The Capitals win a Mtropolitan Division battle. Correspondent Craig Heist reports.
Day: October 29, 2024
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11PM ET 10/29/2024 Newscast
The Guardian’s North of England correspondent Hannah Al-Othman recounts the case of Hugh Nelson, sentenced to 18 years in prison this week for creating child abuse images with AI. Prof Clare McGlynn charts the rise of this material on the web and discusses what can be done to stop it. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/infocus
In war-stricken Omdurman, Sudan’s most populous city, community-funded soup kitchens are feeding those in need with little help from the international community. As one part of Sudan faces famine, the world’s first in seven years, the U.S. and others have called for unfettered access for aid groups.
Climate change is increasingly disrupting people’s sleep.
High nighttime temperatures led to 5% more hours of sleep lost worldwide over the past five years compared to the period between 1986 and 2005, according to the latest edition of the Lancet’s study of climate and health. It marks the first time the prestigious medical journal has examined this metric. Sleep loss peaked in 2023, the hottest year on record, when there was a 6% rise.
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The eighth annual Lancet Countdown on health and climate change report, authored by 122 global experts, found that high temperatures, drought and heavy rainfall are increasingly impacting people’s health. In 2023, a record 512 billion potential hours of labor were lost globally due to high temperatures. Heat-related deaths in people over the age of 65 reached the highest levels on record, 167% higher in the 1990s.
“This isn’t just about extreme weather events,” said Jeremy Farrar, chief scientist at the World Health Organization. “This is about every week, every month of the year, and the impact on all of our health.”
Read More: Here’s How Much Sleep You Need According to Your Age
In many places, nighttime temperatures are rising faster than daytime temperatures. As well as impacting sleep, overheating at night reduces the body’s ability to cool down and recover from the heat of the day, exacerbating heat wave deaths, especially among people with pre-existing heart and respiratory problems.
The study used historic sleep-tracking and temperature data to estimate the effects on sleep from high nighttime temperatures across different years. The biggest increases in lost sleep were in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa.
Even in more temperate climates, overheating at night can be exacerbated by poor building design that leaves indoor temperatures warmer than outdoor temperatures. Buildings can be better ventilated or shaded to reduce how much they heat up during the day and how much they retain that heat. Power demand from air conditioning use is expected to triple by 2050.
A lack of sleep negatively affects attention span and quality of life and can also have knock-on effects for other health conditions. Kevin Lomas, a professor of building simulation at Loughborough University who studies the relationship between heat and sleep, has found in the UK that bedroom temperatures higher than about 27C (80.6F) is the threshold at which people struggle to cool themselves down. “Once you start tinkering with how much sleep people get, then the consequences aren’t just relatively trivial things,” said Lomas, who wasn’t involved in the Lancet study. “They can be long term.”
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to order the removal of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name from presidential election ballots in Michigan and Wisconsin, rejecting a pair of last-ditch requests from the onetime candidate.
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Kennedy, who now supports former President Donald Trump in his race against Vice President Kamala Harris, argued unsuccessfully that the two swing states are violating his constitutional rights by leaving him on the ballot against his wishes.
Officials in Wisconsin and Michigan said Kennedy’s Aug. 23 removal requests came too late under the laws of those states, where voting has already begun. In Wisconsin, Kennedy sought to have stickers placed over his name on millions of ballots that haven’t yet been distributed to voters.
Read More: Inside the Last Weeks of RFK Jr.’s Campaign
The court turned away the requests without explanation, as is its usual practice with emergency matters. Justice Neil Gorsuch said he would have sided with Kennedy in the Michigan case. Lower courts had backed the states.
Kennedy, who dropped out of the race Aug. 23, has sought to have his name kept on the ballot in some states and taken off in others. Justice Sonia Sotomayor last month refused to place Kennedy on the ballot in New York.
The Wisconsin case is Kennedy v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, 24A399. The Michigan case is Kennedy v. Benson, 24A405.
