girls’ soccer and boys’ ice hockey were the sports with the highest concussion rates, according to the study.

    Buckland said what’s most needed is a shift in attitudes, so that it’s no longer encouraged or even acceptable to expose children to activities where repeated head injuries are part of the game.

    “It’s more than just a medical problem, it’s a sociological problem, as well. How do we change society? I think in the long run, it’ll be like smoking. (Stopping) smoking has taken generational change, and I think that’s what we’re looking at here.”

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  • Baltimore investigators searching for suspects in block party mass shooting that killed 2 and injured 28 others | CNN

    Baltimore investigators searching for suspects in block party mass shooting that killed 2 and injured 28 others | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Investigators in Baltimore are searching for multiple suspects in a mass shooting that turned a beloved annual neighborhood block party into chaos early Sunday, killing two people and injuring 28 others, most of whom were teens, officials said.

    The search for the shooters – investigators believe at least two were involved in the incident – is ongoing, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott told CNN Monday, vowing, “We will not rest until we find those who cowardly decided to shoot up this block party and carry out acts of violence which we know will be illegal guns.”

    Officials are combing through “every single lead, every minute, every second of footage, everything that we have to find out who decided to disrupt this peaceful event in this way,” Scott said on “CNN This Morning.”

    The gunfire erupted early Sunday in the south Baltimore neighborhood of Brooklyn, where community members were enjoying a yearly celebration dubbed Brooklyn Day.

    Aaliyah Gonzalez, 18, whose surname police initially spelled ending with an ‘s,’ and Kylis Fagbemi, 20, were fatally shot, the Baltimore Police Department announced.

    The dozens of surviving victims all sustained gunshot wounds, according to acting Police Commissioner Richard Worley. Five of those injured were adults aged 20 or older and the remaining 23 were teenagers ranging in age from 13 to 19, police said.

    Seven of the wounded remain in hospitals, with four in critical condition and three in stable condition, the mayor noted.

    Investigators are scouring the sprawling crime scene – which spans several blocks – for evidence and are poring over hours of surveillance footage, the police commissioner said. Officials have also urged community members to come forward with any relevant information or video footage that may assist in the investigation.

    A reward for information leading to the capture of the suspects has been raised to $28,000, Worley said at a news conference Monday.

    Police began receiving calls reporting the shooting around 12:30 a.m. Sunday, according to Worley.

    As officers arrived on the scene, they found an 18-year-old woman – later identified as Gonzalez – dead, police said. A 20-year-old identified as Fagbemi was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

    An ice cream truck was parked directly across from where Gonzalez was shot and killed. The truck’s driver, Keith, who declined to give his last name, told CNN he watched her collapse on the stairs as hundreds of people ran for cover.

    Keith said he told his children to lay down on the floor of the truck and wait for the rounds of shooting to stop.

    “I walked over to [Gonzalez], checked her pulse, straightened her out, tried to start doing CPR but she was already dead,” he said.

    Some who suffered gunshot injuries took shelter inside the ice cream truck. On Monday morning, blood was still on the ground near the truck’s parking spot.

    Keith said he could not see where the gunshots were coming from. He said there were no disruptions at the block party before the shooting started.

    He said his two daughters, 13 and 18 years old, are “fine but extremely stressed out.”

    Investigators have yet to determine a motive in the attack and are still figuring out whether the victims were targeted or indiscriminately shot at, the police commissioner said. As officers canvassed the neighborhood during the day Sunday, K-9 units located additional shell casings that had not been found overnight, he said.

    Staff at MedStar Harbor Hospital were expecting a routine overnight shift when they were met with the arrival of several patients with traumatic gunshot wounds, Dr. Hania Habeeb, associate chair of the emergency department, said at a news conference Monday.

    Habeeb said the hospital received 19 patients within an hour, 14 of whom were teenagers. Many of the patients were minors, brought in by family and loved ones who were “appropriately concerned,” she said.

    “We didn’t know if we were safe. We didn’t know if the shooter or shooters were right outside of our hospital doors,” Habeeb said.

    The hospital went on immediate lockdown to ensure safety while staff performed lifesaving procedures to stabilize the victims. Habeeb added 10 patients were transferred to Baltimore trauma centers.

    The attack marks one of the latest acts of gun violence to thrust an American community into grief as they gather in everyday spaces, including parks, schools, shopping malls and grocery stores.

    “This was a reckless, cowardly act of violence that has taken two lives and altered many, many more,” Scott said. “This tragic incident is another glaring, unfortunate example of the deep issues of violence in Baltimore, in Maryland and this country and particularly gun violence and the access to illegal guns.”

    Just three days into the month, it is one of five mass shootings in July and one of 340 mass shootings in the US in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The archive, like CNN, defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are shot, not including the shooter.

    “These weapons come from Virginia, they come from Texas, they come from Florida, they come from Alabama, they come from everywhere in this country,” Scott said.

    “We have to deal with this issue of guns and the flow of illegal guns into the hands of people who should not have them at the national level,” he added.

    The National Rifle Association sued Maryland Gov. Wes Moore after he signed the Gun Safety Act of 2023 and other gun safety measures into law in May, court documents show.

    Members of the Kingdom Life Church pray at the site of a mass shooting in the Brooklyn Homes neighborhood on July 2, 2023.

    The block party was held as an annual celebration of the Brooklyn neighborhood. Scott called on the public to think of the shooting as if it happened in a rural community. “When it happens in Baltimore, Chicago or DC it doesn’t get that same attention,” he said.

    “These Black American lives, children’s lives, matter just as anyone else,” he added.

    Scott described the Brooklyn neighborhood as a working-class community filled with “immense pride.”

    “It is a neighborhood that has had its troubles, but a neighborhood that has seen some folks in that community really determined to see it be successful and see things turn around,” he added.

    There were “at least a couple hundred people” at the event Saturday, Worley said at Monday’s news conference, describing it as “unpermitted,” emphasizing no organizers had filed paperwork with the city.

    Asked about whether police had been appropriately staffed for the event, Worley said the annual celebration happens on a different Saturday each year. In the past, law enforcement was able to discover the date of the event in advance to prepare resources.

    But this year, police did not learn of the event until the day of, Worley said. “As far as I know, no one notified BPD that Brooklyn Day was happening on July 1st.”

    “Unfortunately, we didn’t get there in time to prevent what happened.”

    Mayor Scott said Sunday his office is mobilizing every available resource to assist with the investigation, including distributing information about community-based services available to residents in the Brooklyn Homes area, which he described as a public housing facility.

    Yvonne Booker, a resident of Brooklyn Homes, told CNN affiliate WBAL she’s lived in the area for three decades and feels the gun violence has reached a breaking point.

    “It’s kind of hard for me. I’m a mother. They need to stop. It’s too much. I’ve been to so many funerals in this community,” Booker said.

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  • Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel-winning novelist, hospitalized with Covid-19 | CNN

    Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel-winning novelist, hospitalized with Covid-19 | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Peruvian novelist and Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa has been hospitalized in Madrid with Covid-19, his son said Monday.

    “In light of the interest by the news media in our father’s health, we make public that he has been hospitalized since Saturday after being diagnosed with Covid-19,” Alvaro Vargas Llosa tweeted on behalf of himself and his siblings, Gonzalo and Morgana Vargas Llosa.

    The 87-year-old has been in hospital since July 1, surrounded by family, and is being treated by “excellent” professionals, the tweet added.

    Vargas Llosa lives in Madrid and holds Spanish as well as Peruvian citizenship.

    Born in Arequipa, Peru in 1936, Vargas Llosa was brought up by his mother until his father reappeared and brought an authoritarian change to his life.

    As well as the hostile environment at home, Vargas Llosa lived through Peru’s political turmoil, which saw the rise of dictator Manuel Odría in 1948.

    In 1963, he published his first novel, “The Time of the Hero,” a tale based on his own experience, about adolescents struggling to survive in a brutal military academy.

    Social change has been a key theme in his literary works, and in 1990 he ran unsuccessfully for President of Peru. Three years after this defeat, he became a Spanish citizen.

    In 2010, the Nobel Prize committee awarded him the Literature Prize, writing in its citation that he was receiving the prize “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.”

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  • Controversial Chinese scientist He Jiankui proposes new gene editing research | CNN

    Controversial Chinese scientist He Jiankui proposes new gene editing research | CNN

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist who sparked global outrage in 2018 when he revealed that he had created the first gene-edited children, has put forward a new proposal for modifying human embryos that he claims could help aid the “aging population.”

    He, who in 2019 was sentenced to three years in prison in China for “illegal medical practices,” reemerged last year and surprised the global scientific community when he announced on social media that he was opening a research lab in Beijing.

    Since that time, updates on his research posted on his Twitter account have focused on proposed plans to develop gene therapy for rare disease.

    But on Thursday, he again courted controversy by posting a new research proposal that experts say is reminiscent of his earlier work, which scientists broadly decried as unethical and dangerous – with the potential to impact human DNA across generations.

    In a succinct, one page document, He proposed research that would involve gene-editing mouse embryos and then human fertilized egg cells, or zygotes, in order to test whether a mutation “confers protection against Alzheimer’s disease.”

    “The aging population is of grave importance as both a socioeconomic issue and a strain on the medical system … Currently, there is no effective drug for Alzheimer’s disease,” he wrote in an apparent nod to China’s growing demographic burden due to a rising proportion of elderly.

    Unlike the science that landed him in jail, this potential experiment involves a kind of abnormal fertilized egg cell generally considered not suitable to be implanted in a woman.

    No human embryo would be implanted for pregnancy and “government permit and ethical approval” were required before experimentation, the proposal said.

    It’s not clear whether He would get approval for such work in China, even if the proposal he put forward were deemed to have merit – and outside experts say the current proposal is not scientifically sound.

    Authorities in China took multiple steps to tighten rules and ethical standards affecting human gene editing in the wake of the revelations about his previous research. They also banned He from engaging in work related to assisted reproductive technology services and placed limits on his work with human genetic resources, according to state media.

    But the scientist’s release of a new proposal involving gene editing of embryos has scientists and medical ethics experts concerned – and confused.

    “The whole thing is, to put it bluntly, insane,” said Peter Dröge, an associate professor at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, who focuses on molecular and biochemical genetics.

    The proposed research could be seen as a step to explore if such a method of genetic editing could be used in a viable embryo in future, according to Dröge.

    Apart from ethical considerations, gene-editing an embryo to address a complex disease that affects people toward the end of their life and doesn’t have a clear, single genetic cause is “highly questionable,” he said.

    “He basically wants to genetically modify the human species so they don’t get Alzheimer’s,” he said. “I’m really surprised that he’s coming forward with this again.”

    Joy Zhang, founding director of the Centre for Global Science and Epistemic Justice at the University of Kent in Britain, said the proposal seemed to be “more of a publicity stunt than a substantiated research agenda.”

    “However, we do need to take these public claims with vigilance, as it may nevertheless misguide patients and their families, and tint the reputations not just of science in China, but global research effort in this area,” she said.

    In response to questions from CNN, He said he was “collecting feedback from scientists and bioethicists now” and did not have a timeline for the study.

    “I will make a revision to the Alzheimer’s disease proposal later. I will not conduct any experiments until I get the government permit, and also get the approval by an international ethics committee with bioethicists from USA and Europe,” he told CNN via email.

    “I want to emphasize that this is a preclinical study, no embryo will be used for pregnancy in this study. The research will be open and transparent, and all experiment results and progress will be posted on Twitter,” he said.

    He did not address questions on whether he was limited from conducting certain work in China.

    CNN also approached China’s Ministry of Science and Technology and National Health Commission for comment.

    In 2018, He, formerly a researcher at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, claimed he had used a gene-editing tool called CRISPR to modify human embryos of twin girls in the hopes of protecting them from HIV. A third genetically edited baby was also born from He’s experimentation, a court in Shenzhen later said.

    The research sparked a fierce uproar over the ethics of using new and potentially dangerous technology in people and the risk of unintended mutations being passed on not only to the children but potentially any future offspring. It also raised concerns about cracking open the door to a potentially species-changing future of “designer children.”

    In recent media interviews, He has indicated he feels he acted “too quickly” in conducting the research and has given sparse details on the children, besides indicating they were living “normal” lives.

    Genetic manipulation of human embryos – both viable and nonviable ones – is typically tightly controlled globally and some countries ban all such research, experts say.

    But there is robust global debate around allowing genome editing of human embryos to treat serious genetic conditions or expanding research.

    Scientists say genome editing, including in adults, shows promise for one day treating diseases that are currently difficult to treat or cure, like cystic fibrosis or sickle cell disease.

    Chinese law does not allow gene-edited human embryos used in research to be implanted into humans, or developed for more than 14 days. All gene editing for reproductive purposes has also long been banned.

    Since 2019, a broader raft of regulation of China’s biosciences field has added more legal controls and ethical standards to such research, including a major update to national bioethics guidelines earlier this year.

    There’s also been sharp backlash against He within China’s scientific community.

    In March, over 200 Chinese scholars released a statement in response to his public activities, including what they said was He’s “misleading marketing campaign” over his claimed research plans on rare disease.

    They condemned He’s “attitude and refusal to reflect on his criminal actions of violating ethics and regulations of gene editing,” and called for regulatory authorities to launch a new investigation into He’s “alleged re‐violation of scientific integrity, ethical norms, laws and regulations.”

    “The ethical boundaries shall not be crossed,” they wrote.

    As for the future of He’s research, Canadian bioethicist Françoise Baylis of Dalhousie University said numerous questions should be considered, from whether He has the requisite scientific expertise to test the hypothesis, to whether he can be trusted to follow the rules for research involving humans.

    “It is possible for people to learn from their mistakes and to change their behavior … but many are concerned, however, that He Jiankui may not have learned from his past mistakes,” Baylis said.

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