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🌎  7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW

• Troubling new 1.5 °C forecast: According to the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) annual update, global warming is likely to exceed the 1.5 °C key limit in the next five years. Researchers have announced that there is now a 66% chance that we will exceed this global warming limit by 2027.

• Death toll in Sudan fighting passes 800: Since April 15, clashes in Sudan have resulted in 882 deaths and 3,215 injuries, according to a Sudanese doctors' union. Clashes between the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have escalated despite attempts at dialogue. According to the United Nations, nearly one million people have fled the violence of the conflict.

• Biden scales back Asia tour as hopes rise of debt deal: U.S. President Joe Biden has scaled back his Asian tour to return quickly to Washington as hope rises of reaching an agreement with Republican leaders in Congress on averting a debt default. Biden heads to Japan today for a G7 summit, but will now skip subsequent stops in Papua New Guinea and Australia.

• Sarkozy loses appeal, will have to wear electronic bracelet: Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy lost his appeal Wednesday for a 2021 corruption conviction. Though his lawyers announced a further appeal, Sarkozy is now banned from holding public office for the next three years, and was sentenced to one year under house arrest where he will have to wear an electronic bracelet.

• Attackon a U.S. embassy staff in Nigeria: Four people were killed in an attack Tuesday on a convoy of U.S. embassy personnel in southeast Nigeria, including two employees and two police officers. Two other police officers and a driver were also kidnapped. Local police suspect the attack was carried out by a separatist group called the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), which is calling for the establishment of their own republic.

• Chinese fishing boat capsizes in Indian Ocean: Thirty-nine people are missing after a fishing vessel capsized in the Indian Ocean, having last been tracked to the southeast of the Reunion island. A large-scale rescue operation is underway for the crew members, who include 17 people from China, 17 from Indonesia and five from the Philippines

• Saturn passes Jupiter in moons: The International Astronomical Union is set to recognize more than 60 new moons gravitating around Saturn, the largest planet in our solar system. That’s a grand total of 145 moons for the ringed celestial object, surpassing Jupiter's 95 moons.

🗞️  FRONT PAGE

“Probability of conviction: 1%,” titles German dailyDie Tageszeitung, reporting on a new study conducted by an independent research team and led by Frankfurt criminologist Tobias Singelnstein, which has found that a large number of cases of police violence in Germany still go unreported or lead to few penal consequences. In 2021, a total of 2,790 investigations were launched against police officers for unlawful use of force, but only 27 ended in convictions.

#️⃣  BY THE NUMBERS

27

Sherpa Kami Rita, 53, climbed Everest for the 27th time, establishing a new world record for the most summits of the world’s highest mountain. Guiding a Vietnamese climber, the Nepalese mountaineer arrived at the top of the mountain (8,849m) early in the morning. He had held the record since 2018, when he completed his 22nd ascent, a title shared with two other Sherpa climbers who have since retired.

📰  STORY OF THE DAY

Another Russian missile scientist arrested for treason, warnings of sector's "collapse”

A fourth physicist from the Novosibirsk Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences has been detained on treason charges. As Laura Keffer writes in Russian daily Kommersant, the scientists' research is linked to the development of hypersonic missiles, and an open letter now warns that Moscow's arrests of its top researchers will cause Russia to fall behind in the development of such weapons.

🇷🇺🔬 A group of prominent Russian scientists have published an open letter to save Russian aerodynamic science "from the impending collapse." The appeal came after three of their scientists had been arrested on suspicion of treason, the latest being Valery Zvegintsev, a chief researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences. His detention only became known this week.

⚠️ "The most frightening thing about this situation is the impact on the scientific youth," says the appeal. "Already the best students are refusing to work for us, and our best young employees are leaving science. Scientific organizations and their employees need a clear, law based understanding of where the boundary between working for the benefit of the Motherland and treason lies."

🚨 A source from the media agency TASS reported that Valery Zvegintsev was detained about three weeks ago and is now under house arrest. The motive for the treason allegation appears to be the publication of an article about gas dynamics in an Iranian magazine. The agency's interlocutor specified that the material underwent two expert examinations for possible secrecy before publication. The investigating authorities have not commented on the alleged arrest of the scientist.

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📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO

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📣 VERBATIM

“Demilitarize, demonopolize and decentralize.”

— In his first one-on-one interview since Sunday’s election that saw his Move Forward party come on top, Pita Limjaroenrat, the 42-year-old Harvard alumni on track to become Thailand’s next prime minister, told CNN that his policy priorities over the next four years will be to unwind the preeminent power the military has long held in the southeast Asian nation.