Latest Developments:   

A former U.S. Marine who was freed by Russia last year in a prisoner swap has been injured while fighting for Ukraine against Moscow's forces, the U.S. State Department said. 
Russia's prosecutor-general declared independent TV channel Dozhd to be an undesirable organization, continuing the crackdown on news media and groups regarded as threats to Russia's security. Dozhd, which is often critical of the Kremlin, closed its operations in Russia soon after the beginning of the Ukraine conflict, moving first to Latvia and then to the Netherlands.  
The European Union is considering helping fund the costly transportation of grain out of Ukraine after Russia halted a deal that allowed Black Sea exports of Ukrainian grain vital to global food security. 

The United States will send Ukraine an additional $400 million in military aid, including air defense missiles, small drones and armored vehicles, the Pentagon said on Tuesday. 

The weapons are being provided through the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which allows for the speedy delivery of defense articles and services from U.S. stocks, sometimes arriving within days of approval. The materiel will come from U.S. excess inventory.

The aid announcement comes at a time when Ukrainian troops are involved in a slow-moving counteroffensive against invading Russian forces.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the assistance is aimed at “strengthening Ukraine’s brave forces on the battlefield” and “helping them retake Ukraine’s sovereign territory.”

“The people of Ukraine continue to bravely defend their country against Russia’s aggression while Russia continues its relentless and vicious attacks that are killing Ukrainian civilians and destroying civil infrastructure,” Blinken said in a statement.

The new aid package includes an array of ammunition, ranging from missiles for Patriot air defense systems and National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASMS), Stinger anti-aircraft systems, more ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), Stryker armored personnel carriers, and a variety of other missiles and rockets. 

It also will include for the first time U.S.-furnished Black Hornet surveillance drones — tiny nano drones used largely for intelligence-gathering. Ukraine has previously received these drones from other Western allies.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the U.S. has provided more than $43 billion in military aid to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Ukraine said their air defenses intercepted Iranian-made Shahed drones that Russia fired at Kyiv overnight. It was the sixth drone attack on the capital this month. 

Serhii Popko, head of the Kyiv regional military administration, said no casualties or damage were reported.

The Russian Defense Ministry said a Russian patrol ship destroyed two Ukrainian sea drones that attacked it in the Black Sea early Tuesday.

Ukrainian officials said Russia used cluster munitions in an attack on Kostiantynivka, in the eastern Donetsk region, late Monday.

Also Tuesday, Russian lawmakers approved a bill extending the upper age limit for the compulsory military draft from 27 to 30, a move that appears aimed at expanding the pool of recruits for the fighting in Ukraine.

The measure was quickly approved by the lower house on Tuesday. It will need to be approved by the upper house and signed by President Vladimir Putin to become law.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said its staff saw directional anti-personnel mines located on the perimeter of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

The IAEA said in a statement late Monday that the mines were seen Sunday “in a buffer zone between the site’s internal and external perimeter barriers.” The agency said no mines were seen “within the inner site perimeter.”

Russia has controlled the site since the early stages of its invasion of Ukraine. The IAEA has repeatedly warned of the potential for a nuclear catastrophe as it advocated for safety and security measures at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said the agency was told the placement of the mines was a military decision and done in an area controlled by the military.

“But having such explosives on the site is inconsistent with the IAEA safety standards and nuclear security guidance and creates additional psychological pressure on plant staff — even if the IAEA’s initial assessment based on its own observations and the plant’s clarifications is that any detonation of these mines should not affect the site’s nuclear safety and security systems,” Grossi said. 

IAEA experts are also continuing to monitor the availability of water to cool the plant’s reactors following the June destruction of the Kakhovka dam that affected a reservoir near the plant, the agency said.

“The site continues to have sufficient water for some months,” the IAEA said.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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In Ukraine, even in the face of Russian shelling, some people are staying in cities to rescue pets. Volunteers from Kharkiv are trying to help. Anna Kosstutschenko has the story. This video contains images of injured animals that may be disturbing to some viewers. Camera — Pavel Suhodolskiy
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The fingerprints of climate change are all over the intense heat waves gripping the globe this month, a new study finds. Researchers say the deadly hot spells in the American Southwest and Southern Europe could not have happened without the continuing buildup of warming gases in the air.

These unusually strong heat waves are becoming more common, Tuesday’s study said. The same research found the increase in heat-trapping gases, largely from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas has made another heat wave — the one in China — 50 times more likely with the potential to occur every five years or so.

A stagnant atmosphere, warmed by carbon dioxide and other gases, also made the European heat wave 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter, the one in the United States and Mexico 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer and the one in China one 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) toastier, the study found.

Several climate scientists, using tree rings and other stand-ins for temperature records, say this month’s heat is likely the hottest Earth has been in about 120,000 years, easily the hottest of human civilization.

“Had there been no climate change, such an event would almost never have occurred,” said study lead author Mariam Zachariah, a climate scientist at Imperial College of London. She called heat waves in Europe and North America “virtually impossible” without the increase in heat from the mid-1800s. Statistically, the one in China could have happened without global warming.

Since the advent of industrial-scale burning, the world has warmed 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit), so “they are not rare in today’s climate and the role of climate change is absolutely overwhelming,” said Imperial College climate scientist Friederike Otto, who leads the team of volunteer international scientists at World Weather Attribution who do these studies.

The particularly intense heat waves that Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua and Coahuila are now roasting through are likely to happen about once every 15 years in the current climate, the study said.

But the climate is not stabilized, even at this level. If it warms a few more tenths of a degree, this month’s heat will become even more common, Otto said. Phoenix has had a record-shattering 25 straight days of temperatures at or above 43.3 degrees Celsius (110 degrees Fahrenheit) and more than a week when the nighttime temperature never dropped below 32.2 Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit).

The heat in Spain, Italy, Greece and some Balkan states is likely to reoccur every decade in the current climate, the study said.

Because the weather attribution researchers started their analysis of three simultaneous heat waves on July 17, the results are not yet peer reviewed, which is the gold standard for science. But it used scientifically valid techniques, the team’s research regularly gets published and several outside experts told The Associated Press it makes sense.

The way scientists do these rapid analyses is by comparing observations of current weather in the three regions to repeated computer simulations of “a world that might have been without climate change,” said study co-author Izidine Pinto, a climate scientist at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.

In Europe and North America, the study doesn’t claim human-caused climate change is the sole cause of the heat waves, but it is a necessary ingredient because natural causes and random chance couldn’t produce this alone.

Texas state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said the study was reasonable, but looks at a broad area of the U.S. Southwest, so it may not be applicable to every single place in the area.

“In the United States, it’s clear that the entire southern tier is going to see the worst of the ever-worsening heat and this summer should be considered a serious wake-up call,” said University of Michigan environment dean Jonathan Overpeck.

With heat waves, “the most important thing is that they kill people and they particularly kill and hurt and destroy lives and livelihoods of those most vulnerable,” Otto said.
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Greece braced for a new wave of soaring temperatures Tuesday, as wildfires raged on several popular tourist islands, forcing mass evacuations.

In the capital city of Athens the mercury is expected to soar to 41 degrees Celsius, and reach up to 44C in central Greece, according to the national weather forecaster EMY.

Many regions of the country were on “red alert”, meaning there is an extreme risk of dangerous forest fires exacerbated by strong winds.

The very hot weather comes after a weekend of intense heat as thousands of locals and tourists fled forest fires on the Greek islands of Rhodes and Corfu, with the prime minister warning the heat-battered nation is “at war” with the flames.

Authorities evacuated nearly 2,500 people from the Greek island of Corfu on Monday, after tens of thousands of people had already fled blazes on the island of Rhodes, with many frightened tourists scrambling to get home on evacuation flights.

More than 260 firefighters were still battling flames for an eighth consecutive day on Rhodes, supported by two helicopters and two planes.

Fires were also raging on Greece’s second largest island of Evia, where Greek civil protection authorities issued an overnight evacuation order in one northern locality.

The mercury hit 46.4C in Gythio, in the southern Peloponnese peninsula on Sunday, though it failed to reach the hottest temperature nationally on record of 48C.

“We are at war and are exclusively geared towards the fire front,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told parliament on Monday.

He warned that the country faced “another three difficult days ahead” before high temperatures are forecast to ease.

‘Protect our home’

The severe heatwave in Greece has also been reflected across much of southern Europe and Northern Africa.

In Algeria at least 34 people have died as wildfires raged through residential areas, forcing mass evacuations.

In southeastern France officials Monday issued a fire warning at the highest level in the Bouches-du-Rhone region, warning that the weather conditions make the risk of flames “very high compared to normal summers”.

The exceptional temperatures in Greece have forced key tourist sites such as the Acropolis in Athens to close at the hottest times of the day.

Vassilis Kikilias, Greece’s civil protection minister, said crews had battled over 500 fires around the country for 12 straight days.

The fires are particularly devastating on very touristic islands such as Rhodes and Corfu where the season is in full swing and hotels are often full.

Volunteers had come to the aid of foreign tourists in the north of the island where nearly 200 people are still camped out at a school after being evacuated from the fires on Saturday.

School director Kyriakos Kyriakoulis told AFP that dozens of local volunteers and school staff had come forward to help those stranded.

“I can’t believe they are so nice, they gave so much in every way,” said 69-year-old British tourist Christine Moody, who was spending her first vacation in Greece when the fires hit.

“I am very moved,” she said.

In the village of Vati, in the southeast of the island, local mayor Vassilis Kalabodakis said that the impact on the region was “tragic”.

“The village has been ordered to evacuate but we can’t abandon it,” he said. “We are leading the fight to protect our home”.

Scientists from the World Weather Attribution group said Tuesday that the heatwaves that have hit parts of Europe and North America this month would have been almost impossible without human-caused climate change.
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The French president is pressing his country’s interests in the South Pacific this week and trying to make France’s voice heard in a region shaping up as a prime geopolitical battleground for China and the U.S. 

President Emmanuel Macron’s trip to Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and New Caledonia starting Monday comes as French forces take part in massive U.S.-Australian-led military exercises in the region. With troops, citizens and resources spread across its Pacific territories, France wants to protect its interests and project its power alongside like-minded democracies worried about China’s growing assertiveness. 

The most strategically important stop is Thursday in Papua New Guinea, which has seen growing Chinese influence and signed a new security cooperation pact with the U.S. in May. The most populous Pacific Island nation is also negotiating a security treaty with Australia. 

Macron’s office insists the trip is not aimed at pressing an ”anti-China policy,” but at encouraging regional powers to diversify their partnerships beyond Beijing and Washington. He felt the trip was needed because of “new, more intense threats” to security, institutions and the environment in the region, according to an official in Macron’s office who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter. 

His chief diplomatic adviser, Emmanuel Bonne, speaking at the Aspen Security Forum last week, said “China is a global challenge. It is a challenge for the U.S. as well as for the EU,” adding that “there is kind of a strategic awakening in Europe today” of the need for tougher policy toward China. 

But he insisted that Europe shouldn’t “delegate” its global security needs to the U.S. and should craft its own strategic policies. “If we want to remain relevant in today’s world and to tomorrow’s world as France, as Europeans, we need to be much more robust,” he said. 

Macron’s office says he plans to visit a French patrol ship in the area and offer infrastructure projects and a partnership to save forests and mangroves while ensuring jobs in Papua New Guinea, where France’s TotalEnergies is leading a liquefied natural gas project. 

The French tour is coinciding with trips by some top U.S. officials to the region, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Tonga, New Zealand and Australia this week after a visit to Papua New Guinea in May. 

Macron began Monday in the French archipelago of New Caledonia, trying to rebuild trust after voters rejected a string of independence referendums that exposed entrenched frustrations of native Kanaks and inequalities with the mainland, and divisions over management of the region’s rich nickel reserves. Negotiations are underway for a new status for the territory and its institutions. 

“I am at our compatriots’ side to define the basis of this new path,” Macron said in a televised interview after arriving. 

Coastal erosion and other impacts of climate change top the agenda at each stop on Macron’s trip, in a region replete with islands that see periodic tsunamis and risk disappearing to rising seas, according to his advisers. 

France has been an uninterrupted presence in the region since the 19th century, thanks to its colonial history and continued control over territories that are home to 1.5 million citizens and some 7,000 troops across the Indo-Pacific. 
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