List of All Articles with Tag 'rl'

Conditions in Greece have been compared to those in Africa as southern Europeans suffer through a heatwave forecast to only worsen in the coming days. Europe’s highest ever recorded temperature – 48.8C (119.8F) – could be breached in Sicily and Sardinia next week and Spain is expected to reach 45C, experts say. Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Poland and Croatia have all been hit, and officials in several countries have been preparing emergency measures, including mobile phone heat alerts. “It’s like being in Africa,” said 24-year-old tourist Balint Jolan, from Hungary. “It’s not that much hotter than it is currently at home, but yes, it is difficult.” Officials in Athens shut the ancient Acropolis for several hours on Friday to protect visitors as the Greek meteorological service forecast temperatures peaking at 41C in the city. Read live updates on Europe’s heatwave here Hellenic Red Cross workers handed out bottled water to tourists in long queues fanning themselves, and paramedics gave first aid to tourists fainting and suffering dehydration. The mercury on Acropolis Hill is usually even higher due to its altitude and lack of shade, but the last-minute decision left some people frustrated. “I even bought a €50 ticket to skip the line to enter and I couldn’t enter the place,” one said. Elsewhere in Athens, tourists huddled under mist machines. There and in other Greek cities, working hours were changed for the public sector and many businesses to avoid the midday heat, while air-conditioned areas were opened to the public. In the Spanish capital, Madrid, zoo animals were fed fruit ice pops, while authorities in Cyprus urged residents to avoid forest areas where wildfires could be sparked accidentally. Swathes of the Balkans also sweltered. In Croatia, the village of Grebastica near the Adriatic coast was devastated by a wildfire that destroyed cars and homes. Dozens of firefighters and three aircraft struggled to contain the blaze that spread rapidly due to strong southerly winds. The Earth steamed to its hottest June on record, smashing the previous global mark by nearly a quarter of a degree, with global oceans setting temperature records for the third month running, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – considered the gold standard for record-keeping. Europe’s monster heatwave, called Cerberus, has already claimed at least one life as it brought temperatures surpassing 104F (40C) across the continent this week. On Tuesday, the land surface temperature in parts of Spanish region Extremadura exceeded 140F (60C). A 44-year-old man painting road markings in northern Italy collapsed and died. Many people are worried about next week, when the heat in the country is expected to intensify, and temperatures are forecast to climb to above 45C (113F) in the centre and south, under a new heatwave named Cheron. According to La Repubblica, the heat this weekend could be trumped by 12C in the following days, particularly in Tuscany and Lazio. If so, it would break Europe’s current record of 48.8 Celsius recorded in Sicily in August 2021. The impact of such extremities has been brought into focus by a new study that found up to 61,000 people died in Europe’s sweltering heat last summer. The forecast has also raised fears about the impact on crops and animals. The European Space Agency said: “Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Poland are all facing a major heatwave, with temperatures expected to climb to 48 degrees Celsius on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia – potentially the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Europe.” Emergency services in Turkey have been grappling with both fires and floods, in which three people have died. “While there are heat and fires on one side of the country, there are floods and deluges on the other,” said deputy agriculture minister Veysel Tiryaki. Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald said: “We are just getting a small taste for the types of impacts that we expect to worsen under climate change.” Climate scientist Friederike Otto of the Imperial College of London said: “Until we stop burning fossil fuels, this will only get worse. Heat records will keep getting broken, people and ecosystems are already in many cases beyond what they are able to deal with.” Additional reporting by agencies Read More Why is there no UK heatwave as Europe swelters during Cerberus? Earth sets its hottest day record for third time in a week Cities in the US are sinking due to the climate crisis

The special counsel investigating former president Donald Trump threatened potential criminal charges against a Trump Organization employee suspected of lying to investigators, according to sources of ABC News. Jack Smith transmitted a letter to a staffer that indicated that he might have perjured himself in an appearance before the federal grand jury that ultimately indicted Mr Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents, the sources said to ABC. The letter appears to signal Mr Smith’s interest in the Trump Organization’s handling of surveillance footage and efforts of the organization to avoid sharing footage with investigators.

BRF SA, Brazil’s biggest poultry producer, has raised 5.4 billion reais ($1.1 billion) in a share offering that

European stocks posted their biggest weekly advance since March on rising bets that the Federal Reserve’s monetary tightening

The best hope for a toddler missing in France is that “he’s been kidnapped and is alive,” the local mayor has said. Emile vanished from his maternal grandparents’ home in the quiet village of Le Vernet in the Alpes-des-Haute-Provence on Saturday and has not been seen since. After he was reported missing, a massive search operation to locate the two-year-old was launched but police admitted they had “no clue” what happened to Emile after five days of combing every part of Le Vernet. The physical search was called off on Thursday, after a final road was raked for clues about the boy’s whereabouts. In a new interview with French newspaper Le Figaro, Francois Balique has commented on the rescue efforts, that involved a helicopter broadcasting the voice of Emile’s mother over the region, the “curse” of the hamlet, and possible explanations for Emile’s disappearance. Mr Balique, who has been Le Vernet’s mayor since 1977, was asked about the likelihood of finding Emile alive – considering the boy’s age and the number of days that have passed since he was last seen. He responded: “Our only hope now is that he’s been taken and is alive. It’s the last thing we can hope for and it’s already terrible. “We could consider that someone wanting to cause harm to a child passed by the area, that he saw this beautiful little boy and took him away. He couldn’t survive alone in the wild, that’s for sure.” Elsewhere, Mr Balique said he never believed Emile’s disappearance to be a “sordid kidnapping because we see all the people who frequent the area”, adding that a “foreign car would have been noticed”. “It is difficult to favour one hypothesis over another,” he cautioned. “But the probabilities and the rationality would lead us to believe that we are dealing with an accident. “And since little Emile’s body has not been found, it means that he was not alone at the time. We can consider a car accident in which the driver would have panicked and concealed the body. That’s one hypothesis.” He also said the people of Haut-Vernet know that there are children in the area, and “they are careful on the road”. When asked about calling off the physical search for Emile, Mr Balique, 74, said the French military police (or the gendarmes) combed a combined area of one hundred hectares, “which is enormous”. “We did everything we could to find the child, alive or not. We found nothing,” he said. Locals speaking to the media in the wake of Emile’s disappearance said they wondered whether their hamlet may be “cursed” as a result of the tragedies which have taken place, including the murder of a cafe manager and a deadly plane crash. When asked about the “curse”, Mr Balique said “what is curious” are the facts of Emile’s disappearance – “not that it happened here”. Since the physical search was called off on Thursday, local prosecutor Remy Avon said investigators would now start sorting through all the evidence that has been collected to find new clues about what happened to the toddler. During a press conference on Friday, Mr Balique confirmed the last teams of gendarmes had left the village. Read More Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin ‘dead or in prison’ after Putin meeting, former US commander claims Land temperatures in Spain surpass 60C as deadly heatwave sweeps Europe Huw Edwards – latest: Former BBC journalists blast coverage ‘a disgrace’ as TV star in hospital Heatwave across Europe leaves Brits abroad sweltering: ‘I don’t cope well at all’ Watch: Macron and Modi give joint statement at the Elysee after Bastille Day parade Russia Ukraine war: Wagner forces training soldiers in Belarus after Prigozhin exile

Tensions over regional security issues flared at a regional forum in Jakarta that brought together among the world’s

US consumer sentiment soared in early July to an almost two-year high, bolstered by easing inflation and a

American Airlines said Friday it has begun to wind down its Northeast Alliance with JetBlue Airways after a

The US Department of Education will forgive $39 billion in student debt by updating a technical requirement under

Wells Fargo & Co. earned more net interest income than analysts expected in the second quarter and lifted

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A Republican representative from Arizona triggered an angry response in the House of Representatives after using the term “coloured people” to refer to Black Americans during a floor debate. Eli Crane’s proposed amendment to an annual defence policy bill was met with a strong rebuke by the former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus over his usage of the outdated phrase to refer to people of colour. Joyce Beatty, the Democratic representative from Ohio, demanded the phrase be struck from the record through the unanimous consent of the House. “My amendment has nothing to do with whether or not coloured people or Black people or anybody can serve. It has nothing to do with any of that stuff,” Mr Crane said during the debate on the GOP-backed amendments to the National Defence Authorisation Act. “The military was never intended to be, you know, inclusive. Its strength is not its diversity. Its strength is its standards,” he said. “I am going to tell you guys this right now you can: You can keep playing around these games with diversity, equity and inclusion. But there are some real threats out there. And if we keep messing around and we keep lowering our standards, it’s not going to be good,” said the 43-year-old Republican. “I find it offensive and very inappropriate. I am asking for unanimous consent to take down the words of referring to me or any of my colleagues as coloured people,” the 73-year-old Ms Beatty said soon after Mr Crane’s remarks. At this point, Mr Crane interrupted and requested his statement be revised to use the phrase “people of colour” instead. The words were eventually struck from the record through unanimous consent. “In a heated floor debate on my amendment that would prohibit discrimination on the colour of one’s skin in the Armed Forces, I misspoke,” Mr Crane said in a statement. “Every one of us is made in the image of God and created equal.” On Thursday night, the House approved Mr Crane’s amendment with a vote of 214-210. “This just happened on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. A House Republican just referred to Black Americans serving in our military as ‘colored people.’ In 2023,” tweeted representative Don Beyer. “This is a shameful moment on the House floor,” tweeted the Black Caucus. “Rep Eli Crane referring to Black service members who risk their lives for our country as ‘colored people’ is unconscionable. The GOP fights against diversity, equity and inclusion training and prove everyday why it’s necessary.” Ms Beatty also took to social media after the debate to offer her response to the incident. “I am still in utter shock and disbelief that a Republican uttered the words ‘colored people’ in reference to African-American service members who sacrifice their lives for our freedom,” she tweeted. “I will not tolerate such racist and repugnant words in the House Chamber or anywhere in the Congress. That’s why I asked that those words be stricken from the record, which was done so by unanimous consent.” Read More Long-serving Ohio Democrat Kaptur heads back to Congress From AOC to Joe Manchin, the Democratic divide is becoming more severe Joe Biden signs law making lynching a federal hate crime: ‘Hate never goes away, it only hides’ Disney is asking a judge to toss a lawsuit from DeSantis appointees Democratic lawmaker screams at ‘exhausting’ Matt Gaetz on House floor Iowa's restrictive abortion measure faces legal challenge as governor prepares to sign it into law