NewsBytes

Get ready for several years of even more record-breaking heat that pushes Earth to more deadly, fiery and uncomfortable extremes, two of the world's top weather agencies forecast. There's an 80 per cent chance the world will break another annual temperature record in the next five years, and it's even more probable that the world will again exceed the international temperature threshold set 10 years ago, according to a five-year forecast released by the World Meteorological Organisation and the UK Meteorological Office. And for the first time there's a chance — albeit slight — that before the end of the decade, the world's annual temperature will shoot past the Paris climate accord goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) and hit a more alarming 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of heating since the mid-1800s, the two agencies said. There's an 86 per cent chance that one of the next five years will pass 1.5 degrees and a 70 per cent chance that the five years as a whole will average more than that global milestone, they figured. The projections come from more than 200 forecasts using computer simulations run by 10 global centres of scientists.

With rising cases of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a type of blood cancer, experts are calling for it to be recognised as a national health priority, saying critical time is lost in its detection although a simple blood test can help diagnose it. They also said that despite Mumbai housing reputed oncology centres, patients struggle with high costs and limited access to molecular diagnostics and AML-targeted therapies. The AML is a type of cancer that affects the bone marrow and blood. In this, bone marrow makes a large number of abnormal blood cells. With cases gradually rising, AML should be recognised as a national health priority to prevent avoidable loss of life, Dr Ranjit Sahoo, Professor (Additional) at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, said. “Acute leukaemia can be detected by a simple blood test. However, the treatment of AML is carried out at tertiary centres and the cost of supportive treatment is high,” he said.

China has assured Pakistan of re-lending $3.7 billion in commercial loans, denominated in Chinese currency, before the end of June, in a move that will help keep the foreign exchange reserves in double digits, according to a media report. Unlike in the past, when Beijing has given loans in non-Chinese currency too, this time Pakistan's strategic ally has decided not to give loans in the United States currency as part of its drive to decouple the economy from the dollar, the government sources told The Express Tribune newspaper. They said that China gave these assurances during recent meetings, aimed at securing the refinancing of loans maturing between March and June 2025.  Pakistan has already returned a $1.3 billion loan of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) in three tranches between March and April this year, officials said.

The United States and Russia quarrelled in public on Wednesday over the intensifying Ukraine war after US President Donald Trump warned that President Vladimir Putin was "playing with fire" and Moscow massed 50,000 troops near a Ukrainian region. While world leaders bicker over the prospects for peace, the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two is heating up fast: swarms of drones are being launched by both sides while Russia is advancing at key points along the front. Trump, in a post on Truth Social, said Putin was playing with fire and cautioned that ‘REALLY BAD’ things would have happened already to Russia if it was not for Trump himself. “What Vladimir Putin doesn't realise is that if it weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened in Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He's playing with fire,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Tuesday. Putin's foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, told a state TV reporter that Trump's remark suggested that he is not well-briefed on the realities of the war. “Trump is not sufficiently informed about what is really happening in the context of the Ukrainian-Russian confrontation,”  Ushakov said.