9 of the 10 fastest-growing U.S. major metro areas are getting significantly hotter — and many face danger from other natural disasters.

• Why it matters: This accelerating trend will strain cities' water supplies and power grids, and put lots of Americans at risk of heat-related health crises, Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick and Erin Davis report.

We defined "very hot" days as those with a high temperature in the top 5% ever recorded for that particular city.

• Las Vegas, Austin and Raleigh grew the fastest in "very hot" days between 1991-2020, with increases of 115%, 553% and 59%, respectively.

What's happening: Americans are flocking to cities with a high risk of inhospitable conditions.

• In Florida, populations are booming up and down the state's coasts, where hurricanes (including this week's fearsome Ian) are an annual threat. Miami already struggles to keep up with rising floodwaters.
• Houston has perennial hurricane danger.
• Southern California faces growing threats from wildfires.

Share this story.

The last time Tampa Bay took a direct hit from a major hurricane was more than 100 years ago.

• That could change tomorrow, Ben Montgomery and Selene San Felice write for Axios Tampa Bay.

State of play: Hurricane Ian — which made landfall this morning over western Cuba — strengthened into a Category 3 storm as it tracks toward Florida's west coast.

• Tampa Bay grew from a few hundred thousand people to more than 3 million since the last major hurricane struck in 1921, AP notes.

Storm updates ... Get Axios Tampa Bay.

• Go deeper: Ben Montgomery's storm glossary.

The S&P 500 hit its lowest point for the year (above), in what Bloomberg calls an "Everything-Selloff" on Wall Street as bad news piles up around the world.

• The index is down 23% so far in 2022.

Neil Irwin warned in our midday Axios Macro of some ominous parallels with Aug. 2007 — the beginning of the global financial crisis.

• To be clear, we're not predicting anything as severe as the crisis that rocked the world in 2008. Rather, we're arguing that major (and accelerating) underlying shifts are underway — and likely to reverberate for years.

What's happened in the past few months — and with dizzying speed in the last several days — is markets adjusting to the possibility that the era of extremely low rates and liquidity is over, and the 2020s will be very different from the 2010s.

• Keep reading.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid into a bear market — a drop of 20% or more from a recent high (Jan. 4) — for the first since the early days of COVID, The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription).

• The S&P 500 has been in a bear market since June.

Axios' Matt Phillips got his hands on data going back to 1792, showing the British pound yesterday hit a 230-year low against the dollar.

• Why it matters: It's the financial equivalent of a no-confidence vote in Prime Minister Liz Truss, who took office Sept. 6.

Black Americans are seven times more likely than white people to be falsely convicted of serious crimes, and spend longer in prison before exoneration, Axios' Russell Contreras writes from a new report.

• The study, from the National Registry of Exonerations, examined defendants who were exonerated after serving at least part of a sentence — sometimes spending decades in prison.

The findings: Black people represent 13.6% of the American population, but account for 53% of 3,200 exonerations in the registry as of Aug. 8, 2022, according to the report.

• Innocent Black Americans were 7½ times more likely to be convicted of murder than innocent white people, the study found.
• The convictions that led to murder exonerations of Black defendants were almost 50% more likely to include misconduct by police officers.

What we're watching: The number of murder exonerations is increasing — many of them Black murder defendants who spent decades in prison.

• Most of those long-serving Black murder defendants were exonerated by a handful of big city prosecutorial conviction integrity units (CIUs). More are likely on the way.

Context: A Baltimore City judge last week vacated the conviction of Adnan Syed, the subject of the popular "Serial" podcast, which cast doubt on his conviction in the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee.

🔮 What's next: HBO Documentary Films announced last week that it's in production on a follow-up episode to the critically acclaimed, four-part documentary series, "The Case Against Adnan Syed."

Steve Case, AOL co-founder, is out today with "The Rise of the Rest" — a hardcover accompaniment to his longtime passion project spotlighting blooming startup hubs outside the coastal giants.

• The startup king backs up his beyond-the-Valley thesis with seed + early-stage investments from his Revolution investment firm.

"I write about 29 cities in the book," Case told me. "We have visited 43 cities with our [Rise of the Rest] bus tours, and we have VC investments now in 100 cities."

• "The key takeaway is it's not just a few cities on the rise, but a few dozen."

Case writes persuasively and excitedly about "an explosion of startup ecosystem development in dozens of cities":

From Seattle to Phoenix to Salt Lake City to Dallas to Denver to Miami and all points in between, startups are reimagining cities. The new guard is reviving declining iconic places like Detroit and Pittsburgh, once great centers of innovation that fell on hard times.

💭 Our thought bubble: There's a remarkable overlap between Case's startup hubs and the 24 (and soon to be 30) cities of Axios Local.

• Our on-the-ground reporters are narrating the rise and reinvention of America's new hubs of innovation and experimentation — Case's longtime contention, coming to life in the work-from everywhere era.

Case's bottom line: "[T]he point isn't necessarily to catch up or overcome the prominence of San Francisco, New York City, and Boston," he writes.

• "It’s for places like Detroit or Miami to flex their regional advantages and carve out their own exceptionalism."

More on the book ... Share this story ... Get Axios Local.

TAIPEI — An infusion of cash from a Taiwanese semiconductor magnate is helping fund new cyber defense training for Taiwanese citizens, Axios China author Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian writes.

• Why it matters: The goal is to fight online disinformation and hybrid warfare that could accompany a potential Chinese military assault.

A growing number of people in Taiwan are studying Ukrainian resistance tactics.

• Keep reading.

NASA TV triumphantly proclaimed: "Impact confirmed for the world's first planetary defense test mission."

• The space agency last evening rammed a spacecraft at 14,000 mph into a non-threatening asteroid 7 million miles from Earth.

Why it matters: The first-of-its-kind mission — the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) — was designed to determine whether the technology could one day be used to defend Earth from hazardous asteroids or comets, Axios' Jacob Knutson writes.

It was the first time humans have changed the course of a celestial body.

• NASA release ... Share this story.