Important Takeaways:
- A truck driver found a 1-year-old alive in a ditch off an interstate highway in Louisiana this week, a day after the boy’s 4-year-old brother was found dead near the same freeway in what investigators think was a case of abandonment around the time tropical storm conditions hit the area, authorities said.
- A Louisiana sheriff, who says he believes the 1-year-old spent two days along Interstate 10, including while Hurricane Beryl or its weaker iterations battered the western Gulf Coast region with rain and strong wind – is praising the truck driver for seeing the child and stopping to pick up him up Tuesday.
- “This kid spent two days out in the weather on the side of the highway. … Thank God that trucker (saw) him.”
- Truck driver Reginald Walton was driving on I-10 when he saw something “to the right, over in the … embankment” ‘Hey, that looks like a baby,’” Walton, of Texas, told KADN.
- “Sure enough, there was a little boy sitting down the embankment there. As I approached him, he smiled at me, and then he stood up and started crying and walked toward me,” Walton said.
- The boys’ mother, a Louisiana resident, has been arrested in Mississippi and faces murder and other charges, accused of abandoning the children in Louisiana, authorities said Thursday.
- Walton, meanwhile, told KADN he didn’t feel like he was a hero. “I just feel it was God’s will for me to be in the right place at the right time”
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Important Takeaways:
- Orban, a longtime Trump supporter, also visited Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing in the past two weeks on a self-styled ‘peace mission’ to end the Russia-Ukraine war which has angered Hungary’s NATO allies.
- Orban’s so-called peace initiative has irked many members of the European Union, whose rotating presidency Hungary took over at the start of this month.
- Hungary’s Viktor Orban has met with former US President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida where they discussed the “possibilities of peace”, the latest stop in the prime minister’s solo run to secure a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war.
- “It was an honor to visit President [Donald Trump] at Mar-a-Lago today. We discussed ways to make peace. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!” Orban said on X.
- On Friday, Germany’s foreign ministry said Orban had already caused damage in the first 12 days of his country’s rotating EU presidency.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said he was not informed by Orban of his onward trip to Russia, has dismissed the prime minister’s ambition of playing the peacemaker.
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Important Takeaways:
- The United States on Thursday announced a new security package for Ukraine worth $225 million, which includes a Patriot missile battery, additional ammunition for high-mobility artillery rocket systems and missiles, among other items.
- Washington, Ukraine’s biggest supporter, has provided more than $50 billion in military aid since 2022 when the Russian invasion began.
- U.S. legislation was approved in April that provided $61 billion in funding to Ukraine.
- “We will stay with you, period,” U.S. President Joe Biden told Zelenskiy ahead of a bilateral meeting at the NATO summit in Washington.
- Ukraine has repeatedly called on partners to provide more help with air defense as it faces attacks from Russia on cities and energy infrastructure.
- Zelenskiy said last week he wanted to double Ukraine’s air defense capacity over the summer.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Israeli military expanded its evacuation order to the whole of Gaza City on Wednesday after sending tens of thousands of Palestinians fleeing from several of the city’s neighborhoods earlier this week.
- It also issued a notice saying it will be suspending inspections along two roads in Gaza City, in the north of the Gaza Strip, to allow civilians to reach humanitarian zones more easily and quickly as the city “will remain a dangerous combat zone.”
- The IDF has been issuing evacuation orders affecting large parts of Gaza City since Sunday, urging 250,000 residents to head to “safe zones” further south, in Deir al-Balah and al-Zawaida.
- The IDF has said that evacuation orders are necessary so that civilians don’t get caught up in its renewed operations in areas where Hamas is seeking to re-establish a presence. The IDF insists it goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties.
- Hamas has said the evacuations threaten to return negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage deal to “point zero.”
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Important Takeaways:
- At least 28 heat-related deaths have occurred in the West this month.
- At least 19 cities have broken their all-time high temperature records in the past week, including Las Vegas, which hit 120 degrees on Sunday for the first time in its history.
- In Houston, Texas, a million electrical customers remain without power for the fourth straight day since Hurricane Beryl barreled into the city.
- Remnants of Beryl brought up to six inches of rain on Wednesday evening from northern New York state to Vermont and New Hampshire, flooding neighborhoods and prompting evacuations.
- At least three tornadoes were reported in New York state on Wednesday, including an EF-1 twister near Buffalo that packed 110 mph winds, according to the NWS.
- In Vermont, heavy rain from the remnants of Beryl caused flash flooding in several cities, including Barre and Lyndonville, where multiple roads were closed due to flooding, officials said.
- By Sunday, the heat will return to the East Coast with temperatures in the 90s from Boston to Washington, D.C. Combined with the heat index, temperatures on the East Coast will feel above 100 degrees into next week, according to the National Weather Service.
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Important Takeaways:
- Organizers didn’t submit all the required paperwork for the measure to appear on the November ballot, Secretary of State John Thurston said.
- “By contrast, other sponsors of initiative petitions complied with this requirement. Therefore, I must reject your submission,” wrote Thurston, a Republican.
- Rebecca Bobrow, a spokesperson for Arkansans for Limited Government, said that the group “will fight this ridiculous disqualification attempt with everything we have.”
- Arkansas is one of 11 states where organizers formally launched efforts to place pro-abortion-rights amendments on their fall ballots.
- The measures are officially on the ballots in six states: Colorado, Maryland, Florida, South Dakota, Nevada and New York. Organizers in four more — Arizona, Missouri, Montana and Nebraska — have submitted signatures, but further steps remain before those initiatives are certified to appear on the ballots.
- Arkansans for Limited Government — unlike the coalitions fighting for similar measures in other states — does not have any support or backing from major national abortion-rights groups, such as Planned Parenthood, which has said the measure does not go far enough in its goals of expanding abortion access.
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Important Takeaways:
- Biden spoke forcefully and fluently about foreign policy, one of his favorite subjects.
- He gave detailed responses about his work to preserve NATO and his plans for a second term.
- Perhaps Biden’s biggest slip-up in the press conference came early on when he referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump,” in saying he picked her because he believed she could beat Trump.
- The press conference ended with Biden being asked directly whether he’d step down for Harris if he saw polling showing she had a better chance of beating Trump. “No, unless they come back and said there’s no way you can win,” Biden responded. Then he added, in a stage whisper, “No poll’s saying that.”
- Overall, his presentation was a reminder that people are focused on him now with an almost clinical eye toward possible slip-ups and mistakes, the kind of pressure that is unlikely to go away for as long as Biden insists he’ll stay in the race.
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Important Takeaways:
- Netanyahu hardened his own positions on the border issue in a speech on Thursday, insisting Israel maintain control of the territory immediately along the border — known as the Philadelphi corridor — and the Rafah border crossing.
- He added that any deal must allow Israel to return to fighting in Gaza until all war objectives are achieved.
- Netanyahu added that he won’t agree to the return of armed Hamas militants to the northern Gaza Strip and said he will insist that a maximum number of live hostages be released in the first phase of the deal.
- The Israeli official involved in the talks said the prime minister does want a deal, but is willing to push talks to the brink.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia is preparing military countermeasures in response to the planned American deployment of longer-range missiles in Germany, the Russian deputy foreign minister said on Thursday, adding that the U.S. move was “destructive to regional safety and strategic stability.”
- “Without nerves, without emotions, we will develop a military response, first of all, to this new game,” the deputy minister, Sergei A. Ryabkov, told Interfax, a Russian news agency.
- In a separate comment published by the Russian Foreign Ministry, Mr. Ryabkov said that Moscow had anticipated the decision and that Russia had started preparing “compensating countermeasures” in advance.
- In a joint statement, the United States and Germany said Washington would begin “episodic deployments” of the missiles in Germany in 2026, including those that are “significantly longer range” than the ones currently deployed throughout Europe.
- The statement said that the periodic deployments would be preparation for “an enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future.” Ultimately, the weapons will include nonnuclear SM-6 missiles, Tomahawk cruise missiles and developmental hypersonic weapons, the statement said.
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Important Takeaways:
- Poland needs to prepare its soldiers for all-out conflict, its armed forces chief of staff said on Wednesday, as the country boosts the number of troops on its border with Russia and Belarus.
- Poland’s relations with Russia and its ally Belarus have deteriorated sharply since Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into neighboring Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, starting a war that is still being fought.
- “Today, we need to prepare our forces for full-scale conflict, not an asymmetric-type conflict,” army chief of staff General Wieslaw Kukula told a press conference.
- “This forces us to find a good balance between the border mission and maintaining the intensity of training in the army,” he said.
- Speaking at the same event, deputy defense minister Pawel Bejda said that as of August, the number of troops guarding Poland’s eastern border would be increased to 8,000 from the current 6,000, with an additional rearguard of 9,000 able to step up within 48 hours notice.
- The size of the armed forces stood at about 190,000 personnel at the end of last year, including ground, air, naval, special forces and territorial defense forces. Poland plans to increase this to 300,000 troops within a few years.
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