(PARIS) — Three riot police officers, a police commander, a police academy teacher — all are among eight French police officers who have killed themselves recently. That makes 64 so far this year — and the number just keeps on climbing.

Deaths by suicide for French police now outnumber deaths in the line of duty. The protectors need protecting, say police unions, which are demanding more help to stop the problem.

Those who choose to end their lives are from everywhere in France and of all ages, many with young children. The latest death came Wednesday in the Ardeche region in southeast France. Why they step across what one police union calls the “thin blue line” remains a question that French authorities have so far been unable to answer.

A parliamentary inquiry made public in July lists a multitude of reasons for the stress and despair among French police, including overwork since a series of terrorist attacks that started in January 2015 and the weekly, often extremely violent, an..

(NOME, Alaska) — A man discovered a 50-year-old letter in a bottle from the Russian Navy on the shores of western Alaska.

Tyler Ivanoff found the handwritten Russian letter early this month while gathering firewood near Shishmaref about 600 miles (966 kilometers) northwest of Anchorage, KNOM-AM reported Tuesday.

“I was just gathering firewood,” Ivanoff said. “I just happened to stumble across the bottle, and I noticed it was a green bottle and had a cork top. Not really cork, it was a tight cap, and I could see inside the bottle there was a note.”

Ivanoff shared his discovery on Facebook where Russian speakers translated the message to be a greeting from a Cold War Russian sailor dated 1969, officials said. The message included an address and a request for a response from the person who finds it.

Reporters from the state-owned Russian media network, Russia-1, tracked down the original writer, Capt. Anatoliy Botsanenko.

“It looks like my handwriting. For sure! East industry fishing..

(OKJOKULL GLACIER, Iceland) — It was a funeral for ice.

With poetry, moments of silence and political speeches about the urgent need to fight climate change, Icelandic officials, activists and others bade goodbye to what once was a glacier.

Icelandic geologist Oddur Sigurðsson pronounced the Okjokull glacier extinct about a decade ago. But on Sunday he brought a death certificate to the made-for-media memorial.

After about 100 people made a two-hour hike up a volcano, children installed a memorial plaque to the glacier, nicknamed “OK.”

This was Iceland’s first glacier to disappear. But Sigurdsson said all of the nation’s ice masses will be gone in 200 years.

Icelandic Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir called the glacial loss a consequence of the climate crisis.

Hong Kong’s eleventh straight weekend of anti-government protests culminated in a large rally Sunday at the city’s Victoria Park.

Tens of thousands chanted “Free Hong Kong! Democracy Now!” and “Fight for freedom! Stand for Hong Kong!” as a heavy rain fell. Many protesters carried banners decrying alleged police brutality and what they claim is collusion between law enforcement and criminal gangs known as triads.

Others carried banners proclaiming “Hong Kong independence.”

Vanessa, a 42-year-old protester attending the rally with her banker husband, said “We are here to support the young people. I don’t fully agree with everything they do. I don’t one hundred percent agree with what the teenagers have done, but in the end I’ll support them because I know what they’re doing is for Hong Kong.”

Yesterday, thousands of teachers marched in support of a student strike called for Monday, and small groups of radical protesters engaged in a tense standoff with police in the densely populated..