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RIO DE JANEIRO — As dozens of fires scorched large swaths of the Amazon, the Brazilian government on Thursday struggled to contain growing global outrage over its environmental policies, which have paved the way for runaway deforestation of the world’s largest rain forest.

The fires, many intentionally set, are spreading as Germany and Norway appear to be on the brink of shutting down a $1.2 billion conservation initiative for the Amazon.

“The ongoing forest fires in Brazil are deeply worrying,” the European Commission said in a statement on Thursday. “Forests are our lungs and life support systems.”

Five Oklahoma City police officers were charged with first-degree manslaughter in relation to the shooting death of a 15-year-old in November, according to court records filed Wednesday in Oklahoma County.

Bodycam footage from five of the officers provided to CNN by the police department did not show the actual shooting, but officers can be heard yelling for Rodriguez to show them his hands. It's unclear in the videos who fired the first shots but multiple shots can be heard.

Officers Bethany Sears, Jared Barton, Corey Adams, John Skuta and Brad Pemberton are all currently on paid administrative leave, Stewart told CNN.

More than 300 wildfires have destroyed nearly 1,500 acres since the start of the year, and fire officials warn this could be a longer-than-average season.

Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin on Monday signed an executive order declaring a state of emergency in response to elevated wildfire conditions, underscoring statewide efforts to control fires that have already burned nearly 1,500 acres this year.

“With nearly the entire state experiencing high or very high fire risk, protecting Wisconsinites from the destructive dangers of wildfires is a top priority,” Mr. Evers said in a news release.

SYDNEY, Australia — Rural firefighters and farmers, as well as just about everyone in Australia’s largest city, rejoiced Friday at the arrival of something not seen for months: heavy downpours of that magnificent gift called rain.

But for one gray and drenching moment, or a few hours in some places, strong rain doused the deadly flames. And the dried-out gardens. And the filthy streets.

The soggy weather — “best day of the year,” said one sports commentator — delivered quite a jolt. Much of Sydney received more rain on Friday than it had over the past three months. A few smaller towns to the northwest welcomed more precipitation than they had seen in entire recent years.

It was even possible to tell his political outlook from across a field, from the two “Trump 2020” flags that he had hoisted above his combine — until a couple of weeks ago, when a fire destroyed much of his farm equipment.

Nearly four years ago, in his election night victory speech, Mr. Trump pledged to fight for the “hard-working men and women who love their country and want a better, brighter future for themselves and for their family.”“The forgotten men and women of our country,” he promised back then, “will be forgotten no longer.”

In Henderson, and many places like it, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign pitch that he is fighting for the soul of the nation simply doesn’t resonate. People here would view its soul as being in jeopardy if he triumphed.

Tense protests over the death of George Floyd and other police killings of black men spread across the US on Saturday night as mayors around the country imposed curfews and several governors called in the national guard amid scenes of violence, injuries and unrest.

Governors of six states, including Minnesota, where Floyd died on Monday, called out national guard troops. Many cities including Atlanta, Los Angeles, Louisville, Columbia, Denver, Portland, Milwaukee and Columbus, imposed curfews in anticipation of a restless night ahead.

Saturday’s demonstrations had started early but as the night drew on sporadic violence broke out again, seeing businesses torched, police cars set on fire and protesters injured and arrested.

Members of a prestigious research unit at Google have sent a letter to the company's chief executive demanding that ousted artificial intelligence researcher Timnit Gebru be reinstated.

Gebru, who studies the ethics of AI and was one of the only Black research scientists at Google, says she was unexpectedly fired after a dispute over an academic paper and months of speaking out about the need for more women and people of color at the tech giant.

"Offering Timnit her position back at a higher level would go a long way to help re-establish trust and rebuild our team environment,"

Russia says one of its warships fired warning shots at a Turkish fishing boat in the Aegean Sea to avoid a collision.

The captain of the Turkish boat said he was unaware that his vessel had been shot at.

Relations remain tense between the two countries since Turkey's shooting down of a Russian warplane.

On Thursday, a judge released video of the deadly shooting. In its wake, a group of activists who have organized previous protests over shootings called for more on Friday.

The police department fired Davis, he said, after he ruled Officer Kevin Fry's shooting of 17-year-old Chatman, who was unarmed, unjustified. But he had been at odds with the department over the internal assessment of police use of force for a while.

"I pay most attention to Officer Fry. Mr. Chatman is simply trying to get away. He's running as fast as he can away from the officers. Officer (Lou) Toth is right behind him; he's doing the right thing. He's pursuing him. He's trying to capture him, while Officer Fry, on the other hand, has both of his hands on his weapon. He is in a shooter's position. He is looking for a clear shot."

Despite a rich history of black firefighting heroes that goes back to the beginnings of a professionalized service in the early 19th century, firefighting in this country is stained by a tradition of exclusion. Post-segregation, discrimination was reinforced through deep-rooted nepotism and cronyism. For those whose great-grandfather, grandfather and father weren’t firefighters — and especially for applicants with the wrong color, gender or sexuality — training and testing became an impermeable barrier. Notoriously, white male recruits received special mentoring and reduced scrutiny by those in charge of hiring.

problems are system-deep. To begin to solve them, local fire department leaders must step up their efforts to support and enforce inclusivity. We should prioritize hiring fire chiefs who are fully committed to dismantling nepotism and tackling those professional traditions that degrade opportunity. We need an impartial, standardized and professional process for testing at entry level and on promotional exams to inoculate against the effects of bias and favoritism. Fire departments must enforce workplace rules already in place.

Donald Trump on Saturday called Michael Wolff, the writer of a bestselling book about his White House, “a mentally deranged author” who “knowingly writes false information”

Wolff has said he conducted more than 200 interviews and stands by all his sourcing and reporting. News outlets have pointed to inconsistencies in Fire and Fury and in past work

The former acting F.B.I. director, Andrew G. McCabe, wrote a confidential memo last spring recounting a conversation that offered significant behind-the-scenes details on the firing of Mr. McCabe’s predecessor, James B. Comey, according to several people familiar with the discussion.

Mr. Comey’s firing is a central focus of the special counsel’s investigation into whether President Trump tried to obstruct the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia. Mr. McCabe has turned over his memo to the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

In the document, whose contents have not been previously reported, Mr. McCabe described a conversation at the Justice Department with the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, in the chaotic days last May after Mr. Comey’s abrupt firing.

Mueller Seeks White House Documents Related to Trump’s Actions as President

Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, has asked the White House for documents about some of President Trump’s most scrutinized actions since taking office, including the firing of his national security adviser and F.B.I. director, according to White House officials.

Mr. Mueller is also interested in an Oval Office meeting Mr. Trump had with Russian officials in which he said the dismissal of the F.B.I. director had relieved “great pressure” on him.

Before Breonna Taylor's name became synonymous with police violence against Black Americans, she was an emergency medical technician in Louisville, Ky.The 26-year-old Black woman's friends and family say she was beloved, and relished the opportunity to brighten someone else's day.

Exactly one year ago, Louisville police gunned her down in her home. Now, her name is a ubiquitous rallying cry at protests calling for police reforms, and many social justice advocates point to her story as an example of how difficult it can be to hold police accountable for violent acts. The Louisville incident unfolded during a botched narcotics raid, when officers forced their way into her apartment in the early morning hours of March 13, 2020. Taylor was not the target of the raid and the suspect police were searching for was not at Taylor's home.

A year after Taylor's death, none of the officers who fired their service weapons — a total of 32 rounds — face criminal charges directly over Taylor's killing. At least three officers with connections to the raid have been terminated from the force.

A huge blaze broke out at an Iranian oil refinery south of Tehran on Wednesday, a spokesman for Iran's emergency department said, according to state media. At least 11 people have been injured.

The head of Tehran's Provincial Crisis Management Office, Mansour Darajati, said that "a leak at a liquid gas pipeline at the facility sparked the fire," Reuters reported.

Shaker Khafaei, the head of public relations of Tehran Oil Refining Co., which runs the refinery, told state news agency IRINN that he did not believe sabotage to be the cause of the fire.

Vistra Corp. owns 36 natural-gas power plants, one of America’s largest fleets. It doesn’t plan to buy or build any more. Instead, Vistra intends to invest more than $1 billion in solar farms and battery storage units in Texas and California as it tries to transform its business to survive in an electricity industry being reshaped by new technology.

A decade ago, natural gas displaced coal as America’s top electric-power source, as fracking unlocked cheap quantities of the fuel. Now, in quick succession, natural gas finds itself threatened with the same kind of disruption, only this time from cost-effective batteries charged with wind and solar energy.

Natural-gas-fired electricity represented 38% of U.S. generation in 2019

Many of us didn’t see, and still don’t see, how Yglesias’s signing of the letter is supposed to increase the likelihood that VanDerWerff suffers harm. This is VanDerWerff’s most significant complaint against Yglesias

because it comes in the form of a worry over personal safety, rather than as an intellectual challenge to the letter’s contents, this has the effect of preempting critical engagement with VanDerWerff’s response, since disagreement with her no longer seems morally appropriate.

this is my second point — disagreement with her no longer seems logically appropriate, since what’s been offered is not so much a counterpoint to the Harper’s letter but something less cognitive, less vulnerable to the forms and checks of reason and argument

The first institution Maoists captured was not the academy, it was the state. The seeds of the Cultural Revolution were not in the academy, but in the perceived weakness of the communist party in China, and Mao’s position within the party, after the failures of the Great Leap Forward. Maoists took over the state first, and 17 years later launched a campaign to force cultural change in the academy and elsewhere.

Cultural power, and related concepts like “privilege,” aren’t nothing, but they’re vaguer and less impactful than the state, which can credibility threaten, authorize, excuse, and utilize force.

State-backed violence made the Cultural Revolution, and if you think the social justice movement is similar, you misunderstand it.

Islamic State fired crude chemical weapons on US troops – Pentagon

Islamic State forces have fired crude chemical weapons at US troops in Iraq, the Pentagon has confirmed, a startling disclosure that US officials promptly downplayed as resulting in no deaths or injuries.

Mustard, a banned chemical weapon, is relatively easy to manufacture and has a low incidence of lethality in all but extreme doses, such as the bombardment that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein used on Kurdish civilians and Iranian soldiers in the 1980s and early 1990

The U.S. says it has seen the announcement from Russia, Turkey and Iran on their intent to establish a mechanism to enforce a cease-fire in Syria and welcomes actions that de-escalate violence in the country.

U.S. calls on the three countries to press the Syrian government and its allies, as well as opposition forces, to abide by the cease-fire in order to create an environment more conductive to political discussions between Syrians.

The Russian military says its bombers have struck Islamic State positions in eastern Syria in the third such raid in four days.