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Spain and Portugal record hottest June ever
Thomas MackintoshBBC News
Getty ImagesA woman fans herself during the June heatwave in Madrid Both Portugal and Spain recorded their hottest June ever as scorching temperatures continue to grip Europe.
Spain’s national weather service Aemet said the country’s “extremely hot” June 2025 “has pulverised records”, surpassing the normal average for July and August.
The Portuguese meteorological service said 46.6C was the highest temperature recorded in June.
Elsewhere on the continent on Tuesday, tens of thousands of people have been evacuated because of wildfires in western Turkey, while two people died in Italy following separate heat-related deaths.
Overnight, the Aemet meteorological agency said that several places across the Iberian peninsula had topped 43C, but added that a respite in temperatures was on its way from Thursday.
Night-time temperatures recorded overnight into Tuesday hit 28C in Seville and 27C in Barcelona.
In Turkey, rescuers evacuated more than 50,000 people – mostly from the western province of Izmir – as firefighters continued to put out hundreds of wildfires that had broken out in recent days.
Fires have also swept through parts of Bilecik, Hatay, Sakarya, and Manisa provinces.
Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli said over the past three days, emergency teams had responded to 263 wildfires nationwide.
Getty ImagesResidents have been evacuated near the resort city of Izmir in Turkey as wildfires rage In France, many cities experienced their hottest night and day on record for June on Monday, but forecasters have said the heatwave should expect to peak on Tuesday.
The top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris has been closed because of the intense European heatwave; while Climate Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher called an “unprecedented” situation.
For first time in five years the Paris region has activated a red alert, along with 15 other French regions. The Ministry of Education has said 1,350 public schools will either be partially or completely closed on Tuesday.
A reading of 46.6 C (115.9F) was registered in Mora, Portugal, about 60 miles east of Lisbon on Sunday. Portuguese weather officials were working to confirm whether that marked a new record for June.
Getty ImagesThe summit of the Eiffel Tower will be closed all day on 1 July and 2 July, officials said In Italy, the Tuscany region has seen hospital admissions rise by 20%, according to local reports.
Italians in 21 out of the 27 cities have been subjected to the highest heat alert and 13 regions, including Lombardy and Emilia, have been advised not to venture outside during the hottest periods of the day.
In Lombardy, working outdoors has been banned from 12:30 to 16:00 on hot days on building sites, roads and farms until September.
Temperatures in Greece have been approaching 40C for several days and wildfires hit several coastal towns near the capital Athens destroying homes and forcing people to evacuate.
Parts of the UK were just shy of being one of the hottest June days ever on Monday.
The highest UK temperature of the day was recorded at Heathrow Airport in London at 33.1C. Meanwhile, Wimbledon recorded a temperature of 32.9C, the tennis tournament’s hottest opening day on record.
In Germany, the country’s meteorological service warned that temperatures could reach almost 38C on Tuesday and Wednesday – further potentially record-breaking temperatures.
The heatwave lowered levels in the Rhine River – a major shipping route – limiting the amount cargo ships can transport and raising freighting costs.
Countries in and around the Balkans have also been struggling with the intense heat, although temperatures have begun to cool. Wildfires have also been reported in Montenegro.
While the heatwave is a potential health issue, it is also impacting the environment. Higher temperatures in the Adriatic Sea are encouraging invasive species such as the poisonous lionfish, while also causing further stress on alpine glaciers that are already shrinking at record rates.
The UN’s human rights chief, Volker Turk, warned on Monday that the heatwave highlighted the need for climate adaptation – moving away from practices and energy sources, such as fossil fuels, which are the main cause of climate change.
“Rising temperatures, rising seas, floods, droughts, and wildfires threaten our rights to life, to health, to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and much more,” he told the UN’s Human Rights Council.
Heatwaves are becoming more common due to human-caused climate change, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Extreme hot weather will happen more often – and become even more intense – as the planet continues to warm, it has said.
Richard Allan, Professor of Climate Science at the University of Reading in the UK, explained that rising greenhouse gas levels are making it harder for the planet to lose excess heat.
“The warmer, thirstier atmosphere is more effective at drying soils, meaning heatwaves are intensifying, with moderate heat events now becoming extreme.”
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Pakistan to expand Gwadar Port to boost maritime trade, regional connectivity-Xinhua
ISLAMABAD, July 1 (Xinhua) — Pakistan’s Ministry of Maritime Affairs on Tuesday announced a comprehensive plan to expand operations at Gwadar Port by establishing new shipping lines and introducing a ferry service to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, the ministry said in a statement.
Chairing a meeting here, Minister for Maritime Affairs Muhammad Junaid Anwar Chaudhry said the initiative is part of a broader strategy to boost regional connectivity, enhance Pakistan’s maritime trade, and develop Gwadar into a major transshipment and logistics hub in the Arabian Sea.
The federal minister added that the expansion would support growing trade with Central Asia and the Middle East, while positioning Gwadar as a central node in regional supply chains.
As part of the initiative, the ministry also plans to launch a ferry service from Gwadar to GCC countries to provide affordable and direct maritime transport for passengers and cargo.
Located in the county’s southwest Balochistan province, the port is a key component of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
Launched in 2013, the flagship project of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative connects Gwadar port with Kashgar in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. ■
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Bocodepsin/Binimetinib Is Tolerable, Shows Combinatorial Activity in NRAS-Mutant Metastatic Melanoma
NRAS-Mutant Metastatic Melanoma |
Image credit: © Artur – stock.adobe.com
The combination of the oral histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor bocodepsin (OKI-179) and binimetinib (Mektovi) had a manageable safety profile and produced initial responses in patients with NRAS-mutant metastatic melanoma, according to data from the phase 2 portion of the phase 1b/2 NAUTILUS trial (NCT05340621) presented during the 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting.1
Findings from the primary analysis showed that patients treated with the combination achieved a median progression-free survival (PFS) of 6.7 months. Among 20 evaluable patients, the overall response rate was 30%.
Regarding safety, the combination was found to be tolerable. The most common toxicities occurring in more than 10% of patients were dermatitis acneiform (21%), anemia (17%), and thrombocytopenia (17%). No grade 3/4 toxicities were seen in more than 10% of patients, including no high-grade rash.
“Initial response data in patients with NRAS-mutant melanoma are supportive of potential combinatorial activity of a MEK inhibitor and HDAC inhibitor bocodepsin with longer PFS than what is typically seen with MEK inhibition alone,” lead study author Rodabe N. Amaria, MD, and colleagues wrote in a poster presentation of the data. “MEK inhibition and HDAC inhibition warrant further study in a larger patient cohort.”
Amaria is an assistant professor in the Department of Melanoma Medical Oncology, Division of Cancer Medicine, at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.
Dive Into the Background and Design of the NAUTILUS Trial
Activating NRAS mutations occur in 15% to 20% of metastatic melanoma cases. The MEK inhibitor binimetinib has demonstrated modest single-agent activity in this setting, with an ORR of 15% and a median PFS of 2.8 months. Preclinical studies have shown that HDAC inhibitors can potentiate the efficacy of MEK inhibitors in RAS pathway–driven melanomas by concurrently suppressing 2 DNA repair pathways. Bocodepsin, a novel, oral, Class I–selective HDAC inhibitor, has been associated with low-grade toxicities and demonstrated synergistic activity with binimetinib in NRAS-mutant melanoma models, supporting the inception of the NAUTILUS trial.
NAUTILUS was comprised of a phase 1b dose-escalation and a phase 2 single-arm study.2 The phase 1 portion enrolled patients with advanced solid tumors without activating RAS pathway alterations; phase 2 included patients with NRAS-mutant metastatic melanoma who previously received or were ineligible for immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy.
In the dose-escalation study, patients received either 200 mg (cohort 1; n = 8) or 300 mg (cohort 2; n = 6) of bocodepsin administered on a 4-days-on/3-days-off schedule, in combination with binimetinib at 45 mg twice daily.1 The 300 mg dose of bocodepsin was established as the recommended phase 2 dose (RP2D) and was subsequently used in all 22 patients enrolled in the single-arm phase 2 portion.
In phase 1b, the primary end points were identification of the maximum tolerated dose and the RP2D.2 In phase 2, the primary end point was objective response rate (ORR), with secondary end points including safety and pharmacokinetics.1,2
The median age of patients in the phase 2 portion of NAUTILUS (n = 24) was 69 (range, 39-82).1 The majority of patients were female (53%) and had an ECOG performance status of 1 (71%). The median number of prior lines of therapy was 3 (range, 1-9), and lactate dehydrogenase levels were elevated in 41% of patients.
Interim data from NAUTILUS showed that, as of the safety data cutoff of July 6, 2023, no dose-limiting toxicities were observed with the combination in either cohort 1 or cohort 2, and adverse effects (AEs) were generally manageable with supportive care or dose interruptions/ reductions.2 The most common treatment-related AEs were as expected based on the agents’ individual safety profiles, and no grade 4/5 TRAEs were observed.
At an efficacy data cutoff of September 26, 2023, the ORR per RECIST 1.1 criteria among all response-evaluable patients with NRAS-mutant metastatic melanoma in phase 1 and phase 2 (n=16) was 38%; this was comprised entirely of partial responses. Stable disease was also achieved by 38% of patients, and 25% experienced disease progression.
References
- Amaria R, Duvivier H, Tsa K, et al. Nautilus, a phase 1b/2 trial of combining oral HDAC inhibitor (HDACi) with MEK inhibitor (MEKi) in patients with NRAS-mutated metastatic melanoma (MM): Results from the phase 3 ECHELON-3 study. J Clin Oncol. 2025, 43(suppl 16):9552.doi:10.1200/JCO.2025.43.16_suppl.9552
- Amaria R, Duvivier H, Tsa K, et al. Novel strategy for RAS-pathway targeting: Initial results from a phase 1b/2 clinical trial of the oral HDAC inhibitor bocodepsin (OKI-179) combined with binimetinib in patients with RAS-pathway mutated solid tumors and NRAS mutated melanoma. Mol Cancer Ther. 2023; 22(suppl 12):PR012. doi:10.1158/1535-7163.TARG-23-PR012
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Antarctic Sea Ice Decline: Far-Reaching Effects
Antarctic sea ice is more than just a platform for penguins. The sea ice’s high reflectivity influences the whole Earth’s climate, and the ice is a key habitat for underwater as well as above-water ecosystems. Antarctic sea ice cover is becoming much more variable as the climate changes; there has been a string of record high years followed by years with record low areas of ice. Edward Doddridge and colleagues studied these record-low years, which they expect will become more common as the climate warms. Using observations and modeling, the authors find a host of effects of ultra-low ice years, including warming of the Southern Ocean, increased ice-shelf calving, and stronger phytoplankton blooms. Low sea-ice area negatively affects krill, small crustaceans that feed and find refuge beneath the sea ice, as well as fatty silverfish. Reductions in krill and fish populations affect their predators, including whales. Penguins and seals that use ice floes to moult, nest, or grow new fur will struggle if low sea ice continues for many years. Finally, a reduction in the area of firm ice affixed to the land makes it more difficult for humans to operate on the continent, affecting Antarctic science. According to the authors, additional research is needed to fully understand the impacts of low Antarctic sea ice on the physical, ecological, and societal systems within and around Antarctica, and they call, in particular, for reliable, year-round, long-term measurements of sea-ice thickness.
/Public Release. This material from the originating organization/author(s) might be of the point-in-time nature, and edited for clarity, style and length. Mirage.News does not take institutional positions or sides, and all views, positions, and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author(s).View in full here.Continue Reading
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Curiosity Rover Captures First Close-Up Images of Giant ‘Spiderwebs’ on Mars
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has captured the first close-up images of Martian “spiderwebs” or zig-zagging ridges left behind by ancient groundwater. Studying these structures could provide more insights into Mars’ watery past and whether the planet once held extraterrestrial life.
Curiosity Rover Captures ‘Spiderwebs’
New images from NASA’s Curiosity rover show a series of boxwork ridges; Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS The web-like structures consist of criss-crossing ridges of mineral-rich rocks, spanning up to 12 miles across. Until now, these features have never been studied up close.
Smaller boxwork structures can also be found on the walls of caves on Earth, which were formed from a similar process to stalagmites and stalactites. Researchers suggest the same process created the structures on Mars.
“The bedrock below these ridges likely formed when groundwater trickling through the rock left behind minerals that accumulated in those cracks and fissures, hardening and becoming cementlike,” NASA representatives wrote in a statement. “Eons of sandblasting by Martian wind wore away the rock but not the minerals, revealing networks of resistant ridges within.”
According to Live Science, Curiosity is currently exploring a series of boxwork on the slopes of the 3.4-mile-tall Mount Sharp at the heart of the Gale Crater. The rover set its sights on this area in November 2024 and arrived there in early June 2025.
The area was sought out for study because the unique ridges only appear in this area and not anywhere else on the mountain, which has puzzled researchers. After drilling some sample rocks around the web-like ridges, the rover found they contained calcium sulfate, a salty mineral left behind by groundwater.
“These ridges will include minerals that crystallized underground, where it would have been warmer, with salty liquid water flowing through,” Kirsten Siebach, a Curiosity mission scientist at Rice University in Houston who has been studying the area, previously stated. “Early Earth microbes could have survived in a similar environment. That makes this an exciting place to explore.”
In addition to releasing the first close-up images of the site, NASA also released an interactive video that enables 3D exploration of the area.
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Coulomb liquid emerges from five electrons in a semiconductor – Physics World
Coulomb liquid emerges from five electrons in a semiconductor – Physics World
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Crimes in ICT reduced by 59% over last one year: Talal – RADIO PAKISTAN
- Crimes in ICT reduced by 59% over last one year: Talal RADIO PAKISTAN
- Islamabad police announce significant crime rate drop, major case breakthroughs Ptv.com.pk
- Two SSPs to investigate murder of retired brigadier’s son Dawn
- Police still without leads in Faheem Sardar murder case nation.com.pk
- IO changed in murder case The Express Tribune
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Beatles’ Apple Corps Names Tom Greene New CEO
Apple Corps, the Beatles‘ media corporation, has named Tom Greene as its new CEO, the announced Tuesday morning.
Greene is best-known for his work with the Harry Potter franchise, where he worked first as an executive both at Pottermore Publishing, then as the CFO and later general manager at Wizarding World Digital, the joint venture between Warner Media and Pottermore. Greene is currently the chief operating officer of esports programming company Blast, and he is still on the board at Pottermore.
“We are thrilled to welcome Tom Greene as CEO,” Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison and Sean Ono Lennon said in a joint statement. “We have a lot of exciting plans and Tom’s experience and vision make him the perfect person to join us in making it all happen.”
Greene’s appointment comes months after previous CEO Jeff Jones, who served as Apple Corps’ top executive for 17 years, stepped down from his post last October, per Billboard. The Beatles had first established Apple Corps back in 1968, and Greene will serve as the third CEO in the company’s history, per the company.
Apple Corps remains active in overseeing the Fab Four’s musical legacy, giving the signoff for Sam Mendes’ biopics on all four of the Beatles. Those films will star Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, and they’re expected to release in 2028.
“It is a huge honour to lead Apple Corps into this new phase of its history,” Greene said in a statement. “Like so many people around the world, I grew up in a household obsessed with The Beatles and their music. At a time when the world might need more of The Beatles’ spirit, there are so many new and innovative ways to bring their unique magic to all generations of fans. I cannot wait to get started.”
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Hollywood, women and the blacklist star in novel ‘Typewriter Beach’
Meg Waite Clayton was mulling how to follow up her best-selling 2021 historical fiction novel “The Postmistress of Paris” when fate tapped her on the shoulder.
Her father had died and grief was making writing difficult. Then came the global pandemic, which found the California author hunkered down in the new home she shared with her husband Mac in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, a picture-book hamlet snuggled up against a crescent-shaped Pacific beach.
And so was born “Typewriter Beach” (out now from HarperCollins), a novel about blacklisted screenwriter Léon Chazan, who goes by Leo, and his journey toward the embrace of family that was denied him by the Holocaust. The tale toggles between Los Angeles during the 1950s McCarthy era, and 2018, when Chazan’s granddaughter Gemma decamps to his old Carmel cottage to meet her own personal and professional destiny.
“Leo just came to me, that’s my father’s middle name, and Gemma is basically Meg backwards,” says Clayton. “It’s not my family’s story per se; my father was a tech executive, not a blacklisted writer. But it all comes from the shreds of my heart.”
Clayton is no stranger to populating novels with real events and even historical figures, and she’s particularly fond of slicing off gritty periods from the mid-20th century.
In “The Race for Paris” (2015), she crafted a tale spotlighting women war correspondents who helped chronicle D-Day, while in “Last Train to London” (2019) she based her heroine on a real Dutch woman who was integral to the fabled Kindertransport that saved many Jewish children during World War II.
In “Typewriter Beach,” we’re in another difficult period where Senator Joseph McCarthy is on a witch hunt to ruin the lives of anyone even remotely suspected of being connected to the Communist party. Often evidence was thin or fabricated, but that didn’t stop McCarthy and others from sending many Hollywood actors and writers into exile. Screenwriters such as Dalton Trumbo had to submit scripts through proxies, often accepting only a fraction of their regular pay.
That dilemma is at the core of “Typewriter Beach,” which also features an appearance by none other than Alfred Hitchcock, who invites Clayton’s ’50s actress character, Isabella Giori, to audition for him. There are other well-known name drops, involving real Oscar night dramas and #MeToo movement trials, all of which bubbled to the fore during the author’s pandemic writing blitz.
“I write best when I write about the things I’m passionate about. And beyond being interested in the impact of the blacklist, I’d been writing opinion pieces for some time about the treatment of women in Hollywood,” she says.
How women are treated in Hollywood is a big focus on the novel ‘Typewriter Beach’
In this new novel, Giori is an up-and-coming actress whose life is upended by the scrutiny and demands of a publicity machine that doesn’t allow actors to simply be themselves. On the run, she leaves Los Angeles for Carmel. Clayton says she mined those details from reading about real legends from Grace Kelly to Marilyn Monroe, whose careers were subject to intense scrutiny and control.
Ingrid Berman was virtually blackballed after her scandalous extramarital affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini, a marriage that would later produce actress Isabella Rossellini. She stayed away from the Oscars in 1957 despite winning for “Anastasia.”
For Clayton, the power of fiction over news reports is rooted in the heart. “History you read about, but with historical fiction you try and make people feel what it might be like to have something powerful happen to you,” she says.
Part of what keeps “Typewriter Beach” clicking along are the overlapping references to Hollywood then and now, especially when a guest appearance is made by the murder-mystery icon best known simply as “Hitch.”
To make sure his presence was genuine, Clayton watched countless hours of Hitchcock interviews and “made sure I watched many of his greatest works, which frankly was a great excuse to watch movies during the daytime,” she says.
As for the accuracy of Hitch’s comments and behavior in her novel, Clayton says that while creative license is fair game after someone dies, “I still felt compelled to make sure that things resonated, whether it was his love of eating many steaks at a time or his relationship with his wife, Alma, or the description of the house they had just north of Carmel. It’s all the way it was.”
In writing the new book, Clayton also got to know her new hometown better, strolling its tree-dotted and canopied streets, discovering its hidden beaches and learning about its famous poet Robinson Jeffers. She even dove into 1950s town gossip by perusing the archives of the local paper, the improbably named Carmel Pine Cone.
Searching old copies, she’d stumble upon articles announcing that Bing Crosby had just arrived for the season, see ads for movies playing at the local theater and scan announcements detailing which resident had just gotten a telephone. It all made it that much easier to make Carmel-by-the-Sea a key protagonist in her latest work.
“It’s this tiny town known the world over for its cottages and fog and famous residents like Clint Eastwood, Doris Day and now even Brad Pitt,” she says. “But the gift I personally got from the pandemic was being able to focus on where I now lived. And that was just wonderful.”
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