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Firefighters are immersing heatstroke victims in ice on the way to hospitals as temperatures soar in the US southwest.

Dangerously hot conditions in the city of Phoenix, Arizona, produced triple-digit temperatures on Tuesday – and forecasters say they are likely to top 110F (43.3C) in some areas by Thursday, prompting excessive heat warnings.

Phoenix Fire Department hopes employing the new tactic of using cold water immersion therapy will save more lives.

At least 645 people in Maricopa County – home of Phoenix and many of its suburbs – died from heat-related causes last year – a 52% increase on the previous year.

“Just last week we had a critical patient that we were able to bring back before we walked through the emergency room doors,” said Fire Captain John Prato.

“That’s our goal – to improve patient survivability.”

There were 645 heat-related deaths in Phoenix's Maricopa County last year. File pic: AP
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There were 645 heat-related deaths in Phoenix’s Maricopa County last year. File pic: AP

The fire chief said the medical technique is familiar to marathon runners and military service members and has also recently been adopted by Phoenix hospitals as a go-to protocol.

It involves packing ice cubes inside an impermeable blue bag around a patient’s body.

He said the technique could dramatically lower a person’s body temperature in minutes.

Phoenix Fire Captain John Prato demonstrates the new protocol. Pic: AP
Image:
Phoenix Fire Captain John Prato demonstrates the new protocol. Pic: AP

Tuesday’s temperatures reached 106F (41.1C) in Bullhead City, Arizona, 104F (40C) in Phoenix and 103F (39.4C) in Las Vegas, Nevada. Highs in California included 112F (44.4C) at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, 108F (42.2C) in Needles and 104F (40C) in Palm Springs.

By Wednesday afternoon, much of an area stretching from southeast California to central Arizona will see “easily their hottest” weather since last September, forecasters said.

Excessive heat warnings have been issued for Wednesday morning through to Friday evening for parts of southeast California, southern Nevada and Arizona.

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“We’ve been seeing a severe uptick in the past three years in cases of severe heat illness,” said Dr Paul Pugsley, medical director of emergency medicine with Valleywise Health, a network of taxpayer-funded hospitals in Arizona. Of those, about 40% do not survive, he added.

Cooling down patients long before they get to the emergency department could help, Dr Pugsley said.

Banner University Medical Center in Phoenix used the technique to treat patients last summer, said Dr Aneesh Narang, assistant medical director of emergency medicine at the hospital.

“This cold water immersion therapy is really the standard of care to treat heatstroke patients,” he said.

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‘Ukraine can’t win war,’ says Trump – as reports emerge of another tumultuous meeting with Zelenskyy

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'Ukraine can't win war,' says Trump - as reports emerge of another tumultuous meeting with Zelenskyy

Donald Trump has said he doesn’t think Ukraine can win the war against Russia – as reports emerge of a less-than-harmonious meeting between the US president and Volodymyr Zelenskyy .

Asked about the conflict by a journalist during a visit to the White House by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the Mr Trump responded bluntly: “I don’t think they will,” before adding: “They could still win it, I never said they would win it… War is a very strange thing, a lot of bad things happen.”

It is a marked change from his comments a few weeks ago at a UN gathering in New York where he said Ukraine could retake “all of its territory”.

And it comes after the Financial Times claimed the behind-the-scenes of Mr Trump and President Zelenskyy’s meeting in Washington on Friday had descended into a “shouting match”.

According to the paper, the US president repeatedly told his Ukrainian counterpart to accept Vladimir Putin‘s terms for ending the war – warning him that the Russian leader would “destroy” Ukraine if it did not agree.

Mr Zelenskyy later attempted to pour water over the suggestions, saying their meeting was “positive” and that Ukraine was preparing a contract to buy 25 Patriot air defence systems as a result of their talks.

However, Mr Zelenskyy said he did not secure the Tomahawk missiles he had wanted for Ukraine. The long-range missiles would have been a major boost for Kyiv.

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“In my opinion, he does not want an escalation with the Russians until he meets with them,” Mr Zelenskyy said.

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Why Tomahawks are off the table


Meanwhile, Hungary’s foreign minister Peter Szijarto has announced he will visit Washington on Tuesday. It follows claims from Mr Trump that he would meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest soon.

Will the pair meet again soon? File pic: Reuters
Image:
Will the pair meet again soon? File pic: Reuters

And on Monday, US secretary of state Marco Rubio had a phone call with Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.

According to the state department, Mr Rubio and Mr Lavrov spoke about possible concrete steps to implement understandings reached during the call between Mr Trump and Mr Putin last week.

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Mr Rubio had, a statement said, also “emphasised the importance of upcoming engagements as an opportunity for Moscow and Washington to collaborate on advancing a durable resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war, in line with President Trump’s vision”.

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Also on Monday, French president Emmanuel Macron announced there will be a meeting of the coalition of the willing in London on Friday which Mr Zelenskyy will attend.

The coalition – co-chaired by Sir Keir Starmer, Mr Macron and Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz – has the aim of bringing countries together to protect a peace deal in Ukraine.

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What’s affected by internet outage – all we know so far

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What's affected by internet outage - all we know so far

Dozens of websites, banks and apps are being affected by a major internet outage. 

The problem, which started on Monday morning, appears to be related to an issue at Amazon Web Services (AWS).

As of 9.20am, there were more than 2,000 reports of the Amazon Web Services outage in the US alone, according to Downdetector, which monitors issues and outages in real-time.

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On its service status page, the company said it was seeing “increased error rates” and delays with “multiple AWS services”.

Here’s what we know so far.

Pic: PA
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Pic: PA

Pic: PA
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Pic: PA

Pic: PA
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Pic: PA

What has been affected?

Multiple banks, the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) website, mobile phone networks and video-chatting platform Zoom are among the websites having technical issues.

All Amazon products – including Prime Video and Amazon Music – have also been affected, as well as the main Amazon website.

Here’s a full list of what has been affected by the internet outage, according to Downdetector:

• Snapchat
• Ring
• Roblox
• Amazon Web Services
• Life360
• My Fitness Pal
• Amazon
• Xero
• Signal
• Canva
• Fortnite
• Blink Security
• Zoom
• HMRC
• Clash Royale
• Clash Of Clans
• Asana
• Wordle
• Slack
• Smartsheet
• Epic Games Store
• Duolingo
• Amazon Alexa
• Jira
• Vodafone
• Tidal
• Coinbase
• Atlassian
• IMDB
• Amazon Prime Video
• Pokemon Go
• BT
• Peloton
• EE
• Ancestry
• Square
• Playstation Network
• Eventbrite
• Amazon Music
• Sky
• Flickr
• Hay Day
• Rocket League
• Perplexity AI
• Dead By Daylight
• Bank Of Scotland
• Lloyds Bank
• Halifax

What has AWS said?

AWS confirmed it was suffering from “increased error rates and latencies” for multiple services.

What is Amazon Web Services?

Mickey Carroll

Science and technology reporter

Amazon Web Services was named as the cause of the problem by the chief executive of AI company Perplexity.

Aravind Srinivas posted on X saying: “Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it.”

AWS describes itself as “the world’s most comprehensive” cloud service.

It offers companies a virtual backbone, giving them access to servers, databases and storage without having to build their own infrastructure.

Millions of businesses are thought to use AWS, so when something goes wrong, it can have a huge impact. AWS hasn’t put out any information on the outage. Sky News has contacted the company for comment.

In a statement on its website, the company said: “We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand root cause,” an update on its website says.

“We will provide an update in 45 minutes, or sooner if we have additional information to share.”

The company is posting regular updates on the situation and said its engineers were “immediately engaged” as soon as they spotted the issue.

Concentrated in the US

ThousandEyes, a website that tracks the performance of local and wide area networks, servers and applications, shows many of the outages appear to be concentrated in the US.

A large portion is focused in Virginia, which is widely considered as the global capital for data centres.

Has something like this happened before?

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Donald Trump mocks ‘No Kings’ protests with AI video of himself dropping brown sludge on protesters from jet

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Donald Trump mocks 'No Kings' protests with AI video of himself dropping brown sludge on protesters from jet

Donald Trump has responded to so-called “No Kings” rallies with an AI video of himself in a fighter jet, pouring brown sludge over protesters.

Millions of people were expected to take part in the demonstrations this weekend – the second such gathering after an initial nationwide day of protest in June coinciding with the US president’s birthday.

The term “No Kings” reflects the belief by some that Mr Trump is behaving like a “king” and some in his administration are depicting him as a monarch.

A protester in costume as Donald Trump presents the president as a prisoner in chains in Seattle. Pic: AP
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A protester in costume as Donald Trump presents the president as a prisoner in chains in Seattle. Pic: AP

One of the rallies in New York. Pic: Reuters
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One of the rallies in New York. Pic: Reuters

On Sunday, the president shared the AI video on his social media platform, Truth Social.

In the clip, an AI-generated version of Mr Trump is wearing a crown and sitting in a jet with “King Trump” written across it, to the soundtrack of Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone, from the film Top Gun.

The jet then drops thick brown sludge on to AI-generated protesters.

Supporters say the marches are a patriotic defence of free speech, while critics are calling them anti-American.

A large inflatable effigy of Mr Trump in Chicago. Pic: Reuters
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A large inflatable effigy of Mr Trump in Chicago. Pic: Reuters

This protest took place in Washington DC. Pic: AP
Image:
This protest took place in Washington DC. Pic: AP

Mr Trump’s Republican Party has dismissed the demonstrations as “Hate America” rallies.

Many of the events featured marching bands, huge banners and signs, as well as effigies of the president and demonstrators wearing inflatable costumes.

Thousands gathered along the waterfront in Portland, Oregon. Pic: AP
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Thousands gathered along the waterfront in Portland, Oregon. Pic: AP

Protesters at the Wyoming State Capitol got creative with their signs. Pic: Wyoming Tribune Eagle/AP
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Protesters at the Wyoming State Capitol got creative with their signs. Pic: Wyoming Tribune Eagle/AP

The protests follow Mr Trump’s return to the White House and come against the backdrop of a government shutdown which has closed federal programmes and services.

There has also been criticism of what some see as an aggressive executive, confronting Congress and the courts, in ways that protest organisers believe are a slide toward authoritarianism.

This event in San Francisco was among thousands taking place across the US. Pic: Reuters
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This event in San Francisco was among thousands taking place across the US. Pic: Reuters

A 'No Kings' sign, outside City Hall in Los Angeles. Pic: Reuters
Image:
A ‘No Kings’ sign, outside City Hall in Los Angeles. Pic: Reuters

So far, the atmosphere at most of the protests appears to have been largely energetic and upbeat, with protesters calling for accountability and protections for civil liberties.

Organisers said events would be peaceful – a direct response to Republican and Trump administration claims that the protests could be unsafe.

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