Category Archives: US News

California resort extends ski season as rest of US west suffers from heatwaves

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The state’s snowpack, full from winter storms, has not yet melted, while the rest of the region bakes in summer temperatures

While most of California swelters through a prolonged, extreme heatwave, Mammoth Mountain ski resort in the eastern Sierras announced that it would be extending its season into early August.

“We are stoked to announce that we’re staying open,” the resort, which saw its snowiest season on record this winter, announced on Instagram. Mammoth Mountain had planned to remain open through the end of July and is now planning to close on 6 August. Located along eastern Sierra Nevada, the resort often stays open into June or July – but this season will be only the third to extend into August in its 69-year operating history.

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Guatemala contender decries police raid on party HQ before crucial runoff

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Semilla’s Bernardo Arévalo, who came second in June election, condemns ‘flagrant demonstration of the political persecution’

The Guatemalan presidential candidate Bernardo Arévalo has denounced a police raid on his party headquarters as a “corrupt” show of “political persecution” just a month before the high-stakes runoff election.

Police raided the headquarters of Arévalo’s Semilla party on Friday, saying it was carrying out a 12 July court order that had canceled the party’s legal status.

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Hot streak: US heatwaves lasting longer as record temperatures bake south-west

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Phoenix and Californian town of Needles experiencing 70th day in which temperatures have reached 90F

A brutal heatwave is persisting throughout much of the US, with cities across the south-west reaching all-time records for hottest consecutive days. Intense heatwaves are becoming more frequent as a result of the climate crisis, but alarmingly, these streaks of hot days are also lasting longer.

People living in cities in Arizona, California and Texas are entering their second month of days in which the temperature reaches 90F (32.2C) and above. Cities such as Phoenix, and Needles in California, have had no relief from this extreme heat in the past 70 days, with Phoenix recently experiencing three consecutive weeks of temperatures reaching 110F (43.3C) and above.

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Bankman-Fried planned to buy Nauru and build apocalypse bunker – lawsuit

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Lawsuit filed against FTX founder, 31, includes memo that detailed plans to purchase Pacific island in case world came to an end

The disgraced cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, who founded the FTX exchange, had planned to purchase the small Pacific island nation of Nauru in case the world came to an end, according to a new lawsuit.

The lawsuit, filed on Thursday by FTX against its 31-year-old founder and three other former executives, and seeking $1bn, included a memo created by Bankman-Fried’s younger brother Gabriel and an FTX Foundation executive. The memo detailed plans to buy Nauru.

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Top tech firms commit to AI safeguards amid fears over pace of change

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Joe Biden announced Meta, Amazon and OpenAI among others had agreed to eight measures to encourage responsible practices

Top players in the development of artificial intelligence, including Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI, have agreed to new safeguards for the fast-moving technology, Joe Biden announced on Friday.

Among the guidelines brokered by the Biden administration are watermarks for AI content to make it easier to identify and third-party testing of the technology that will try to spot dangerous flaws.

Using watermarking on audio and visual content to help identify content generated by AI.

Allowing independent experts to try to push models into bad behavior – a process known as “red-teaming”.

Sharing trust and safety information with the government and other companies.

Investing in cybersecurity measures.

Encouraging third parties to uncover security vulnerabilities.

Reporting societal risks such as inappropriate uses and bias.

Prioritizing research on AI’s societal risks.

Using the most cutting-edge AI systems, known as frontier models, to solve society’s greatest problems.

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How brutal heat is breaking records everywhere from the US to Japan

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Temperatures reached as high as 53.3C in the US and flooding hit South Korea and India

A remote township in the north-western region of Xinjiang set a Chinese record of 52.2C (125.9F) on Sunday – in a country that was battling -50C weather six months ago. Sanbao is in the Turpan Depression, an arid basin of sand dunes and dried-up lakes where 50.3C was recorded in 2015. Beijing topped its record for high-temperature days in a year on Tuesday, with 27 days above 35C. The temperature in its southern suburbs soared even higher on Wednesday to 36.3C.

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Stolen Christopher Columbus letter found in Delaware returned to Italy

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Columbus wrote the letter to King Ferdinand of Spain in 1493 about his findings after the ‘discovery’ of the Americas

The US has returned a rare 15th-century original edition of a letter written by Christopher Columbus to Italy, the federal US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency has announced.

The letter, valued at over $1.3m, was revealed to have been stolen some time between 1985 and 1988, likely from the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, the historic public library in Venice.

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Journalist unrepentant over 2016 fracas with new Fox News host Jesse Watters

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Ryan Grim calls Tucker Carlson replacement ‘a classic bully’ and says fight started when he backed colleague Watters had harassed

The US political journalist Ryan Grim broke the news of allegations against Brett Kavanaugh before his 2018 supreme court justice confirmation, and he was among the first to report on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s initial ascent to Congress.

Still, to some, he remains known as the guy who got into a fight at the 2016 White House Correspondents’ Dinner with Jesse Watters, who debuted Tuesday as host of the coveted 8pm Fox News slot made available by Tucker Carlson’s firing.

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Man dies in Death Valley as California national park swelters in extreme heat

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High temperature ‘may have been a factor’ in death of 71-year-old Steve Curry in Golden Canyon area, park officials say

A 71-year-old man collapsed and died in Death Valley on Tuesday as temperatures in the valley – the point of lowest elevation in North America as well as one of the hottest places in the world – reached at least 121F (49.4C).

“Heat may have been a factor in his death,” Death Valley national park officials said in a press release.

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US ambassador to Beijing targeted in Chinese cyber-attack – report

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Nicholas Burns’ emails reportedly accessed in hack that exploited flaw in Microsoft system and took Washington by surprise

The US ambassador to Beijing, Nicholas Burns, was reportedly one of the American officials whose emails were accessed in a recent Chinese hacking attack which took Washington by surprise with its sophistication.

Another target was Daniel Kritenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for east Asia, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. When the attack was first disclosed last week, the administration admitted the email account of the commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, had also been compromised. US officials were quoted as saying those were the three most senior targets but that in total, hundreds of thousands of government email accounts could have been breached.

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Nevada home raided in link with Tupac Shakur killing tied to suspect’s uncle

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Property in Henderson linked to Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis, whose late nephew, Orlando Anderson, was long suspected in rapper’s killing

A home that Las Vegas police searched this week in connection with the 1996 drive-by shooting of Tupac Shakur is tied to a man whose nephew had emerged as a suspect shortly after the rapper’s killing.

Detectives sought items “concerning the murder of Tupac Shakur” from Duane “Keffe D” Davis, according to a copy of the warrant obtained Thursday. Davis is the uncle of Orlando Anderson. Anderson denied involvement in Shakur’s killing at the time, and died two years later in an unrelated gang shooting in Compton, California.

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Leading Nasa climate expert says July likely to be hottest month on record

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Gavin Schmidt of Goddard Institute for Space Studies warns of likelihood of new high as heatwave bakes large parts of planet

July will likely be Earth’s hottest month in hundreds if not thousands of years, Gavin Schmidt, the director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told reporters on Thursday, as a persistent heatwave baked swaths of the US south.

Schmidt made the announcement during a meeting at Nasa’s Washington headquarters that convened agency climate experts and other leaders, including Nasa administrator Bill Nelson and chief scientist and senior climate adviser Kate Calvin.

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California school district fined $1.5m after rejecting curriculum with Harvey Milk

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Gavin Newsom, the state governor, said his office will provide new school textbooks and send a bill for violating state laws

A school district in southern California will be fined more than $1m after rejecting a curriculum that included Harvey Milk, the pioneering gay rights leader who the the school board’s president has called a “pedophile”.

Gavin Newsom, the California governor, announced on Wednesday that his office will send textbooks to the Temecula school district that include Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the state, as well as fine the district $1.5m for failing to “adopt an updated social studies curriculum”.

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Supreme court ethics: Senate committee approves new rules as fresh Clarence Thomas claims emerge – as it happened

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Rules passed along party lines; conservative nonprofits reportedly orchestrated a $1.8m PR campaign to defend supreme court justice
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Here’s a rundown of the ethical controversies supreme court justices have been involved in.

Real estate transactions

Just about every week now, we learn something new and deeply troubling about the justices serving on the supreme court, the highest court in the land in the United States, and their conduct outside the courtroom.

Let me tell you, if I or any member of the Senate failed to report an all-expense paid luxury getaway or if we used our government staff to help sell books we wrote, we’d be in big trouble.

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North Korea fails to answer entreaties about US soldier who crossed border

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Travis King had finished prison term in South Korea for assault and was supposed to be returning to Texas

North Korea is not responding to US attempts to discuss the American soldier who crossed the heavily armed border and whose prospects for a quick release are unclear when military tensions are high and communication channels inactive.

Pte Travis King, who was supposed to be heading to Fort Bliss, Texas, after finishing a prison sentence in South Korea for assault, ran into North Korea while on a civilian tour of the border village of Panmunjom on Tuesday. He is the first known American to be held in North Korea in nearly five years.

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He’s unimpressed with his physique, but wins bodybuilding competitions … at 90

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Jim Arrington, who was recognized as the planet’s oldest bodybuilder in 2015, explains how a ‘low opinion’ motivated him

Like many in the US who are grappling with pressure to look better, Jim Arrington is unimpressed with his physique – but he says that self-perception has motivated him to keep winning bodybuilding competitions at age 90.

The nonagenarian great-grandfather spoke about how he has achieved a level of physical fitness which is superior to that of many people more than half his age in an interview published on Wednesday by Guinness World Records, which first recognized him as the planet’s oldest bodybuilder in 2015.

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Trump hosts screening of Sound of Freedom, a hit with QAnon devotees

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Ex-president holds golf club screening of child sex trafficking film, with Steve Bannon, Kari Lake and Jack Posobiec in attendance

It was an outdoor movie with a difference. Sitting in the front row: Donald Trump, the former US president. Also in attendance: extremists and election deniers. On the big screen: a box office hit promoted by followers of QAnon.

Trump, who is running for president again, hosted a private screening of Sound of Freedom, a thriller about child sex trafficking, at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Wednesday night.

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Alabama due to resume executions despite botching three last year

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James Barber due to die on Friday but granddaughter of Dorothy Epps, the woman he murdered, doesn’t want it to happen

Alabama is due to resume executions on Thursday despite botching three last year and after a review of capital punishment practices in the southern state was largely kept from public view.

The inmate set to die by lethal injection by 6am on Friday is James Barber. Now 54, he was convicted of the murder of Dorothy Epps, who was 75, in 2001.

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Trump under investigation for civil rights conspiracy in January 6 inquiry

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Federal prosecutors say they have evidence to charge Trump with three crimes over efforts to overturn 2020 election

Federal prosecutors investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results have evidence to charge the former president with three crimes, including section 241 of the US legal code that makes it unlawful to conspire to violate civil rights, two people familiar with the matter said.

The potential charges detailed in a target letter sent to Trump by prosecutors from the office of special counsel Jack Smith, who also charged Trump with retaining classified documents last month, was the clearest signal of an imminent indictment.

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US soldier was reportedly laughing when crossing border into North Korea

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Soldier, identified by US and Korean officials as Travis King, gave ‘out a loud “ha ha ha”’, member of tour group says

A US soldier who crossed into North Korea while on a tour group after escaping military detention was laughing as he fled over the inter-Korean border, according to media reports.

US and Korean officials identified the soldier as Private 2nd Class Travis King, according to CBS News. King, 23, was being held in custody by South Korea at the airport in Incheon, near Seoul, and in the process of being expelled when he fled.

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