IndustryStandard

A new Trump administration report which attempts to justify a mass rollback of environmental regulations is chock-full of climate misinformation, experts say.

On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a proposal to undo the 2009 “endangerment finding”, which allows the agency to limit planet-heating pollution from cars and trucks, power plants and other industrial sources. Hours later, the Department of Energy (DOE) published a 150-page report defending the proposal, claiming scientific concern about the climate crisis is overblown.

MEE’s investigation can reveal that:

• The woman accusing Khan of sexual misconduct wrote in May 2024 in text messages to Khan that there were “games being played” and attempts to make her a “pawn in some game I don’t want to play”. Two internal ICC investigations into the allegations were closed after she refused to cooperate with them

• The complainant had previously sought and obtained Khan’s help in another complaint against a second senior ICC official. This was during the period in which she later alleged Khan had repeatedly sexually assaulted her. Investigators found no wrongdoing on the part of the individual who was the subject of her complaint

• Thomas Lynch, Khan’s special assistant, who he tasked to liaise with Israel on the Palestine investigation, played a key role in making the allegations against Khan official. Privately however, Lynch had expressed his own doubts about the allegations to Khan’s wife and said that the timing was suspicious. In response to questions from MEE, Lynch described allegations in this article as “false and misleading”.

• A female ICC lawyer told MEE there was a group of people within the court who disagreed with Khan’s approach and who were working to discredit him. She said she had been approached in May 2024 and asked if Khan had ever behaved inappropriately towards her: “I told them he is the last person on my list of men who would do that”

• Two former ICC judges have told MEE they have grave concerns about the way the OIOS investigation into the allegations against Khan has been conducted, questioning why the prosecutor was publicly named as the subject of a complaint, and the need for an external investigation into his alleged misconduct

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration announced it is launching a new program that will allow Americans to share personal health data and medical records across health systems and apps run by private tech companies, promising that will make it easier to access health records and monitor wellness.

More than 60 companies, including major tech companies like Google, Amazon and Apple as well as health care giants like UnitedHealth Group and CVS Health, have agreed to share patient data in the system. The initiative will focus on diabetes and weight management, conversational artificial intelligence that helps patients, and digital tools such as QR codes and apps that register patients for check-ins or track medications.

Authorities in Japan and South Korea have urged people to take precautions to prevent heatstroke, as the region reels from record-breaking temperatures and pressure on hospitals.

On Thursday, South Korea’s meteorological office said the country had experienced a record-breaking streak of “tropical nights” for 22 consecutive days this month.

A day earlier, Japan saw its hottest day on record, with the mercury reaching 41.2C, as hospitals across the country were inundated with people who had fallen ill as a result of the heatwave.

Gaza civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that “at least 30” people were killed and 300 wounded.

The Israeli military said it had no knowledge of casualties in the incident north of Gaza City, as the United Nations said that pauses in Israel’s offensive against Hamas were not enough to help the population through a deepening hunger crisis.

The only person charged with a felony in connection with last year’s violent attack on a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA has been given a plea deal to attend a diversion program that could allow him to avoid jail time and have the charges dismissed.

Malachi Marlan-Librett, 28, was accused of assault with a deadly weapon, battery, and committing a hate crime stemming from two separate incidents on the UCLA campus in April and May 2024, according to court documents. Under a plea deal entered on July 7, Marlan-Librett must complete 90 hours of therapy and anti-bias education. If he complies with the terms, all charges will be dropped.

Livestreamer William Gude, aka Film the Police, has pointed out that Marlan-Librett “singled out” Black people as the targets for his assaults.

An investigation has been triggered after a three-year-old boy died after being left in a hot car by a contractor for the state human resources department in Alabama.

Ke’Torrius Starkes Jr, who was in foster care, had been picked up in the late morning on Tuesday by the worker after a supervised visit with his father, the New York Times reported. He was supposed to be transported to a day care program by a worker for the department, which oversees child protection other social services.

Instead the boy was left alone strapped in a vehicle with tinted windows on a hot day in Bessemer, a suburb of Birmingham.

The Birmingham police department said officers went to a private home in Bessemer to respond to a report of an unresponsive child at around 5.30pm and found that the boy was “accidentally left inside of a vehicle while in the care of a third-party contracted worker through the Department of Human Resources”.

The daughter of a woman murdered by a man from Laos who is among those controversially deported from the US to South Sudan has spoken out about her family’s pain but also to decry the lack of rights afforded to those who were expelled to countries other than their own.

Birte Pfleger lives in Los Angeles and was a history student at Cal State University in Long Beach when her parents came to visit her from their native Germany in 1994 and ended up shot by Thongxay Nilakout during a robbery while on a sightseeing trip. Pfleger’s mother, Gisela, was killed and her father, Klaus, wounded.

Nilakout, now 48, is Laotian and was among eight convicted criminals from countries including Mexico, Cuba, Vietnam and Myanmar who were deported to the conflict-torn African country, amid uproar over Donald Trump’s extreme immigration policies.

In an interview with the Guardian, Pfleger said: “It’s been 31 years living with the irreparable pain and permanent grief, so, on the one hand, I wanted him gone. On the other hand, I’m a historian and I have taught constitutional history. He was denied due process and that’s a constitutional problem.”

Experts on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said a judgment on whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is unlikely before the end of 2027 at the earliest, amid warnings that the international community should not use the court’s glacial proceedings as an excuse to put off action to stop the killing.

Israel was originally due to present its rebuttal to the genocide charge brought by South Africa on Monday, but the court has granted its lawyers a six-month extension.

The South African legal team countered that none of the arguments given by Israeli lawyers were a legitimate reason for delay, and dragging out the case was unjustifiable in view of the humanitarian emergency in Gaza. But the court sided with Israel, which now has until next January to present its case.

“The second round is usually around six months each, so that’s another year, and then that brings us to January 2027,” said Michael Becker, who served as a legal officer at the ICJ from 2010 to 2014, and who is now assistant professor of international human rights law at Trinity College Dublin.

A range of factors could drag the case into 2028 however, including demands by other countries to intervene.