One person has died amid flooding and an atmospheric river is forecast to drive storms across the state this week
One person has died in California amid heavy flooding, as residents across the state brace for a week of brutal storms that are predicted to bring extensive rainfall throughout the Christmas weekend.
Authorities in Redding, a city in northern California, reported that a motorist died on Sunday after becoming stranded in their vehicle.
Black Diamond Pool eruption provides dramatic footage after being captured on official camera
A hot spring in Yellowstone national park that erupts sporadically was captured on an official camera exploding in spectacular muddy plumes at the weekend.
Volcanic experts at the US Geological Survey described the eruption as simply “Kablooey!”
The 82-year-old singer says the disease is in its early stages and he plans to be back on stage in February
Barry Manilow has revealed that he has been diagnosed with lung cancer and will undergo surgery.
The 82-year-old singer, whose parade of high-spirited hits from Copacabana to Mandy has made him one of pop music’s most beloved showmen, will have surgery to remove part of his lung in an effort to fight off the disease, which is in its early stages.
Controversially appointed editor-in-chief Bari Weiss says: ‘I held that story and I held it because it wasn’t ready’
CBS News was dealing with internal and external uproar on Monday after it pulled at the last minute an investigation for its flagship 60 Minutes show into the harsh prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelans from the US earlier this year.
The episode about the Cecot mega-prison was due to air on Sunday night. However, in an “editor’s note” posted on X late that afternoon, the broadcaster’s official account announced that “the lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated. Our report ‘Inside Cecot’ will air in a future broadcast.”
Some US citizens, grappling with issues from LGBTQ+ rights to the economy, are looking to the countries their families once left behind
Daniel Kamalić was born and raised in New York City, where he spent his summers riding his bike around Brighton Beach before pedaling home to his “Brooklyn Jewish” mother and his “smooth talker” father. He went out for Cub Scouts and soccer before realizing, during his time studying at MIT, that he loved sailing most of all. Now 48, he is a professional tenor with the opera, performing in and around New York.
Kamalić never considered that he might want to be anything but American – why would he? His life was shaped by the freedoms and opportunities that his father, Ivan Kamalić, risked everything for.
WBD had urged shareholders to reject $108.4bn hostile takeover bid from Paramount, which is controlled by the Ellisons, following $82.7bn Netflix deal
The tech billionaire Larry Ellison has agreed to provide a personal guarantee of more than $40bn for Paramount Skydance’s fight to gain control of Warner Bros Discovery, amid an extraordinary corporate battle over the entertainment giant.
WBD urged shareholders to reject a $108.4bn hostile takeover bid from Paramount – which is controlled by the Ellisons – last week, having agreed to sell its storied movie studios, HBO cable network and streaming service to Netflix in a $82.7bn deal earlier this month.
The documents are disturbing. But they seem largely to reflect information that has already been made public
After months of public outcry and pressure from within the Maga coalition, Donald Trump’s justice department released what it called The Epstein Files, with the Trump world’s typical fanfare. A media frenzy ensued. But the “files” that were released by Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice left many observers frustrated and confused. The release was partial and heavily redacted; much of the information had already been made public. Media figures were incensed, and members of Congress pledged to push the Trump administration for more. The episode left Washington watchers frustrated. It fueled speculation that Trump, who had long opposed the release of the documents, had something to hide.
That was on 27 February, when a group of 15 rightwing media figures who had taken a special interest in the Epstein case were summoned to the White House and given white binders labeled “The Epstein Files”. The release was meant to allay pressure from the president’s conspiracy-minded base and neutralize the Epstein issue, which has dogged Trump since the financier, sex offender and former close friend of the president died in prison during his first term in 2019. But those who received the binders said that there was little new information in them. The episode only further inflamed tensions and increased the salience of the Epstein issue.
Online activity shows the Base, headed by alleged Russian asset Rinaldo Nazzaro, sees US and Ukraine as key centers
Amid high-profile arrests in its Spanish cell, the American-born and designated neo-Nazi terrorist group the Base – once a major preoccupation of FBI counter-terrorism efforts – has all but faded from US headlines. But a flurry of online activities shows the group is still active stateside and considers the US an operational nerve center.
Headed by Rinaldo Nazzaro, an ex-Pentagon contractor turned alleged Russian intelligence asset, the Base has been busy of late pursuing European expansion: besides its heavily armed members in Spain, its Ukrainian wing is linked to multiple acts of terrorism inside of the country and claimed the high-profile July assassination of an intelligence officer in Kyiv.
Medetomidine has extreme and fast-acting withdrawal symptoms – and the detox centers that help patients are struggling with how best to cope
The staff at harm reduction hub Sunshine House in the middle of Kensington, a neighborhood in north-east Philadelphia home to the most notorious open drug scene in the US, often reverse at least one overdose per day.
But the mutating illegal drug supply is regularly conjuring new drugs with novel sets of potentially deadly risks. For the past 18 months, there has been a new drug in circulation, the veterinary sedative medetomidine, also known as “rhino tranq”. It has perhaps the most extreme and fast-acting withdrawal symptoms of all known street drugs.
Thousands of farms set to go bankrupt as grain farmers in particular hit by trade disruptions caused by price hikes
Donald Trump, having promised to “NEVER LET OUR FARMERS DOWN”, appeared to come through for them this month when he unveiled a $12bn aid package. Industry leaders say thousands of farms will still go bust this year.
While the US president has vowed to increase domestic farm production, and even claimed this formed a “big part” of his plan to lower grocery prices for Americans, many US farmers are grappling with mounting financial issues – compounded by Trump’s agenda.
This is the latest in the relentless purge of climate researchers who refuse to be co-opted by the fossil fuel industry
The Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin would no doubt have understood and even appreciated the latest attack by the Trump administration on climate researchers and their work.
Professor Michael Mann is the presidential distinguished professor and director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, and co-author with Peter Hotez of Science Under Siege; Bob Ward is policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science
Heavy rain and mountain snow forecast for northern and central parts, with river and flooding likely in Los Angeles
After prolonged heavy rainfall and devastating flooding across the Pacific north-west in the past few weeks, further flood watches have been issued across California through this week.
With 50-75mm (2-3in) of rainfall already reported across northern California this weekend, a series of atmospheric rivers will continue to bring periods of heavy rain and mountain snow across the northern and central parts of the state, with flood watches extending until Friday.
Mette Frederiksen and Jens-Frederik Nielsen demand respect for borders after US appoints Greenland envoy
The prime ministers of Denmark and Greenland have demanded respect for their borders after Donald Trump appointed a special envoy to the largely self-governing Danish territory, which he has said repeatedly should be under US control.
“We have said it very clearly before. Now we say it again. National borders and the sovereignty of states are rooted in international law … You cannot annex other countries,” Mette Frederiksen and Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a joint statement.
This year has brought us many brilliant video games – but as wealth continues to concentrate, and games are used to exert economic and political influence, we need to keep an eye on the top players
I love playing video games, but what interests me most as a journalist are the ways in which games intersect with real life. One of the joys of spending 20 years on this beat has been meeting hundreds of people whose lives have been meaningfully enhanced by games, and as their cultural influence has grown, these stories have become more and more plentiful.
There is another side to this, however. A couple of decades ago, video games were mostly either ignored or vilified by governments and mainstream culture, leading to an underdog mentality that has persisted even as games have become a nearly $200bn industry. As their popularity has grown, so have their political and cultural relevance. And the ways in which games intersect with real life are now coloured by the economic and political realities of our times.
Documents allege Epstein’s accomplice and ex-girlfriend ‘normalized’ his grooming and ‘directed’ girls on what to do
A document among the tranche of newly releasedJeffrey Epstein files casts fresh light on psychological tricks that his ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell deployed in her effort to lure vulnerable teen girls into his abusive orbit.
His interference in the region has been aided by the collapse of the leftist forces that once pushed back against US imperialism
For the past generation, Latin America has been a place of unstable stability. Marked on the surface by protests, political pendulum swings and spectacular scandals, most of the region has, since the democratisation of the 1980s and 1990s, remained firmly democratic and free of war between states. Though scarred by the violence of armed groups and increasingly powerful criminal organisations, it has, by and large, lived up to its self-assumed moniker of a “zone of peace”.
Which is why this year has felt so jarring. Throughout 2025, the first year of Donald Trump’s second term, analysts have obsessively parsed potential US military incursions into a hemisphere once defined by its unified defence of national sovereignty. But the fixation on whether Washington’s escalating pressure on Nicolás Maduro presages a physical military invasion of Venezuela has distracted from the real story: the largershift towards direct intervention has already happened, and it has faced remarkably little resistance. More than 100 people have been killed in US maritime strikes that experts characterise as extrajudicial executions, and the loudest objections have come not from Latin American presidents or regional organisations, but from the US Congress.
Jordana Timerman is a journalist based in Buenos Aires. She compiles the Latin America Daily Briefing and is part of the Ideas Letter’s editorial team
Backlash after broadcaster announces investigation, due to air on Sunday night, ‘needs additional reporting’
CBS News is facing a backlash, including from one of its own correspondents, after it cancelled a 60 Minutes investigation into a brutal prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration has deported hundreds of migrants.
The episode of its flagship program about the Cecot mega-prison was due to air on Sunday night. However, in an “editor’s note” posted on X, the broadcaster’s official account announced that “the lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated. Our report ‘Inside Cecot’ will air in a future broadcast.”
Steve Witkoff says representatives share goals to stop killing, support Ukraine and end war with Russia
A White House envoy said on Sunday he held “productive and constructive” talks in Florida with Ukrainian and European representatives to end the nearly four-year war between Russia and Ukraine.
Posting on social media, Steve Witkoff said the talks aimed at aligning on a shared strategic approach between Ukraine, the US and Europe.
Department says image was flagged by prosecutors before determining it posed no risk to survivors of late sex offender
The US justice department said on Sunday it had restored an image it had removed a day earlier from the public release of investigative files related to Jeffrey Epstein after concluding that the photograph, which included within it a photo of Donald Trump, posed no risk of public exposure to victims of the late convicted sex offender.
The justice department said the image had been flagged by federal prosecutors in New York for potentially exposing victims of Epstein. Its unexplained removal on Saturday triggered a chorus of accusations from Democrats about evident political interference in favor of the president, a former friend of Epstein.
Figures at event include Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon and Trump Jr as cohesion of political right shows signs of stress
The stars of the Maga conservatism converged for the four-day AmericaFest conference in Phoenix this weekend amid reports that the cohesion of the political-religious right, a year into Donald Trump’s second presidential term, is showing signs of stress.
The sold-out Turning Point USA event brought together figures from the right including Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump Jr, Vivek Ramaswamy, Ben Shapiro and Glenn Beck, to kick around the dominant themes of conservatism.
Photos suggest former Duke of York served as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s pass to British high society
The former Prince Andrew at Sandringham lying across the laps of five elegantly dressed women as Ghislaine Maxwell looks on; Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein on a shoot near Balmoral; the three of them peering down from the royal box at Ascot.
The images are just some of the “Epstein files” released by the US Department of Justice on Friday.
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