Nearly 30,000 people in northern California evacuated as raging wildfire spreads

Thompson fire near Oroville destroys homes and vehicles as state simmers in brutal and potentially historic heatwave

Thousands of homes are under threat from a raging wildfire that erupted in northern California on Tuesday, as the state simmers in a brutal and potentially historic heatwave.

Roughly 28,000 residents have been forced to evacuate as the Thompson fire quickly swept across more than 3,500 acres (1,416 hectares) near the city of Oroville, about an hour outside Sacramento, California’s capital.

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Georgia lawsuit challenges anti-LGBTQ+ book bans over ‘real harms’

Lawsuit says student and youth groups hurt after teacher was fired for reading My Shadow is Purple to students

The Southern Poverty Law Center and another group have amended a federal lawsuit against a Georgia school district to include a transgender student and a grassroots youth organization, effectively becoming the “first case challenging anti-LGBTQ book bans” in the state.

The move – done anonymously to protect the student – widens the case’s focus from how teachers are affected by censorship laws and policies in Georgia, to how those same policies affect children.

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Biden to meet Democratic governors in bid to assuage fears | First Thing

Up to 25 House representatives could call for president to step aside. Plus, US expels more than 100 Chinese migrants

Good morning.

Joe Biden is to meet with Democratic governors today in an attempt to stave off growing discontent over his candidacy, with a congressional Democrat calling for him to withdraw from the presidential race.

Are any sitting Democrats calling on Biden to step aside? So far: only one. Lloyd Doggett, a congressman from Texas, yesterday became the first Democrat in the House of Representatives to publicly urge the president to step aside. “Instead of reassuring voters, the president failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and expose Trump’s many lies.” Adam Frisch, a Democratic House candidate in Colorado, echoed the call, and former presidential candidate Tim Ryan has also urged Biden to pull out.

Newsom, Newsom, Newsom. Online political betting odds that Gavin Newsom, the California governor, would end up at the top of the presidential ticket this year tripled to a one-in-four chance last week, despite the relatively low chance of the president stepping aside.

US and China resume cooperation on migration issues. In recent years, the US had a difficult time returning Chinese nationals who do not have the right to stay in America because China has resisted taking them back. Last year, US border officials arrested more than 37,000 Chinese nationals on the southern border, 10 times the number the year before.

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Ann Wilson, frontwoman of Heart, diagnosed with cancer

Chart-topping singer cancels remainder of 2024 tour dates but says she hopes to return next year

Ann Wilson, the lead singer of rock band Heart, has announced that she has been diagnosed with cancer.

The 74-year-old wrote in an Instagram post: “I recently underwent an operation to remove something that, as it turns out, was cancerous. The operation was successful & I’m feeling great but my doctors are now advising me to undergo a course of preventive chemotherapy & I’ve decided to do it. And so my doctors are instructing me to take the rest of the year away from the stage in order to fully recover.”

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‘Hawk tuah’ girl leans into craze she ignited but looks forward to moving on

Hailey Welch details in podcast interview how viral clip has upended her life and doesn’t want it to ‘be her image’

When she went viral in a video clip showing her coining the onomatopoeia “hawk tuah” to describe what intimate act reliably drives men wild in her experience, Hailey Welch thought about keeping herself hidden from the masses.

Then the rumor circulated that the photogenic blonde in the video with the thick southern drawl was actually the daughter of a humiliated religious leader. The attention had caused the woman to be fired from her education job, another rumor claimed. And social media users started creating fake accounts with photos of her.

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Hawksmoor for sale in deal that could value restaurant chain at £100m

Investment bank Stephens hired to find suitors for business, which wants to expand overseas operations

The high-end steakhouse chain Hawksmoor has been put up for sale in a deal that could value it at about £100m.

The restaurant chain has hired the investment bank Stephens to start looking for potential suitors for the business, which is hoping to expand its overseas operation.

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US expels more than 100 Chinese migrants in rare mass deportation

Department of Homeland Security says it plans more such ‘large charter flights’, sparking concerns for safety of migrants escaping poverty or repression

The US has sent back 116 Chinese migrants in the first such “large charter flight” in five years, the Department of Homeland Security has said.

“We will continue to enforce our immigration laws and remove individuals without a legal basis to remain in the United States,” homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.

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Texas congressman becomes first House Democrat to call on Biden to withdraw

Lloyd Doggett breaks ranks and says Biden should not continue presidential run after Trump debate calamity

The first congressional Democrat has broken ranks and called on Joe Biden to withdraw his presidential candidacy following last week’s calamitous debate performance against Donald Trump.

Lloyd Doggett, a House member for Texas, became the first Democrat in the House of Representative to urge the president to stop aside amid continuing signs of underlying alarm in the wider party over his electability triggered by his faltering display in Atlanta.

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Ford chief says Americans need to fall ‘back in love’ with smaller cars

Jim Farley says country is ‘in love with these monster vehicles’ but big cars are not sustainable in the age of EV

It is time for the US to “get back in love” with smaller cars, according to the chief executive of Ford.

In an wide-ranging interview at the Aspen ideas festival, Jim Farley said the auto industry needs to focus on smaller EVs and commercial vehicles. He acknowledged that American consumers are in “love with these monster vehicles” but said they need to “get back in love” with small cars.

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Salman Rushdie stabbing suspect rejects plea deal over terrorism charge

Agreement would have shortened prison term but exposed alleged attacker to a federal terrorism-related charge

The man charged with stabbing author Salman Rushdie in 2022 rejected a plea deal on Tuesday that would have shortened his state prison term but exposed him to a federal terrorism-related charge, the suspect’s lawyer said.

Hadi Matar, 26, has been held without bail since Rushdie’s attack, in which he is accused of stabbing the acclaimed author more than a dozen times and blinding him as he was onstage, about to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York.

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Biden attacks Republican climate deniers as he unveils extreme-heat rules

President hails proposal to protect millions of Americans from extreme heat – the top weather-related US killer

President Biden on Tuesday trumpeted new rules from his administration that aim to protect Americans from extreme heat.

“Extreme heat is the number one weather-related killer in the United States,” he said at the Washington DC Emergency Operations Center. “More people die from extreme heat than floods, hurricanes and tornadoes combined.”

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New Cuban radar site near US military base could aid China spying – report

CSIS calls site near Guantánamo a ‘powerful tool’ that will be able to monitor air and maritime activity of US military

Satellite images appear to show that Cuba is building a new radar site likely to be capable of spying on the US’s nearby Guantánamo Bay naval base, in the latest upgrade to the country’s surveillance capabilities long thought to be linked to China.

The base, under construction since 2021 but previously not publicly reported, is east of the city of Santiago de Cuba near the El Salao neighborhood, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said in a report published on Monday and later referenced by the Wall Street Journal.

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Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, convicted over 1975 FBI killings, denied parole

Peltier, 79, in poor health and sentenced to life over two deaths in South Dakota, not eligible for another hearing until 2026

Leonard Peltier, the 79-year-old Indigenous activist who has spent nearly 50 years in prison for the 1975 murders of two FBI agents, has just been denied parole. Many fear that the ruling all but ensures that the longest-imprisoned Indigenous American will die behind bars.

Peltier has maintained his innocence since he was arrested in connection with the deaths that occurred at the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota. For decades, advocates such as Coretta Scott King, Nelson Mandela, Pope Francis and James H Reynolds, the US attorney who handled the prosecution and appeal of Peltier’s case, have fought for his release.

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Israel risking disastrous war against Hezbollah for political reasons, says former US official

Harrison Mann, military expert who quit over Gaza, says ruinous war in Lebanon would pull US into regional conflict

Israel risks going to war against Hezbollah to ensure Benjamin Netanyahu’s political survival, but it would be a miscalculation that could lead to mass civilian deaths in both Lebanon and Israel, a former US military intelligence analyst has warned.

Harrison Mann, a major in the Defence Intelligence Agency who left the military last month over US support for Israel’s war in Gaza, also told the Guardian that such a disastrous new war would pull the US into a regional conflict.

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Panama to shut down Darién Gap route in deal that will see US pay to repatriate migrants

New president José Raúl Mulino has vowed to close the route through which thousands of migrants travel to the US every year

The US will cover the costs of repatriating migrants who enter Panama illegally, under a deal agreed with the Central American country’s new president who has vowed to shut down the treacherous Darién Gap used by people travelling north to the United States.

In his first address as president, José Raúl Mulino promised to seek international assistance to find solutions to what he described as a costly “humanitarian and environmental crisis”.

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Brutal California heatwave to coincide with Fourth of July wildfire risks

Sweltering conditions and power shutoffs may overlap with errant fireworks or badly tended campfires

A brutal and long-lasting heatwave is threatening to wreak havoc across the US west this week, as sweltering conditions, power shutoffs and a severe uptick in wildfire risks coincide with Fourth of July celebrations.

Nearly 90 million people were under heat alerts from the National Weather Service on Tuesday morning, as swaths of the south-central and western US were scorched. As pressure builds over the west through the week, the dangerous weather event is expected to stretch for days with little reprieve.

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Hurricane Beryl: Caribbean leader calls out rich countries for climate failures as ‘horrendous’ storm makes landfall

Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent and the Grenadines calls Cop ‘largely a talk shop’ and beseeches west to honor commitments

The prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) has decried a lack of political will in western Europe and the US to tackle global climate crisis as Hurricane Beryl has made landfall as an “extremely dangerous” category 4 storm.

Speaking from his residence in SVG on Monday, Ralph Gonsalves described the unfolding catastrophe as the “monster” storm ripped off rooftops, including that of the 204-year-old St George’s Anglican cathedral in the country’s capital, Kingstown.

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Detroit changes rules for police use of facial recognition after wrongful arrest of Black man

City to pay $300,000 to Robert Williams, whose driver’s license was incorrectly flagged in shoplifting investigation

The city of Detroit has agreed to pay $300,000 to a Black man who was wrongly arrested for shoplifting, and to change how police use facial-recognition technology to solve crimes after the software identified him as a suspect.

The conditions are part of a lawsuit settlement with Robert Williams. His driver’s license photo was incorrectly flagged by facial-recognition software as a likely match to a man seen on security video at a Shinola watch store in 2018.

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Adoptee stolen at birth sues Chile over thousands of dictatorship-era thefts

Jimmy Lippert Thyden González alleges country engaged in plan to steal babies from perceived enemies in 70s and 80s

A Chilean-American man raised in the United States has filed a criminal complaint against the Chilean state, alleging that it engaged in a systematic plan to steal thousands of babies from perceived enemies of the state in the 1970s and 1980s.

The case filed by Jimmy Lippert Thyden González, 43, aims to advance the task of Chilean prosecutors and human rights groups working on accountability for crimes committed under Gen Augusto Pinochet.

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Mistrial declared in Karen Read’s case over killing of her Boston police boyfriend

Prosecutors say Read ran over John O’Keefe with an SUV and fled scene in 2022, but jury was unable to reach verdict

A mistrial has been declared in the Karen Read case after a jury was unable to reach a verdict on charges that she murdered her boyfriend, a Boston police officer.

The local district attorney’s office quickly issued a statement saying that prosecutors intend to retry the case, which jurors first began hearing in late April.

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