Japan hit by record heat, rice crops at risk
Japan is facing record-breaking heat, with temperatures hitting 41.8°C, sparking health emergencies and threatening the country’s rice harvest....
Texas House Republicans on Monday issued civil arrest warrants for more than 50 Democratic representatives who slipped across state lines to deny the chamber a quorum for debating new redistricting maps, thrusting the legislature into its second walk-out crisis in four years.
The warrants, signed by House Speaker Dustin Burrows and enforceable only within Texas, instruct the Department of Public Safety to detain absent members and return them to the Capitol in Austin. Governor Greg Abbott has also ordered troopers to “assist in the arrests” and said he may call successive 30-day special sessions if the stalemate drags on.
Democrats, now scattered across Illinois, New York and Massachusetts, say the Republican-drawn maps would erode the voting power of minority communities that drove most of the state’s population growth over the past decade.
“My district is majority-minority, and these political games hurt people like mine,” Representative Jessica Gonzalez told reporters in Chicago.
Under House rules adopted in 2023, each lawmaker who breaks quorum faces a fine of $500 a day. Prof Matthew Wilson of Southern Methodist University said removing elected members from office would be “unprecedented” and questioned whether law-enforcement agencies in Democratic-run states would comply with any extradition requests.
Republican leaders counter that the walk-out is delaying unrelated measures, including flood-relief funding, although no such bill has yet reached the floor. They accuse Democrats of trying to thwart efforts backed by President Donald Trump to secure at least five additional Republican seats in the U.S. House through mid-term redistricting.
The current special session expires on 19 August, but Mr Abbott has signalled he will restart the clock until the maps pass.
A previous Democratic exodus in 2021 lasted nearly five weeks before members returned and a voting-restrictions bill was approved.
The world’s biggest dance music festival faces an unexpected setback as a fire destroys its main stage, prompting a last-minute response from organisers determined to keep the party alive in Boom, Belgium.
According to the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), a magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck the Oaxaca region of Mexico on Saturday.
Australian researchers have created a groundbreaking “biological AI” platform that could revolutionise drug discovery by rapidly evolving molecules within mammalian cells.
China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will send an upgraded ‘version 3.0’ free-trade agreement to their heads of government for approval in October, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Saturday after regional talks in Kuala Lumpur.
A series of earthquakes have struck Guatemala on Tuesday afternoon, leading authorities to advise residents to evacuate from buildings as a precaution against possible aftershocks.
Japan is facing record-breaking heat, with temperatures hitting 41.8°C, sparking health emergencies and threatening the country’s rice harvest.
The U.S. State Department will ask tourists and business travellers from countries with high overstay rates to lodge bonds of as much as $15,000 when applying for a visa, under a year-long pilot intended to curb illegal stays.
Türkiye is conducting its fifth national scientific expedition to the Arctic, leading 19 research projects focused on climate, marine ecosystems, and atmospheric data around the Svalbard Archipelago.
What happens when language becomes a weapon? When cinema turns into a battlefield? A new AnewZ documentary investigates how Russia’s propaganda machine operates, tracing its roots from the playbook of Joseph Goebbels to the Kremlin’s cultural strategies today.
Rescue teams in northern Pakistan have ended a two-week search for 11 people who disappeared in last month’s flash floods, declaring them presumed dead, local authorities said Monday.
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