Good morning.
Forty-six people were found dead and 16 others were taken to hospital after being found inside a tractor-trailer rig yesterday on a remote back road in south-west San Antonio, Texas officials have said.
The discovery may prove to be the deadliest tragedy among thousands of people who have died attempting to cross the US border from Mexico in recent decades.
A city worker at the scene was alerted by a cry for help shortly before 6pm yesterday, police chief William McManus said. Officers arrived to find a body on the ground outside the trailer and a partially opened gate to the vehicle, he said.
Sixteen people were taken to hospital with heat-related illnesses, of which 12 were adults and four were children, said a fire chief, Charles Hood. The patients were hot to the touch and dehydrated, and no water or air conditioning was found in the trailer, he said.
Has anyone been arrested? Three people were taken into custody but it was unclear if they were connected to human trafficking, McManus said. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have launched a federal investigation into the deaths, with support of local police and the border force.
What else do we know? Here’s everything we know about the trailer truck deaths so far.
Louisiana judge blocks abortion ban amid uproar after Roe v Wade ruling
A Louisiana judge on Monday temporarily stopped the state from enforcing Republican-backed laws banning abortion, about take effect after the US supreme court ended the constitutional right to the procedure last week.
Louisiana is one of 13 states that passed “trigger laws” to ban or severely restrict abortions once the supreme court overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that recognized a right to the procedure. It did so on Friday, stoking uproar among progressives, with protests and counter-protests on the streets of major cities.
In New Orleans on Monday, an Orleans parish civil district court judge, Robin Giarrusso, issued a temporary restraining order, blocking the state ban.
The case before Judge Giarrusso, a Democrat, was brought by Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, one of three abortion clinics in Louisiana. “We’re going to do what we can,” Kathaleen Pittman, administrator of Hope Medical Group, told the Associated Press. “It [the work of the clinic] could all come to a screeching halt.”
What’s happening in California? California voters will decide in November whether to guarantee the right to an abortion in their state constitution.
What has Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said about the supreme court justices? The congresswoman says Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch lied under oath to Congress about their views on Roe.
21 people still missing after Kremenchuk shopping centre attack
At least 21 people are still missing after a Russian missile hit a crowded shopping centre in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk yesterday, Ukrainian prosecutors said.
About 18 people are believed to have been killed. Military personnel, volunteers, firefighters and police have been working non-stop to recover bodies from the rubble. Authorities estimated there were between 200 and 1,000 people inside the mall that afternoon. Many managed to flee to a nearby bomb shelter when they heard the air raid sirens but others did not make it in time and remained trapped in the building.
“I left the building two minutes before the explosion,’’ said Yevhenia Semyonova, 38, a shop assistant at a sportswear shop. “My colleagues who are working in bigger stores, like the supermarket for example, had to wait for the customers to get out before they could leave. We were lucky, because there were no customers in our store during the alarm.”
What has Russia said about the attack? Russia’s ministry of defence has claimed that the fire in the shopping mall was caused by “the detonation of stored ammunition for western weapons”. No evidence was offered to back up the claim.
In other news …
The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is closely focused on phone calls and conversations among Donald Trump’s children and top aides captured by a documentary film-maker weeks before the 2020 election, say sources familiar with the matter.
Ghislaine Maxwell is scheduled to be sentenced this morning in her New York sex-trafficking case, six months after a jury found the British socialite guilty of luring teenage girls into Jeffrey Epstein’s orbit for him to abuse. Maxwell, 60, faces up to 55 years in prison.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has urged G7 leaders gathered in Germany to help end the war in Ukraine by winter as they planned new economic measures against Russia and vowed to “stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes”.
Israel has eased its regulations on abortion access, in what the health minister said was a response to last week’s “sad” US supreme court ruling overturning Roe v Wade. The new rules, approved by a parliamentary committee, grant women access to abortion pills through Israel’s universal health system.
Stat of the day: there have been at least 67 instances in which Scottish bills were vetted by the Queen
A Scottish government memo obtained by the Guardian reveals that “it is almost certain” draft laws have been secretly changed to secure the Queen’s approval. Under an arcane mechanism, the monarch is routinely given advance sight of proposed laws that could affect her personal property and public powers. In Scotland, where the procedure is known as crown consent, research by the Guardian identified at least 67 instances in which Scottish bills were vetted by the Queen.
Don’t miss this: why we love to track our watching and reading habits
For millions of people, religiously tracking their cultural intake has become as instinctive as recording their steps, workouts, calorie count or periods. Letterboxd – dubbed “the social network for film-lovers”, who can log, review and discuss films with other members – recently hit 6 million members. The Amazon-owned GoodReads, which has been doing the same for books for the past 15 years, has a community of 140 million. But does “gamification” get in the way of actually enjoying the arts?
Climate check: climate crisis clear in many extreme events but social factors also key, study finds
The climate crisis is to blame for most heatwaves recorded worldwide but its relationship with other extreme events and their effect on society is less clear, according to a study. “I think on the one hand we overestimate climate change because it’s now quite common that every time an extreme event happens, there is a big assumption that climate change is playing a big role, which is not always the case,” said Friederike Otto, one of the lead authors of the research.
Last Thing: blow for Trump’s Truth Social as merger company hit by grand jury subpoenas
A US federal grand jury has issued subpoenas to the board members of the company merging with Donald Trump’s social media company, Truth Social. The disclosure by Digital World Acquisition Corporation is the latest blow to Trump’s plans to take his Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) public. Truth Social was launched after Trump was banned from Twitter, where he had more than 88 million followers. Trump currently has 3.37 million followers on Truth Social.
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