A man and a woman who scaled to the very top of New York’s Empire State Building on Thursday, identified as internet daredevils 32-year-old Ivan Kuznetsov and 33-year-old Angelina Nikolau, are facing multiple criminal charges including felony burglary, reckless endangerment and trespassing. NBC’s Valerie Castro reports for TODAY.

This story originally appeared in Kids Today, Vox’s newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions.

A few summers ago, we signed our older kid up for a very outdoorsy camp. The organizers prided themselves on getting children comfortable with nature and the elements; they told us that kids would only go indoors if absolutely necessary.

Then, a punishing heat wave hit New York City. Our kid came home with a weird heat rash that took days to go away. Later that summer, smoke from Canadian wildfires forced the camp to take shelter at a nearby school. 

My kid did not enjoy the experience, but I don’t blame the camp. Organizers around the country have had to change their programs or even cancel camp in response to extreme heat, smoke, and other realities of our modern summer. 

The result is often a loss of outdoor time, which is critical for kids’ physical health and social development. That loss is especially troubling at a time when recess is dwindling, and school is becoming increasingly screen-based. Kids need as much summer as they can get.

It’s still possible to give campers the fun new experiences they need, experts say. But it takes a new layer of planning and adaptability as climate change, increasingly, factors into every decision.

“Our focus really should be not on less outdoor activity,” Allison Poulos, an assistant professor at Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions, told me. “It’s just smarter outdoor activity.”

What kids lose when it’s too hot for camp

As I’m writing this story, extreme heat warnings are affecting more than 160 million Americans as a “heat dome” closes over the Midwest and Northeast. In some parts of New York state, “feels like” temperatures are expected to go as high as 110 degrees.

This is, sadly, our new normal. Higher average temperatures due to climate change are making heat waves more common and extreme. “When a heat dome or a high-pressure system sets up, it’s now starting from a hotter floor,” Ashley Ward, director of the Heat Policy Innovation Hub at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute, recently told NPR. “That makes the extreme heat more likely.”

As we’ve seen during recent heat waves across Europe, extreme heat can be dangerous. Kids are especially vulnerable because their bodies heat up more quickly and are less efficient at cooling off by sweating, said Harleen Marwah, a pediatrician at Mass General Brigham for Children who has spent her career working on the intersection of climate and health.

Children also don’t necessarily recognize when they’re getting too hot and may “push themselves to play to a point where they’re in an unsafe situation,” Marwah told me. “It really puts the onus on the caregiver to be monitoring closely.”

In the face of triple-digit heat, sometimes organizers have no choice but to cancel camp. The recent heat wave has already led to cancellations in the Midwest.

But calling off camp presents real childcare problems for parents, who typically have to work in the summer, no matter how hot it gets. It’s also not great for kids, who get real benefits from the outdoor playtime that camp can provide.

Being outside is “an opportunity for physical activity, which is good for overall health, and also becoming increasingly limited as people spend more time indoors and more time behind screens,” Marwah said.

Being in green spaces, especially, is good for kids’ mental and emotional wellbeing, Marwah said. “Outdoor play creates a space where children can learn about nature as well, and that’s an opportunity that gets missed out on if things have to be canceled.”

How camp can survive climate change

Whenever possible, camps should adapt to the heat instead of completely cancelling activities, experts say. It’s a process Kevin Martin, director of recreational sports at Texas A&M Corpus Christi, knows well. Known as “Jambalaya” to the hundreds of campers who come to the campus every summer, Martin said this summer has already been punishing.

“Man, it’s been hot,” he told me. “The mosquitoes have been biting.”

But Texas A&M camps haven’t canceled or reduced their hours. Instead, the heat “has made us be more innovative,” Martin said.

Even if other outdoor activities are canceled, the pool stays open, especially since swimming is “magnificent” for campers’ mental health, Martin said. But counselors enforce mandatory water breaks even during swim time.

That’s crucial, Marwah said, because playing in water, while cooling in the short term, can actually mask the signs of dehydration.

Beyond making sure campers get plenty of water, camps can also think about the design of their outdoor spaces, including using materials that heat up less quickly and creating space for shade, ideally from trees, Marwah said. 

That takes time and money, but one thing camps can do right now is structure their schedules with the forecast and heat index in mind, keeping outdoor activities in cooler parts of the day. 

When it’s just too hot to be outside, there are ways to keep kids active. Poulos and her team have found that playing in an indoor gym, with room to move around, offers some of the same benefits as outdoor play. At Texas A&M, campers retreat to the gym for dodgeball, Pop-A-Shot, and an introductory basketball game called Nukem. “I don’t know what is about Nukem, but they love Nukem,” Martin said.

His campers have the benefit of being on a campus with college-level athletic facilities. But even camps with fewer resources can use what they have to support play on hot days. Camps with smaller indoor spaces, for example, can rotate kids between inside and outside so that everyone gets to play and no one gets too hot, Poulos said.

All of this adaptation takes work — it’s one of the many burdens climate change is placing on communities around the world. But planning ahead is also an opportunity to help kids contribute to the solution.

Martin likes to get campers’ input on games they want to play — as a member of Gen Z, he already feels out of step with what they’re into. “When you get their buy-in and ask them, ‘What do y’all enjoy playing? What do you want to play?’” he said. “They are [so excited for] the camp at that point, because they feel valued.”

What I’m reading

A new report says that the Department of Education may no longer be able to do its job of enforcing federal education law after the Trump administration cut 40 percent of staff and terminated $2 billion worth of contracts and grants in 2025. The report was incomplete because department staff did not comply with interview requests, meaning even internal investigators were unable to assess the full scope of the damage.

The Texas State Board of Education has approved a required reading list for public school students that includes a Bible excerpt in most grades, sparking concern among teachers and advocates for the separation of church and state.

The latest viral squishy toy is a stick of butter.

My horror-loving older child enjoyed The Witch’s Wings and Other Terrifying Tales, a graphic novel based on that millennial mainstay Are You Afraid of the Dark?.

Also in throwbacks, my little kid is now obsessed with Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, a 1980s cartoon that predates even me. My older kid calls it “old-timey” and “ancient.”

From layering tricks to accessory pairings, these printed dress styling tips show you how to wear a statement patterned midi or mini with ease.

As America has become increasingly polarized politically, the ABA has simply followed one of the two poles.

The Transportation Security Administration is expected to screen more than 3 million passengers on Thursday ahead of an expectant busy travel weekend for Independence Day.

Shabana Mahmood says the government accepts the “fundamental failures” identified by an inquiry.

Trump and his family earned over $1 billion last year through cryptocurrency ventures and other businesses. And, the Vatican declared that the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X has entered schism.

(Image credit: Andrew Harnik)

More than 200 million people are feeling the heat with dangerous and punishing temperatures enveloping the Northeast ahead of the Fourth of July weekend. Forecasters predict several cities could set record highs through the holiday weekend from Detroit to Nashville to Bangor, Maine. NBC’s Ryan Nobles reports and TODAY’s Al Roker tracks the latest forecast.

Comfort shows are just the best.

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The racing jockey is in hospital recovering from the crash.

Shabana Mahmood said the government accepted the “fundamental failures” identified by an inquiry.

This story originally appeared in The Guardian and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Temperatures on the ocean surface have hit a record high, raising fears of another burst of extreme heat this summer.

On June 21, temperatures outside the polar regions exceeded the extraordinary highs observed at the same time in 2023 and 2024, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said on Wednesday.

It warned the new peak would probably bring “consequences for weather patterns, global climate and marine ecosystems,” not least because it would coincide with the earliest phases of an El Niño event they forecast to be the strongest in decades.

When the previous ocean record for June was set in 2023, scientists described the trends as “worrying,” “terrifying,” and “bonkers,” because they were so far outside their expectations. That presaged an El Niño and a period of devastating global heatwaves, floods, and storms.

That 2023 record has now been surpassed, and much of the world is once again seeing an alarming rise in temperatures. Last month, the UK and many other countries in Europe sweltered amid new heat records, while Antarctica experienced unprecedentedly balmy winter conditions.

Although the focus is usually on land temperatures, oceans give a fuller picture of how much the climate is being pushed out of balance by human-caused warming.

Surface temperatures are affected by solar radiation, water currents, and the buildup of heat in the depths.

Oceans absorb more than 90 percent of the excess energy in the Earth system, which is primarily caused by burning fossil fuels, such as oil, coal and gas. That imbalance hit a record 23 zettajoules last year, more than double the average of the previous two decades.

As a result, the oceans are warming at an accelerating rate. In 2020, the amount of heat being added to the oceans was equivalent to about five Hiroshima bombs a second. Last year, it was closer to 11 Hiroshima explosions a second. The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, has warned “Earth is being pushed beyond its limits.”

Scientists said it was too early to say whether the sea surface heating would prove temporary or even worsen, because annual peaks are usually registered in July and August.

But Carlo Buontempo, Copernicus director at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, warned it could indicate the beginning of a new phase, leading, once more, to uncharted territory, “With ocean temperatures at these levels and El Niño on the horizon, we are likely to see more temperature records fall in the coming months.”

Copernicus is part of the EU’s space programme.