US airfares expected to stay high even if Iran ceasefire drops oil prices, experts say

Festival organisers defend show after criticism from sister of Meredith Kercher, Knox’s murdered former flatmate The Edinburgh festival fringe said it was “not afraid of controversy” after calls to cancel a sold-out show by Amanda Knox, who was falsely imprisoned for the 2007 murder of her flatmate Meredith Kercher in Italy.Knox’s comedy show, Cartwheel, has been condemned by Kercher’s family, with her sister, Stephanie, saying it “normalises and trivialises violence against women”. A petition calling for it to be cancelled has been signed by more than 6,000 people. Continue reading...

Robyn Cory says daughter Kristen was not protected, amid questions about why it took six years to identify remainsThe family of Kristen Galvan, a 15-year-old Houston girl who was sex trafficked and murdered, says law enforcement failed her twice by not protecting her after she gave forensic interviews about her traffickers, and later by taking more than six years to identify her remains.The Texas attorney general’s office announced on 28 July that Kristen’s remains had been positively identified using advanced DNA testing conducted over the past year. Parts of her skull, clothing and an earring were found beneath a bridge beside a jogging trail in Missouri City, about 10 miles outside Houston. Continue reading...

A Trump administration framework on AI testing leaves a lack of transparency – and plenty of open questionsAfter months of talking with tech industry leaders, the Trump administration finalized a framework this week for how it will test new artificial intelligence models for safety and cybersecurity risks. So far, the White House is keeping details of the framework private, in a blow to transparency and potential boon for secretive AI companies.On Tuesday, staff from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, Nvidia and Microsoft attended a private meeting with White House officials to review the AI framework. Multiple outlets have since reported that although the volunteer vetting process for new AI models has been settled, the White House does not plan to release its policy publicly and will only share testing criteria with a select few tech companies. Continue reading...

Officials try to find homes for residents as talks to save social assistance hub collapse amid government crackdownRome authorities are scrambling to find homes for hundreds of people sleeping in tents in extreme heat after talks aimed at saving Italy’s most high-profile centre for housing and social assistance collapsed amid a crackdown by Giorgia Meloni’s government on squatted buildings.The approximately 400 evicted residents of Spin Time Labs, located in a 10-floor building in Rome’s Esquilino district occupied by grassroots groups since 2013, will not be allowed to move back in after its private owner refused Rome council’s offer to buy the property. The residents were forced out at the end of last month. Continue reading...

Musician’s projects included Madonna’s Ray of Light, Blur’s 13 and All Saints’ chart-topping singles Pure Shores and Black CoffeeWilliam Orbit, the British music producer whose dreamy yet propulsive style invigorated work by Madonna, Blur, All Saints, U2 and more, has died aged 69.A statement on his social media, attributed to family and friends, said he died at home on 23 July. “He will be greatly missed by us and by so many whose lives he touched through his music, friendship and kindness,” the statement read. No cause of death was given. Continue reading...

Alaska Republican is concerned that proposed fund to compensate January 6 rioters will proceed even though Blanche confirmed it was deadUS politics live – latest updatesLisa Murkowski, Alaska’s moderate Republican senator, announced early on Friday that she will not vote for Donald Trump’s nomination of Todd Blanche as US attorney general, leaving his elevation from “acting” to official confirmation in the post even narrower.Murkowski issued a statement expressing her concerns that the Trump administration could proceed with its proposed fund to compensate rioters who invaded the US Capitol on January 6 in a failed attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s defeat of Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Continue reading...

Environmentalists and activists furious as Trump’s policies raise costs for US families. Plus, the undiscovered masterpiece that was left lying in museum storageGood morning. Donald Trump’s statement that oil companies have made “too much money” from the Iran war has angered environmentalists, who say his policies were designed to benefit those very corporations.American families have paid more than $78bn more at the pump since the start of the Iran war, according to a Brown University tracker. And a recent analysis from the environmental advocacy group Climate Power and the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a liberal thinktank, found that Trump’s policies had cost the average American family $285 more when filling up their cars.What policies has Trump enacted to help the oil industry? Since re-entering the White House last year, he has eased dozens of restrictions and regulations on fossil fuel expansion, exempted fossil fuel producers from environmental rules, and signed an executive order last year directing the attorney general to prioritize blocking climate lawsuits targeting oil majors. Trump has also personally invested in major oil companies.What did the supreme court previously rule? In the court’s June decision, the chief justice, John Roberts, said Trump’s first order violated the 14th amendment of the US constitution. “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights – to freely participate in our political community,” he wrote. “The framers of the 14th amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land’. We keep that promise today.” Continue reading...

High 30s celsius forecast for France, Spain and Italy next week, before affecting Germany, Poland and CzechiaAnother pulse of heat is expected to affect central and western Europe next week. The latest forecast models show daily maximum temperatures well into the high 30s celsius widely across France, Spain and Italy during the first half of the week, while Germany, Poland and Czechia will experience the highest temperatures towards the end of the week. The shift in the focus of the heat as the week progresses can be attributed to the movement of high pressure. At the start of the week, low pressure centred in the Atlantic and high pressure centred over the low countries will draw warm air in from southern Europe northwards into parts of France. During the working week, the high pressure will slip a little farther south and east, enabling the warm air once situated over western Europe to make inroads into parts of Germany and central Europe.The heat in central and western Europe this summer has been unrelenting. Last week’s weather tracker highlighted extreme recording breaking temperatures for the month of July in Austria. However, only a few days later, on 4 August, the all-time record was shattered with 41.0C achieved in Stammersdorf, north-east of the capital, Vienna. This comfortably broke the previous all-time record set in the August of 2003 by 0.7C. Unbelievably, that record was broken again the following day when 41.2C was recorded in Deutsch-Altenburg. Slovakia also set a new all-time record on the same day of 41.4C. The continuing European heatwave is associated with a vertically extensive anticyclone, and had the effect of raising the freezing level above 4,000 metres across much of the Alpine region. This represents a level in the atmosphere well above many Alpine glaciers, accelerating the seasonal melting process. On the opposite side of the Atlantic, 51.8C was recorded in Badwater, California, the highest temperature in the US for 2026 so far. Continue reading...

More air-conditioned spaces are open during extreme heat, but distance, stigma and risk perception keep many awayResponding to an uptick in extreme heat waves this summer, US cities have increased their efforts to establish cooling centers to keep people safe but continue to encounter a problem: actually getting people to enter the public air-conditioned spaces.Lower-income people, who often do not have – or cannot afford to operate – air conditioning, face a greater risk of heat-related illness or deaths, which means public agencies in the US concentrate their efforts on trying to reach them. Continue reading...

By dragging out talks, Tehran aims to damage the US president politically, but some fear a bruised and weakened Trump could only prolong the conflict Tehran has set out a protracted negotiating timetable designed to keep Donald Trump embroiled in the Iran conflict until the midterm elections, in the hope of inflicting the same ruinous blow on his presidency as Jimmy Carter suffered over the 1979-81 US embassy hostage crisis.For many inside Iran, inflicting meaningful revenge on Trump is a legitimate and self-standing war aim, reflected in the mood of those attending the funeral of the late supreme leader Ali Khamenei where demands for retribution were ubiquitous. Continue reading...

DHS secretary Markwayne Mullin says ‘We’re going after them right now’ despite threat of violence in home country Hundreds of thousands of Haitians are faced with the prospect of imminent risk of arrest and deportation – to a home country racked with crime, violence and political unrest – after the Trump administration officially stripped them of humanitarian protections that had allowed them to live and work legally in the United States for years.US district judge Ana Reyes confirmed on Wednesday that her order blocking the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from ending temporary protected status (TPS) for Haiti was no longer in effect. This followed the controversial supreme court ruling in June that upended judicial review of the program and opened the door for immigration enforcement to track down and detain Haitians en masse. Continue reading...