First Thing: Phoenix’s record streak of temperatures above 110F ends after 31 days

Relief expected to be brief with forecasts of highs above 110F this week. Plus, the man who hopes to shut down the coal industry with his drone

Good morning.

Phoenix’s record stretch of daily highs over 110F (43.3C) ended yesterday as cooling monsoon rains tempered the dangerous heatwave that suffocated the American south-west throughout July.

The region – from Texas, across New Mexico and Arizona, and into California’s desert – has been grappling with historic heat since June. Phoenix and its suburbs sweltered more intensely than most, with several records including the 31 consecutive days of 110F days. The previous record was 18 successive days, set in 1974.

The streak was broken on Monday, when the temperature peaked at 108F, the National Weather Service reported.

But the reprieve was expected to be brief, with forecasts of highs above 110F for several days this week. The National Weather Service meteorologist Matthew Hirsch has warned August could be even hotter than July.

Are people still in danger? Potentially, yes. More than 50 million Americans remain under a heat advisory amid one of the hottest summers recorded, and a heatwave continues to affect swathes of the country.

What is happening in the south-west? The hot and dry weather in the south-west of the US has set off a wave of wildfires. California and Nevada are battling a large blaze that is uncontrolled. Another, which originated in Washington state, has spread into Canada, forcing residents in the town of Osoyoos, British Columbia, to flee their homes.

Moscow hit by second drone attack in two days, says mayor

Russian air defences have shot down “several” drones targeting the Moscow region, the mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, has said, with one hitting a tower that had been struck on Sunday.

The Russian defence ministry said two drones were destroyed by air defence systems in the Odintsovo and Narofominsk districts near Moscow, while a third was jammed and crashed in the capital, the Russian state news agency, Tass, reported early this morning. The ministry blamed the attacks on Kyiv.

Sobyanin said in a Telegram post that no injuries had been reported. “The facade of the 21st floor was damaged. The glazing of 150 square metres was broken,” he added.

Vnukovo airport in Moscow was shut temporarily and flights redirected.

What has Ukraine said about the drone attacks? Ukraine has not acknowledged responsibility for the attacks but the strikes came two days after the Ukrainian president said the war was coming to Russia, after three drones were shot down over Moscow on Sunday. “Gradually, the war is returning to the territory of Russia – to its symbolic centres and military bases. This is an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process,” Volodymr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address on Sunday.

What else is happening? The Russian defence ministry says it successfully repelled a unmanned boat drone attack on two of its ships in the Black Sea fleet – the Sergey Kotov and the Vasily Bykov.

Trump increases Republican primary lead despite swirling legal peril

Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton county, Georgia, is “ready to go” with indictments in her investigation of Donald Trump’s election subversion. In Washington, the special counsel, Jack Smith, is expected to add charges regarding election subversion to 40 counts already filed over the former president’s retention of classified records.

Trump already faces 34 criminal charges in New York over hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels. Referring to Trump being ordered to pay $5m after being found liable for sexual abuse and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll, a judge recently said Carroll proved Trump raped her. Lawsuits over Trump’s business affairs continue.

Yet less than a month before the first debate of the Republican presidential primary, Trump’s domination of the field increases with each poll. Yesterday, the first 2024 survey from the New York Times and Siena College put Trump at 54% support. His closest challenger, Ron DeSantis, was at 17%. No one else – including Mike Pence, Tim Scott and Nikki Haley – was higher than 3%.

What has Trump said he would do if convicted? Heading for trials in primary season, Trump denies wrongdoing and claims political persecution. But his chaos-agent campaign, which he says he will not abandon even if convicted and sentenced, does not just threaten the national peace. It threatens his own party.

In other news …

Nasa is listening for any peep from Voyager 2 after it lost contact with the spacecraft billions of miles away. Hurtling ever deeper into interstellar space, Voyager 2 has been out of touch since flight controllers accidentally sent a wrong command more than a week ago that tilted its antenna away from Earth.

The US education secretary is a critic of the supreme court’s elimination of affirmative action but maintains the recent decision created an opening to “go further” with other measures aimed at diversifying campuses, including by axing legacy and donor-based admissions.

A group of Indian sanitation workers have won the monsoon bumper prize, worth 100m rupees ($1.2m) after pooling their resources to collectively buy a single lottery ticket, at a cost of 250 rupees – the equivalent of a day’s wages. The women spoke of their joy at winning big but pledged to continue working.

Warner Bros Japan has criticized what it calls “extremely regrettable” Barbenheimer tweets shared by its US counterpart. It joins a growing backlash in Japan against the conflation of Greta Gerwig’s playfully marketed film with Oppenheimer, a biopic of the scientist behind the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Stat of the day: Joe Biden says ‘I have seven grandkids’ after acknowledging four-year-old Navy

For the first time in an interview, Joe Biden has acknowledged he has seven grandchildren, including Hunter Biden’s four-year-old daughter, Navy. “I have seven grandkids,” the president said, “five of ’em old enough to talk on the phone, you know, every day I either text or call them.”

The president was speaking to On Purpose with Jay Shetty, a podcast, about the importance of mental health. Navy Biden is the daughter of Hunter Biden and Lunden Roberts, whom Hunter Biden, the president’s surviving and scandal-ridden son, met while struggling with addiction. Calling Roberts “the woman from Arkansas who had a baby in 2018 and claimed the child was mine”, he wrote: “I had no recollection of our encounter.” Roberts sued.

In 2019, a DNA test confirmed Hunter Biden’s paternity. Joe Biden’s failure to publicly count Navy Biden among his grandchildren came to the fore last month, particularly via a column by Maureen Dowd of the New York Times headlined It’s seven grandkids, Mr President.

Don’t miss this: One man and his drone – ‘My hope is to shut down the coal industry’

Since he was 19, Junior Walk, now 33, has risked the wrath of his community by campaigning against coal, first through direct protest action and, more recently, in more novel ways. Standing as a lonely opponent of an industry that holds the region in a tight grip, Walk is fixated on the destruction of his nemesis. “My ultimate hope is to shut down the coal industry,” he said. “In order to get anything else new here, you’ve got to burn it down first.”

He has a perfect weapon to do this: a drone. Most days, Walk fires up a small four-rotor drone that he flies over the coalmining operations that dot the undulating landscape that hugs the Big Coal River. Walk’s aim is to document environmental violations on video. Since 2015, the small nonprofit Walk works for, Coal River Mountain Watch, named after one of the mountains in the midst of this, has lodged dozens of complaints with state regulators, with evidence captured by drone.

Climate check: US climate change reforestation plans face key problem – lack of tree seedlings

In an effort to slash carbon emissions and provide relief from extreme heat, governments across the country and globally have pledged to plant trees. But the US does not have enough seedlings to furnish its plans, according to a study. The country’s nurseries do not grow nearly enough trees to bring ambitious planting schemes to fruition, and they lack the species diversity those plans require, according to research published in the journal Bioscience on Monday. As part of the study, 13 scientists examined 605 plant nurseries across 20 northern states. Only 56 – less than 10% – grow and sell seedlings in the volumes needed for conservation and reforestation.

The team also found that forest nurseries tended to maintain a limited inventory of a select few species of trees, with priority placed on those valued for commercial timber production. As a result, there is an “overwhelming scarcity of seedlings” that are well-suited for climate plans, the authors write.

Last Thing: Chinese zoo denies its sun bears are humans dressed in costumes

A zoo in eastern China has denied suggestions that some of its bears are humans dressed in costumes, after a video of one standing on its hind legs circulated online. Footage of the sun bear standing caused some people to note that its slender legs and folds of fur made it look like a human in an animal costume.

In a recording circulating on WeChat, a spokesperson for the zoo said the animal was real and such a deception would not happen at a state-run facility. He also noted that in the current 104F heat, a human in a fur bear suit “would not last more than a few minutes before collapsing”. A zoo employee said visits were being arranged for reporters on Monday to see the bears. Other Chinese zoos have been accused of trying to pass off dogs dyed to look like wolves or African cats, and donkeys painted to look like zebras.

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