4 things to know for July 6: Threads, Philadelphia, Record heat, Passports
1. Threads
Facebook parent company Meta on Wednesday officially launched a new app called Threads as a direct rival of Twitter. The app appears to have many similarities to its competitor, from the layout to the product description.
Threads is intended to offer a space for real-time conversations online, a function that has long been Twitter’s core selling point. The app joins a growing list of Twitter’s rivals, but could pose the biggest threat given Meta’s vast resources and its massive audience.
Threads received 10 million sign-ups within seven hours of its launch, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on his verified Threads account. The launch also comes amid heightened turmoil at Twitter, which experienced an outage over the weekend, followed by an announcement that the site had imposed temporarary limits on how many tweets users are able to read per day.
2. Philadelphia
New details have recently emerged about the man facing murder charges for a shooting rampage in Philadelphia on Monday that killed five people, the youngest of whom was a 15-year-old boy. The gunman allegedly told police that he carried out the shooting to clean up the neighborhood, two law enforcement sources told CNN.
The suspect’s social media activity featured a series of posts about guns, the Second Amendment and the “loss of freedoms,” according to a law enforcement source. The 40-year-old was arraigned Wednesday on charges of murder, attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment and weapons charges, and was ordered held without bail. He “obviously planned” the shooting, a district attorney said, but the investigation into other factors of the case could take months.
3. Record heat
The hottest day in the world on record globally happened this week and some scientists believe it could have been the hottest day on Earth in 125,000 years.
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The average worldwide temperature on Tuesday reached 17.18°C (62.9°F), breaking the record of 17.01°C (62.6°F) set just a day earlier. The previous highest global temperature was in mid-August 2016.
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While the low 60s may not sound very hot to the millions of Americans sweating through a summer heat wave, the figure is almost a full degree Celsius above the average temperature between 1979 and 2000 and represents a new indicator that Earth’s climate is heating up faster than anticipated, meteorologists say.
4. Passport delays
The State Department says it is not expecting to reduce passport processing times to pre-pandemic levels until the end of the year.
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This comes as many frustrated travelers have had their summer plans disrupted by having to factor in waiting months to get a new passport before going abroad.
In March, the agency increased the processing time for new passports to 10 to 13 weeks for routine processing and seven to nine weeks for expedited processing, which costs an additional $60.
The wait time before the pandemic was two to three weeks for expedited cases and six to eight weeks for routine passport applications. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress earlier this year that the department is “getting 500,000 applications a week for passports,” which is around 40% more applicants this year than last year.
