The northern hemisphere is baking in record heat as fires rip through Europe and US, China temperatures soar
Updated 1511 GMT (2311 HKT) July 20, 2022
Hundreds of millions of people around the world were sweltering in extreme heat on Wednesday, as record-breaking heat waves set swathes of Europe's countryside on fire, scorched the US and put dozens of Chinese cities under alert.
Sri Lanka president vote: Ranil Wickremesinghe wins amid protests
MPs pick ex-PM seen as close to ousted president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a move likely to frustrate protesters
Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Colombo
Sri Lanka’s prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has been elected as president to replace the ousted Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a result that is likely to provoke turmoil among protesters who have been calling for weeks for him to resign.
Wickremesinghe, who has been prime minister six times but never president, won a comfortable victory in parliament on Wednesday morning, where MPs voted for the new president in an unprecedented secret ballot. The vote came after protesters forced Rajapaksa from office amid anger over a spiralling economic crisis.
Spanish worker's death shows need to adapt to climate change
The death of a street cleaner during a heat wave in Madrid is driving a debate in Spain about the need to adapt labor rules to the realities of climate change
When José Antonio González started his afternoon shift sweeping the streets of Madrid, the temperature was 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) amid a heat wave gripping Spain.
After a long time without a job, González couldn’t afford to pass up a one-month summer contract to sweep the city, where he lived in a working-class neighborhood. Three hours later, the 60-year-old collapsed with heat stroke and was found lying in the street he was cleaning.
An ambulance took the father of two to the hospital, where he died on Saturday.
The need for diversity in genome sequencing
A majority of the DNA that has been sequenced for research comes from donors of European ancestry. That causes a knowledge gap about the genome of people from the rest of the world.
Among various things that unite humans around the world, the DNA sequence hovers at the top: a whopping 99.9% of human DNA sequences are identical among people.
Gregor Mendel, a monk and scientist whose 200th birthday is this Wednesday (July 20), proposed that certain "invisible factors" were responsible for the various characteristics we display. Today, we know that these factors are genes, which make up our DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid.
Fear among Syrian refugees over Turkey ‘voluntary return’ plan
Erdogan said he will not expel Syrian refugees but government plan to repatriate one million has raised concerns.
Syrians living in Turkey have expressed fear and concern about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s proposal to repatriate about one million of them to the northern region of Idlib, as the Turkish government continues to insist that it will carry out a military operation in northern Syria.
In May, Erdogan announced that the government was working to return Syrian refugees to the areas under Turkish security control in northern Syria. The plan includes building 250,000 housing units and equipping them with infrastructure that will extend between the cities of Azaz, Jarablus and al-Bab, all the way to Tal Abyad and Ain Issa.
Ukraine war: Russia's Lavrov says ready to expand war aims
BBC News
Russia's military focus in Ukraine is no longer "only" the east of the country, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.
In an interview with Russian state media, he implied Moscow's strategy had changed after the West supplied Ukraine with longer-range weapons.
Russia would now have to push Ukrainian forces further from the front line to ensure its own security, he explained.
The US had earlier accused Russia of preparing to annex parts of Ukraine.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February, claiming falsely that Russian-speakers in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region had suffered a genocide and needed to be liberated.
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