Man is found guilty in the murder of 6 family members

A jury on Wednesday found a man guilty of first-degree murder in the 2016 slayings of six members of his family — including two young boys — inside their Chicago home in 2016. The jury deliberated for about a day before finding 28-year-old Diego Uribe Cruz guilty of all six counts of first-degree murder of four adults and two children inside their bungalow in the Gage Park neighborhood on the city’s Southwest Side. With the conviction, Uribe Cruz faces a sentence of life in prison without parole.

During the trial, prosecutors alleged that Uribe Cruz shot his aunt, 32-year-Maria Martinez, after he tried to rob her before he fatally stabbed her sons, ages 10 and 13, and stabbed or beat to death other relatives to make sure there were no witnesses — the last of which was her father, whom he stabbed after he returned from a store with snacks. “These were women, children, brothers, sisters, grandparents, cousins. They were a family,” Jason Fisher, an assistant state’s attorney, told the jury, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Evidence against him included DNA recovered from under Maria Martinez’s fingernails and a small amount of blood that matched that of Uribe Cruz.

Climate change made summer drought 20 times more likely

Drought that stretched across three continents this summer — drying out large parts of Europe, the United States and China — was made 20 times more likely by climate change, according to a new study. Drought dried up major rivers, destroyed crops, sparked wildfire, threatened aquatic species and led to water restrictions in Europe. It struck places already plagued by drying in the U.S., like the West, but also places where drought is more rare, like the Northeast. China also just had its driest summer in 60 years, leaving its famous Yangtze river half its normal width.

Researchers from World Weather Attribution, a group of scientists from around the world who study the link between extreme weather and climate change, say this type of drought would only happen once every 400 years across the Northern Hemisphere if not for human-caused climate change. Now they expect these conditions to repeat every 20 years, given how much the climate has warmed. “The impacts are very clear to people and are hitting hard,” Maarten van Aalst, a climate scientist at Columbia University and study co-author said, “not just in poor countries, like the flooding in Pakistan .... but also in some of the richest parts of the world, like western central Europe.”

Election software executive arrested on suspicion of theft

The top executive of an elections technology company that has been the focus of attention among election deniers was arrested by Los Angeles County officials in connection with an investigation into the possible theft of personal information about poll workers, the county said Tuesday. Eugene Yu, the founder and CEO of Konnech, the technology company, was taken into custody on suspicion of theft, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon said in a statement.

Konnech, which is based in Michigan, develops software to manage election logistics, such as scheduling poll workers. Los Angeles County is among its customers. Groups challenging the validity of the 2020 presidential election have accused Konnech of storing information about poll workers on servers in China. The company has repeatedly denied keeping data outside the United States. Gascon’s office said its investigators had found data stored in China. Holding the data there would violate Konnech’s contract with the county.

— The Associated Press