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People are flocking to pools, beaches and cooling centers in a swath of the Midwest and South spanning from northern Florida to the Great Lakes, as a heat wave pushed temperatures into the 90s and beyond and may have caused the deaths of at least two people in the Milwaukee area.

The National Weather Service maintained an excessive heat warning through Wednesday evening for most of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, which have been dealing with the sticky humidity and soaring temperatures since Tuesday.

And the heat advisory in place for the Midwest and South stretched all the way eastward to the South Carolina shoreline, covering an area that is home to roughly a third of the country’s population.

The Jan. 6 committee is plunging into Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to salvage the 2020 election by pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the electoral count — powers Pence didn’t have.

Thursday’s hearing is expected to focus on how Trump latched onto a strategy from conservative law professor John Eastman to pressure Pence days before the vice president was to preside over the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.

Testimony is expected from the vice president’s counsel, Greg Jacob, and a retired federal judge, Michael Luttig, who called the plan “incorrect at every turn.”

Two U.S. veterans from Alabama who were in Ukraine assisting in the war against Russia haven’t been heard from in days and are missing. Members of the state’s congressional delegation say relatives of 27-year-old Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh of Trinity and 39-year-old Alexander Drueke of Tuscaloosa have been in contact with Capitol Hill offices seeking information about the men’s whereabouts.

The U.S. State Department says it is looking into reports that Russian or Russian-backed separatist forces in Ukraine had captured at least two American citizens. If confirmed, they would be the first Americans fighting for Ukraine known to have been captured since the war began Feb. 24.

After five weeks of declining coronavirus deaths, the number of fatalities reported globally increased by 4% last week, according to the World Health Organization. In its weekly assessment of the pandemic issued on Thursday, the U.N. health agency said there were 8,700 COVID-19 deaths last week, with a 21% jump in the Americas and a 17% increase in the Western Pacific.

WHO said coronavirus cases continued to fall, with about 3.2 million new cases reported last week, extending a decline in COVID-19 infections since a peak in January.

A fisherman confessed to killing a British journalist and an Indigenous expert in Brazil’s remote Amazon and took police to a site where human remains were recovered, a federal investigator said, after a grim 10-day search for the missing pair. Authorities said Wednesday night that they expected to make more arrests soon in the case of freelance reporter Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira of Brazil, who disappeared June 5.

A federal police investigator says the fisherman who had been the prime suspect confessed Tuesday night and detailed what happened to Phillips and Pereira. Investigator Eduardo Alexandre Fontes says Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira told officers he used a firearm to kill the pair and then led them deep into the forest to the spot where he buried them.

The Avalanche top the Lightning in OT, the Astros clobber the Rangers, the Yankees and Braves win again, the Brewers get a record win for their manager and the Dodgers just miss a no-hitter.

The Federal Reserve intensified its drive to tame high inflation by raising its key interest rate by three-quarters of a point — its largest hike in nearly three decades — and signaling more large rate increases to come that would raise the risk of another recession.

The move the Fed announced after its latest policy meeting will increase its benchmark short-term rate, which affects many consumer and business loans.

The central bank is ramping up its drive to tighten credit and slow growth with inflation having reached a four-decade high of 8.6%, spreading to more areas of the economy and showing no sign of slowing.

The gunman who is accused of killing 10 Black people in a racist attack at a Buffalo supermarket has been charged with federal hate crimes that could potentially carry a death penalty. The filing of the new charges against 18-year-old Payton Gendron on Monday coincided with a visit to Buffalo by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Garland met with families and laid flowers at a memorial outside the Tops Friendly Market. Investigators say Gendron’s radical, racist worldview and extensive preparation for the May 14 mass shooting are laid out in online documents.

Garland said “families and the survivors will be consulted” as the Justice Department weighs whether to seek capital punishment. Gendron’s lawyer declined to comment.

Officials say a Michigan police officer charged with murder after shooting Patrick Lyoya in the back of the head has been fired. Grand Rapids City Manager Mark Washington said Wednesday that Christopher Schurr waived his right to a hearing and was dismissed, effective last Friday.

Schurr was a Grand Rapids officer for seven years. Police Chief Eric Winstrom recommended Schurr’s dismissal after a second-degree murder charge was filed Thursday.

Lyoya, a Black man, was killed at the end of a traffic stop on April 4. He ran and physically resisted Schurr after failing to produce a driver’s license. Schurr, who is white, has claimed Lyoya had control of his Taser when he shot him. Defense lawyers say the officer feared for his safety.

The U.S. says it will send an additional $1 billion in military aid to Ukraine, as America and its allies work to provide longer-range weapons they say can make a difference in a fight where Ukrainian forces are outnumbered and outgunned by their Russian invaders.

President Joe Biden and his top national security leaders say the U.S. is moving as fast as possible to get critical weapons into the fight, even as Ukrainian officials protest that they need more, and faster, in order to survive.

The aid will include anti-ship missile launchers, howitzers and more rounds for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems that U.S. forces are training Ukrainian troops on now.

John Hinckley Jr. has been freed from court oversight. The action ends decades of supervision by legal and mental health professionals. Hinckley shot and wounded President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

The European Central Bank has vowed to come up with a new, unspecified market backstop that could be used to buffer some countries against bond market turmoil similar to what shook the 19-country eurozone during a debt crisis more than a decade ago.

The statement came after an unscheduled meeting of the bank’s governing council Wednesday. It aims to address a selloff in Italian and Spanish government debt in the wake of the bank’s decision to start raising interest rates in July for the first time in 11 years.

The Environmental Protection Agency is warning that two nonstick and stain-resistant compounds in drinking water pose health risks at levels so low they cannot currently be detected. Most uses of so-called “forever chemicals” known as PFOA and PFOS have been voluntarily phased out by U.S. manufacturers.

Americans trimmed their spending unexpectedly in May compared with the month before, underscoring how surging inflation on daily necessities like gas is causing them to be more cautious about buying discretionary items. U.S. retail sales fell 0.3% last month, down from a revised 0.7% increase in April.

A third arrest has been made in a mass shooting in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where three people died and 14 were injured. News outlets cited an affidavit filed with the U.S. District Court for Eastern Tennessee in reporting that 31-year-old Rodney Harris was charged Tuesday in federal court with possession of a firearm by a felon.

Ford is recalling over 2.9 million vehicles in the U.S. to fix a transmission problem that can increase the risk of inadvertent rollaway crashes. The recall covers certain 2013 to 2019 Escape, 2013 to 2018 C-Max, 2013 to 2016 Fusion, 2013 to 2021 Transit Connect, and 2015 to 2018 Edge vehicles.

Automakers reported nearly 400 crashes of vehicles with partially automated driver-assist systems, including 273 involving Teslas, according to new statistics from U.S. safety regulators.