Disaster: At least 238 people are dead in a coalmine explosion and fire in Turkey. About 120 miners are still trapped inside. Turkey’s energy minister said 787 people were working at the mine 155 miles south of Istanbul when the accident happened. About 300 miners have been rescued, but government officials say hopes are fading for finding more survivors.

Outbreak: The deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) has spread to the US with two confirmed cases and two Florida hospital employees who have developed the disease’s flulike symptoms. They came into contact with a Saudi Arabian patient who had worked in a hospital in Jiddah that was treating MERS cases.

MERS kills a high number of people who contract it. In a current outbreak in Saudi Arabia, 112 out of 450 patients have died.

Nation: Former Army Sgt. Kyle White, a radiotelephone operator, yesterday was awarded the Medal of Honor for saving the lives of fellow soldiers during a 2007 Taliban attack in Afghanistan. Early in the fight White suffered concussion and shrapnel wounds. He said he didn’t think he would survive, so he did everything he could until he was killed. He’s open about suffering post-traumatic stress and urges fellow soldiers to get help. White left the Army in 2011 and now works as an investment analyst.

>Veteran Detroit Congressman John Conyers won’t be on the Democratic Party’s Aug. 5 primary ballot because he failed to collect enough nominating signatures. He fell 400 short of the necessary 1,000. First elected in 1964, the 84-year-old congressman is the senior member of the Black Congressional Caucus.

Struck: Now it’s Idaho, where a federal magistrate judge has ruled that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. Judge Candy Dale wrote that Idaho unconstitutionally denies same-sex couples the right to marry. State bans have been falling in rapid succession. Next up could be Virginia, where the federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is considering its decision.

World: More woes about global warming. A government-funded military security report says accelerating climate change is leading to regional conflicts over food and water while endangering coastal populations in India, Bangladesh and the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. Secy. Of State John Kerry is quoted in the NY Times saying, “Tribes are killing each other over water today. Think of what happens if you have massive dislocation, or the drying up of the waters of the Nile, of the major rivers in China and India.” The report says the US military might be increasingly drawn into situations aggravated by climate change.

The Obit Page: H.R. Giger, the painter and sculptor who gave a face to fear in the 1979 movie “Alien”, has died at age 74. Giger created the drooling monster with a jaw within a jaw that stalked Sigourney Weaver inside her craft deep in space. Also his work, the crablike creature that implants an embryo in its victim’s throat that later bursts through the chest. Nice stuff. His aliens changed the face of aliens forever.

>Swedish filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul, 36, who won the 2013 Academy Award for best documentary with, “Searching for Sugar Man” about the nearly forgotten Detroit folk blues singer Sixto Rodriguez, was found dead yesterday in Stockholm. The movie, which Bendjelloul paid for and edited himself, was his film debut. No cause of death was given.

Sincerely: Letters Jackie Kennedy wrote to an Irish priest are set to be auctioned. She wrote nearly 30 letters revealing her private thoughts about public life and her grief after President Kennedy was assassinated. Early on she said she loved being married, but compared her roving husband to her philandering father who “loves the chase and is bored with the conquest — and once married needs proof he’s still attractive so flirts with other women and resents you.”

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