On the very day the “Freedom 250” concert series was announced, rapper Young MC became the second artist to publicly back out of the government-sponsored festival taking place on the National Lawn in Washington, D.C.. His exit following Morris Day‘s statement earlier Wednesday that he and the Time would have nothing to do with the newly announced patriotic series, an outgrowth of an Independence Day initiative tarted by the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, a third artist that had been announced Wednesday morning, C+C Music Factory frontman Freedom Williams, posted a fired-up, profanity-laced eight-minute message in which he initially said he’d planned to back out of the show after learning about Trump involvement. Then Williams backtracked and said C+C Music Factory might well go ahead with the gig after all, to show he was impervious to the backlash and could not be told what to do by angry commenters.

Young MC’s message to fans on social media Wednesday night was short and to the point: “I HAVE INFORMED MY AGENTS THAT I WILL NOT BE PERFORMING AT THE FREEDOM 250 EVENT,” he wrote. “The artists were never told about any political involvement with the event. And despite the claims by the organizers that the event is non-partisan, Spin magazine describes it as ‘Trump-backed.’ I hope to perform in D.C. in the near future at an event that is not so politically charged.”

Russia signed a landmark nuclear agreement with Kazakhstan on Thursday to build the Central Asian country’s first-ever commercial power plant, marking a major geopolitical and economic victory for President Vladimir Putin, according to reports.

The $16.5 billion project, signed during high-level bilateral talks in Astana between Putin and Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, will be backed by a Russian export loan covering roughly 85% of the total cost, Reuters reported.

Rosatom, Russia’s state-run nuclear corporation, will lead construction near the village of Ulken in southeastern Kazakhstan along the shores of Lake Balkhash.

Rosatom secured the primary construction mandate after beating out competition from China National Nuclear Corp., France’s EDF and Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, the outlet said.

NO LIMITS, NO INSPECTIONS: US AND RUSSIA FACE POST–NEW START ERA AS TRUMP PUSHES NEW NUCLEAR DEAL

The pact directly advances the Kremlin’s efforts to anchor its economic and geopolitical influence within former Soviet states amid Western sanctions.

According to the World Nuclear Association, Kazakhstan is the world’s largest producer of uranium.

For Kazakhstan, the facility is intended to stabilize a long-term domestic energy supply, since it has struggled with old coal-reliant power infrastructure and electricity deficits for more than two decades.

“The agreement signed today on the construction of the Balkhash NPP has an important role,” Tokayev said at the signing ceremony.

CAN A NEW NUCLEAR PLANT FIX NEW YORK’S POWER PROBLEM?

Putin called the deal “a flagship project in the field of peaceful nuclear energy” and said “the commissioning of the plant will make a significant contribution to the energy supply of the Kazakh economy, helping to provide businesses and households with affordable and clean energy.”

“I would like to point out that, as we agreed with the president of Kazakhstan, we are not simply talking about the creation of a nuclear power plant or construction; we are talking about the creation of an entire industry, including education, personnel training, and so on,” he added.

According to Kazakhstan’s atomic energy agency, the massive facility will feature two advanced VVER-1200 Generation III+ reactors.

Total development costs are estimated at $16.5 billion, with officials noting that approximately $2 billion of the sum will be allocated toward security systems and foundational infrastructure.

MYSTERIOUS 2020 EXPLOSION IN CHINA HAD HALLMARKS OF NUCLEAR TEST, US OFFICIAL ALLEGES

Construction is scheduled to begin in 2027, with the first reactor slated to become operational by early 2034.

The project follows a 2024 national referendum in which Kazakh voters formally approved development at the Balkhash site.

However, the pivot to atomic energy is sensitive for local citizens. The nation hosted hundreds of Soviet nuclear weapons tests at the Semipalatinsk site between 1949 and 1989, leaving behind severe public health crises and environmental pollution.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Distrust increased over the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, after which tens of thousands of Kazakh workers fell ill assisting in cleanup operations.

According to Bloomberg, the two countries also signed a currency swap arrangement Thursday.

Bank of Russia Gov. Elvira Nabiullina and National Bank of Kazakhstan Gov. Timur Suleimenov signed the ruble-tenge swap agreement.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the next five years, the Earth is overwhelmingly likely to surge again and again past the international climate threshold set as safe and shatter its hottest-year record along the way, according to new United Nations climate projections.

The World Meteorological Organization also forecasts an overheating Arctic that warms nearly 3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.66 degrees Celsius) between now and 2030 and a dangerous drought with potential wildfires for the Amazon, a crucial part of Earth’s natural defenses to lessen human-caused climate change. A hotter globe from the burning of coal, oil and gas means more extreme weather including floods, droughts and heat waves, scientists said.

The projections by the U.N. climate agency and the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office said there’s a 75% chance that the average global temperature between 2026 and 2030 will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. That threshold is the agreed-upon limit of warming — averaged over 20 years — set in 2015 by the Paris climate agreement.

A U.N. science report a few years later detailed how exceeding that 1.5 mark means more likely death, danger and species loss. Even though it’s only a few tenths of a degree, some of the planet’s ecosystems, such as coral and glaciers, can’t handle the strain.

Passing warming limit has consequences, but no cliff

There’s a 91% chance that at least one of the next five years will shoot past the 1.5 degree threshold and an 86% chance that one of those years will smash the record for Earth’s hottest year set in 2024, the WMO report said. The WMO projects each year between now and 2030 to be between 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) and 1.9 degrees Celsius (3.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s.

“It’s important to note that (1.5) is not kind of a cliff edge that we’re going to fall off,” said report co-author Melissa Seabrook, a climate scientist at the U.K. Meteorological Office. “Every kind of 0.1 of a degree has more and more severe impact.”

She pointed to unprecedented May heat in Europe this week.

An entire year or more above the 1.5 degree mark “means a whole range of extreme weather events, probably many so hot/wet/dry that it exceeds anything we’ve experienced in the past and thus crucially, anything our city planning, agriculture etc. has anticipated,” Imperial College of London climate scientist Friederike Otto, who wasn’t part of the report, said in an email. “This will mean many people will lose their lives, we are in for a lot of food price shocks, and more intense wildfires.”

Nearly all the shorter-term forecasts call for a strong El Nino — a natural warming of parts of the central Pacific that alters weather worldwide and spikes global temperatures — to form soon. The WMO report said it could stretch all the way to 2028. Because of that, Seabrook said 2027 will likely break the 2024 heat record.

And if the next five years do average more than 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times, that means Earth will have warmed a quarter of a degree Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit) in a decade, which is faster than the previous rates of warming. Those were closer to two-tenths of a degree Celsius per decade.

Climate scientists are debating whether global warming is accelerating, “which obviously is quite scary,” and if these projections come true it would give additional evidence to those who see a speeded up rate of change, Seabrook said.

Accelerating warmth forecast in the Arctic

The projections, based on the averaging of about 200 runs of computer simulations using 13 different climate models from various countries, show warming in the Arctic rising 3.5 times faster than the rest of the globe, because there’s less ice and snow that had been reflecting solar radiation to space, Seabrook said. It becomes a vicious cycle.

“As the temperature warms, more sea ice melts, the worse this makes it,” Seabrook said.

Winters in the Arctic from 2020 to 2025 on average were 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1991-2020 average. The WMO projects the next five winters will average 5.1 degrees Fahrenheit (2.8 degrees Celsius) warmer than that recent normal, Seabrook said.

The report also forecasts Arctic sea ice to continue to shrink in the summer.

Amazon may get drier, sparking fire worries

The report calls for even warmer and unusually dry conditions in the Amazon basin, and that could be devastating for both local residents and the planet as a whole, Seabrook said.

People rely on the Amazon for water and the hotter, drier conditions should increase wildfire risk, Seabrook said, threatening to turn the Amazon, which now sucks heat-trapping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, into a region that worsens the problem.

Africa’s Sahel area, which has been extra dry, is likely to get more than normal rain and that could lead to flooding, Seabrook said.

United Nations officials said efforts to curb climate change haven’t been enough.

“Despite the progress of recent years, it’s clear that global heating is still outpacing global efforts to contain it, and the baking temperatures in Europe, India and elsewhere show yet again the brutal human and economic impacts of humanity still burning colossal amounts of coal, oil and gas,” U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell said about the WMO report.

“Whether it’s extreme heat, mega-storms, floods, massive wildfires or droughts hitting food supply and prices,” he said, “every nation is already paying a huge price from this global climate crisis.”

___

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.