Tim Walz accepts the VP nomination | First Thing

Good morning.

As the crowd chanted “coach” and held up “Coach Walz” signs, Tim Walz closed out Wednesday’s Democratic convention in Chicago by accepting the Democratic party’s vice-presidential nomination . The Minnesota governor garnered loud cheers in his well-received speech that drew on his rural bona fides and Americana background as a teacher and coach.

“It’s the fourth quarter. We’re down a field goal, but we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball,” he told the crowd, emphasizing his Americana background as a teacher and coach. “We’re driving down the field, and boy, do we have the right team. Kamala Harris is tough, Kamala Harris is experienced, and Kamala Harris is ready.”

• Who else spoke ? Before Walz, the former president Bill Clinton and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi took the stage , as well as rising stars in the party, the Maryland governor Wes Moore and transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg. The comedian Kenan Thompson and actor Mindy Kaling also spoke, but perhaps the most rousing speech was from a surprise guest, Oprah Winfrey, the Chicago-based talkshow host and political independent, who called on fellow independents to rally around the Harris-Walz ticket .

• What’s next? Kamala Harris will take the stage tonight in the biggest test of her political life so far : persuading American voters to defeat Donald Trump in November’s presidential election and put her in the White House.

Joe Biden presses Benjamin Netanyahu on ‘urgency’ of sealing ceasefire

Late on Wednesday, Joe Biden posted on X that he had called on the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu , and “made clear that we must bring the ceasefire and hostage release deal to closure”. Meanwhile, Israeli forces pressed deeper into areas of the central and southern Gaza Strip as they fought Hamas.

• What is happening in Gaza? Palestinian health officials said on Thursday that Israeli strikes had killed at least 22 people . One strike on a house in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya killed 11 people, while another killed six, including a local journalist, in a house in al-Maghazi camp in the central Gaza Strip, medics said. Five others were killed in separate strikes in the south.

Report: Robert F Kennedy Jr to drop out of presidential race

The ABC network is reporting that Robert F Kennedy Jr is about to drop his campaign for president. Earlier this week, his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, revealed on a podcast that Kennedy was considering that option and considering endorsing Donald Trump , the Republican nominee.

• Are the Democrats worried? Jen O’Malley Dillon, campaign manager for Harris, said she did not have any concerns if Kennedy dropped out and endorsed Trump. “We are very confident that the vice-president is going to win whether she’s running against one candidate or multiple candidates,” she said at a CNN-Politico grill event. “I don’t think it’s really going to interfere with the race too much.”

In other news …

• Texas’s highest criminal court will once again consider the case of Crystal Mason, a Texas woman sentenced to five years in prison for trying to cast a provisional ballot in the 2016 presidential election when she was ineligible to vote.

• In a new deal announced on Wednesday, California will be the first US state to direct millions of dollars of taxpayer and tech compan y money to help pay for journalism and AI research .

• Divers are continuing to search the coast of Sicily, where a super-yacht sank during a violent storm . Teams have so far recovered five bodies , include one reported to be that of the British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch.

Stat of the day: About 500,000 trees cut down at site of Tesla gigafactory near Berlin

Since May, activists have been protesting against the expansion of a Tesla plant in Grünheide, near Berlin, saying it would damage the environment. Satellite analysis is now showing that 329 hectares (813 acres) of forest were cut down at the site between March 2020 and May 2023 – about 500,000 trees . While Tesla did not respond to requests for comment, Antoine Halff, the chief analyst at Kayrros, the environmental intelligence company behind the satellite analysis, said the lost trees were equivalent to about 13,000 tonnes of CO ₂ , the annual amount emitted by 2,800 average internal combustion engine cars in the US.

“That’s a fraction of the number of the electric cars that Tesla produces and sells every quarter,” Halff said. “You always have trade-offs, so you need to be aware of what the terms of the trade-off are.”

Don’t miss: Thousands of Rohingya forced to flee homes in Myanmar

In Myanmar, the rebel Arakan Army has seized control of much of the country’s Rakhine state from the military and is now targeting the area’s Muslim Rohingya minority, shelling their villages and reportedly rounding up groups of men. Thousands of Rohingya have been forced from their homes , with one UN official saying that there appeared to be a coordinated attack on 5 August, when Rohingya from several villages were forced to a riverbank by Arakan Army fighters and then targeted by explosive-laden drones.

Climate check: The melting ice buffers of Antarctica

As rising temperatures melt sea ice buffers, scientists are warning that objects washing ashore in Antarctica from Australia, South Africa, South America and New Zealand could disrupt the local ecosystem . While plants and animals have always drifted toward Antarctica, scientists theorize they may have been destroyed by the floating sea ice that constantly crushes and scrapes against the coastline.

“If things are getting there frequently, it must be the cold waters and the icy conditions that are preventing them from actually establishing,” said Dr Hannah Dawson, the lead author of the study published in Global Change Biology. “But these conditions are changing.”

Last Thing: A penguin movie star

The French actor Jean Reno is a global cinema legend, with notable appearances in movies such as The Pink Panther and The Da Vinci Code. But in his newest film, My Penguin Friend, he understood that on set, he would be playing second fiddle to the project’s true star : the Magellanic penguin in the film’s titular role, who had a “trailer” with a natural saltwater pool and only worked until 3pm. Before and after each scene, a flame-thrower would clear the penguin’s path to keep it from being bitten by mosquitoes, and at the end of each day, a weigh-in was done to ensure the actor had not lost weight from the stress of filming.

“I had to tell Jean Reno, a cinema legend, ‘Jean, the penguin is more important than you in this film’… he was incredibly respectful and understood,” said the film-maker David Schurmann, who directed My Penguin Friend.

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