SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Extreme heat in China played havoc on Wednesday despite lower temperatures in some regions, with authorities across the Yangtze river basin scrambling to limit the damage from climate change on power, crops and livestock. China’s heatwave, stretching past 70 days, is its longest and most widespread on record, with around 30% of the 600 weather stations along the Yangtze recording their highest temperatures ever by last Friday. The southwestern region of Chongqing has been hit especially hard, with one resident, Zhang Ronghai, saying that both his water and his power had been cut after a four-day mountain fire in the district of Jiangjin. “People need to go to a power centre over 10 km (6 miles) away to charge their phones,” Zhang said.

 

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BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian police have conducted raids targeting several businessmen who have backed President Jair Bolsonaro’s re-election, two sources said, after a media report accused them of discussing the virtues of a coup d’etat if the far-right leader lost the October vote. Federal police confirmed they were carrying out eight search warrants in five states at the direction of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who became head of Brazil’s top electoral court last week. Police did not name the targets. Two people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the targets of the raids included Jose Isaac Peres, who is the chief executive officer of shopping mall operator Multiplan 

 

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LUANDA, Angola (AP) — Angolans were voting in an election on Wednesday in which President Joao Lourenco is seeking a second term and longtime opposition party UNITA is trying to unseat the ruling MPLA party which has held power for 47 years. Some voters lined up at dawn, two hours before polling stations opened at 7 a.m. local time. Lourenco and opposition candidate Adalberto Costa Junior of the Union for the Total Independence of Angola, UNITA, cast their ballots in Luanda, the capital city on the Atlantic Ocean.

 

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The husband of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was sentenced to five days in jail and ordered to pay $6,800 in fines and restitution on Tuesday after he pleaded guilty to causing injury by drunken driving in Napa County, California. But Paul Pelosi, 82, will avoid any further incarceration after the judge gave him four days’ credit for time already served in jail following his arrest and ordered him to perform eight hours of community service in lieu of the one remaining day, according to his attorney Amanda Bevins.

 

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OFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — A Belgian-British teenager became the youngest person to fly around the world solo in a small aircraft after he landed on Wednesday in Bulgaria, where his global journey kicked off five months ago.

Mack Rutherford, who turned 17 during the trip, landed on an airstrip west of Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia, to complete his task and to claim two Guinness World Records. Along with becoming the youngest person to fly around the world by himself, Rutherford is the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe in a microlight plane.

 

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NEW DELHI (Al-Jazeera) - The Indian Air Force has said the government sacked three officers for accidentally firing a missile into Pakistan in March. Military experts have in the past warned of the risk of accidents or miscalculations by the neighbours, which have fought three wars and engaged in numerous smaller armed clashes, usually over the disputed territory of Kashmir. “A Court of Inquiry, set up to establish the facts of the case, including fixing responsibility for the incident, found that deviation from the Standard Operating Procedures by three officers led to the accidental firing of the missile,” the air force said in a statement on. The BrahMos missile – a nuclear-capable, land-attack cruise missile jointly developed by Russia and India – was fired on March 9, prompting Pakistan to seek answers from New Delhi about the reported accident.