News in brief for August 28

Kamala Harris, Tim Walz agree to first joint interview on Thursday

(TNS) — More than a month after becoming the Democratic party’s nominee for president, Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, will sit for their first joint interview with a news agency.

CNN announced Tuesday it will air a discussion between Harris, Walz and politics correspondent Dana Bash on Thursday at 9 p.m. ET. The interview takes place in Georgia, which will likely be a pivotal state in deciding the 47th president in November.

2 workers killed at Delta facility near Atlanta airport

(TNS) — ATLANTA — Two people were killed and another person was injured at a Delta Air Lines maintenance facility near Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport early Tuesday morning, according to the company.

Multiple Atlanta Fire Rescue Department units and police responded to the scene at a Delta TechOps maintenance hangar on Maynard H. Jackson Jr. Boulevard near the international terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson just after 5 a.m.

Early reports were that a tire on a plane exploded, and a Delta employee and a contractor were killed, according to Channel 2 Action News, which cited multiple unnamed individuals. None of the victims were identified.

Atlanta Fire Rescue referred inquiries to Delta. Few details have been confirmed by the airline.

Fireball leaves smoke trail above Midwest, NASA says

(TNS) — A lot of Midwesterners were recently left impressed, and momentarily wondering what the heck they just saw, after a blazing fireball violently and loudly broke apart overhead.

The fireball, which was later determined to be an asteroid fragment, was first seen soaring across the Midwestern sky at about 6:13 a.m. Friday, NASA said in a news release.

Though it was already light outside, the fireball was particularly bright and clearly visible to witnesses in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin, according to reports submitted to the American Meteor Society.

Heat deaths have doubled in the US in recent decades, study finds

(NYT) — A new study shows heat-related deaths across the U.S. are on the rise. While 2023 was the hottest year on record and led to at least 2,325 heat-related deaths in the U.S., more than 21,518 people have died from heat since 1999, according to a study published Monday in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association. Heat kills more people in the United States than any other type of extreme weather, according to researchers. The study noted a 117% increase in heat-related deaths over the past 24 years, with a significant upswing since 2016.

First Jan. 6 rioter to enter Capitol gets more than 4 years in prison

(NYT) — The first rioter to breach the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced Tuesday to more than four years in prison, federal prosecutors announced. In March, a federal jury found Michael Sparks, 47, of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, guilty on felony charges of obstructing an official proceeding and civil disorder and several misdemeanor charges for being on the premises of the Capitol building on Jan. 6.