Category: Voices

Dozens of people were evacuated over the weekend from Grand Canyon National Park after flash floods inundated parts of the park.
Bright Angel Canyon, a popular hiking trail into the Grand Canyon, was hit with a spate of flash flooding around 2:30 p.m. Saturday, the National Park Service said.
No injuries were reported, officials said.
The National Park Service said it was conducting an aerial evacuation of “approximately 50 individuals from the Phantom Ranch area.”
“The entirety of the North Kaibab Trail and Phantom Ranch are closed until further notice,” the NPS wrote on social media.
About 50 people were evacuated from Grand Canyon National Park over the weekend due to flash flooding, park officials said (AP2000)Phantom Ranch is a historic lodge in the Grand Canyon National Park near the bottom of the Grand Canyon by Bright Angel Creek.
The flash floods total one-quarter to three-quarters of an inch in 30 minutes, the National Weather Service said.
The rain caused flooding in ..

Passengers sit on top of capsized ferry off coast of CyprusSearch teams are desperately trying to locate 23 people who were aboard a ferry carrying nearly 270 passengers that capsized off the coast of northern Cyprus on Sunday.
At least seven people have died in the incident, self-declared Northern Cyprus prime minister Unal Ustel confirmed, and 237 people have been rescued.
Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman said: “We have still not been ‌able to reach 23 people. Search and rescue teams are working very intensively to find them.
“If there are people still inside the vessel, reaching them does not appear easy at the moment. Efforts are being made using other technologies to reach them as well.”
The catamaran-style boat was travelling from the port of Kyrenia, also known as Girne, in the breakaway north of ethnically divided Cyprus, to the Turkish port of Tasucu in Mersin province.
Mr Ustel said the ferry faced adverse weather conditions and began taking in water just 15 minutes afte..

President Donald Trump faced backlash over his latest attack on a female reporter, whom he called “unattractive,” a “stalker” and derisively nicknamed after insect larvae.
The presidential tirade came after The New York Times reported Thursday that Trump planned to skip the 25th-anniversary commemoration of the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York — in part because he had not been allowed to deliver a speech.
Maggie Haberman, a veteran journalist who has long been a target of the president’s ire, was one of the report’s bylines.
“Maggot Hagerman, the Fake Reporter from The Failing New York Times, an unattractive person both inside and out, and who knows less about me than most reporters on the beat (She’s a SCAMMER!), made up a story that on September 11th,” the 80-year-old president wrote on Truth Social on Friday.
“Maggot Hagerman is a PHONY,” he added. “She’s been falsely writing about me for years — She’s a stalker, and should be forced to turn over any and all money that she’s ..

A New York City mother was found not criminally responsible due to mental disease or defect by a Bronx judge Monday for the 2022 killings of her two young sons at a Bronx family shelter.
Dimone Fleming, 26, is accused of repeatedly stabbing her sons, Daishawn Fleming, 3, and Octavius Canada, 11 months, before submerging them in a bathtub inside an apartment in the Mount Hope area on November 26, 2022. She was 22 at the time of the killings and was initially charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
The prosecution ultimately agreed that Fleming should not face a conventional criminal trial because of the severity of her mental illness. Psychiatrist Dr. Eric Goldsmith determined Fleming was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis, including hallucinations and delusions, and was “grossly psychotic and out of touch with reality,” according to the New York Post. She will avoid prison but remain in custody for psychiatric evaluations.
Fleming believed killing her children was nece..

President Donald Trump has reached an awkward moment in his second term as the U.S.-Israel war against Iran began six months ago Friday. It’s a notable milestone for a Republican leader who repeatedly assured Americans that attacking Iran would be a “little excursion” over in weeks.
And another federal judge has halted — at least for now — Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting. Thousands of marchers have converged on the National Mall to support voting rights ahead of the midterm elections. Many are condemning Republican-led changes to voting laws as detrimental to racial justice and to Black Americans in particular.
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US revokes visa of former Iraqi finance minister who won 2022 ‘International Women of Courage’ award
The Trump administration has revoked the U.S. visa of a former Iraqi finance minister who was honored in 2022 with an “International Women of Courage” award by the State Department.
The department said Friday it had revoked the visa of Tai..

Ghent University has permitted Nathan Cofnas, the US academic who accused late Cambridge University professor Jason Arday of plagiarism, to resume selected academic work while a disciplinary inquiry continues, the Belgian institution announced on Friday.
Arday, once celebrated as Cambridge's youngest Black professor, was found dead at the age of 41 in London this month, days after resigning from his position. Arday had denied the plagiarism allegations while acknowledging that he made mistakes.
Ghent University subsequently suspended Cofnas “as a precautionary measure” upon launching an investigation, which Cofnas said was looking into possible discrimination.
In Friday's statement, Ghent announced Cofnas could resume academic duties at the university while the inquiry proceeded, on the condition that he worked remotely and did not engage in teaching.
open image in galleryJason Arday was found dead earlier this month (Joe Giddens/PA) (PA Wire)The plagiarism claims against Ard..

Donald Trump’s administration hit record highs of monthly immigration enforcement arrests this summer, with more than 43,000 people arrested in June and another 50,000 arrested in July.
But last month, for the first time since Trump took office, more than half of all people arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement had no prior criminal convictions or pending charges.
A growing majority of immigrants targeted by federal law enforcement officers have no criminal history whatsoever, as officers increasingly target immigrants whose legal status has lapsed or been stripped by the Trump administration, according to new reviews of federal data. The share of arrests of immigrants with past violent criminal convictions fell to less than 4 percent.
The administration has instead shifted its focus to legal immigration pathways, including people seeking asylum, the spouses of U.S citizens stuck in legal limbo, and refugees with temporary legal status whose humanitarian protections were revo..

In a new video, President Donald Trump used his trusty Sharpie to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America” as his trade war with Canada escalates.
In a clip posted to the president’s TikTok account on Wednesday, Trump sat in the Oval Office displaying a map of Lake Ontario, which straddles the U.S.-Canada border.
“We’re gonna make a little change; we’re gonna call it something different than Lake Ontario,” the 80-year-old president said. “We’re gonna call it Lake America. And all it takes is a good pen and some intelligence.” Trump, a former real estate mogul with a penchant for branding, then used a Sharpie to cross out the lake’s name and write “LAKE AMERICA” above it.
“Now we have a gulf because we have the Gulf of America,” he said, referring to his decision last year to rebrand the Gulf of Mexico. “And now we have Lake America without the ‘of.’ Enjoy Lake America.”
The clip was posted a day after the Republican president suggested that he might officially rename the Great Lake as rel..

The recent release of Marine veteran Robert Gilman from Russian custody ended more than four years of imprisonment, but his visibly frail condition has raised alarming questions for the families of Americans still detained there.
Watching the news coverage from the United States, Harold Jezler saw Gilman's gaunt appearance and immediately worried about what it meant for his 36-year-old wife, Olga, who has been held in Russia since 2022 while suffering from her own deteriorating health issues.
“You just look at the pictures and the guy is not in good shape. It’s concerning for me and for all the families, I would imagine,” Jezler said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Is this what it takes for the government to really make a move and prioritize this — that the person is basically in dire straits? It was a very bittersweet thing to see that.”
Although Gilman’s freedom follows a series of prisoner releases over recent years, numerous Americans remain incarcerated in Russia…