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The Kerch Bridge connecting the Crimean peninsula to Russia has been closed after explosions in the early hours of this morning killed two people and injured a child.
The heavily guarded road and rail link is among the Kremlin’s most important and high-prestige infrastructure projects, and the only overland link that goes directly from Russia to occupied Crimea.
Video published by the pro-Kremlin Crimea 24 channel, taken from the adjacent railway bridge, showed a section of the road bridge had sheared off and was sloping towards the Black Sea.
There were reports of explosions at about 3am local time, and cars heading for the bridge were stopped early on Monday morning, after the head of the Russian-controlled administration in Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said there was an “emergency situation” on the 145th pillar of the bridge.
What has Ukraine said about the attack? Ukrainian media outlets cited unnamed sources suggesting the Ukrainian domestic security service, along with the navy, had been responsible for the attack. A Ukrainian security service source told AFP: “Today’s attack on the Crimean Bridge is a special operation of the SBU and the navy … It was difficult to reach the bridge, but in the end it was possible to do it.”
Rightwing disinformation on Plan B vending machines at colleges ‘harmful to young lives’
The headlines warned parents of an unspeakable horror on college campuses – something even more dangerous to their precious children than left-leaning curricula. “Abortion vending machines are appearing on college campuses,” one stated. “Abortions pills available by vending machine at 39 US colleges,” said another.
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life America, wrote that there was a “recent obsession with putting Plan B vending machines on college and university campuses as some kind of miracle drug in a post-Roe America”.
“An anti-baby, anti-family bias permeates many campuses exposing students to risks and dangers they are either not told about or told to ignore.” The “casual distribution of Plan B”, Hawkins also wrote, exposes young women “to dangerous people, to unknown physical consequences, and to the current epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)”.
The conservative backlash against Plan B vending machines stems from an influx of colleges installing them on campuses – at least 39 with more to come – amid post-Roe v Wade abortion restrictions. Advocates worry that criticism and disinformation could stymie access to emergency contraception.
How does Plan B work? “Plan B is an emergency contraceptive,” said Kelly Cleland, executive director of the American Society for Emergency Contraception. “Plan B works by preventing or delaying ovulation. If you miss the point in the cycle to prevent ovulation, it doesn’t work. It’s different from the abortion pill in that Plan B prevents pregnancy from ever happening and medication abortion is used to end a pregnancy after somebody already has an established pregnancy.”
Millions in US, Europe and Asia under warnings amid severe heat
More than 100 million people, about a third of Americans, were under extreme heat advisories this weekend and that record-breaking heat was expected to continue into this week.
There were advisories from coast to coast, with the south-west and parts of the west hard hit and officials warning that conditions could get worse in Arizona, California and Nevada.
Meanwhile, parts of Europe and Asia are preparing for scorching heat today that threatens to break records, drive wildfires and has prompted health warnings and evacuations.
Europe could record its hottest ever temperature this week on Italy’s islands of Sicily and Sardinia where a high of 48C (118F) is predicted, the European Space Agency said, while Japan has issued heatstroke alerts affecting tens of millions of people, as near-record high temperatures hit several parts of the country, with other areas pummelled by torrential rain.
What else is happening? The US’s climate envoy, John Kerry, said it was “imperative that China and the United States make real progress” in the four months before the Cop28 global climate talks in Dubai, as he met his counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, in the Chinese capital on Monday. He also urged China to partner with the US to cut methane emissions and reduce the climate impact of coal-fired power.
In other news …
Twitter’s cashflow remains negative because of a near 50% drop in advertising revenue and a heavy debt load, Elon Musk admitted, falling short of his expectation in March that Twitter could be cashflow positive by June. In a tweet, he said he did not see the increase in advertising revenue that had been expected in June.
Microsoft has signed a binding agreement to ensure that the Call of Duty video game franchise will remain available on Sony’s PlayStation platform after Microsoft’s $69bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the tech company said yesterday, easing concerns from Sony and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Lionel Messi followed in the footsteps of Dwyane Wade, Dan Marino and LeBron James yesterday as he was unveiled as Inter Miami’s latest sporting superstar. His first official appearance as aplayer was televised live, and took place in front of thousands of cheering fans.
Student journalists in Indonesia are facing a backlash after reporting on sexual harassment on campus. The students say they are being targeted with expulsion, physical assault and death threats after publishing a damning piece on the prevalence of sexual harassment at the Ambon Islamic State Institute.
Hundreds of women who have been imprisoned have, with human rights organisations, lawyers and activists, written an open letter calling on the organisers of a high-level conference in Rwanda this week to include female incarceration as a key topic due to the alarming rise in women in prison.
Stat of the day: Taylor Swift becomes first woman to have four albums in US Top 10 at once
Taylor Swift has become the first woman, and only the third artist ever, to have four albums in the Top 10 of the US album chart simultaneously, while also beating a record set by Barbra Streisand to become the female artist with the most No 1 albums in history. The 33-year-old’s latest album, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), has debuted at the top spot on the Billboard 200 with 716,000 album-equivalent units – a figure that combines physical sales with digital sales and streaming figures. It is the largest week for any album in 2023 and the best since her previous album, Midnights, was released last October. Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) is joined in the Top 10 by Midnights at No 5, Lover at No 7 and Folklore at No 10. This makes Swift the first woman to have four albums in the Top 10 at the same time since the charts began in 1963, and the first living act to do so since 1966, when the US trumpeter Herb Alpert achieved the same record.
Don’t miss this: ‘We used to check every day, now it’s every minute’ – how we got addicted to weather apps
One day in 2020, close to the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Matt Rickett realized he was checking weather apps all the time. He immediately understood why: “Everything felt so unpredictable, so out of control,” he says. “Just knowing that something was going to happen, tomorrow, that people said was gonna happen, was reassuring.” The next year Rickett, who lives in Austin, Texas, decided to stop using social media: “I didn’t like the control it had over my life,” he says. “But I still had the energy, the need to look at my phone, for some reason. So I got even more into weather.”
He checks apps roughly every couple of hours. After much trial and error, he’s decided he likes Weather Underground and Forca the best. He also uses apps’ radar functions to try to track storms and precipitation. As unprecedented weather leads to increasing climate anxiety, more of us have become addicted to weather apps, like Rickett.
Climate check: big oil quietly walks back on climate pledges as global heat records tumble
It was probably the Earth’s hottest week in history earlier this month, following the warmest June on record, and top scientists agree that the planet will get even hotter unless we phase out fossil fuels. Yet leading energy companies are intent on pushing the world in the opposite direction, expanding fossil fuel production and insisting that there is no alternative. It is evidence that they are motivated not by record warming, but by record profits, experts say. “The fossil fuel industry has massively profited from selling a dangerous product and now innocent people and governments across the globe are paying the price for their recklessness,” Naomi Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard University who studies the oil industry, said. Oil majors have, over the past several years, rolled out pledges to decrease oil and gas production and slash their emissions, citing concerns about the climate crisis. But more recently, many have walked those plans back.
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