Month: August 2023

Fire officials say nine bodies have been recovered from the rubble of a massive fire at a vacation cottage in eastern France, where 11 people had been reported missing. The fire broke out early Wednesday morning in the town of Wintzenheim. Authorities say the cottage was rented by an association that assists disabled people. The missing residents, including 10 adults with learning disabilities and a staff member, were from the nearby eastern city of Nancy.   Christopher Marot, the secretary-general of the Haut-Rhin district, told reporters earlier Wednesday it was unlikely the 11 missing people were able to escape the blaze.   …

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Russia on Tuesday aligned itself with its ally Iran in rejecting Western attempts to maintain curbs on Iran despite the collapse of a 2015 deal intended to restrain Tehran’s nuclear program in return for relief from sanctions.  After a meeting between their respective deputy foreign ministers in Tehran, Russia’s foreign ministry said Moscow and Tehran were unanimous in believing that the failure to implement the deal stemmed from the “erroneous policy of ‘maximum pressure’ pursued by the United States and those who think similarly.”  Then-U.S. President Donald Trump quit the deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) …

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Paris has recently been shivering under the kind of summer for which it was once infamous — before climate change entered mainstream lexicon and thinking. As temperatures soared in parts of southern Europe, rain has lashed the French capital, sending tourists and locals scrambling for umbrellas and thick sweaters.  It’s certain to be a short-term reprieve. By 2050, one recent study finds Paris could have the highest number of heat wave-related deaths of any European capital, with temperatures possibly hitting a scorching 50 degrees Celsius.  “We have to maintain the beauty of Paris, while also finding new tools, new materials to …

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Dozens of second-hand Leopard 1 tanks that once belonged to Belgium have been bought by another European country for Ukrainian forces fighting Russia’s invasion, the arms trader who did the deal said Tuesday.  The German-made Leopards were at the center of a public spat earlier this year after Belgian Defense Minister Ludivine Dedonder said the government had explored buying back tanks to send to Ukraine but had been quoted unreasonable prices.  The clash highlighted a predicament faced by Western governments trying to find weapons for Ukraine after more than a year of intense warfare — arms they discarded as obsolete …

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Watching news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. comic book editor Scott Dunbier felt compelled to help. He reached out to comic book professionals to create “Comics for Ukraine: Sunflower Seeds” to raise funds to provide emergency supplies and services to Ukrainians. Genia Dulot has this report. …

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Poland’s president announced Tuesday that the country would hold its parliamentary election on Oct. 15, marking the official start of an electoral campaign that has informally been underway for months and is being shaped by Russia’s war against Ukraine. President Andrzej Duda said in a statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the elections for the 460-seat lower house of parliament, the Sejm, and for the 100-seat Senate will both take place on that Sunday. Lawmakers will be elected for a four-year term. The election campaign begins during rising anxieties in Poland over the presence of Russia-linked Wagner …

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Now that July’s sizzling numbers are all in, the European climate monitoring organization made it official: July 2023 was Earth’s hottest month on record by a wide margin.   July’s global average temperature of 16.95 degrees Celsius (62.51 degrees Fahrenheit) was a third of a degree Celsius (six tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) higher than the previous record set in 2019, Copernicus Climate Change Service, a division of the European Union’s space program, announced Tuesday. Normally global temperature records are broken by hundredths or a tenth of a degree, so this margin is unusual.   “These records have dire consequences …

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LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:  At least seven people killed in two Russian missile strikes in eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk Monday evening  The Ukrainian Security Service said Monday that it had detained a Russian informant aiming to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy while he was visiting the Mykolaiv region in July.  Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba requested ATACMS long-range missiles in a phone call Monday with his U.S. counterpart Antony Blinken.    Rescuers in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk are digging through the rubble of several buildings destroyed by two back-to-back Russian missile attacks Monday that killed at least seven people. Pokrovsk is located …

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