Reuters Daily Briefing

"The age of 'heat storms.'"

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Daily Briefing

By Kate Turton

Hello. Today we launch a new series about 'heat storms.' I recommend you read our special report, along with the fascinating methodology of how and why we developed the investigative series.

Today's Top News   Flowers left on a destroyed bike, the day after clashes during a national day of demonstrations against the cost of living and rising fuel prices. REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq France is reeling after riots and looting that plunged President Emmanuel Macron's final months in office into turmoil. Michel Rose in Paris tells the Reuters World News podcast, it's Marine Le Pen who stands to gain from the fallout. Elsewhere in Europe the far right gains from fuel-price anger ahead of elections. Alberta residents voted to remain part of Canada in the province's first-ever referendum ‌on separation, in a much-needed win for Prime Minister Mark Carney as he attempts to unify the country amid a trade war with the US. President Donald ‌Trump's approval rating fell to a record low as Americans worried about high gasoline prices and appeared ready to punish his Republican Party in the November 3 congressional elections, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Monday. One-third of Americans think the government should try a second time to put a convicted criminal to death if ‌a first execution attempt fails, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted after a botched lethal injection in Tennessee. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will fly to Oslo to meet US special envoy Steve Witkoff, trying to repair ties with Washington that ‌have deteriorated sharply over the past two weeks as President Trump has increasingly courted Moscow. To much of the world and to many Israelis, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the bellicose face of Israel's far right, is a figure from the fringe of politics, but ahead of next week's election, polls show a boost in his Jewish Power party's support among younger, urban voters. China's military said it had sent forces to watch a US warship that "illegally" entered waters ‌around a disputed shoal in the South China Sea, while further north in the waterway, Taiwan reported a standoff with a Chinese vessel.

Business & Markets   GLP-1 drugs rank among the biggest medical breakthroughs in years, owing to their efficacy in treating obesity and type 2 diabetes, and reducing the risk of heart disease. Some 10 million Americans used them last year. Their side effects, though, have caused many to turn to loosely regulated dietary supplements. The artificial intelligence boom, increasingly acknowledged at the Federal Reserve as helping drive inflation, has left central bankers faced with cooling the rest of the economy to lower price pressures amplified by an industry of marquee names like Amazon, Apple and Anthropic considered immune to rate hikes. Many unemployed Chinese are hiding their ‌joblessness from relatives, wary of the concern and pressure that often follow in a labor market where finding work has become increasingly difficult. Analysts say the phenomenon is a stark reflection of a weakening job market in an economy increasingly reliant on roaring exports. Stock markets are flashing familiar warnings: abundant liquidity, high leverage, frantic trading, and exuberant retail investors. In this episode of The Big View podcast, the financial historian Edward Chancellor tells Peter Thal Larsen why this market may be the most speculative ever.

Giant ‘heat storms’ are scorching Earth: the story of the biggest one.   Heat storms intensify wildfires. Here, a tree burned in Mandra, Greece, in July 2023, when heat storms struck the area for most of that month. REUTERS/Louiza Vradi In about six and a half decades, heat waves have evolved from sporadic, isolated episodes into massive, cascading weather events that can blanket vast swaths of the planet for months or even years at a time. To understand this new reality, Reuters consulted with two dozen climate researchers and analyzed temperatures around the globe for every hour of every day since 1960. Out of those results we developed a new concept: the heat storm. Heat storms are supersized heat waves that at their peak cover at least 1% of the globe, roughly half the size of Canada. In the 1960s, they averaged about five a year. This decade, they have averaged about 100 a year.  Today we launch a new series on the weather phenomenon. Read our special report

And Finally... A yak grazes on a grass patch some 9,842 feet above sea level in the mountains outside Almaty. REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov/File Photo  A Siberian cave already famous for yielding the first remains of an extinct human lineage called the Denisovans, who once roamed widely in Eurasia, has now produced evidence of a previously unknown large Ice Age mammal closely related to today's yak. Researchers said they discovered small bone fragments of the animal in Denisova Cave in the Altai ‌Mountains of southern Siberia in Russia, and obtained DNA that showed these remains belonged to a bovine species distinct from others already known, living and extinct. Read more

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