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Abortion bans that were put on the books in some states in the event Roe v. Wade was overturned started automatically taking effect Friday, while clinics elsewhere — including Alabama, Texas and West Virginia — stopped performing abortions for fear of prosecution, sending women away in tears. “Some patients broke down and could not speak through their sobbing,” said Katie Quinonez, executive director of West Virginia’s lone abortion clinic, whose staff spent the day calling dozens of patients to cancel their appointments. “Some patients were stunned and didn’t know what to say. Some patients did not understand what was happening.” America was convulsed with anger, joy, fear and confusion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. The canyon-like divide across the U.S. over the right to terminate a pregnancy was on full display, with abortion rights supporters calling it a dark day in history, while abortion foes welcomed the ruling as the answer to their prayers. Women who traveled across state lines to end a pregnancy found themselves immediately thwarted in some places as abortions were halted as a result of state laws that were triggered by the court decision or confusion over when those laws would take effect.  In eliminating the constitutional right to abortion that has stood for a half-century, the high court left the politically charged issue up to the states, about half of which are now likely to ban the procedure. Also read: Fighting Texas abortion law could be tough for federal gov’t Abortions were immediately halted in nine states. Providers in two other states, Oklahoma and South Dakota, had already stopped performing the procedure in the past month. About 73 million people live in the 11 states where the procedure was not available — more than a fifth of the U.S. population. The reaction across the country largely fell along predictable political lines. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat in a state where abortions are available with few restrictions, called the ruling a “war on women” and vowed to stand as a “brick wall” to help preserve the right. Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin vowed to seek a ban on abortions after 15 weeks. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a conservative Republican widely considered a potential candidate for president in 2024, tweeted: “The Supreme Court has answered the prayers of millions upon millions of Americans.” The issue is certain to intensify the fall election season. Both sides intend to use the issue to energize supporters and get them to vote. “This country is lurching to the right, taking away rights. The voters are going to have to intervene,” said Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, the U.S. House majority whip. Some states, including Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri, had “trigger law” bans on the books that went into effect as soon as Roe fell. In Alabama, the state’s three abortion clinics stopped performing the procedure for fear providers would now be prosecuted under a law dating to 1951. At the Alabama Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives in Huntsville, the staff had to tell women in the waiting room Friday morning that they could not perform any more abortions that day. Some had come from as far away as Texas for an appointment. “A lot of them just started breaking down crying. Can you imagine if you had driven 12 hours to receive this care in this state and you are not able to?” clinic owner Dalton Johnson said. Patients were given a list of out-of-state places still doing abortions. Abortion providers across Arizona likewise stopped doing procedures while they try to determine if a law dating to pre-statehood days — before 1912 — means doctors and nurses will face prison time now. In Texas, providers wondered which law they had to follow: a 1925 ban, a 2021 law that limits abortions to the first six weeks of pregnancy, or a trigger law that bans the procedure outright, but wouldn’t take effect for a month or more. The confusion led them to suspend abortions while they seek legal advice. Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton warned they could face immediate prosecution for performing abortions under the Prohibition-era ban, which carries two to five years in prison. It was the risk of prosecution under a 19th-century abortion ban punishable by prison that led the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia to stop performing the procedure. West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican, said he will not hesitate to call the Legislature into special session if the ban needs to be clarified. In Ohio, a federal judge dissolved an injunction, allowing a 2019 state law to take effect banning most abortions at the first detectable fetal heartbeat. The high court ruling drew strong reactions around the country. Carol E. Tracy, the executive director of the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia, was “absolutely furious.” “They want women to be barefoot and pregnant once again,” she said. “But I have no doubt that women and like-minded men, and people in the LGBTQ community, who are also at great risk, ... we’re going to fight back. I think it’s going to be a long, hard fight.” Garrett Bess, who works with a lobbying arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation, said his group will continue to press states to restrict abortion. “We’ll be working with grassroots Americans to ensure the protection of pregnant mothers and babies,” Bess said outside the Supreme Court. “This has been a long time coming, and it’s a welcome decision.” Opinion polls show that a majority of Americans favor preserving Roe. They include Alison Dreith, 41, an abortion activist in southern Illinois, where the governor has vowed to keep the procedure accessible. She said she fears for the safety of abortion workers, especially those who help people from states where the procedure is banned. Dreith works with the Midwest Action Coalition, which offers gas money, child care and other practical support to women seeking abortions. “I absolutely believe that they will try to come after me. I’m not built for prison, but I’m ready,” she said, “and I say, ‘Let’s do this.’ You want to pick that fight with me? I’m fighting back.” People on both sides of the emotional issue took to the streets to protest or rejoice, gathering in parks, on steps of state Capitols, on sidewalks outside courthouses and at abortion clinics. In Omaha, Nebraska, about 50 abortion opponents rallied at a federal courthouse, vowing to pressure lawmakers to outlaw the procedure. A few miles away, more than 1,000 abortion-rights supporters lined a busy street and a bridge overlooking traffic at rush hour, saying they would try to keep abortion legal in the state despite its heavy conservative leanings. They held up signs and shouted as passing motorists honked. In Little Rock, Arkansas, a man in a crowd of more than 100 people held up a sign that said “Abort the Supreme Court.” Outside Planned Parenthood in St. Louis, Missouri, abortion foes held a victory celebration. “I never thought I would live to see this day,” said Mary McMahan, 64, who has been active in the movement since childhood and has spent many hours on the sidewalk outside the clinic praying. “But here it is. Thank God it is here.” Emma Garland, 18, of Freeburg, Illinois, showed up to support Planned Parenthood, saying she was scared her rights were being “stripped away.” “I thought we had more faith in our country as a whole not to overturn it, but we lost that faith today,” Garland said.

The House sent President Joe Biden the widest ranging gun violence bill Congress has passed in decades Friday, a measured compromise that at once illustrates progress on the long-intractable issue and the deep-seated partisan divide that persists. The Democratic-led chamber approved the election-year legislation on a mostly party-line 234-193 vote, capping a spurt of action prompted by voters’ revulsion over last month’s mass shootings in New York and Texas. The Senate approved the measure late Thursday by a bipartisan 65-33 margin. The White House said Biden would sign the bill and deliver remarks on it Saturday morning. Every House Democrat and 14 Republicans — six of whom won’t be in Congress next year — voted for the measure. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., underscored its significance to her party by taking the unusual step of presiding over the vote and announcing the result from the podium, to huzzahs from rank-and-file Democrats on the chamber’s floor. Among Republicans backing the legislation was Rep. Liz Cheney of gun-friendly Wyoming, who has broken sharply with her party’s leaders and is helping lead the House investigation into last year’s Capitol insurrection by supporters of then-President Donald Trump. In a statement, she said that “as a mother and a constitutional conservative,” she believed the bill would curb violence and enhance safety, adding: “Nothing in the bill restricts the rights of responsible gun owners. Period.” READ: School massacre continues Texas’ grim run of mass shootings Impossible to ignore was the juxtaposition of the week’s gun votes with a pair of jarring Supreme Court decisions on two of the nation’s most incendiary culture war issues. The justices on Thursday struck down a New York law that has restricted peoples’ ability to carry concealed weapons, and Friday it overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the protection for abortion that case had ensured for a half-century. The bill, crafted by senators from both parties, would incrementally toughen requirements for young people to buy guns, deny firearms from more domestic abusers and help local authorities temporarily take weapons from people judged to be dangerous. Most of its $13 billion cost would go to bolster mental health programs and for schools, which have been targeted in Newtown, Connecticut, Parkland, Florida and many other infamous massacres. It omits far tougher restrictions Democrats have long championed like a ban on assault-type weapons and background checks for all gun transactions, but is the most impactful firearms violence measure Congress has approved since enacting a now-expired assault weapons ban in 1993. The legislation was a direct result of the slaying of 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, exactly one month ago, and the killing of 10 Black shoppers days earlier in Buffalo, New York. Lawmakers returned from their districts after those shootings saying constituents were demanding congressional action, a vehemence many felt could not be ignored. “This gives our community the sorely needed hope that we have been crying out for, for years and years and years,” Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Ga., whose 17-year-old son was shot dead in 2012 by a man complaining his music was too loud, told supporters outside the Capitol. “Understand and know that this bill does not answer all of our prayers, but this is hope.” Speaking haltingly, Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., said he was backing the bill for his father, shot to death 30 years ago to the day, the 58 people killed in a 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas “and so many other Americans who are victims and survivors of gun violence.” For conservatives who dominate the House GOP, it came down to the Constitution’s Second Amendment right for people to have firearms, a protection key for many voters who own guns. “Today they’re coming after our Second Amendment liberties, and who knows what it will be tomorrow,” Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the House Judiciary Committee’s top Republican, said of Democrats. Pelosi said with Thursday’s gun ruling by the justices, “the Trump-McConnell court is implicitly endorsing the tragedy of mass shootings and daily gun deaths plaguing our nation.” That was a reference to the balance-tipping three conservative justices appointed by Trump and confirmed by a Senate that was run by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. But House Republicans used the gun debate to praise both court decisions. “What a great day for the babies, and as the speaker described it, the Trump-McConnell Supreme Court,” said Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Wis. Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., said the firearms decision has “electrified the country and left radicals seething — the Constitution means what it says.” In the Senate, every Democrat and 15 Republicans backed the compromise. Just two of those GOP senators face reelection next year. But overall, fewer than one-third of GOP senators and just 1-in-15 House Republicans supported the measure. That means the fate of future congressional action on guns seems dubious, even as the GOP is expected to win House and possibly Senate control in the November elections. McConnell kept careful tabs on the negotiations that produced the bill and voted for it, partly in hopes it would attract moderate suburban voters whose support the GOP will need in its November bid for Senate control. In contrast, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and other GOP leaders of the more conservative House opposed it. The legislation was opposed by firearms groups like the National Rifle Association. But groups backing gun curbs like Brady and Everytown for Gun Safety weren’t the only ones backing it. Support also came from the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The talks that produced the bill were led by Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Thom Tillis, R-N.C. Under the compromise, background checks for gun buyers age 18 to 20 will now include an examination of their local juvenile records. The accused shooters in Uvalde and Buffalo were both 18. People convicted of domestic abuse who are current or former romantic partners of the victim — not simply spouses or people who lived or had children with the person they abused — will be prohibited from acquiring firearms. That closes the so-called “boyfriend loophole.” There will be money to help states enforce “red flag” laws that help authorities temporarily take guns from people considered threatening and for other states’ violence prevention programs. More people who sell weapons would have to become federally licensed gun dealers and need to conduct background checks. Penalties for gun trafficking are strengthened, billions of dollars are provided for behavioral health clinics and school mental health programs and there’s money for school safety initiatives, though not for personnel to use a “dangerous weapon.”  

Eighteen Africans seeking to cross into Spain were killed and scores of migrants and police were injured in what Moroccan authorities called a “stampede” of people surging across Morocco’s border fence with the Spanish North African enclave of Melilla on Friday. A total of 133 migrants breached the border between the Moroccan city of Nador and Melilla on Friday, the first such mass crossing since Spain and Morocco mended diplomatic relations last month. A spokesperson for the Spanish government’s office in Melilla said about 2,000 people attempted to cross, but many were stopped by Spanish Civil Guard police and Moroccan forces on either side of the border fence. Morocco’s Interior Ministry said in a statement that the casualties occurred when people tried to climb the iron fence. It said five migrants were killed and 76 injured, and 140 Moroccan security officers were injured. READ: Nigeria attacks: Hundreds reported killed as bandits target villages Thirteen of the injured migrants later died in the hospital, raising the death toll to 18, according to Morocco’s official news agency MAP., which cited local authorities. The Moroccan Human Rights Association reported 27 dead but the figure could immediately be confirmed. Spanish officials said 49 Civil Guards sustained minor injuries. Four police vehicles were damaged by rocks thrown by some migrants. Those who succeeded in crossing went to a local migrant center, where authorities were evaluating their circumstances. People fleeing poverty and violence sometimes make mass attempts to reach Melilla and the other Spanish territory on the North African coast, Ceuta, as a springboard to continental Europe. Spain normally relies on Morocco to keep migrants away from the border. Over two days at the beginning of March, more than 3,500 people tried to scale the six-meter (20-foot) barrier that surrounds Melilla and nearly 1,000 made it across, according to Spanish authorities. Friday’s crossings were the first attempt since relations between Spain and Morocco improved in March after a year-long dispute centered on the Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony annexed by Morocco in 1976. Morocco loosened its controls around Ceuta last year, allowing thousands of migrants to cross into Spain. The move was viewed as retaliation for Spain’s decision to allow the leader of Western Sahara’s pro-independence movement to be treated for COVID-19 at a Spanish hospital. Tensions between the two countries began to thaw earlier this year after Spain backed Morocco’s plan to grant more autonomy to Western Sahara, where activists are seeking full independence

The real-life effects of shutdowns of the internet on people's lives and human rights are vastly underestimated, according to the UN human rights office. When major communication channels and networks are slowed down or blocked, this means thousands, even millions of people are deprived of their only means of reaching loved ones, medical assistance, and participating in political debates or decisions, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) report published Thursday said. "When you see a shutdown happen, it's time to start worrying about human rights," Peggy Hicks, director of the Thematic Engagement, Special Procedures and Right to Development Division of the OHCHR, said. Shutdowns deepen digital divides between and within countries and are happening in places where there are deteriorating human rights situations, Peggy added. At a time when substantial development aid is directed towards enhancing connectivity in less developed countries, some of the beneficiaries of that assistance are themselves deepening the digital divide through shutdowns. At least 27 of the 46 least developed countries implemented shutdowns between 2016 and 2021 despite receiving support to increase their Internet connectivity, Peggy said. The first major internet shutdown took place in Egypt in 2011, during the Tahrir Square protests that led to hundreds of arrests and killings. Shutdowns can mean a complete block on internet connectivity, but governments also increasingly ban access to major communication platforms and limit bandwidth and mobile services to 2G transfer speeds, making it difficult to share and watch videos or live picture broadcasts. Many states refuse to acknowledge interfering in communications or putting pressure on telecom companies to prevent them from sharing information. The official justification for the shutdowns was unknown in 228 cases reported by civil society across 55 countries. When authorities recognise having ordered disruptions, justifications often point to public safety, containing the spread of hostility or violence, or combating disinformation. Yet, shutdowns often achieve the exact opposite. According to Peggy, "199 shutdowns were justified by public safety concerns, and 150 were based on national security grounds. But many of those shutdowns were followed by spikes in violence." When a state shuts down the internet, both people and economies suffer. The costs to jobs, education, healthcare, and political participation virtually always exceed any hoped-for benefit. "We call on states to stop doing this, stop imposing shutdowns. Shutdowns are simply never the best answer. Their costs are simply too great to economies, democracy, and people's daily lives," Peggy said. Also read: The limits of analog censorship in a digital era

Nearly 20 million lives were saved by COVID-19 vaccines during their first year, but even more deaths could have been prevented if international targets for the shots had been reached, researchers reported Thursday. On Dec. 8, 2020, a retired shop clerk in England received the first shot in what would become a global vaccination campaign. Over the next 12 months, more than 4.3 billion people around the world lined up for the vaccines. The effort, though marred by persisting inequities, prevented deaths on an unimaginable scale, said Oliver Watson of Imperial College London, who led the new modeling study. Read: WTO holds big meeting to tackle vaccines, food shortages “Catastrophic would be the first word that comes to mind,” Watson said of the outcome if vaccines hadn't been available to fight the coronavirus. The findings “quantify just how much worse the pandemic could have been if we did not have these vaccines." The researchers used data from 185 countries to estimate that vaccines prevented 4.2 million COVID-19 deaths in India, 1.9 million in the United States, 1 million in Brazil, 631,000 in France and 507,000 in the United Kingdom. An additional 600,000 deaths would have been prevented if the World Health Organization target of 40% vaccination coverage by the end of 2021 had been met, according to the study published Thursday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases. The main finding — 19.8 million COVID-19 deaths were prevented — is based on estimates of how many more deaths than usual occurred during the time period. Using only reported COVID-19 deaths, the same model yielded 14.4 million deaths averted by vaccines. The London scientists excluded China because of uncertainty around the pandemic’s effect on deaths there and its huge population. The study has other limitations. The researchers did not include how the virus might have mutated differently in the absence of vaccines. And they did not factor in how lockdowns or mask wearing might have changed if vaccines weren’t available. Another modeling group used a different approach to estimate that 16.3 million COVID-19 deaths were averted by vaccines. That work, by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, has not been published. Read: COVID-19: Urgent action sought to close vaccine equity gap In the real world, people wear masks more often when cases are surging, said the institute's Ali Mokdad, and 2021's delta wave without vaccines would have prompted a major policy response. “We may disagree on the number as scientists, but we all agree that COVID vaccines saved lots of lives," Mokdad said. The findings underscore both the achievements and the shortcomings of the vaccination campaign, said Adam Finn of Bristol Medical School in England, who like Mokdad was not involved in the study. “Although we did pretty well this time — we saved millions and millions of lives — we could have done better and we should do better in the future," Finn said. Funding came from several groups including the WHO; the UK Medical Research Council; Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The conflict in Ukraine has “sounded an alarm for humanity,” Chinese leader Xi Jinping said Wednesday, as China continues to assume a position of neutrality while backing its ally Russia. China has refused to criticize Russia’s war in Ukraine or even to refer to it as an invasion in deference to Moscow, while also condemning U.S.-led sanctions against Russia and accusing the West of provoking Moscow. “The Ukraine crisis has again sounded the alarm for humanity. Countries will surely end up in security hardships if they place blind faith in their positions of strength, expand military alliances, and seek their own safety at the expense of others,” the official Xinhua News Agency quoted Xi as saying. Xi, who did not propose any solutions, was speaking at the opening of a virtual business forum of the “BRICS” countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. In other comments, Xi said imposing sanctions could act as a “boomerang” and a “double-edged sword,” and that the global community would suffer from “politicizing, mechanizing and weaponizing” global economic trends and financial flows. Also Read: Ukraine and rising global insecurity, test for all: UN rights chief Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro maintained an unusual diplomatic tone in his brief recorded speech to the forum, exalting his administration’s results without naming any other country.  “The current international context is a cause for concern because of the risks to trade and investment flows to the stability of energy supply chains and investment,” he said. “Brazil’s response to these challenges is not to close itself off. On the contrary, we have sought to deepen our economic integration.” Xi also said China would seek to reduce the damage to international supply chains caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which it has confronted with a hard-line policy of lockdowns and quarantines, despite a diminishing number of cases and the increasing economic cost. China’s increasingly assertive foreign policy and drive to dominate global markets have prompted a backlash in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere, including calls to replace Chinese suppliers and reduce reliance on the Chinese economy. Xi called for nations to work together on such issues, saying efforts to “build a small courtyard with high walls” was in no one’s interest. “Economic globalization is an objective requirement for the development of productive forces and an irresistible historical trend,” Xi said. “Going backwards in history and trying to block other people’s road will only block your own road in the end,” he said.

The Uvalde school district’s police chief was put on leave Wednesday following allegations that he erred in his response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School that left 19 students and two teachers dead. Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Superintendent Hal Harrell said that he put schools police Chief Pete Arredondo on administrative leave because the facts of what happened remain unclear. In a statement, Harrell did not address Arredondo’s actions as on-site commander during the attack but said he didn’t know when details of federal, state and local investigations into the law enforcement response to the slayings would be revealed. “From the beginning of this horrible event, I shared that the district would wait until the investigation was complete before making personnel decisions,” Harrell said. “Because of the lack of clarity that remains and the unknown timing of when I will receive the results of the investigations, I have made the decision to place Chief Arredondo on administrative leave effective on this date.” A spokesperson for the Uvalde school district, Anne Marie Espinoza, declined to say whether Arredondo would continue to be paid while on leave. Read: Texas elementary school shooting: What do we know so far? Col. Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, told a state Senate hearing on Tuesday that Arredondo made “terrible decisions” as the massacre unfolded on May 24 , and that the police response was an “abject failure.” Three minutes after 18-year-old Salvador Ramos entered the school, sufficient armed law enforcement were on scene to stop the gunman, McCraw testified. Yet police officers armed with rifles waited in a school hallway for more than an hour while the gunman carried out the massacre. The classroom door could not be locked from the inside, but there is no indication officers tried to open the door while the gunman was inside, McCraw said. Read: Texas police: School door shut but didn’t lock before attack McCraw has said parents begged police outside the school to move in and students inside the classroom repeatedly pleaded with 911 operators for help while more than a dozen officers waited in a hallway. Officers from other agencies urged Arredondo to let them move in because children were in danger. “The only thing stopping a hallway of dedicated officers from entering Room 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children,” McCraw said. Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin pushed back on McCraw’s testimony casting blame on Arredondo, saying the Department of Public Safety has repeatedly put out false information about the shooting and glossed over the role of its own officers. McLaughlin called Tuesday’s Senate hearing a “clown show” and said he heard nothing from McCraw about state troopers’ involvement, even though McLaughlin said their number in the school hallway at points during the slaughter surpassed that of any other law enforcement agency. Delays in the police response as the shooting was happening has become the focus of ongoing investigations and public outcry. Law enforcement has at times offered confusing and sometimes contradictory details and timelines that have drawn anger and frustration. The Uvalde City Council on Tuesday voted unanimously against giving Arredondo — who is a council member — a leave of absence from appearing at public meetings. Relatives of the shooting victims had pleaded with city leaders to instead fire him. “Please, please, we’re begging you, get this man out of our lives,” said Berlinda Arreola, the grandmother of Amerie Jo Garza, a 10-year-old who was fatally shot in the attack. Sen. Paul Bettencourt told the state Senate hearing that Arredondo should have stepped down straight away. “This man should have removed himself from the job immediately because, just looking at his response, he was incapable of it,” Bettencourt said. Arredondo and his lawyer have declined repeated requests for comment from The Associated Press and did not immediately respond to an inquiry Wednesday about his leave. Arredondo has tried to defend his actions, telling the Texas Tribune that he didn’t consider himself the commander in charge of operations and that he assumed someone else had taken control of the law enforcement response. He said he didn’t have his police and campus radios but that he used his cellphone to call for tactical gear, a sniper and the classroom keys. It’s still not clear why it took so long for police to enter the classroom, how they communicated with each other during the attack, and what their body cameras show. Officials have declined to release more details, citing the investigation. Arredondo, 50, grew up in Uvalde and spent much of his nearly 30-year career in law enforcement in the city. He took the head police job at the school district in 2020 and was sworn in as a member of the City Council in a closed-door ceremony May 31.

The Nobel Peace Prize auctioned off by Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov to raise money for Ukrainian child refugees sold Monday night for $103.5 million, shattering the old record for a Nobel. A spokesperson for Heritage Auctions, which handled the sale, could not confirm the identity of the buyer but said the winning bid was made by proxy. The $103.5 million sale translates to $100 million Swiss francs, hinting that the buyer is from overseas. “I was hoping that there was going to be an enormous amount of solidarity, but I was not expecting this to be such a huge amount,” Muratov said in an interview after bidding in the nearly 3-week auction ended on World Refugee Day. Previously, the most ever paid for a Nobel Prize medal was $4.76 million in 2014, when James Watson, whose co-discovery of the structure of DNA earned him a Nobel Prize in 1962, sold his. Three years later, the family of his co-recipient, Francis Crick, received $2.27 million in bidding also run by Heritage Auctions. Muratov, who was awarded the gold medal in October 2021, helped found the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and was the publication’s editor-in-chief when it shut down in March amid the Kremlin’s clampdown on journalists and public dissent in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Read: ‘It’s just hell there’: Russia still pounds eastern Ukraine It was Muratov’s idea to auction off his prize, having already announced he was donating the accompanying $500,000 cash award to charity. Muratov has said the proceeds will go directly to UNICEF in its efforts to help children displaced by the war in Ukraine. Just minutes after bidding ended, UNICEF told the auction house it had already received the funds. Online bids had begun June 1 to coincide with the International Children’s Day observance. Many bids came by telephone or online. The winning bid, tendered by telephone, catapulted the bidding from the low millions to astronomical levels. Muratov had left Russia on Thursday to begin his trip to New York City, where live bidding began Monday evening. Early Monday, the high bid was only $550,000. The purchase price had been expected to spiral upward — but not over $100 million. “I can’t believe it. I’m awestruck. Personally, I’m flabbergasted. I’m stunned. I don’t really know what happened in there,” said Joshua Benesh, the chief strategy officer for Heritage Auctions. “We knew that there was a tremendous groundswell of interest in the last couple of days by people who were moved by Dimitry’s story, by Dimitry’s act of generosity, that the global audience was listening tonight,” he said. Muratov and Heritage officials said even those out of the bidding can still help by donating directly to UNICEF. Read: Russian journalist sells Nobel Prize for Ukrainian children Muratov shared the Nobel Peace Prize last year with journalist Maria Ressa of the Philippines. The two journalists, who each received their own medals, were honored for their battles to preserve free speech in their respective countries, despite coming under attack by harassment, their governments and even death threats. Melted down, the 175 grams of 23-karat gold contained in Muratov’s medal would be worth about $10,000. Muratov has been highly critical of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the war launched in February that has caused nearly 5 million Ukrainians to flee to other countries for safety, creating the largest humanitarian crisis in Europe since World War II. Independent journalists in Russia have come under scrutiny by the Kremlin, if not outright targets of the government. Since Putin came into power more than two decades ago, nearly two dozen journalists have been killed, including at least four who had worked for Muratov’s newspaper. In April, Muratov said he was attacked with red paint while aboard a Russian train. Since its inception in 1901, there have been nearly 1,000 recipients of the Nobel Prizes honoring achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and the advancement of peace.

Hundreds of blue, green and grey tents are pitched under the sun’s searing rays in downtown Phoenix, a jumble of flimsy canvas and plastic along dusty sidewalks. Here, in the hottest big city in America, thousands of homeless people swelter as the summer’s triple digit temperatures arrive. The stifling tent city has ballooned amid pandemic-era evictions and surging rents that have dumped hundreds more people onto the sizzling streets that grow eerily quiet when temperatures peak in the midafternoon. A heat wave earlier this month brought temperatures of up to 114 degrees (45.5 Celsius) - and it’s only June. Highs reached 118 degrees (47.7 Celsius) last year. “During the summer, it’s pretty hard to find a place at night that’s cool enough to sleep without the police running you off,” said Chris Medlock, a homeless Phoenix man known on the streets as “T-Bone” who carries everything he owns in a small backpack and often beds down in a park or a nearby desert preserve to avoid the crowds. “If a kind soul could just offer a place on their couch indoors maybe more people would live,” Medlock said at a dining room where homeless people can get some shade and a free meal. Excessive heat causes more weather-related deaths in the United States than hurricanes, flooding and tornadoes combined. Around the country, heat contributes to some 1,500 deaths annually, and advocates estimate about half of those people are homeless. Temperatures are rising nearly everywhere because of global warming, combining with brutal drought in some places to create more intense, frequent and longer heat waves. The past few summers have been some of the hottest on record. Just in the county that includes Phoenix, at least 130 homeless people were among the 339 individuals who died from heat-associated causes in 2021. “If 130 homeless people were dying in any other way it would be considered a mass casualty event,” said Kristie L. Ebi, a professor of global health at the University of Washington. It’s a problem that stretches across the United States, and now, with rising global temperatures, heat is no longer a danger just in places like Phoenix. This summer will likely bring above-normal temperatures over most land areas worldwide, according to a seasonal map that volunteer climatologists created for the International Research Institute at Columbia University. Read: 1 billion people have mental disorders: WHO Last summer, a heat wave blasted the normally temperate U.S. Northwest and had Seattle residents sleeping in their yards and on roofs, or fleeing to hotels with air conditioning. Across the state, several people presumed to be homeless died outdoors, including a man slumped behind a gas station. In Oregon, officials opened 24-hour cooling centers for the first time. Volunteer teams fanned out with water and popsicles to homeless encampments on Portland’s outskirts. A quick scientific analysis concluded last year’s Pacific Northwest heat wave was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change adding several degrees and toppling previous records. Even Boston is exploring ways to protect diverse neighborhoods like its Chinatown, where population density and few shade trees help drive temperatures up to 106 degrees (41 Celsius) some summer days. The city plans strategies like increasing tree canopy and other kinds of shade, using cooler materials for roofs, and expanding its network of cooling centers during heat waves. It’s not just a U.S. problem. An Associated Press analysis last year of a dataset published by the Columbia University’s climate school found exposure to extreme heat has tripled and now affects about a quarter of the world’s population. This spring, an extreme heat wave gripped much of Pakistan and India, where homelessness is widespread due to discrimination and insufficient housing. The high in Jacobabad, Pakistan near the border with India hit 122 degrees (50 Celsius) in May. Dr. Dileep Mavalankar, who heads the Indian Institute of Public Health in the western Indian city Gandhinagar, said because of poor reporting it’s unknown how many die in the country from heat exposure. Summertime cooling centers for homeless, elderly and other vulnerable populations have opened in several European countries each summer since a heat wave killed 70,000 people across Europe in 2003. Emergency service workers on bicycles patrol Madrid’s streets, distributing ice packs and water in the hot months. Still, some 1,300 people, most of them elderly, continue to die in Spain each summer because of health complications exacerbated by excess heat. Spain and southern France last week sweltered through unusually hot weather for mid-June, with temperatures hitting 104 degrees (40 Celsius) in some areas. Climate scientist David Hondula, who heads Phoenix’s new office for heat mitigation, says that with such extreme weather now seen around the world, more solutions are needed to protect the vulnerable, especially homeless people who are about 200 times more likely than sheltered individuals to die from heat-associated causes. “As temperatures continue to rise across the U.S. and the world, cities like Seattle, Minneapolis, New York or Kansas City that don’t have the experience or infrastructure for dealing with heat have to adjust as well.” In Phoenix, officials and advocates hope a vacant building recently converted into a 200-bed shelter for homeless people will help save lives this summer. Mac Mais, 34, was among the first to move in. “It can be rough. I stay in the shelters or anywhere I can find,” said Mais who has been homeless on and off since he was a teen. “Here, I can stay out actually rest, work on job applications, stay out of the heat.” Read: Russia frees captive medic who filmed Mariupol’s horror In Las Vegas, teams deliver bottled water to homeless people living in encampments around the county and inside a network of underground storm drains under the Las Vegas strip. Ahmedabad, India, population 8.4 million, was the first South Asian city to design a heat action plan in 2013. Through its warning system, nongovernmental groups reach out to vulnerable people and send text messages to mobile phones. Water tankers are dispatched to slums, while bus stops, temples and libraries become shelters for people to escape the blistering rays. Still, the deaths pile up. Kimberly Rae Haws, a 62-year-old homeless woman, was severely burned in October 2020 while sprawled for an unknown amount of time on a sizzling Phoenix blacktop. The cause of her subsequent death was never investigated.   A young man nicknamed Twitch died from heat exposure as he sat on a curb near a Phoenix soup kitchen in the hours before it opened one weekend in 2018. “He was supposed to move into permanent housing the next Monday,” said Jim Baker, who oversees that dining room for the St. Vincent de Paul charity. “His mother was devastated.” Many such deaths are never confirmed as heat related and aren’t always noticed because of the stigma of homelessness and lack of connection to family. When a 62-year-old mentally ill woman named Shawna Wright died last summer in a hot alley in Salt Lake City, her death only became known when her family published an obituary saying the system failed to protect her during the hottest July on record, when temperatures reached the triple digits. Her sister, Tricia Wright, said making it easier for homeless people to get permanent housing would go a long way toward protecting them from extreme summertime temperatures. “We always thought she was tough, that she could get through it,” Tricia Wright said of her sister. “But no one is tough enough for that kind of heat.”  

Nearly one billion people, including around one in seven teenagers, worldwide suffer from some form of mental disorder, according to the UN. To make matters worse, in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, rates of common conditions such as depression and anxiety went up by more than 25 percent, the UN health agency said Friday. In its largest review of mental health since the turn of the century, the World Health Organization urged more countries to get to grips with worsening conditions. It offered examples of good practices that should be implemented as quickly as possible, in recognition of the important role that mental health plays in positive and sustainable development, at all levels. Even before Covid hit, only a small fraction of people in need of help had access to effective, affordable and quality mental health treatment, the WHO said, citing the latest available global data from 2019. More than 70 percent of those suffering from psychosis worldwide do not get the help they need, the UN agency said. Read: Mental Health: Types of Mental Illness and supporting someone with a mental health problem The gap between rich and poor nations highlights unequal access to healthcare, as seven in 10 people with psychosis receive treatment in high-income countries, compared to only 12 percent in low-income countries. The situation is more dramatic for cases of depression, the WHO said, pointing to gaps in assistance across all countries – including high-income ones – where only one-third of people who suffer from depression receive formal mental health care. And although high-income countries offer "minimally adequate" treatment for depression in 23 percent of cases, this drops to just three percent in low and lower-middle-income countries.