Important Takeaways:
- Almost 100 suspected heat deaths are attributed to a single week, from July 7 to 13, when temperatures reached 118 degrees.
- A heat report dashboard run by Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and is the fourth most-populated county in the United States with 4.4 million people, showed 322 deaths are suspected to have been a result of heat-related illness in the year to July 13 — a huge increase on last year.
- There have been 23 confirmed deaths in the county related to heat this year, the data shows, 17 of which were directly caused by heat and 6 which were “heat-contributed.”
- There have been at least 73 heat-related deaths across the U.S. this year so far, according to an ongoing count by NBC News.
- The DHH said a quarter of last year’s deaths happened indoors, with air conditioning units not working properly for two thirds of those victims.
- The heat dashboard was launched by the county in May to better track illness and death as a result of extreme temperatures.
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Important Takeaways:
- In a news release, Wilson said a recent court ruling in Kansas will temporarily block the Biden administration’s new Title IX Rule from being implemented at some South Carolina schools, colleges and universities.
- The new rule, which is slated to take effect on Aug. 1, would require schools that receive federal funding to accommodate students’ and teachers’ gender identity.
- Students and teachers would also be required to use others’ preferred pronouns.
- South Carolina was not a party in the suit but the ruling that blocks the new Title IX rule from taking effect does affect some Lowcounret schools and colleges, including Porter-Gaud, John Paul II Catholic School and Charleston Southern University.
- “Attorney General Wilson filed a separate lawsuit in April on this same rule, arguing that the Biden administration does not have the authority to override the text of Title IX that Congress passed in 1972,” Wilson’s office said in the release.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to reject the establishment of a Palestinian state, reflecting the deepening decline in support for a two-state solution among wider Israeli society.
- The vote could signal that Israeli lawmakers have confidence that “the next president is going to be Donald Trump,” one analyst said.
- The vote came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to travel to the United States to address a joint session of Congress and meet with President Joe Biden
- Israel has faced growing pressure to present a clear plan for what happens when the war comes to an end, with Israeli opposition to a two-state solution complicating paths to a viable diplomatic resolution.
- Addressing the Knesset on Wednesday, Netanyahu defended his handling of the war in Gaza, saying Israeli forces had been effective in putting Hamas “under pressure” amid negotiations for a cease-fire deal that would bring an end to fighting in Gaza and see hostages who remain held by Hamas in the enclave released.
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Important Takeaways:
- Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the first-in-the-nation law Monday, which bans districts from requiring school staff to disclose a student’s gender identity or sexual orientation to any other person without the child’s permission, with some exceptions.
- It also requires the state Department of Education to develop resources for families of LGBTQ+ students in grade 7 through high school.
- The law will take effect in January.
- At least six states have requirements that schools notify parents when minors disclose that they are transgender or ask to be referred to with a different pronoun, according to Associated Press reporting: Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
- Newsom spokesperson Brandon Richards said the new California law will “keep children safe while protecting the critical role of parents.”
- “It protects the child-parent relationship by preventing politicians and school staff from inappropriately intervening in family matters and attempting to control if, when, and how families have deeply personal conversations,” Richards said in a statement.
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Important Takeaways:
- Military assesses it will take months to locate all tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border, but Rafah Brigade mostly dismantled; half of terror group’s military leadership killed
- The IDF believed that its intelligence indicating that Deif arrived at a compound belonging to Rafa’a Salameh, the commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade, was highly accurate, and that the pair were together in the building that was targeted with several heavy munitions.
- Salameh was killed in the strike, the IDF announced Sunday after obtaining final confirmation on the matter. It has yet to receive the same kind of information on Deif, and if he was dead, Hamas would attempt to hide the truth for some time.
- Deif was one of the chief architects of the October 7 massacre in southern Israel, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists broke through the border, killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
- He has been one of the figures most wanted by Israel since 1995 for his involvement in the planning and execution of many terror attacks, including bus bombings in the 1990s and early 2000s.
- The IDF has also been working to locate Hamas’s attack tunnels, which approach the Israeli border, as well as tunnel junctions that connect between various underground networks in the Strip.
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Important Takeaways:
- Without giving any further details, South Korea’s spy agency the National Intelligence Service confirmed an earlier report by the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, which said that a counsellor responsible for political affairs at the North Korean embassy in Cuba had defected.
- Among Ri Il-kyu’s jobs at the embassy was to block North Korea’s rival South Korea and old ally Cuba from forging diplomatic ties
- Details on North Koreans defections often take months to come to light, with defectors needing to be cleared by authorities and going through a course of education about South Korean society and systems.
- “Every North Korean thinks at least once about living in South Korea. Disillusionment with the North Korean regime and a bleak future led me to consider defection,” he told the paper.
- “In fact, North Koreans yearn for reunification even more than South Koreans. Everyone believes that reunification is the only way for their children to have a better future. Today, the Kim Jong-un regime has brutally extinguished even the slightest hope left among the people.”
- He said he flew out of Cuba with his family but he did not elaborate further on how he pulled off the high-risk escape.
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Important Takeaways:
- French centrist Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and his government resigned on Tuesday, but will stay on in a caretaker capacity until a new cabinet is appointed following an inconclusive snap election.
- The caretaker government will run current affairs in the euro zone’s second-largest economy, but cannot submit new laws to parliament or make any major changes, experts say.
- Its role will include making sure that the Olympics, that start on July 26, run smoothly.
- Who becomes president of the assembly, equivalent to a speaker who organizes the chamber’s agenda and runs debates, is crucial at a time when it is still unclear who will run the government as no party or group has an absolute majority.
- A left-wing alliance that unexpectedly topped the June 30 and July 7 election, and which has since been fighting bitterly over who to put forward as prime minister, hopes to agree on a name for parliament chief.
- “Never before has the election of the president of the assembly held such a political significance,” Euro intelligence analysts said.
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Important Takeaways:
- For Donald J. Trump’s most devoted supporters, the bullet that nicked his ear and came within inches of ending his life was only further proof that a higher power is looking out for him.
- “I don’t see this as luck,” said the Rev. Nathaniel Thomas, a Republican National Convention delegate and a pastor from the Washington, D.C., area. “I see this as God’s protection.”
- “Something’s got to be at play,” said Michael Thompson, the Republican chairman in Lee County, Fla., while looking toward the sky as if to invoke the heavens. “I don’t think the average person could withstand a tenth of what he has gone through. So yeah, I think he’s probably chosen at the right time in our country’s history.”
- “The most incredible thing was that I happened to not only turn but to turn at the exact right time and in just the right amount,” Mr. Trump said. “If I only half-turn, it hits the back of the brain. The other way goes right through. And because the sign was high, I’m looking up. The chances of my making a perfect turn are probably one tenth of 1 percent, so I’m not supposed to be here.”
- On his social media website, Mr. Trump said, “it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Hundreds of people in a southern Illinois town were ordered to evacuate Tuesday as water rolled over the top of a dam, just one perilous result of severe weather that raged through Midwest overnight with relentless rain and tornadoes and hit the Chicago area especially hard.
- Hundreds of thousands of people lost power, and even weather forecasters had to briefly scramble for safety.
- A woman in Indiana died after a tree fell on a home Monday night.
- Water overtopped a dam near Nashville, Illinois, sending first responders out to ensure everyone got out safely. There were no reports of injuries in the community of 3,000, southeast of St. Louis, but a woman reported water up to her waist in her home, said Alex Haglund, a spokesperson for the Washington County Emergency Management Agency.
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Important Takeaways:
- Menendez is the first senator to be convicted of acting as a foreign agent.
- Menendez pleaded not guilty to 16 federal charges including bribery, fraud, acting as a foreign agent and obstruction.
- Federal prosecutors in New York alleged the New Jersey Democrat accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in the form of cash, gold bars, mortgage payments and more in exchange for the senator’s political clout.
- Three New Jersey businessmen who were also charged, along with the governments of Egypt and Qatar, were the alleged recipients.
- The FBI found gold bars and more than $400,000 in cash stashed in places including jackets and shoes throughout his home, prosecutors said.
- “The only honest verdict I submit here is to acquit him on each count,” defense attorney Adam Fee told the jury on July 9. “His actions were lawful, normal and good for the country.”
- This marked the second time the senator was charged with corruption. A 2015 indictment ended in a mistrial in 2018 after a jury failed to reach a verdict on all counts.
- Menendez will be sentenced on Oct. 29 and faces decades in prison.
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