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Biden’s NYC fundraiser with Obama, Clinton rakes in record $26 million for campaign
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A record surge in dengue cases in Latin America spurs a warning
A record surge in dengue cases throughout Latin America and the Caribbean prompted the head of the Pan American Health Organization to warn of the need for proactive measures to curb the virus that is transmitted by mosquitoes.
PAHO Director Dr. Jarbas Barbosa said in a press briefing Thursday that as of March 26, the region had seen more than 3.5 million cases of dengue and more than 1,000 deaths.
“This is cause for concern, as it represents three times more cases than those reported for the same period in 2023, a record year with more than 4.5 million cases reported in the region,” he said.
As of March, the hardest-hit countries in Latin America are Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina — which have accounted for 92% of the dengue cases and 87% of the deaths — where mosquitoes have thrived because of the warm and rainy weather this time of year.
Barbosa said, however, that they’re seeing an uptick in Barbados, Costa Rica, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Martinique and Mexico, “where transmission is usually higher in the second half of the year.”
U.S. embassies have been issuing health alerts in countries throughout the region, urging people to cover their arms and legs, use mosquito repellent and avoid stagnant water and other mosquito-breeding places.
The U.S. territory of Puerto Rico declared a dengue public health emergency this week, with a surge in cases mostly in the island’s capital, San Juan.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “dengue viruses are spread to people through the bite of an infected Aedes species” mosquito, with symptoms that can range from mild to life-threatening for those who get sick from the infection. About 1 in 20 people can get severe dengue, which can lead to death.
The most common symptom is fever, according to the CDC; other symptoms include serious headaches, nausea, vomiting, rash and body pain.
“Facing the dengue problem is a task for all sectors of society,” Barbosa said, urging community engagement.
This includes “efforts to eliminate mosquito breeding sites and protect against mosquito bites, increase preparedness in health services for early diagnosis and timely clinical management, and continuous work to educate the population about dengue symptoms and when to seek prompt medical attention,” according to a PAHO news release.
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Michelin awards stars to a record 340 restaurants in Germany
Germany’s elite chefs are getting more recognition. This year, a record 340 restaurants can boast at least one star in Michelin’s renowned gourmet guidebook.
The latest edition of the restaurant guide was unveiled in Hamburg on Tuesday. The increased number of starred restaurants surprised the director of the Michelin Guide for Germany and Switzerland, Ralf Flinkenflügel, because the industry is struggling with a shortage of skilled labour and rising purchasing and energy prices. “We ourselves are amazed at the new record,” he said.
Ten restaurants have been granted the highest Michelin award and can adorn themselves with three stars in 2024. The Upper Bavarian restaurant Ess:enz by Edip Sigl in Grassau, which was only awarded two stars two years ago, has progressed to the next level.
The nine other three-star restaurants are located in Berlin (Rutz), Baden-Württemberg (Bareiss and Schwarzwaldstube in Baiersbronn), Bavaria (Jan, in Munich), Hamburg (The Table), Lower Saxony (Aqua, in Wolfsburg), Rhineland-Palatinate (Waldhotel Sonnora in Dreis, and Schanz. Restaurant in Piesport) and Saarland (Victor’s Fine Dining by Christian Bau, in Perl).
The inspection team also rated 50 restaurants with two stars – three of which are new – and 280 top kitchens with one star – 32 of which are new. Criteria include the quality of the products, a personal touch, value for money and consistent quality over the long term.
A total of 77 restaurants were awarded a Green Star for their environmentally conscious and resource-conserving gastronomy – ten more than in 2023. But 27 kitchens had to give up one or more stars because they closed, had a new concept or the quality deteriorated.
First published in France more than 100 years ago, the little red Guide Michelin was intended to encourage more drivers to travel and thus boost sales for the French tyre company Michelin. The first Michelin stars were awarded in Germany in 1966.
Zara owner Inditex workers protest after record profits
Workers at Inditex’s Zara and other big name stores protested outside the company shops across Spain on Friday to demand better benefits after the world’s biggest fashion retailer reported record profits and raised shareholder payouts.
Blowing whistles and waving union flags, around 100 people demonstrated outside the flagship Bershka store on Madrid’s main avenue, the Gran Via, according to an AFP reporter at the scene.
“It seems very unfair to us because Inditex has had a huge profit. So we want it to redistribute that,” said Juan Becerra, a 44-year-old worker at an Oysho store in the Spanish capital.
Similar protests were held outside Inditex stores in seven other cities, including Barcelona, Seville and Valencia.
The protests were organised by Spain’s two largest unions, UGT and CCOO, which want a bonus for Inditex workers with more than four years service and other benefits.
The unions say just over half of Inditex’s 27,000 employees in Spain have signed a petition demanding that “the group’s profits be returned in a fair and equitable manner to those who make them possible: all the group’s workers”.
Monica Donoro, a CCOO representative, said negotiations with Inditex managers had stalled.
“We are not making any progress. They are not listening to us,” she said.
Inditex, which has seen a strong performance on Spain’s stock market over the past year, posted net profits of 5.4 billion euros ($5.9 billion) in 2023, up 30 percent from 4.1 billion euros, the previous record, in 2022.
The company, whose eight brands include Pull and Bear and upmarket label Massimo Dutti, said it would pay shareholders a dividend of 1.54 euros, a 28 percent increase from 2022, and the highest in the group’s history.
“We, the staff, have the impression that we are not taken into account, that our work is not recognised even though we contribute to generating the profits, which are so high, through our work,” Beatriz Aliaga, a 44-year-old Zara employee, told AFP at the Madrid demonstration.
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Haiti gang wars push hunger to worst levels on record
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Almost half of Haiti’s people are struggling to feed themselves as gang violence spreads across the country, with several areas close to famine, international organizations said on Friday.
Inflation and poor harvests have also helped push Haiti to its worst levels of food insecurity on record, they said.
“Rising hunger is fueling the security crisis that is shattering the country. We need urgent action now — waiting to respond at scale is not an option,” Jean-Martin Bauer, the World Food Programme’s Haiti director, said.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) — an organization which sets a scale used by the United Nations and governments to assess hunger — said in a report that about 4.97 million people out of a population of about 11.5 million were facing crisis or worse levels of food insecurity.
Eight areas were now assessed to be in an emergency phase — the worst level before famine, it said.
These include the Artibonite valley, Haiti’s farming heartland, which has been badly hit by gangs expanding from the capital Port-au-Prince, rural parts of the Grand-Anse peninsula and neighborhoods of the capital such as the poor Cite Soleil district.
The Caribbean country has been gripped by violence since rival gangs unleashed a wave of attacks this month, including raids on police stations and the international airport. The conflict has killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands.
Regional leaders are trying to form a transitional council and Prime Minister Ariel Henry has promised to resign once it is set up. But he is currently stranded abroad, shut out of the country after making a visit to Kenya to discuss the deployment of an international security force. This has now been put on hold.
The FSB security service said ‘all four terrorists’ had been arrested while heading to the Ukrainian border, and that they had contacts in Ukraine.
The WFP said Haiti was now suffering its worst levels of food insecurity on record, with many people resorting to desperate measures and taking on more debt as armed groups take over farmlands and steal crops.
The IPC report found only 5% of Haitians had received humanitarian food aid and the WFP said that operations were “woefully under-funded.”
More than 30,000 people have fled violence and shortages in the capital in just two weeks this month, according to U.N. data, most of them people who had already lost their homes and were living in camps or with other families.
Authorities in the neighboring Dominican Republic, who have deported tens of thousands of Haitian migrants, have said they have not agreed to an air bridge announced by the U.N. to supply aid to Haiti, saying its air route is for evacuating foreigners.
Laurent Uwumuremyi, who heads aid group Mercy Corps’ Haiti arm, said gangs now control nearly 90% of the capital with basic errands impossible, key infrastructure closed, shortages in basic supplies and hospitals on the brink of collapse.
“Even in areas like Petion-Ville, an upscale neighborhood that until recently was considered safe, the population has been barricaded indoors,” he said. “If the situation deteriorates without any efforts to address the unfolding humanitarian crisis, Port-au-Prince will soon find itself completely overwhelmed.”
European scientists make it official. July was the hottest month on record by far
Now that last month’s sizzling numbers are all in, the European climate monitoring organization made it official: July 2023 was Earth’s hottest month on record by a wide margin.
July’s global average temperature of 16.95 degrees Celsius (62.51 degrees Fahrenheit) was a third of a degree Celsius (six tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) higher than the previous record set in 2019, Copernicus Climate Change Service announced Tuesday. Normally global temperature records are broken by hundredths or a tenth of a degree, so this margin is unusual.
The United States is now at a record 15 different weather disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Tuesday. It’s the most mega-disasters through the first seven months of the year since the agency tracked such things starting in 1980, with the agency adjusting figures for inflation.
“These records have dire consequences for both people and the planet exposed to ever more frequent and intense extreme events,” said Copernicus deputy director Samantha Burgess. There have been deadly heat waves in the Southwestern United States and Mexico, Europe and Asia. Scientific quick studies put the blame on human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.
The previous single-day heat record was set in 2016 and tied in 2022. From July 3, each day has exceeded that record. It’s been so warm that Copernicus and the World Meteorological Organization made the unusual announcement that it was likely the hottest month days before it ended. Tuesday’s calculations made it official.
“We should not care about July because it’s a record, but because it won’t be a record for long,” said Imperial College of London climate scientist Friederike Otto. “It’s an indicator of how much we have changed the climate. We are living in a very different world, one that our societies are not adapted to live in very well.”
The global average temperature last month was 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial times. In 2015, the nations of the world agreed to try to prevent long-term warming — not individual months or even years, but decades — that is 1.5 degrees warmer than pre-industrial times.
Last month was so hot, it was .7 degrees Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than the average July from 1991 to 2020, Copernicus said. The world’s oceans were half a degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the previous 30 years and the North Atlantic was 1.05 degrees Celsius (1.9 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than average. Antarctica set record lows for sea ice, 15% below average for this time of year.
Copernicus, a division of the European Union’s space program, has records going back to 1940. July’s temperature would be hotter than any month the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has recorded and their records go back to 1850. But scientists say it’s actually the hottest in a far longer time period.
“It’s a stunning record and makes it quite clearly the warmest month on Earth in 10,000 years,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research in Germany. He wasn’t part of the Copernicus team.
Rahmstorf cited studies that use tree rings and other proxies that show present times are the warmest since the beginning of the Holocene Epoch, about 10,000 years ago. And before the Holocene started there was an ice age, so it would be logical to even say this is the warmest record for 120,000 years, he said.
While much of the world broiled in July, the United States only had its 11th hottest July in its 129-year record, according to NOAA. But Arizona, Florida, Maine and New Mexico had their warmest Julys on record.
Arizona broke its record by nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) and Phoenix averaged 102.8 degrees for the entire month making it the hottest month for any city int he United States, according to NOAA. Death Valley reported its hottest midnight temperature on record with 120 degrees Fahrenheit (48.9 degrees Celsius) on July 17.
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What to know about tonight’s record $1.58 billion Mega Millions drawing
The odds are long, but Tuesday’s Mega Millions drawing could yield a record-setting jackpot — $1.58 billion.
The game’s previous largest jackpot was the $1.537 billion won in October 2018.
The new jackpot is estimated to be $1.58 billion, which it reached after no one won the top prize in Friday night’s drawing, game officials said.
The potential record-setting jackpot has been months in the making. The last time someone won the jackpot was April 18. In Mega Millions, as in the Powerball lottery game, jackpots roll over when no one wins.
While eye-popping, the $1.58 billion Mega Millions jackpot would rank as only the third-largest prize of all U.S. lotto games. Last year, someone in California won a $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot. The second largest in size was in 2016, when the Powerball jackpot reached a nearly identical amount of $1.586 billion, according to the Associate Press.
The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350.
The game is played in 45 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
‘Barbie’ joins $1 billion club, breaks record for pic helmed by female director
Greta Gerwig should be feeling closer to fine these days. In just three weeks in theaters, “Barbie” is set to sail past $1 billion in global ticket sales, breaking a record for female directors that was previously held by Patty Jenkins, who helmed “Wonder Woman.”
“Barbie,” which Gerwig directed and co-wrote, added another $53 million from 4,178 North American locations this weekend according to studio estimates on Sunday. The Margot Robbie-led and produced film has been comfortably seated in first place for three weeks and it’s hardly finished yet. Warner Bros. said the film will cross $1 billion before the end of the day.
In modern box office history, just 53 movies have made over $1 billion, not accounting for inflation, and “Barbie” is now the biggest to be directed by one woman, supplanting “Wonder Woman’s” $821.8 million global total. Three movies that were co-directed by women are still ahead of “Barbie,” including “Frozen” ($1.3 billion) and “Frozen 2” ($1.45 billion) both co-directed by Jennifer Lee and “Captain Marvel” ($1.1 billion), co-directed by Anna Boden. But, “Barbie” has passed “Captain Marvel” domestically with $459.4 million (versus $426.8 million), thereby claiming the North American record for live-action movies directed by women.
New competition came this weekend in the form of the animated, PG-rated “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” and the Jason Statham shark sequel, “Meg 2: The Trench,” both of which were neck-in-neck with Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” also in its third weekend, for the second-place spot.
“Meg 2” managed to sneak ahead and land in second place. It overcame its abysmal reviews to score a $30 million opening weekend from 3,503 locations. The Warner Bros. release, directed by Ben Wheatley, currently has a 29% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes and a B- CinemaScore from audiences. The thriller was released in 3D, which accounted for 22% of its first weekend business.
Third place went to “Oppenheimer,” which added $28.7 million from 3,612 locations in North America, bringing its domestic total to $228.6 million. In just three weeks, the J. Robert Oppenheimer biopic starring Cillian Murphy has become the highest grossing R-rated film of the year (ahead of “John Wick Chapter 4”) and the sixth-biggest of the year overall, surpassing “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”
“Oppenheimer” also celebrated a landmark, crossing $500 million globally in three weeks. Its worldwide tally is currently $552.9 million, which puts it ahead of “Dunkirk,” which clocked out with $527 million in 2017, and has become Nolan’s fifth-biggest movie ever. It’s also now among the four top grossing biographies ever (company includes “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “The Passion of the Christ” and “American Sniper”) and the biggest World War II movie of all time.
Paramount’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” was close behind in fourth place with an estimated $28 million from 3,858 theaters in North America. Since opening on Wednesday, the film, which is riding on excellent reviews (96% on Rotten Tomatoes) and audience scores, has earned $43.1 million.
“This is one of those movies that is a multigenerational joy,” said Chris Aronson, Paramount’s president of domestic distribution. “I think the enduring popularity of ‘Turtles’ is showing its true colors. And there hasn’t been an animated film in eight weeks and there won’t be another for eight weeks which is great for us.”
“Turtles” cost $70 million to produce and features a starry voice cast that includes Jackie Chan, Ice Cube, Paul Rudd, Ayo Edebiri and Seth Rogen, who produced and co-wrote the film, which leans into the “teenage” aspect of the turtles.
“Barbie,” “Oppenheimer” and even the surprise, anti-trafficking hit “Sound of Freedom” (now at $163.5 million and ahead of “Mission: Impossible 7”) have helped fuel a boom at the box office, bringing in many millions more than was expected and helping to offset pains caused by some summer disappointments.
“After ‘The Flash,’ ‘Indiana Jones’ and, to a certain extent, ‘Mission: Impossible,’ people were saying the summer was a disappointment. But it’s not over yet,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “We’re going to have a summer that is going to go out on a high note.”
But the moment of triumph for the industry will likely be short lived if the studios can’t reach an agreement with striking actors and writers soon. The fall release calendar has already gotten slimmer, with some studios pushing films into 2024 instead of trying to promote them without movie stars.
Sony had planned to release its PlayStation-inspired true story “Gran Turismo” in theaters nationwide next Friday, but will now be rolling it out slowly for two weeks before going wide on Aug. 25. The thinking? If movie stars can’t promote the film, maybe audiences can.
“We have to be realistic,” Dergarabedian said. “We’re on this emotional high of movies doing so well, but we have to temper our enthusiasm and optimism with the fact that the strike is creating a lot of uncertainty. The longer it goes on the more profound the issues become. But the audience has spoken and they love going to the movie theater.”
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. “Barbie,” $53 million.
2. “Meg 2: The Trench,” $30 million.
3. “Oppenheimer,” $28.7 million.
4. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” $28 million.
5. “Haunted Mansion,” $9 million.
6. “Sound of Freedom,” $7 million.
7. “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part I,” $6.5 million.
8. “Talk to Me,” $6.3 million.
9. “Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani,” $1.5 million.
10. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” $1.5 million.
Record snow brings Great Salt Lake back from the brink of drought
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