A new study finds this month’s record-shattering global heat wave would not have been possible without the continuing buildup of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere due to human activity. Scientists at World Weather Attribution say a rapid analysis of weather data taken this month across China, southern Europe and the American Southwest show high levels of carbon dioxide and other gases helped drive temperatures by as much as four-and-a-half degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels. The researchers warn the past 20 days have likely been the hottest such stretch in more than 100,000 years.

This comes as new research finds sea ice around Antarctica is in sharp decline and may never recover. Data from the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute show almost 2 million square kilometers less sea ice has accumulated so far during the Southern Hemisphere’s winter compared to any previous year. 

In Sweden, climate activist Greta Thunberg was arrested Monday as she joined a nonviolent civil disobedience protest outside an oil terminal in the southern city of Malmö. Thunberg’s arrest came just hours after she was fined by a Swedish court for disobeying police during a protest at the same oil terminal in June. Thunberg called her repeated protests an act of self-defense against a rapidly worsening climate catastrophe. 

Greta Thunberg: “Right now we don’t have any laws that holds the carbon in the ground. We don’t have any laws that long term protect us against the self-destructing greed that we have let in full control over the world. The laws have to be changed. We know that we cannot save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.”

Algeria says at least 34 people have been killed and thousands more evacuated as nearly 100 wildfires burn across 16 provinces. The fires were fueled by extreme heat in North Africa, which has added to the misery of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean to apply for asylum in Europe.

In Tunisia, asylum seekers, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, forced to live in makeshift tent camps are languishing under a sweltering heat wave with temperatures reaching 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Meanwhile, dozens of migrants who were rounded up by Tunisian authorities and stranded in a desolate militarized area in the Tunisian border with Libya have described harrowing conditions in the heat wave. Many have been stuck there for at least two weeks without any food, fresh drinking water or shelter from the rising temperatures. This is an asylum seeker from Nigeria.

Asylum seeker: “No food, no water. They materialize us here. They brutalize us. There are snakes here. Nowhere to sleep, nothing to eat. We are begging on the U.N. to please come to our aid. We are suffering here brutally. Look at how our skin have been infected. No treatment, no food. They have been treating us maliciously, which is very wrong.”

The Biden administration filed a lawsuit Monday against Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott over the state’s installation of barrels wrapped in razor wire in the Rio Grande as an attempt to block asylum seekers from crossing the river. The suit comes after Abbott ignored a request from the Justice Department to remove the floating barrels and vowed to fight in court to keep them in place. Dozens of migrants, including children, have suffered severe injuries after being cut by the razor wire, which is often underwater and not visible. The blistering heat wave in Texas has also been deadly for migrants crossing through the region. A whistleblower recently revealed Texas border officials were ordered to deny migrants drinking water even in the brutal heat.

Israeli lawmakers have approved a highly contested bill to gut the power of the Supreme Court by preventing it from blocking government decisions it deems unreasonable. The bill is part of a broader set of judicial reforms pushed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that have sparked months of unprecedented protests. Ahead of Monday’s vote, opposition lawmakers erupted in jeers and shouts of “shame!” before storming out of the Knesset, leaving the far-right majority led by Benjamin Netanyahu to pass the bill on a vote of 64 to 0. Later in the day, Netanyahu defended the legislation in a nationally televised address.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Today we carried out the required democratic move. The move was aimed at restoring a degree of balance between the authorities, which was here for 50 years.”

Massive protests against the judicial reforms are continuing in Tel Aviv, where on Monday police fired water cannons and a noxious chemical known as “skunk” at protesters. It’s believed to be the first time Israeli police have deployed the chemical agent against Israeli citizens; since 2008, Israel has repeatedly deployed “skunk” against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Meanwhile, Israel’s military says it shot and killed three Palestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus. Seventeen Palestinians were also arrested in overnight raids. After headlines, we’ll go to Israel for the latest.

In Sudan, army officials on Monday rejected a proposal from Kenya to send East African peacekeepers as other regional and international mediation efforts to end the violence have also failed. Meanwhile, fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces continued to escalate as the war marked 100 days Sunday.

In Russia, Kremlin officials say a Ukrainian drone attack Monday struck two buildings near the Defense Ministry’s main headquarters in Moscow. This followed a Ukrainian drone attack on Saturday that hit an ammunition depot in the Russian-annexed territory of Crimea.

Russian drones struck a town on the Danube River in southern Ukraine, destroying a grain hangar. The drones struck less than 1,000 feet from Ukraine’s border with Romania, a NATO member nation that the U.S. and others in the military alliance have vowed to defend. The attack suggests the Kremlin is targeting sites that provide an alternative route for Ukraine to export food and fertilizer, after Russia pulled out of a deal allowing Ukraine to ship its grain across the Black Sea. This follows attacks Sunday on the Ukrainian Black Sea port city of Odesa that killed one person, injured 19 and damaged an Orthodox cathedral that’s listed as a World Heritage Site. This is a survivor of the assault.

Survivor: “My child was enrolled here. We regularly attended the cathedral’s services. The priests here are wonderful. People need to stop being so cruel.”

Guatemalan police raided the offices of the progressive Semilla party Friday, as Semilla’s presidential candidate, Bernardo Arévalo, blasted the Attorney General’s Office for the “illegal and spurious” action and “political persecution.” Ever since placing second in June’s first round of the election, the anti-corruption Semilla party and Bernardo Arévalo have been targeted by presidential front-runner, former first lady Sandra Torres and her allies, who are backed by Guatemala’s business and political elites. The election’s second round between Torres and Arévalo is scheduled for August 20.

A truck driver from Arkansas who was filmed assaulting a police officer during the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was sentenced Monday to 52 months in federal prison. Video of the incident shows Peter Stager watched as rioters attacked a police line and dragged Metropolitan Police Department officer Blake Miller into the crowd, where Stager repeatedly beat him with a flag pole.

Monday’s sentencing came amid signs that special counsel Jack Smith will soon announce another indictment against former President Donald Trump, over Trump’s role in inciting the insurrection as he attempted to remain in power following his November 2020 election loss. 

President Biden has designated a national monument across three locations in Illinois and Mississippi honoring Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley. On August 28, 1955, a white mob dragged Emmett Till from his great-uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi, and lynched him. The 14-year-old African American boy had traveled that summer to the segregated South from his home in Chicago. Today would have been Emmett Till’s 82nd birthday. Over the weekend, residents of Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood celebrated the occasion with an ice cream social outside his childhood home, and they paid homage to Till at the Roberts Temple Church of Christ, which has just been designated a national monument. It was inside the church that Till’s brutally beaten and disfigured body was displayed in an open casket at his funeral. This is Chicago resident Quintella Bounds.

Quintella Bounds: “I want to say it’s a blessing, because so often they want to erase the events that happened to African Americans, but you can’t erase it if it’s a landmark.”