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On Feb. 14, 1904, someone curious about the emerging possibilities of a key force of nature checked out James Clerk Maxwell's "An Elementary Treatise on Electricity" from the New Bedford Free Public Library. It would take 119 years and the sharp eyes of a librarian in West Virginia before the scientific text finally found its way back to the Massachusetts library. The discovery occurred when Stewart Plein, the curator of rare books at West Virginia University Libraries, was sorting through a recent donation of books. An unauthorized open-air ‘library’ on Dhaka University campus raises eyebrows Plein found the treatise and noticed it had been part of the collection at the New Bedford library and, critically, had not been stamped "Withdrawn," indicating that while extremely overdue, the book had not been discarded. Plein contacted Jodi Goodman, the special collections librarian in New Bedford, to alert her to the find. "This came back in extremely good condition," New Bedford Public Library Director Olivia Melo said Friday. "Someone obviously kept this on a nice bookshelf because it was in such good shape and probably got passed down in the family." The treatise was first published in 1881, two years after Maxwell's death in 1879, although the cranberry-colored copy now back at the New Bedford library is not considered a rare edition of the work, Melo said. The library occasionally receives books as much as 10 or 15 years overdue, but nothing anywhere close to a century or more, she said. Library named in memory of Abdus Salam has books, but no visitors The treatise was published at a time when the world was still growing to understand the possibilities of electricity. In 1880, Thomas Edison received a historic patent embodying the principles of his incandescent lamp. When the book was last in New Bedford, the nation was preparing for its second modern World Series, incumbent Republican President Theodore Roosevelt was on track to win another term, Wilbur and Orville Wright had conducted their first airplane flight just a year before and New York City was celebrating its first subway line. The discovery and return of the book is a testament to the durability of the printed word, especially in a time of computerization and instant access to unfathomable amounts of information, Melo said. "The value of the printed book is it's not digital, it's not going to disappear. Just holding it, you get the sense of someone having this book 120 years ago and reading it, and here it is in my hands," she said. "It is still going to be here a hundred years from now. The printed book is always going to be valuable." Goethe and HerStory Foundation to host 'Sister Library: Mother Steals a Bicycle' on Wednesday The New Bedford library has a 5-cent-per-day late fee. At that rate, someone returning a book overdue by 119 years would face a hefty fee of more than $2,100. The good news is the library's late fee limit maxes out at $2. Another lesson of the find, according to Melo? It's never too late to return a library book.

A white gunman who killed 23 people in a racist attack on Hispanic shoppers at a Walmart in a Texas border city was sentenced Friday to 90 consecutive life sentences but could still face more punishment, including the death penalty. Patrick Crusius, 24, pleaded guilty earlier this year to nearly 50 federal hate crime charges in the 2019 mass shooting in El Paso, making it one of the U.S. government’s largest hate crime cases. Crusius, wearing a jumpsuit and shackles, did not speak during the hearing and showed no reaction as the sentence was read. U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama recommended that Crusius serve his sentence at a maximum security prison in Colorado and receive treatment and counseling for a severe mental health condition. Crusius still faces a separate trial in a Texas court that could end with him getting the death penalty for carrying out one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history. 8 dead as SUV hits crowd at Texas bus stop near border As Crusius was led from the courtroom, the son of one of the victims shouted from the gallery. “We’ll be seeing you again, coward,” yelled Dean Reckard, whose mother, Margie Reckard, was slain in the attack. “No apologies, no nothing.” Police say Crusius drove more than 700 miles from his home near Dallas to target Hispanics with an AK-style rifle inside and outside the store. Moments before the attack began, Crusius posted a racist screed online that warned of a Hispanic “invasion” of Texas. Police: 8 killed in Texas mall shooting, gunman also dead In the years since the shooting, Republicans have described migrants crossing the southern U.S. border as an “invasion,” waving off critics who say the rhetoric fuels anti-immigrant views and violence. Crusius pleaded guilty in February after federal prosecutors took the death penalty off the table. But Texas prosecutors have said they will try to put Crusius on death row when he stands trial in state court. That trial date has not yet been set. In the U.S. government's case, Crusius received a life sentence for each of the 90 charges against him, half of which were classified as hate crimes. Attorney General Merrick Garland said after the sentencing that “no one in this country should have to live in fear of hate-fueled violence.” Joe Spencer, Crusius’ attorney, told the judge before the sentencing that his client has a “broken brain.” He said Crusius had arrived in El Paso without a specific target in mind before winding up at the Walmart. “Patrick’s thinking is at odds with reality … resulting in delusional thinking,” Spencer said. Crusius became alarmed by his own violent thoughts, Spencer said, and he once left a job at a movie theater because of them. He said Crusius also searched online to look for ways to address his mental health, and he dropped out of a community college near Dallas because of his struggles. Suspected gunman caught after 5 dead in Texas mass shooting The sentencing in El Paso followed two days of impact statements from relatives of the victims, including citizens of Mexico and a German national. In addition to the dead, more than two dozen people were injured and numerous others were severely traumatized as they hid or fled. One by one, family members used their first opportunity since the shooting to directly address Crusius, describing how their lives have been upended by grief and pain. Some forgave him. One man displayed photographs of his slain father and insisted that the gunman look at them. Crusius’ family did not appear in the courtroom during the sentencing phase. The attack was the deadliest of a dozen mass shootings in the U.S. linked to hate crimes since 2006, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. Before the shooting, Crusius had appeared consumed by the nation’s immigration debate, tweeting #BuildtheWall and posts that praised then-President Donald Trump’s hard-line border policies. He went further in his rant posted before the attack, sounding warnings that Hispanics were going to take over the government and economy. Ian Hanna, an assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the government’s case, said Crusius had embraced the “insidious lie” that America only belonged to white people. “He wanted to eliminate a class of people,” Hanna said. Tito Anchondo, whose brother Andre Anchondo was killed in the attack, called the sentence “the best it’s going to get” because it ensures that Crusius will be left to think about his actions in prison for the rest of his life. “In a sense justice was served today, and in another sense I don’t think anything is ever going to be the same,” he said. The people who were killed ranged in age from a 15-year-old high school athlete to several grandparents. They included immigrants, a retired city bus driver, teachers, tradesmen including a former iron worker, and several Mexican nationals who had crossed the U.S. border on routine shopping trips. Two teenage girls recounted their narrow escape from Crusius’ rampage as they participated in a fundraiser for their youth soccer team outside the store, and said they are still fearful in public. Margaret Juarez, whose 90-year-old father was slain and whose mother was wounded but survived, said she found it ironic that Crusius would spend his life in prison among inmates from racial and ethnic minorities. Others in the courtroom applauded Thursday as she celebrated their liberty. “Swim in the waters of prison,” she told Crusius. “Now we’re going to enjoy the sunshine. … We still have our freedom, in our country.”

India’s federal crime agency said Friday (July 07, 2023) it has arrested three railway officials in connection with one of the country’s deadliest train accidents, which killed more than 290 people last month. The arrested men have been charged with culpable homicide without murder and destruction of evidence, the Central Bureau of Investigation said in a statement. It identified them as two signal engineers and one technician, and said the investigation is ongoing. Error in signaling system led to train crash that killed 275 people in India, official says June’s train crash in eastern Odisha state occurred when a packed passenger train was mistakenly diverted onto an adjacent loop line where it rammed into a stationary freight train loaded with iron ore. The collision derailed the passenger train’s coaches onto another track where they struck a passing train that was running in the opposite direction. The two passenger trains were carrying more than 2,290 people when the collision took place. Nearly 1,000 people were injured. India’s deadly train crash renews questions over safety as government pushes railway upgrade After the accident, India’s Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the cause of the crash was related to the signaling system. India, a country of 1.42 billion people, has one of the world’s most extensive and complicated railways built during the British colonial era: more than 40,000 miles (64,000 kilometers) of tracks, 14,000 passenger trains and 8,000 stations. Spread across the country from the Himalayas in the north to the beaches in the south, it is also a system that is weakened by decades of mismanagement and neglect. Despite efforts to improve safety, several hundred accidents happen every year, and most such crashes are blamed on human error or outdated signaling equipment. Indian officials end rescue work for 2 wrecked passenger trains that killed over 300 people The June crash was India’s deadliest since 1995, when two trains collided near New Delhi, killing 358 people. In 2016, a passenger train slid off the tracks between the cities of Indore and Patna, killing 146 people.

Earth's average temperature set a new unofficial record high on Thursday, the third such milestone in a week that already rated as the hottest on record. The planetary average hit 63 degrees Fahrenheit, 17.23 degrees Celsius, surpassing the 62.9 and 17.18-degree marks set Tuesday and equaled Wednesday, according to data from the University of Maine's Climate Reanalyzer, a tool that uses satellite data and computer simulations to measure the world's condition. That average includes places that are sweltering under dangerous heat — like Jingxing, China, which checked in almost 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 degrees Celsius) — and the merely unusually warm, like Antarctica, where temperatures across much of the continent were as much as 8 degrees Fahrenheit (4.5 degrees Celsius) above normal this week. Also read: World swelters to unofficial hottest day on record The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday issued a note of caution about the Maine tool's findings, saying it could not confirm data that results in part from computer modeling. "Although NOAA cannot validate the methodology or conclusion of the University of Maine analysis, we recognize that we are in a warm period due to climate change," NOAA said. Still, the Maine data has been widely regarded as another troubling sign of climate change around the globe. Some climate scientists said this week they weren't surprised to see the unofficial records. Also read: Nearly 100 die as India struggles with a sweltering heatwave in 2 most populous states Robert Watson, a scientist and former chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said governments and the private sector "are not truly committed to address climate change." Nor are citizens, he said. "They demand cheap energy, cheap food and do not want to pay the true cost of food and energy," Watson said. Also read: Heatwaves to impact almost every child by 2050: UNICEF report  

Globally, women are most likely to be responsible for fetching water for households, while girls are nearly twice as likely as boys to bear the responsibility, and spend more time doing it each day, according to a new report released by UNICEF and WHO on Thursday. Progress on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) 2000-2022: Special focus on gender – which provides the first in-depth analysis of gender inequalities in WASH – also notes that women and girls are more likely to feel unsafe using a toilet outside of the home and disproportionately feel the impact of lack of hygiene. "Every step a girl takes to collect water is a step away from learning, play, and safety," said Cecilia Sharp, UNICEF Director of WASH and CEED. "Unsafe water, toilets, and handwashing at home robs girls of their potential, compromises their well-being, and perpetuates cycles of poverty. Responding to girls' needs in the design and implementation of WASH programmes is critical to reaching universal access to water and sanitation and achieving gender equality and empowerment." Also read: Number of displaced children reaches 43.3 million in 2022: UNICEF According to the report, globally, 1.8 billion people live in households without water supplies on the premises. Women and girls aged 15 and older are primarily responsible for water collection in 7 out of 10 such households, compared with 3 in 10 households for their male peers. Girls under 15 (7 per cent) are also more likely than boys under 15 (4 per cent) to fetch water. In most cases, women and girls make longer journeys to collect it, losing time in education, work, and leisure, and putting themselves at risk of physical injury and dangers on the way. Also read: Millions of children at risk in Bangladesh, Myanmar in the aftermath of Cyclone Mocha: UNICEF The report also shows that more than half a billion people still share sanitation facilities with other households, compromising women's and girls' privacy, dignity, and safety. For example, recent surveys from 22 countries show that among households with shared toilets, women and girls are more likely than men and boys to feel unsafe walking alone at night and face sexual harassment and other safety risks. Furthermore, inadequate WASH services increase health risks for women and girls and limit their ability to safely and privately manage their periods. Also read: Around 34.5 mln women in Bangladesh were married before they turned 18: Unicef Among 51 countries with available data, women and adolescent girls in the poorest households and those with disabilities are the most likely to lack a private place to wash and change. "The latest data from WHO shows a stark reality: 1.4 million lives are lost each year due to inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene," said Dr Maria Neira, WHO Director, Environment, Climate Change and Health Department. "Women and girls not only face WASH-related infectious diseases, like diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections, they face additional health risks because they are vulnerable to harassment, violence, and injury when they have to go outside the home to haul water or just to use the toilet." The findings go on to show that a lack of access to hygiene also disproportionately affects women and girls. In many countries, women and girls are primarily responsible for domestic chores and caring for others – including cleaning, preparing food, and looking after the sick – which likely exposes them to diseases and other risks to their health without the protection of handwashing. Also read: 90% of adolescent girls, young women don’t use internet in low-income countries: UNICEF Additional time spent on domestic chores can also limit girls' chances of completing secondary school and gaining employment. Today, around 2.2 billion people – or 1 in 4 – still lack safely managed drinking water at home and 3.4 billion people – or 2 in 5 – do not have safely managed sanitation. Around 2 billion people – or 1 in 4 – cannot wash their hands with soap and water at home. The report notes some progress towards achieving universal access to WASH. Between 2015 and 2022, household access to safely managed drinking water increased from 69 to 73 per cent; safely managed sanitation increased from 49 to 57 per cent; and basic hygiene services increased from 67 to 75 per cent. But achieving the Sustainable Development Goal target for universal access to safely managed drinking water, sanitation, and basic hygiene services by 2030 will require a six-fold increase in current rates of progress for safely managed drinking water, a five-fold increase for safely managed sanitation, and a three-fold increase for basic hygiene services. Further efforts are needed to ensure that progress on WASH contributes towards gender equality, including integrated gender considerations in WASH programmes and policies and disaggregated data collection and analysis, to inform targeted interventions that address the specific needs of women and girls and other vulnerable groups.  

A passenger bus lost control and veered off a road and into a 75-foot-deep (25 meter-deep) gully in southern Mexico early Wednesday, killing at least 29 passengers, officials said. The crash occurred in the largely indigenous Mixteca region of the southern state of Oaxaca. The state's interior secretary, Jesús Romero, said 27 people had died in the crash, including a 1 1/2-year-old toddler. He said that about 20 people were injured in the accident, some very seriously. His office later said the death toll had increased to 29, after two victims died from their injures at a hospital. Romero said the bus driver apparently lost control of the vehicle and plunged into the gully. “It appears that a lack of skill and tiredness caused the accident,” Romero said in remarks to a local television station. Read: Leaders of Italy and Poland say European Union should focus on stopping migration Photos distributed by police suggesting the bus had flipped over, totally crushing the passenger compartment. The bus set out from Mexico City to carry passengers to a number of tiny, remote mountain villages in the impoverished Mixteca region. The route, and the possessions, bundles and baskets strewn amid the wreckage, suggested the victims were people who worked in manual labor in the capital and were returning to their home towns.

Despite global disruptions created by the Covid-19 pandemic, geopolitical turbulence and high inflation, countries are continuing to move towards a seamless and efficient trading environment by simplifying and digitalizing formalities in international trading, according to a new survey by the United Nations. According to the fifth United Nations Global Survey on Digital and Sustainable Trade Facilitation covering 161 countries, progress has been observed in more efficient trade facilitation with the overall implementation rate of general and digital trade facilitation measures increasing by more than six percentage points between 2021 and 2023. The global average implementation rate currently stands at 68.7 per cent. The highest implementation rate is seen in developed economies (85.3 per cent), followed by countries in South-East and East Asia (76.6 per cent). Pacific Islands have the lowest implementation rate (42.3 per cent). Also read: UK to support Bangladesh’s aspiration of becoming an aviation hub In the Asia-Pacific region, implementation increased by about three percentage points since 2021, with the highest rates observed in Australia and New Zealand and East and North-East Asia. North and Central Asia and the Pacific Island Developing Economies recorded the most progress over the last two years, the survey shows. Measures included in the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement continue to be largely implemented and paperless trade facilitation measures improved the most over the period, according to the report. Crucial to the progress made globally were regional and subregional initiatives such as the Framework Agreement on Facilitation of Cross-border Paperless Trade in Asia and the Pacific (CPTA), the expansion of the ASEAN Single Window Agreement, and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement, the survey report by the United Nations shows. Also read: PMs of Kuwait and Bangladesh express satisfaction over bilateral ties in telephone conversation These initiatives could further support countries in gradually moving to less paper and then to paperless and cross-border paperless trade by providing a dedicated, inclusive and capacity-building intergovernmental platform. Conversely, the 2023 Survey also highlighted the insufficient adoption of sustainable trade facilitation measures and inadequate support for vulnerable groups, including the agricultural sector, Small to Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and women traders. “More concerted international collaboration is necessary. I call upon countries to actively implement sustainable trade measures highlighted in the Survey to foster inclusive and sustainable trade and development,” said Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ESCAP. The Survey was jointly conducted by the Economic Commission for Africa, the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, the Economic Commission for Europe, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Also read: IFC providing $50 million to BRAC Bank to support trade finance, preservation of jobs The initiative supports the implementation of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, as well as emerging regional and global initiatives on paperless trade or e-trade, such as the recent CPTA. The Survey also recommends cutting-edge paperless and cross-border trade facilitation measures, as well as those supporting more inclusive and sustainable trade, targeted at supporting sectors and groups with special needs.  

The entire planet sweltered to the unofficial hottest day in human recordkeeping July 3, according to University of Maine scientists at the Climate Reanalyzer project. High temperature records were surpassed July 3 and 4 in Quebec and northwestern Canada and Peru. Cities across the U.S. from Medford, Oregon to Tampa, Florida have been hovering at all-time highs, said Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Beijing reported 9 straight days last week when the temperature exceeded 35 C (95 F). This global record is preliminary, pending approval from gold-standard climate measurement entities like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. But it is an indication that climate change is reaching into uncharted territory. It legitimately captures global-scale heating and NOAA will take these figures into consideration when it does its official record calculations, said Deke Arndt, director of the National Center for Environmental Information, a division of NOAA. Read: Bangladesh to get assistance on priority basis to deal with climate change impacts, natural disasters.: UN ASG Mami “In the climate assessment community, I don’t think we’d assign the kind of gravitas to a single day observation as we would a month or a year,’’ Arndt said. Scientists generally use much longer measurements -- months, years, decades -- to track the Earth’s warming. In addition, this preliminary record for the hottest day is based on data that only goes back to 1979, the start of satellite record-keeping, whereas NOAA’s data goes back to 1880. But Arndt added that we wouldn’t be seeing anywhere near record-warm days unless we were in “a warm piece of what will likely be a very warm era” driven by greenhouse gas emissions and the onset of a “robust” El Nino. An El Nino is a temporary natural warming of parts of the central Pacific Ocean that changes weather worldwide and generally makes the planet hotter. Human-caused climate change is like an upward escalator for global temperatures, and El Nino is like jumping up while standing on that escalator, Arndt said. The global daily average temperature for July 3 came in at 17.01 degrees Celsius or 62.6 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a common tool often used by climate scientists for a good glimpse of the world’s condition. The reanalyzer is based on a NOAA computer simulation intended for forecasts that uses satellite data. It is not based on reported observations from the ground. So this unofficial record is effectively using a weather tool that is designed for forecasts, not record-keeping. Read: Deep sea mining permits may be coming soon. What are they and what might happen? This average temperature may not seem that hot, but it’s the first time in the 44 years of this dataset that the temperature surpassed the 17-degree Celsius mark. Hotter global average temperatures translate into brutal conditions for people all over the world. In the U.S., heat advisories are in effect this week for more than 30 million people in places including portions of western Oregon, inland far northern California, central New Mexico, Texas, Florida and the coastal Carolinas, according to the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center. Excessive heat warnings are continuing across southern Arizona and California, they said. When the heat spikes, humans suffer health effects. “Those hotter temperatures that happen when we get hotter than normal conditions? People aren’t used to that. Their bodies aren’t used to that,” said Erinanne Saffell, the Arizona state climatologist and an expert in extreme weather and climate events. Saffell added that the risk is already high for the young and old, who are vulnerable to heat even under normal conditions. “That’s important to understand who might be at risk, making sure people are hydrated, they’re staying cool, and they’re not exerting themselves outside and taking care of those folks around you who might be at risk as well,” she said.

A 40-year-old killed one man in a house before fatally shooting four others on the streets of a Philadelphia neighborhood, then surrendering to police officers after being cornered in an alley with an assault rifle, a pistol, extra magazines, a police scanner and a bulletproof vest, police said. A 2-year-old boy and a 13-year-old were also wounded in the Monday night violence that made the working-class area of Kingsessing the site of the nation's worst violence around the July Fourth holiday. Police called to the scene found gunshot victims and started to help them before hearing more shots. Some officers rushed victims to hospitals while others ran toward the gunfire and chased the firing suspect. Officers ultimately arrested the assailant in an alley, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said at a news conference. The shooter had no connection to the victims before the shooting, she said. Bangladeshi businessman shot dead in South Africa  “On what was supposed to be a beautiful summer evening, this armed and armored individual wreaked havoc, firing with a rifle at their victims seemingly at random,” she said Tuesday afternoon. Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom, the homicide unit commander, said witness interviews and video indicated that the suspect went to several locations in a ski mask and body armor, carrying an AR-15-style rifle. “The suspect then began shooting aimlessly at occupied vehicles and individuals on the street as they walked,” he said. The vehicles included a mother driving her 2-year-old twins home, and one was wounded in the legs and the other hit in the eyes by shattered glass. Pregnant woman fatally shot in car at Seattle intersection Philadelphia police on Tuesday afternoon identified the victims as 20-year-old Lashyd Merritt, 29—year-old Dymir Stanton, 59-year-old Ralph Moralis and 15-year-old Daujan Brown, all pronounced dead shortly after the Monday night gunfire; and 31-year-old Joseph Wamah Jr., who was found in a home early Tuesday, also with multiple bullet wounds. Investigators believe Wamah was the first victim killed, but he wasn't found by family members until hours later, Ransom said. A 2-year-old boy shot four times in the legs and a 13-year-old shot twice in the legs were in stable condition, as were a 2-year-old boy and a 33-year-old woman injured by shattered glass. Russia fires 30 cruise missiles at Ukrainian targets; Ukraine says 29 were shot down Police said the suspect is believed to have acted alone and there was no reason to believe anyone else was involved. Police and prosecutors said no charges were planned at this point against a second person taken into custody who is believed to have obtained a gun somewhere and fired back at the shooter. “When you are under fire in a mass shooting, there are rights to protect others and rights to protect yourself,” District Attorney Larry Krasner said. Authorities asked for patience as they investigate every aspect of the shooting. That investigation, Outlaw said, "includes the ‘why.’” Krasner said the suspect would face multiple counts of murder, as well as aggravated assault and weapons charges, and was expected to be denied bail. Outlaw praised the bravery of officers who tended to victims and rushed them to hospitals as others “fearlessly ran toward the sounds of gunfire,” and captured the suspect. "Their swift actions undoubtedly saved additional lives,” she said. At a holiday weekend block party in Baltimore, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) to the southwest of Philadelphia, two people were killed and 28 others were wounded in a shooting. More than half of the victims were 18 or younger, officials said. About four hours after the Philadelphia shooting, gunfire at a neighborhood festival in Fort Worth, Texas, killed three people and wounded eight. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney renewed his oft-repeated call to “do something about America’s gun problem.” “A person walking down the city street with an AR-style rifle and shooting randomly at people while wearing a bulletproof vest with multiple magazines is a disgraceful but all-too-common situation in America,” Kenney said. “I was today at Independence Hall where they wrote that Constitution, and the 2nd Amendment was never intended to protect this.” Krasner said that the morning after the shooting, he saw “completely empty streets” in the traumatized neighborhood on an otherwise beautiful morning. “I saw every porch empty. I saw every door closed. I saw every curtain where there was a curtain pulled. I saw no kids playing,” he said, describing a bicycle left on a corner, apparently untouched for 12 or more hours, “as if everybody understood what happened here was so horrible that for right now this is a desert, and for right now everything that we associate with celebrating Fourth of July is off.” Tim Eads said that on Monday night he heard fireworks, then gunshots, and saw police cars “flying by.” His wife was on the second floor “looking out the bay window and saw the shooter actually coming down this street here behind me.” Eads saw the other man with a pistol who, he said, may have been firing at the shooter. “He was using my car as a shield shooting out into the street,” Eads said. A resident named Roger who declined to give his last name said he and his family were eating in the living room at about 8:30 p.m. when they heard eight to 10 gunshots. “Everybody thought it was fireworks but ... been around here about three years so I heard it enough,” he said. “I looked out the window and seen a bunch of people running.” He said he heard about four more shots and “thought it was the end of it.” Ten minutes later, he said, police came “flying down here,” and about five minutes later he heard rapid gunfire open up right outside the house. The Philadelphia violence was the country’s 29th mass killing in 2023, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University, the highest on record by this time in the year. The number of people killed in such events is also the highest by this time in the year. There have been more than 550 mass killings since 2006, according to the database, in which at least 2,900 people have died and at least 2,000 people have been hurt.

The U.N. Security Council will hold a first-ever meeting on the potential threats of artificial intelligence to international peace and security, organized by the United Kingdom which sees tremendous potential but also major risks about AI’s possible use for example in autonomous weapons or in control of nuclear weapons. UK Ambassador Barbara Woodward on Monday announced the July 18 meeting as the centerpiece of its presidency of the council this month. It will include briefings by international AI experts and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who last month called the alarm bells over the most advanced form of AI “deafening,” and loudest from its developers. “These scientists and experts have called on the world to act, declaring AI an existential threat to humanity on a par with the risk of nuclear war,” the U.N. chief said. Guterres announced plans to appoint an advisory board on artificial intelligence in September to prepare initiatives that the U.N. can take. He also said he would react favorably to a new U.N. agency on AI and suggested as a model the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is knowledge-based and has some regulatory powers. Woodward said the UK wants to encourage “a multilateral approach to managing both the huge opportunities and the risks that artificial intelligence holds for all of us,” stressing that “this is going to take a global effort.” Read: China warns of artificial intelligence risks, calls for beefed-up national security measures She stressed that the benefits side is huge, citing AI's potential to help U.N. development programs, improve humanitarian aid operations, assist peacekeeping operations and support conflict prevention, including by collecting and analyzing data. “It could potentially help us close the gap between developing countries and developed countries,” she added. But the risk side raises serious security question that must also be addressed, Woodward said. Europe has led the world in efforts to regulate artificial intelligence, which gained urgency with the rise of a new breed of artificial intelligence that gives AI chatbots like ChatGPT the power to generate text, images, video and audio that resemble human work. On June 14, EU lawmakers signed off on the world’s first set of comprehensive rules for artificial intelligence, clearing a key hurdle as authorities across the globe race to rein in AI. In May, the head of the artificial intelligence company that makes ChatGPT told a U.S. Senate hearing that government intervention will be critical to mitigating the risks of increasingly powerful AI systems, saying as this technology advances people are concerned about how it could change their lives, and “we are too.” Read: ChatGPT's chief to testify before US Congress as concerns grow about artificial intelligence's risks OpenAI CEO Sam Altman proposed the formation of a U.S. or global agency that would license the most powerful AI systems and have the authority to “take that license away and ensure compliance with safety standards.” Woodward said the Security Council meeting, to be chaired by UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, will provide an opportunity to listen to expert views on AI, which is a very new technology that is developing very fast, and start a discussion among the 15 council members on its implications. Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced that the UK will host a summit on AI later this year, “where we'll be able to have a truly global multilateral discussion," Woodward said. Read more: How Europe is building artificial intelligence guardrails