A brutal heat wave is expanding across Texas and the South this week, impacting millions of Americans with triple-digit temperatures and extreme humidity that is cranking up the heat index, making it feel hotter than 110 degrees in some of the region’s most populous cities.

But forecasters are warning that there is a more dangerous aspect to this heat wave, and one that is becoming more common because of the climate crisis: overnight temperatures are not cooling down enough, offering little reprieve from the oppressive heat — particularly for people who don’t have access to air conditioning.

The National Weather Service highlighted the insidious nature of this week’s heat wave in a statement on Monday, when forecasters at the Weather Prediction Center noted “there may be more danger than a typical heat event, due to the longevity of near-record or record high nighttime lows and elevated heat index readings.”

Overnight temperature records are expected to far outpace daytime records this week. Around 90 afternoon high-temperature records could be broken across the South, from Texas to the Mississippi Valley and parts of Florida, according to data from the National Weather Service.

But overnight temperatures will also stay abnormally high, with potentially 180 nighttime records broken over the next seven days.

Hotter nights are a consequence of the climate crisis, scientists have warned. On average, nights are warming faster than days in most of the US, according to the 2018 National Climate Assessment.

Increasing nighttime heat is even more common in cities because of the urban heat island effect, in which metro areas are significantly hotter than their surroundings.

Dallas, for example, is set to go six consecutive days without seeing temperatures drop below 80 degrees Fahrenheit overnight — a June record for the city.

Areas with a lot of asphalt, concrete, buildings and freeways absorb more of the sun’s heat than areas with parks, rivers and tree-lined streets. At night, when temperatures are supposed to cool down, the retained heat is released back into the air, said Kristie Ebi, a climate and health expert at the University of Washington.

Areas with a lot of green space – with grass and trees that reflect sunlight and create shade – are cooler on summer’s hottest days.

“It’s going to take a while for trees to grow, but we need tree planting programs focusing on places that are particularly vulnerable — making sure that city planning takes into account that we’re heading into a much warmer future.”

Houston has had nine days far this month that haven’t dropped below 80 degrees — nearly double what’s typical for June. This has only happened two other times in the city’s records.

Nighttime should be when our bodies are given a break from the heat, Patel said. But with climate change, that’s becoming less likely to happen. A recent study found that heat-related deaths could increase six-fold by the end of the century due to warmer nighttime temperatures, unless planet-warming pollution is significantly curbed.

Researchers have also warned the climate crisis is already affecting people’s ability to sleep. A study published last month found that people living in warmer climates lose more sleep for each degree of temperature increase.

“We all know what it’s like to try to fall asleep on a hot night — it’s uncomfortable,” Patel said. “We often lose sleep. It is estimated that by the end of the century, we could lose about two days of sleep per year, and it will be worse for people without access to air conditioning.”

Patel explains that at its most extreme, when a human body does not get the chance to recover — typically at night — heat stress can progress to heat stroke, which is associated with confusion, dizziness and passing out.

And while this can happen to anyone, she said the impacts are more amplified on the elderly, people with chronic underlying health conditions, and young children, particularly infants. Heat waves that go on for several days tend to be associated with more deaths as the body can no longer keep itself cool.

“Living through a heat wave during the day can be like running a race,” Patel said. “We need a cool break to recover and recuperate, and when nighttime temperatures don’t drop, we don’t get that critical time we need to relieve the stress on our bodies from being overheated during the day.”

Salvatore Del Deo is a 94-year-old artist and Korean War Veteran who has made a dune shack in Provincetown, Massachusetts, his part-time home for the past 77 years.

“Frenchie’s Shack,” named for Del Deo’s friend who built the rustic dune dwelling in 1942, is where the nonagenarian has spent part of the year since 1946, according to his son, and it’s where he thought he would spend the rest of his life.

Those plans might change.

Salvatore received an eviction notice from the National Park Service in March. The land the shack sits on became federal property in the 1960s, and arrangements made with Jeanne “Frenchie” Chanel, the shack’s original owner, have since expired, according to the park service.

“Mr. Del Deo has been occupying the property without a permit since the passing of the individual who held a life estate for use of that dune shack. We have worked with Mr. Del Deo to grant him additional time to make necessary arrangements to vacate the dune shack,” the National Park Service said in a statement.

Salvatore’s dune shack is one of more than a dozen such small dwellings on the Cape Cod National Seashore, which has a long and storied history as a home for activists and artists, said Romolo.

Salvatore has deep ties within Provincetown, including his founding of two local restaurants, Sal’s Place and Ciro & Sal’s, and his late wife was active in preserving the historic shacks.

Salvatore was originally ordered to vacate the property in 30 days. But with the help of family friend Michela Murphy, whose family now owns Sal’s Place, the Del Deos were able to extend the eviction notice by 60 days, until June 27, Murphy said.

Dune shacks for lease

The eviction notice came shortly before the National Park Service announced a leasing program for eight other dune shacks.

The park service has opened those eight historic properties to 10-year lease proposals, according to their website, and moved to make them available to new prospective occupants – a plan that has earned criticism from some locals. Lease proposals can be submitted through July 3, according to the National Park Service announcement.

“Federal regulation requires that the lessee pays, at minimum, fair market value rent,” the park service website says.

The shack occupied by Salvatore was not part of the eight shacks offered up to the public for lease by the park service, which frustrated his son.

“Our shack was not even on the list of properties that we could bid on presently,” said Romolo. But the property is likely to be offered for lease by park service in the future.

“What the park service seemed to be doing was attempting a kind of coup d’état,” said Romolo. “They were going to uproot the oldest continuous family living on the dunes and disconnect them from the community, and then later on evict everybody else.”

In the 1960s, the land that makes up the Cape Cod National Seashore became federal property. The tenants were granted a variety of lifetime leases, according to the park service, which now owns 18 shacks.

“When the land became federal property in the 1960s, tenants of the shacks were granted a variety of lifetime estates, either through the current occupant’s lifetime or the lifetime of their children,” the park service said in a statement.

One of these tenants was Frenchie Chanel. According to Romolo, she attempted to pass ownership of the dune shack to the Del Deo family upon her death in 1983. The transfer of the property to the Del Deo family has not been acknowledged by the park service, Romolo said.

In a use plan for the historic dune shacks published by the park service in 2011, the Chanel shack is listed with a “Reservation” that extends through the “life of daughter.”

Romolo said the shack was passed to one of Chanel’s daughters, who left Provincetown more than a decade ago and recently passed away, likely prompting the park service to question the shack’s occupancy.

The remaining members of the Chanel family have no issue with Salvatore’s occupancy of the shack, Romolo says.

A long history on the dunes

Many of the shacks date back decades before the dunes became part of Cape Cod National Seashore.

Salvatore has spent part of nearly 80 consecutive years on what is now the Cape Cod National Seashore, except for his military service in Korea and during colder months, when the shacks become essentially uninhabitable.

Salvatore and Josephine maintained the shack over the years, and at one point even rebuilt it after a severe storm.

“In the 1970s, the original shack that Frenchie built was nearly destroyed, so we built, essentially, a superstructure, and rebuilt the entire shack,” said Romolo. Park service documents make note of the Del Deo rebuild in 1976.

Josephine, who died in 2016, is known locally for her efforts in maintaining the shacks and establishing the seashore as a park.

At one point, the dune shacks were under threat of being destroyed by the government, but Josephine, along with other activists, helped to get them registered as historic places so they would not be demolished, Romolo said.

When the park service issued the eviction notice, Romolo said his family felt “betrayed.”

Organizing against eviction

Michela Murphy, the Del Deo family friend, started an online petition to halt the eviction, which now has over 10,000 signatures.

Romolo said he was surprised by the amount of support his family has received. “It’s not like this is my circle of friends,” said Romolo.

US Rep. Bill Keating shared a letter on social media requesting that Salvatore be allowed to maintain his residence in the shack. Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey and Sen. Elizabeth Warren were listed as co-signers.

“Even where the transfer of a lifetime lease to another party may not be possible, we respectfully request that the National Park Service consider all available options to legally allow Mr. Del Deo to reside in Frenchie’s Shack,” said the letter.

Protesters gathered near the shacks on June 15, the day that the park service scheduled for prospective tenants to visit the properties, though Salvatore’s shack was not up for lease. According to Murphy, due to high demand, the visits had to be spread out over eight days.

Murphy said that the shacks had been portrayed “like a vacation rental,” which she believes is inaccurate.

“They didn’t mention that there have been families that have been living here for generations and maintaining it,” said Murphy. “The only reason that these shacks were able to stand against the sand for so many years is because these people stood for them.”

Romolo believes that the leasing program is misguided and that even well-intentioned wealthy lessees would not be able to successfully maintain their shacks in the harsh winters or connect to the community.

“This is a piece of American history and culture,” said Romolo.

The Del Deo family would be willing to negotiate, said Romolo, and would be willing to pay annual fees, so long as the family is allowed to retain the shack.

“Nobody’s committed a crime, nobody’s violated anything, we’re just doing what we’ve always done before the park existed,” Romolo said.

The Del Deo family will host a sit-in at the shack from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET Tuesday, the day of the eviction deadline.

“Let him live out his days there,” said Murphy.

The search for the Titan submersible that captivated the world came to an abrupt and grim end this week after fragments of the vessel were detected on the ocean floor near the Titanic. The discovery led the US Coast Guard to announce the ship likely imploded, killing all five passengers aboard.

But questions remain about what exactly happened to the ill-fated vessel, whether recovery of the bodies or the submersible is possible, and what consequences the disaster may have for Oceangate, the company running the excursion to see the Titanic off the coast of Canada.

Here’s what you need to know about next steps for the Titan and the investigation into what happened.

What comes next in the search?

The multinational rescue effort has now turned into a recovery mission, with a remotely-operated vehicle scouring the ocean floor for debris from the deadly implosion.

Only one remotely-operated vehicle has made it to the immense depths where the Titanic wreck and the debris field from the sub lie: the Odysseus 6, operated by Pelagic Research Services. The Odysseus 6 discovered debris from the Titan submersible about 1,600 feet from the wreckage of the Titanic on Thursday, according to the US Coast Guard. The debris was consistent with the disastrous loss of the 22-foot-long vessel’s pressure chamber, the Coast Guard said. The loss would have resulted in an almost instantaneous inward collapse of the vessel, which was under immense pressure in the ocean depths.

The remotely operated vehicle found a total of “five different major pieces of debris” from the Titan, according to Paul Hankins, the US Navy’s director of salvage operations and ocean engineering. Officials located the submersible’s nose cone and one end of its pressure hulls in a large debris field. The other end of the pressure hull was found in a second, smaller debris field. Officials are working to map out the debris field.

“What they would do now is go back to that site and, like cookie crumbs, try to find a trail as to where that would lead,” said Tom Maddox, CEO of Underwater Forensic Investigators, who took part in a Titanic expedition in 2005.

He added the debris pieces could still be “slightly buoyant” and might be carried further away by ocean currents. “So the big project right now is going to be trying to collect those parts,” he said. “They’ll mark them, they’ll indicate where they were, and they’ll lay out a map of where those parts were found.”

Can the bodies of the passengers be recovered?

Five passengers were aboard the Titan when it imploded: Pakastani businessman and his son, Shahzada and Suleman Dawood; British businessman Hamish Harding; French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet; and Stockton Rush, the pilot of the vessel and CEO of the vessel’s operator, OceanGate Expeditions.

All five are presumed dead after the “catastrophic implosion” of the submersible, according to the US Coast Guard. But it’s unclear whether any remains will be able to be recovered.

On Friday, Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said, “I don’t have an answer for prospects at this time” when asked about recovering remains. He noted the “incredibly unforgiving environment” in the depths of the ocean near the Titanic wreck and the intense pressure that far down.

A medical expert said that the implosion would likely leave no recoverable remains.

Tributes to the five victims came pouring in after the Coast Guard announced they were presumed dead. All five shared “shared a distinct spirit of adventure,” OceanGate said in a statement.

When did the Titan implode?

It’s unclear when or where exactly the submersible imploded. Mauger said Thursday that it will take time to establish a specific timeline of events in the “incredibly complex” disaster.
The expedition set out from Newfoundland, Canada, on June 16 on the Polar Prince, the Titan’s support ship. The ship took participants to the site of the Titanic wreck, about 350 miles off Newfoundland’s coast. On Sunday, June 18, the five passengers began their descent to the Titanic in the submersible, launched from the support ship, which remained on the surface.

They began the dive around 9 a.m. and were expected to resurface at 6:10 p.m., according to Miawpukek Maritime Horizon Services, which co-owns the Polar Prince. But the group last communicated with the surface at 11:47 a.m. Authorities were notified at 6:35 p.m. and rescue operations began, according to Maritime Horizon.

The Navy detected a sound that was “consistent” with an implosion on Sunday, but it was determined to be “not definitive.” Authorities searched for the submersible in the hope that the vessel might still be intact and its occupants alive.

On Tuesday, authorities detected “banging noises” underwater, sparking hope that the submersible, which was equipped with 96 hours of oxygen, might still be intact and its passengers alive.

But by Thursday afternoon, authorities determined the sub had imploded and said there did not seem to be a connection between the noises and the debris.

Who will investigate the incident?

Authorities in both the US and Canada announced probes of the incident.

The US Coast Guard and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada announced the launch of investigations Friday, though it’s unclear whether the agencies are conducting separate examinations or working together for one.

“The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) is launching an investigation into the fatal occurrence involving the Canadian-flagged vessel Polar Prince and the privately operated submersible Titan,” the agency announced in a statement.

The agency is traveling a team to St. John’s and Labrador to conduct the probe.

On Saturday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) also announced it would conduct its own investigation separately from the Transportation Safety Board. The police superintendent Kent Osmond said the RCMP investigates all reportable deaths off shore.

“There’s no suspicion of criminal activity, per se, but the RCMP is taking initial steps to assess whether or not we will go down that road,” he said.

The US Coast Guard will also investigate the incident, according to a post on Twitter by the National Transportation Safety Board.

A Coast Guard official said Thursday that authorities are discussing how an investigation would unfold since the implosion took place in international waters. Experts have suggested that that any probe would consider the submersible’s design, the materials used to build it, and Rush and OceanGate’s role in the deathly disaster.

What’s next for OceanGate?

The disaster has cast scrutiny on OceanGate, the Titan’s operator. The company, which sold its trips to the Titanic for $250,000 per passenger, is no stranger to criticism. In the past years, at least two OceanGate employees voiced concerns about the submersible’s carbon fiber hull. One employee, OceanGate’s former director of marine operations David Lochridge, claimed in a court filing that he was wrongfully terminated in 2018 for raising concerns about the Titan’s safety and testing. The case was settled out of court.

It is unclear whether OceanGate will continue its operations after the catastrophe. In a statement about the deaths, the company said, “This is an extremely sad time for our dedicated employees who are exhausted and grieving deeply over this loss.”

OceanGate faced a series of mechanical problems and inclement weather conditions that forced the cancellation or delays of trips in recent years, according to court records.

In a 2019 blog post, the company defended its choice not to have its vessel “classed” or certified by any safety organizations. The blog said most marine operations “require that chartered vessels are ‘classed’ by an independent group such as the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), DNV/GL, Lloyd’s Register, or one of the many others.”

But the Titan is not classed by any independent group, according to the blog post, in part because classing innovative designs often requires a multi-year approval process, which interferes with rapid innovation. Additionally, “classing is not sufficient to ensure safety” by itself, the company’s blog post said.

Additionally, the vessel operated in international waters, allowing it to skirt national regulations.

Rush, the company’s founder and CEO and one of the passengers who died in the implosion, previously made comments about breaking rules in pursuit of innovation.

“At some point, safety just is pure waste,” Rush told journalist David Pogue in an interview last year. “I mean, if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed. Don’t get in your car. Don’t do anything.”

The armed insurrection launched by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the bombastic chief of private paramilitary group Wagner, appeared to end as abruptly it started Saturday when the Kremlin said the mercenary agreed to leave Russia for Belarus in a deal apparently brokered by the country’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko.

The crisis began when Prigozhin unleashed a new tirade against the Russian military Friday before taking control of military facilities in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and Voronezh, plunging Russia into renewed uncertainty as President Vladimir Putin faces the biggest threat to his authority in decades.

Putin called Wagner’s actions “treason” and has vowed to crush those behind the “armed uprising.”

Some of Prigozhin’s forces began marching towards Moscow on Saturday before he published an audio recording claiming he was turning them around to “avoid bloodshed” in an apparently de-escalation of the rebellion.

Here’s what you need to know.

What did Prigozhin do?

The dramatic turn of events began Friday when Prigozhin openly accused Russia’s military of attacking a Wagner camp and killing a “huge amount” of his men. He vowed to retaliate with force, insinuating that his forces would “destroy” any resistance, including roadblocks and aircraft.

“There are 25,000 of us and we are going to find out why there is such chaos in the country,” he said.

Prigozhin later rowed back on his threat, saying his criticism of the Russian military leadership was a “march of justice” and not a coup – but by that point he appeared to have already crossed a line with the Kremlin.

The crisis then deepened as Prigozhin declared his fighters had entered Russia’s Rostov region and occupied key military installations within its capital. That city, Rostov-on-Don, is the headquarters for Russia’s southern military command and home to some one million people.

Prigozhin released a video saying his forces would blockade Rostov-on-Don unless Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, come to meet him.

Amid the rebellion, Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, described developments in Russia as “a staged coup d’état,” according to Russian state media RIA Novosti.

Prigozhin has spent months railing against Shoigu and Gerasimov, who he blames for Moscow’s faltering invasion of Ukraine.

How did Russia respond?

Hours later Putin made an address to the nation that illustrated the depth of the crisis he now confronts.

“Those who carry deliberately on a path of treason, preparing an armed rebellion when you were preparing terrorist attacks, will be punished,” Putin said.

He said “any internal turmoil is a deadly threat to our statehood for us as a nation; it is a blow to Russia for our people and our actions to protect our homeland. Such a threat will face a severe response.”

But Prigozhin responded, saying on Telegram that the president is “deeply mistaken.” He said his fighters are “patriots of our Motherland” and promised: “No one is going to turn themselves in at the request of the president, the FSB or anyone else.” That marked a more direct threat to Putin than Prigozhin had typically deployed in the past.

Russia’s Defense Ministry earlier denied attacking Wagner’s troops, calling the claim “informational propaganda.”

And the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s internal security force, also opened a criminal case against Prighozhin, accusing him of calling for “an armed rebellion.”

“Prigozhin’s statements and actions are in fact calls for the start of an armed civil conflict on the territory of the Russian Federation and are a stab in the back of Russian servicemen fighting pro-fascist Ukrainian forces,” an FSB statement said, calling for Wagner fighters to detain their leader.

Russian officials meanwhile appeared to take no chances with security measures stepping up in Moscow, declaring Monday a non-workday and imposing a counter-terrorism regime to strengthen security, according to Russian state media and officials.

Russian security forces in body armor and equipped with automatic weapons took up a position near a highway linking Moscow with southern Russia, according to photos published Saturday by the Russian business newspaper Vedomosti.

Meanwhile, in region of Voronezh, there was an apparent clash between Wagner units and Russian forces, damaging a number of cars.

But the escalating situation took a pause Saturday when Prigozhin claimed he was turning his forces around from their march to Moscow.

“We turning our columns around and going back in the other direction toward our field camps, in accordance with the plan,” he said in a message on Telegram.

Who is Prigozhin?

Prigozhin has known Putin since the 1990s. He became a wealthy oligarch by winning lucrative catering contracts with the Kremlin, earning him the moniker “Putin’s chef”.

His transformation into a brutal warlord came in the aftermath of the 2014 Russian-backed separatist movements in the Donbas in eastern Ukraine.

Prigozhin founded Wagner to be a shadowy mercenary outfit that fought both in eastern Ukraine and, increasingly, for Russian-backed causes around the world.

Prigozhin’s political star rocketed in Russia after Moscow’s full invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

While many regular Russian troops saw setbacks on the battlefield, Wagner fighters seemed to be the only ones capable of delivering tangible progress.

Known for its disregard for the lives of its own soldiers, the Wagner group’s brutal and often lawless tactics are believed to have resulted in high numbers of casualties, as new recruits are sent into battle with little formal training – a process described by retired United States Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling as “like feeding meat to a meat grinder.”

Prigozhin has used social media to lobby for what he wants and often feuded with Russia’s military leadership, casting himself as competent and ruthless in contrast to the military establishment.

His disagreements with Russia’s top brass exploded into the public domain during the grim and relentless battle for Bakhmut during which he repeatedly accused the military leadership of failing to supply his troops with enough ammunition.

In one particularly grim video from early May, Prigozhin stood next to a pile of dead Wagner fighters and took aim specifically at Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and chief of the Russian armed forces Gen. Valery Gerasimov.

“The blood is still fresh,” he says, pointing to the bodies behind him. “They came here as volunteers and are dying so you can sit like fat cats in your luxury offices.”

Putin presides over what is often described as a court system, where infighting and competition among elites is in fact encouraged to produce results, as long as the “vertical of power” remains loyal to and answers to the head of state.

But Prigozhin’s increasingly outrageous outbursts have sparked speculation in recent weeks that even he could be going too far.

Putin’s national address sets up a direct confrontation at the heart of Russia’s establishment at a time when Ukraine is hoping to make advances during its own summer offensive.

Putin likened what he now faces to the Russian Revolution in 1917, when the Bolsheviks overthrew Tsar Nicholas II of Russia in the midst of World War One, plunging the country into civil war and eventually paving the way for the creation of the Soviet Union.

“This was the same kind of blow that Russia felt in 1917, when the country entered World War I, but had victory stolen from it,” Putin said.

“Intrigues, squabbles, politicking behind the backs of the army and the people turned out to be the greatest shock, the destruction of the army, the collapse of the state, the loss of vast territories, and in the end, the tragedy and civil war. Russians killed Russians, brothers killed brothers.”

Prigozhin “knows precisely what his risk is … which is kind of interesting when you think about it, because that means he must have calculated that he can pull this off … A guy like Prigozhin knows what the risks are and knows that if it doesn’t go well for him, it’s gonna go really badly,” he added.

What happens now?

In a conference call with reporters Saturday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said an agreement was struck with Prigozhin.

“You will ask me what will happen to Prigozhin personally?” Peskov said. “The criminal case will be dropped against him. He himself will go to Belarus.” Peskov added that the Kremlin was unaware of the mercenary’s current whereabouts.

In the video, Prigozhin is seen sitting in the backseat of a vehicle. Crowds cheer and the vehicle comes to a stop as an individual approaches it and shakes Prigozhin’s hand.

Meanwhile the open disunity within Russia’s armed forces has been greeted with glee and much schadenfreude in Kyiv.

Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said Ukraine will be keen to exploit the turmoil, especially if Moscow is forced to move troops from the frontline.

“If Russian forces at those locations are being withdrawn to fight Wagner – to defeat what is certainly an insurrection at the moment but could be which could become a civil war down the track – then potentially you will see the Ukrainians opening up new opportunities, identifying gaps in the Russian lines that they can push through and exploit.”

“If gaps open up, then they need to be ready to exploit those gaps,” he added.

That is what appeared to have happened. Ukrainian forces launched simultaneous counteroffensives in multiple directions, according to Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar. She said that “there is progress in all directions” without giving any further detail.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Prigozhin’s escalation “almost nullified” Putin and criticized Prigozhin for “suddenly” turning his forces around. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in his nightly address, claimed Putin is “very afraid,” saying that the Russian president is “probably hiding somewhere, not showing himself.”

Guatemalans head to the polls on June 25 to pick a new president, as regional watchers warn of a downward spiral of kleptocracy and weakening rule of law in Central America’s most populous nation.

Social democrat Sandra Torres, the right-wing Zury Ríos and center-right Edmont Mulet lead the pack of more than 20 presidential hopefuls in the general elections.

Other candidates have been blocked from running, including leftist indigenous leader Thelma Cabrera, and most recently, former frontrunner Carlos Pineda – sparking accusations of political meddling against the country’s electoral court.

One of the expelled candidates, the rightwing Roberto Arzú, was a vocal critic of President Alejandro Giammattei. Another disqualified candidate, Cabrera, had been outspoken critic about corruption in Guatemalan politics.

Pineda ran as an outsider to Guatemala’s entrenched power structure, frequently sharing his anti-establishment position on Tik Tok. After his disqualification, he concluded on Twitter: “Corruption won, Guatemala lost.”

It’s not the first time that Guatemala’s electoral tribunal eliminates presidential hopefuls, but this year’s cycle is happening in rapidly shrinking civic space.

Failing battle against corruption

Rights groups say graft and impunity accelerated in the country after former President Jimmy Morales dissolved a United Nations-backed anti-corruption commission in 2019.

The International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) had been set up in 2006 to help dismantle influential criminal networks in the country. It assisted in hundreds of convictions, exposed a corruption scandal, and has been attributed for helping reduce the country’s homicide rate.

Since CICIG’s removal, corruption has spread through the country’s justice system, experts say.

“A large part of Guatemala’s justice system has been co-opted by a network of corrupt political, economic, and military elites seeking to advance their own interests and carry out corrupt practices with impunity,” concludes a 2022 report by the Washington Office on Latin America, Latin America Working Group, and Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA.

Prosecutors and judges associated with CIGIG have been arrested, investigated, and many have been forced to flee the country under the country’s current President Alejandro Giammattei.

When the country’s attorney general Consuelo Porras Argueta was reappointed in 2022 by the president, she was sanctioned hours later by the US for “her involvement in significant corruption,” says Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State, in a press statement.

“During her tenure, Porras repeatedly obstructed and undermined anticorruption investigations in Guatemala to protect her political allies and gain undue political favor,” the statement added.

Members of the media that took on corruption have also faced legal consequences. Prominent Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora – founder of the country’s leading investigative newspaper that was shut down this year – was sentenced to six years in prison for money laundering on Wednesday. Press rights groups have called it an attack on free speech.

Corruption and poor governance are important factors that drive migration, say experts, which is clearly in play in Guatemala – home to the largest economy in Central America yet the second-highest source country for migrants encountered at the US border, according US Border Patrol figures.

The candidates

The US and Western allies have raised concerns about the exclusion of presidential candidates in Guatemala. But regional watchers speculate an excess of caution, a lack of focus on the Central American region and other foreign policy concerns have shifted priorities.

With migration a top concern in Washington as the US heads into the 2024 election cycle, Freeman said the Biden administration has had to balance Guatemala’s position as a regional ally, especially over efforts to curb migration, over concerns about democratic backsliding in the country. “The Biden administration has been caught between a rock and a hard place,”Freeman said.

In April, the US’s Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian Nichols stressed the US’s support for “Guatemalans’ right to free, fair, peaceful elections,” saying that democracy depended on citizens being able to choose leaders “without arbitrary barriers, exclusion, or intimidation.”

At least one of the remaining candidates appears willing to speak up about graft.

The 72-year-old centrist Mulet has taken a vocal anti-corruption stance in recent months. The technocrat, who has held legislative and diplomatic roles, including a stint at Guatemala’s ambassador to the United States, led United Nations bodies on Haiti and chemical weapons. His background has added to the sense that he is someone who could build on that experience in Guatemala, according to Zissis.

He warned that Guatemala was marching towards an “authoritarian model” like Nicaragua, telling Agence-France Presse on Tuesday that Guatemala’s public institutions were “contaminated.

Analysts say the centrist, who has proposed universal pension and youth unemployment projects, looks in a strong position to advance to the second round of voting slated for August 20 as “he’s not seen as one of these deeply corrupt and entrenched machine politicians,” said Freeman.

He will have to beat Torres and Rios, who have both advocated for tough mano dura polices to tackle crime in the style of El Salvadorean leader Nayib Bukele.

Torres appears to be leading the pack, according to polling. She holds support among rural voters, garnered when she helped get more cash transfers and benefits when she was first lady alongside former President Álvaro Colom, say analysts. Despite heading one of the country’s oldest and well-resourced parties, “there is a hardcore, consolidated anti-vote” against her over her decision to divorce Colom in 2011, in a conservative, family-orientated country, Freeman said. Polls show nearly a third of the country will not vote for her.

Ríos is the daughter of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, who was convicted of genocide in 2013. She is popular among Guatemala’s strong evangelical community while advocating for progressive causes like women’s rights. Ríos has denounced corruption during the race, with a focus on incumbent Giammattei. Although, analysts stress she holds the support of the country’s military and economic elite and she had previously condemned CICIG before it lost its mandate.

But it’s anyone’s guess as to whether any of these candidates will be able to address Guatemala’s erosion of rule of law once in power.

Commentators have lamented their proposals have been lacking and overly simplistic, said Zissis. “And as a result, in a country that has such big challenges, the question ends up being, what are these candidates going to do to solve the problems?”

This just does not happen in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Especially in public.

The Russian president is facing the most serious threat to his hold on power in all the 23 years he’s run the nuclear state. And it is staggering to behold the veneer of total control he has maintained all that time – the ultimate selling point of his autocracy – crumble overnight.

It was both inevitable and impossible. Inevitable, as the mismanagement of the war had meant only a system as homogenously closed and immune to criticism as the Kremlin could survive such a heinous misadventure. And impossible as Putin’s critics simply vanish, or fall out of windows, or are poisoned savagely. Yet now the fifth-largest army in the world is halfway through a weekend in which fratricide – the turning of their guns upon their fellow soldiers – was briefly the only thing that could save the Moscow elite from collapse.

At the time of writing, 24 hours of extraordinary shark-jumping culminated with Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin agreeing to reverse his advance to within 120 miles (200 kilometers) of Moscow’s city limits and send his columns back to “field camps, according to the plan.” It is a last-minute reversal intended, he said, to avoid “bloodshed.” Shortly before this audio statement, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko apparently contacted Prigozhin, with the permission of Putin, to negotiate this remarkable climbdown, according to a statement from Belarusian officials and Russian state media reports.

Much of this sudden resolution is as curious and inexplicable as the crisis it solved. Prigozhin appears – thus far – to have had none of his demands heeded. The top brass of Russia’s defense ministry is still in place. He has done incalculable damage to Putin’s control over the Russian state, and shown how easy it is to take control of the key military city of Rostov-on-Don and then move fast towards the capital. And it took the intervention of Lukashenko, an ally whom Putin treats more as a subordinate than an equal, to engineer an end to this ghastly of weekends for the Kremlin.

More details of how this came to be will emerge. And the lasting damage done to Putin by this armed insurrection will be compounded by some key decisions the Kremlin head must now make. Will he pardon Prigozhin, and his fighters, or retract his statement about “inevitable punishment” for “blackmail and terrorist methods?” Does he make changes in the defense elite to placate Wagner’s head? What does all of this say to the Russian military, elite and people about who is really in charge of the country?

The rage and tension that has been building for months has not suddenly been assuaged. It has instead been accentuated.

So accustomed are we to viewing Putin as a master tactician, that the opening salvos of Prigozhin’s disobedience were at times assessed as a feint – a bid by Putin to keep his generals on edge with a loyal henchman as their outspoken critic. But what we have seen – with Putin forced to admit that Rostov-on-Don, his main military hub, is out of his control – puts paid to any idea that this was managed by the Kremlin.

It is likely however Wagner’s units planned some of this for a while. The justification for this rebellion appeared urgent and spontaneous – an apparent air strike on a Wagner camp in the forest, which the Russian Ministry of Defense has denied – appeared hours after a remarkable dissection of the rationale behind the war by Prigozhin.

He partially spoke the truth about the war’s disastrous beginnings: Russia was not under threat from NATO attack, and Russians were not being persecuted. The one deceit he maintained was to suggest Russia’s top brass was behind the invasion plan, and not Putin himself. Wagner’s forces have pulled themselves together very fast and moved quickly into Rostov. That’s hard to do spontaneously in one afternoon.

Perhaps Prigozhin dreamt he could push Putin into a change at the top of a ministry of defense the Wagner chief has publicly berated for months. But Putin’s address on Saturday morning has eradicated that prospect. This is now an existential choice for Russia’s elite – between the president’s faltering regime, and the dark, mercenary Frankenstein it created to do its dirty work, which has turned on its masters.

It is a moment of clarity for Russia’s military too. A few years ago, Prigozhin’s mild critiques would have led to elite special forces in balaclavas walking him away. But now he roams freely, with his sights openly on marching to Moscow. Where were the FSB’s special forces during this nightmare Saturday for the Kremlin? Decimated by the war, or not eager to take on their armed and experienced comrades in Wagner?

This is not the first time this spring we have seen Moscow look weak. The drone attack on the Kremlin in May must have caused the elite around Putin to question how on earth the capital’s defenses were so weak. Days later, elite country houses were targeted by yet more Ukrainian drones. Among the Russian rich, Friday’s events will remove any question about whether they should doubt Putin’s grip on power.

Ukraine will likely be celebrating the disastrous timing of this insurrection inside Russia’s ranks. It will likely alter the course of the war in Kyiv’s favor. But rebellions rarely end in Russia – or anywhere – with the results they set out to achieve. The 1917 removal of Tsar Nicholas II in Russia turned into the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin and then the Soviet Empire.

As this rare Jacobean drama of Russian basic human frailty plays out, it is not inevitable that improvements will follow. Prigozhin may not prevail, and the foundations of the Kremlin’s control may not ultimately collapse. But a weakened Putin may do irrational things to prove his strength.

He may prove unable to accept the logic of defeat in the coming months on the frontlines in Ukraine. He may be unaware of the depth of discontent among his own armed forces, and lack proper control over their actions. Russia’s position as a responsible nuclear power rests on stability at the top.

A lot more can go wrong than it can go right. But it is impossible to imagine Putin’s regime will ever go back to its previous heights of control from this moment. And it is inevitable that further turmoil and change is ahead.

Nicola Bulley – a British woman whose missing person case triggered feverish conspiracy theories and criticism of the police investigation – died from drowning after she accidentally fell into cold water in January, UK’s PA Media reported.

A senior coroner for Lancashire, James Adeley, said Bulley suffered “cold water shock,” and ruled out suicide as a cause of death.

The 45-year-old mortgage adviser went missing on the morning of Friday, January 27, in the northern English village of St. Michael’s on Wyre, Lancashire Police said. She was walking her dog after dropping her two children off at school.

Weeks later, her body was recovered from the River Wyre. Police insisted throughout the investigation that there was no evidence to suggest third-party involvement and their main working hypothesis remained that she fell into the river.

The case caught the attention of the UK public and media, after Bulley’s dog was found wandering alone and her phone spotted on a bench next to the river. It was still logged into a group work call.

Lancashire Police drew accusations of sexism for their handling of the case, after they chose to disclose Bulley’s struggles with alcohol and the menopause at the time of her disappearance.

Investigators at the time fiercely condemned members of the public for posting unfounded claims on social media, which police said interrupted the investigation.

On Tuesday, Bulley’s family said they still receive “negative” messages and continue to see “wildly inaccurate speculation” on various social media platforms, according to PA Media.

“The last few months have been extremely tough to process for our family. The emotional impact will stay long in our hearts and whilst we will never forget the loss of our Nikki, we will forever remember her as a brilliant mum, partner, daughter and sister that we all knew and loved so very much,” the family’s lawyer, Terry Wilcox, said in a statement on their behalf.

“Sadly, we feel the need to again raise and address the issue of social media. It’s upsetting that we’ve continued to receive negative targeted messages and still wildly inaccurate speculation being shared on numerous platforms.”

Connor McDavid won his third Hart Trophy – awarded to the NHL’s most valuable player – on Monday after a near unanimous vote.

The Edmonton Oilers center earned 195 of 196 first place votes, with the only other first place vote going to the Boston Bruins’ David Pastrňák.

McDavid enjoyed a stellar season for the Oilers, leading the league in goals, assists and points.

Although the 26-year-old has yet to taste Stanley Cup success, the importance of his personal accolades is hugely significant to Hart.

“Certainly, it’s not lost on me what these trophies mean in the grand scheme of our game,” McDavid said.

“To do it a number of times, it means a lot to me. Obviously, it’s not the motivating factor, but it’s special still.
I know the five-year-old me would be [upset] if I was taking it for granted or something like that, because I’m not. It’s special.”

McDavid previously won the Hart Trophy in 2017 and 2021. He becomes just the fifth player to win the award at least three times within his first eight NHL seasons alongside Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Clarke, Bobby Orr and Alex Ovechkin.

In leading the league in goals, assists and points, McDavid is the fifth different player to do so and the first since Oilers legend Gretzky in the 1986-87 season.

It was an emotional awards ceremony for McDavid who was surprised on stage by the family of Ben Stelter, an Oilers superfan who had become close with the Oilers center and his Edmonton team before he died of cancer at the age of six in 2022.

Stelter had suffered from glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer, for which he went through surgery, chemotherapy and radiation to treat.

During that time, Stelter joined the Oilers for morning skate arounds, lining up with the team for pre-match anthems and featuring on McDavid’s social media during the team’s 2022 Stanley Cup playoff run.

When the Stelter family joined McDavid on stage big embraces were exchanged.

“Wow,” McDavid told the audience. “That was an incredible surprise, and it means so much to me to be standing up here with the Stelters thinking about our buddy Ben.”

It was a memorable evening in more ways than one for McDavid as he also won the Ted Lindsay Award for the fourth time in his career. The accolade is presented “to the most outstanding player in the NHL,” as voted by fellow members of the NHL Players’ Association.

“I really feel that (the Ted Lindsay) is the most prestigious award that is given out here tonight in terms of hockey awards,” McDavid said. “To have your peers recognize you, they’re the ones you go to battle with every night, and for them to single you out, obviously, it’s really, really special.”

McDavid also was the winner of the Maurice Richard Trophy – given to the player “finishing the regular season as the league’s goal-scoring leader” – and the Art Ross Trophy – awarded to the player “who leads the NHL in scoring points at the end of the regular season.”

Australian teenager Arisa Trew has become the first female to land a 720 – a skateboarding trick involving two full rotations while in the air – as she competed in the Tony Hawk Vert Alert event on Saturday.

In 1985, legendary skateboarder Hawk became the first to complete the trick but since then no female has joined him in achieving the feat – until now.

Hawk was present at the competition in Salt Lake City, Utah, and said on Instagram that the 13-year-old Trew, “brought the house down.”

“I can’t believe I landed my first 720!!! And to be the first girl in the world to land a 7 in competition,” an ecstatic Trew said on Instagram, before thanking those who helped her achieve this accomplishment.

Her coach Trevor Ward also took to Instagram to talk about the process of the teen making history and the battle between 16-year-old Lilly Stoephasius and Trew to land the trick.

“What an amazing scenario. The 2 best vert skaters going head-to-head to land the 720 in front of the inventor of the trick. Tony was giving both girls tips on how to do the trick.

“We knew it was coming soon. We just didn’t expect it to be in the world stage rather than on our vert ramp back home in Australia.

“Arisa has an amazing mindset and will power to succeed. Congrats Arisa you are amazing.,” Ward concluded.

Vert skateboarding involves riding a skateboard on a near vertical ramp.

Trew will be hoping to take this form into the Olympic Games, if selected, next year where she could compete for Australia on the biggest stage of all at Paris 2024.

An independent report into the culture of cricket in England and Wales has found racism, class-based discrimination, elitism and sexism to be “widespread” and “deep rooted” in the sport.

The “Holding a Mirror Up to Cricket” report was written by the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) and received more than 4,400 responses to its call for evidence between oral and written submissions.

The ICEC was established in March 2021, after the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), the governing body for the sport in the country, announced its intention to investigate inequality and discrimination in cricket following “broad reactive introspection generated by the public outcry following the tragic murder of George Floyd,” according to ICEC chair Cindy Butts in a foreword to the report.

According to the report, 50% of those who responded experienced discrimination in the past five years playing cricket, with that number “substantially higher for people from ethnically diverse communities: 87% of people with Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage, 82% of people with Indian heritage and 75% of all Black respondents.”

One unnamed former Asian cricketer details the discrimination he suffered in the findings, revealing teammates threw alcohol and bacon at him in acts of “abuse” and “hatred” – similar to those described by whistleblower Azeem Rafiq when giving evidence to the UK government’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee in November 2021.

Rafiq’s testimony “significantly increased” public interest in the commission’s work, according to Butts.

Rafiq contributed evidence to the commission, as did current and former England men’s Test captains Ben Stokes and Joe Root respectively. Current women’s captain Heather Knight also submitted evidence.

“Cricket has failed Black communities. … The decline in Black cricket in England and Wales has been well documented and subject to much public debate for many years. … We found it deeply concerning and surprising that we could identify no evidence of direct ECB-led activity to understand, halt or reverse this decline since the ECB’s formation in 1997,” said the report.

Regarding sexism, the report said: “Women are still seen as an ‘add on’ to the men’s game. Our evidence shows that women continue to be treated as subordinate to men,”

In addition, evidence heard by the ICEC points to “a widespread culture of sexism and misogyny, and unacceptable behavior towards women in both the recreational and professional game.”

The report said there was also “predatory behavior” from men towards women which is “often fuelled by alcohol.”

“I have experienced predatory behaviour [from] some men in cricket,” the report quotes one anonymous contributor,  noting the men included “players, coaches, media, corporate executives, which may be when they drink or not although it feels more prevalent with alcohol.”

In the professional game, the inequity in pay between men and women is highlighted in the report.

“Women receive an embarrassingly small amount compared to men,” the report says. “The average salary for England Women is 20.6% of the average salary for England Men.”

Education and class are addressed in the report’s findings, which note that 58% of male players in England and Wales in 2021 were privately educated – far outstripping the 7% of the general population. The report describes a “prevalence of elitism and class-based discrimination in cricket” which is “structural and institutional in nature.”

The ECB should issue an “unqualified public apology,” according to the first of 44 recommendations from the report. “The apology should acknowledge that racism, sexism, elitism and class-based discrimination have existed, and still exist, in the game, and recognise the impact on victims of discrimination.

“It should include, in particular, a direct apology for the ECB’s and the wider game’s historic failures in relation to women’s and girls’ cricket and its failure to adequately support Black cricket in England and Wales.”

In response, the ECB chairman Richard Thompson said in a statement on the organization’s website: “On behalf of the ECB and wider leadership of the game, I apologise unreservedly to anyone who has ever been excluded from cricket or made to feel like they don’t belong.

“This report makes clear that historic structures and systems have failed to prevent discrimination, and highlights the pain and exclusion this has caused. I am determined that this wake-up call for cricket in England and Wales should not be wasted.”

Other ICEC recommendations include the creation of a triannual “State of Equity in Cricket” report to assess progress on the findings, and a stringent commitment to being “an anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-classist organization.”

In response to the findings, Rafiq posted a statement saying: “I welcome the report’s findings and acknowledge the extraordinary work that has been put into this inquiry.

“There is no doubt now that the game we all love has suffered from institutional discrimination, including racism. The report is an opportunity to fully reflect on what happened and for the sport’s governing structures to work out a way forward to ensure that cricket is a game for everyone and that they feel supported, no matter their background.”