People are flocking to pools, beaches and cooling centers in a swath of the Midwest and South spanning from northern Florida to the Great Lakes, as a heat wave pushed temperatures into the 90s and beyond and may have caused the deaths of at least two people in the Milwaukee area. The National Weather Service maintained an excessive heat warning through Wednesday evening for most of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, which have been dealing with the sticky humidity and soaring temperatures since Tuesday. And the heat advisory in place for the Midwest and South stretched all the way eastward to the South Carolina shoreline, covering an area that is home to roughly a third of the country’s population. The Jan. 6 committee is plunging into Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to salvage the 2020 election by pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the electoral count — powers Pence didn't have. Thursday's hearing is expected to focus on how Trump latched onto a strategy from conservative law professor John Eastman to pressure Pence days before the vice president was to preside over the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.
Testimony is expected from the vice president’s counsel, Greg Jacob, and a retired federal judge, Michael Luttig, who called the plan “incorrect at every turn.”
Two U.S. veterans from Alabama who were in Ukraine assisting in the war against Russia haven’t been heard from in days and are missing. Members of the state's congressional delegation say relatives of 27-year-old Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh of Trinity and 39-year-old Alexander Drueke of Tuscaloosa have been in contact with Capitol Hill offices seeking information about the men’s whereabouts.
The U.S. State Department says it is looking into reports that Russian or Russian-backed separatist forces in Ukraine had captured at least two American citizens. If confirmed, they would be the first Americans fighting for Ukraine known to have been captured since the war began Feb. 24.
After five weeks of declining coronavirus deaths, the number of fatalities reported globally increased by 4% last week, according to the World Health Organization. In its weekly assessment of the pandemic issued on Thursday, the U.N. health agency said there were 8,700 COVID-19 deaths last week, with a 21% jump in the Americas and a 17% increase in the Western Pacific.
WHO said coronavirus cases continued to fall, with about 3.2 million new cases reported last week, extending a decline in COVID-19 infections since a peak in January.