In Colombia, Reuters reports more than 160 people are dead after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck the northwestern Chocó and other regions Monday, damaging and collapsing hundreds of buildings. The death toll is expected to rise as search and rescue efforts continue. Colombia’s President Abelardo de la Espriella, who was sworn in just three days before the earthquake, has declared a state of emergency.

The U.S. Geological Survey determined the epicenter of the quake to be about three miles from the small town of San José del Palmar, home to only about 5,000 people. The Chocó region is one of the poorest and most neglected in Colombia. The city of Pereira in the neighboring state of Risaralda is among the hardest hit, as well as Cali, where several top floors of the city’s main hospital collapsed, trapping patients. This is a local resident.

Cali resident: “Fortunately, as the neighbor just said, there was a Google Alert, and we were able to get out. But many people didn’t manage to do so. Unfortunately, there were impacts, like here at La Luna Bridge, and despite everything, people are still moving through there. Also, here in the strips, we see that the building suffered damage. I think they’re going to have to demolish it. Really, this is a call for us as a community to come together and solve these types of situations that can happen at any moment.”

New data reveals July was the hottest month ever documented in the United States since records began in 1895, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. So far this summer, intense heat domes swept across the East Coast, the Plains and the Southwest, triggering massive wildfires in the Pacific Northwest and Canada. Lake Mead has plummeted to historic low water levels as the Colorado River struggles to sustain the West, while in Puerto Rico, hundreds of thousands of people are going without running water for 48 hours at a time as authorities impose rotating water shutoffs to combat severe drought.

In France, nearly 70% of the country is under water-use restrictions as successive heat waves intensify the crisis, with two-thirds of groundwater reserves falling below normal levels. Another heat wave is expected this week.

Meanwhile, in England, three-quarters of the nation has entered drought status, placing 27 million people under water-use restrictions as a fifth heat wave looms.

In China, more than a million people were evacuated from their homes as Typhoon Dolphin made landfall. The typhoon unleashed torrential rains that paralyzed transportation systems. On Monday alone, Shanghai’s airports canceled approximately 1,000 flights.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Monday reducing the number of childhood vaccinations from 18 to just 11. The directive also proposes separating the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine into three individual shots administered at different times. Back in January, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reduced the U.S. immunization schedule by eliminating vaccines for six of the 17 covered diseases, but a federal court blocked the change. The new executive order reinstates Kennedy’s overhaul despite the legal case still pending. Republican Senator ​Bill Cassidy of Louisiana criticized the order, saying, “I’m a doctor. This executive order is wrong. The president does not have the expertise to make these changes.” The American Academy of Pediatrics said, “There is no new evidence to justify significant changes to childhood immunization guidance. Dozens of studies involving millions of people show there is no link between vaccines and autism, and yet federal leaders continue to promote this outdated, disproven idea to scare families.” This is President Trump on Monday.

President Donald Trump: “Well, they have a vaccination that looks like the size of a bottle of soda poured into a little child’s body. And bad things happen in many cases — in too many cases, because this is an explosion. This is an epidemic.”

President Trump on Monday claimed that Iran has killed thousands of people through its wars in the region, and during protests inside the country, and demanded compensation. Trump’s new proposal countered Tehran’s existing demands for reparations and the removal of sanctions, which largely matched a preliminary peace agreement signed in June but has since collapsed. This is President Trump.

President Donald Trump: “Well, we’re going to ask for money for that damage they’ve done over a 50-year period, whether you go SS Cole or whether you go all of the people that were so badly hurt, so badly wounded or killed, many thousands of people, and maybe damages for the 52,000 protesters over the last four months that were killed in Iran.”

Meanwhile, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian reported that he spent seven to eight hours with Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and confirmed Khamenei was in good health. The two men met in late July around the start of Pezeshkian’s third year as president, according to state media.

President Masoud Pezeshkian: “It was a good meeting with Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. We talked about all sorts of issues. We raised all the problems and set out our concerns. In terms of his health, he was completely well, because someone who can sit there and hold discussions with us for seven or eight hours cannot be in poor health.”

This comes amid new reports that President Trump secretly left the presidential jet before Air Force One took off from Turkey at the end of last month’s NATO summit because of a credible Iranian threat to fire a missile at his aircraft.

In Syria, a court sentenced ousted leader Bashar al-Assad to death Tuesday after a trial in absentia. He was convicted of killings, torture and arbitrary arrest during Syria’s nearly 14-year war. It was the first Syrian conviction against Assad, who fell in a rebel offensive in December 2024 that ended his family’s decades of rule and a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

A U.S. oil company linked to President Trump called Greenland Energy is preparing to drill in Greenland without local approval. The firm recently landed drilling equipment on Greenland’s eastern coast as President Trump renews threats to seize the Arctic territory. Greenland’s government issued a “strong warning” that no permission was granted. The island’s Mineral Resources Authority must approve all future logistical operations before they proceed, officials said.

Under Colombia’s new right-wing, Trump-supported President Abelardo de la Espriella, Colombia has recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over occupied Western Sahara. Colombia has frozen diplomatic relations with the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and ended prior support for the independence group, the Polisario Front. Morocco has brutally occupied Western Sahara and its Indigenous people, the Sahrawi, since 1975, in defiance of the United Nations and the international community. The first Trump administration recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara in 2020 as part of a larger effort to normalize relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Trump’s State Department has revoked more than 175,000 visas from foreign nationals as part of its sweeping immigration crackdown. This comes as congressional Democrats say they plan to investigate the Trump administration’s efforts to deport U.S. military service members and their families. The probe was announced in response to an Associated Press investigation that found the Trump administration has detained more than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty U.S. military personnel. The investigation by U.S. lawmakers, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren, also found that ICE has attempted to deport 282 veterans and their immediate family members. In April 2025, ICE rescinded its long-standing policy that protected immigrant veterans, and replaced it with a new measure that allows for the detention and deportation of noncitizen U.S. service members.

In more related news, attorneys and local advocates are reporting Haitian immigrants in Ohio are being forced to report to ICE appointments and wear ankle monitors after the Trump administration officially ended temporary protected status, TPS, stripping deportation relief from hundreds of thousands of Haitians. A video circulating on social media and news outlets shows a Haitian man in Blue Ash, Ohio, collapsing to the ground in tears after leaving an ICE check-in and receiving an ankle monitor. He’s been identified by CNN as Monsanto Maler. Maler said he’s lived in the United States since 2023 and that he fled Haiti fearing for his life.

A U.S. appeals court in San Francisco allowed thousands of lawsuits to proceed Monday against Meta, Google, TikTok and Snapchat for designing products that are addictive to young users. Attorneys representing thousands of school districts and individuals suing Meta and other companies said in a statement, “A trial is how the public finds out what Meta knew about its products’ impact on children, when it knew it, and what it chose to do with that knowledge. Meta has fought to keep that evidence from the public.”

Here in New York, a Staten Island judge ordered an emergency pause on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new pied-à-terre tax. The court ruled on a Friday lawsuit filed by three homeowners seeking to delay the rollout of the tax. The pied-à-terre tax targets homes valued at $5 million or higher, and co-ops and condos worth $1 million or more, when the owner doesn’t live there as their primary residence. A spokesperson for Mayor Mamdani said, “We disagree with today’s ruling, but we are confident in both the pied-à-terre surcharge and the City’s ability to implement it fairly and effectively. This surcharge asks those who own second homes valued at $5 million or more to contribute their fair share to the city they benefit from.”

In India, tens of thousands of student and youth protesters marched on the state legislature in Jharkhand Monday as riot police deployed tear gas and water cannons and beat demonstrators with batons. This comes amid weeks of anti-government street protests against the ruling BJP party over the leak of national exam questions, which forced millions of students to retake the exam. Some students ended up dying by suicide after studying for the exam for years. The protests forced the resignation of India’s education minister last month. This is a student leader.

Ravindra Paswan: “I would like to humbly appeal to the state government through your platform that this protest today will be a historic one. By evening, the crowd here will increase gradually. I appeal to the state government that you will have to seriously come up with a decision today itself on the student-related issues.”

Massachusetts has expanded late-term abortion access, loosening restrictions in cases of severe or lethal fetal abnormalities or if the pregnant person’s life is at risk. The law will allow providers to perform abortions after the previous cutoff of 24 weeks when it is necessary to save the pregnant person’s life. Most abortions still happen within the first trimester. During Monday’s bill signing, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, a Democrat, said, “We believe that health care decisions should be made between women and families and their doctors, not politicians. … Mothers and fathers and families who experience these devastating diagnoses — and they are devastating, heartbreaking — now they’ll be able to make their own choices.” Massachusetts becomes the 10th state, along with Washington, D.C., to allow an abortion at any point in pregnancy.