North America

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — A heat wave was developing in California on Monday but winds were light as firefighters battled a wildfire that poses a threat to a grove of giant sequoias and a small community in Yosemite National Park.

The Washburn Fire on the western flank of the Sierra Nevada had scorched about 3.6 square miles by Monday morning, an increase of about 300 acres (121 hectares) overnight, according to an incident update.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The U.S.-Mexico relationship — a straightforward tradeoff during the Trump adminstration, with Mexico tamping down on migration and the U.S. not pressing on other issues — has become a wide range of disagreements over trade, foreign policy, energy and climate change.

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — One of the jurors in the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial served improperly, an attorney for Heard alleged in a recent filing that asked the court to declare a mistrial and order a new trial.

“Newly discovered facts” show Juror No. 15 in the six-week trial was not the individual summoned in April to serve in the case, Heard’s attorney wrote in a five-page memo filed Friday in Virginia’s Fairfax Circuit Court.

Instead, the filing suggests Juror No. 15 was a younger individual with the same last name who “apparently” lives at the same address.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is hosting a “celebration” of a new bipartisan law meant to reduce gun violence that, after just 16 days in effect, already has been overshadowed by yet another mass shooting.

The bill, passed after recent gun rampages in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, incrementally toughens requirements for young people to buy guns, denies firearms to more domestic abusers, and helps local authorities temporarily take weapons from people judged to be dangerous.

WASHINGTON (AP) — For the first time, a pharmaceutical company has asked for permission to sell a birth control pill over the counter in the U.S.

HRA Pharma’s application on Monday sets up a high-stakes decision for health regulators amid legal and political battles over women’s reproductive health. The company says the timing was unrelated to the Supreme Court’s recent decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

(AP) --- After members of the far-right Oath Keepers extremist group stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan 6, 2021, their leader called someone on the phone with an urgent message for then-President Donald Trump, another extremist told investigators.

While gathered in a private suite at the Phoenix Park Hotel, an Oath Keeper member says he heard their leader, Stewart Rhodes, repeatedly urge the person on the phone to tell Trump to call upon militia groups to fight to keep the president in power.

WASHINGTON, July 9 (Reuters) - President Joe Biden on Saturday defended his decision to travel to Saudi Arabia saying human rights would be on his agenda as he gave a preview of a trip on which he aims to reset ties with the crown prince, who he previously denounced as a pariah.

Biden will hold bilateral talks with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz and his leadership team, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on his visit to the Middle East next week. https://reut.rs/3PiLiB4

July 10 (Reuters) - Drawing back the curtain to a photo gallery unlike any other, NASA will soon present the first full-color images from its James Webb Space Telescope, a revolutionary apparatus designed to peer through the cosmos to the dawn of the universe.

The highly anticipated July 12 unveiling of pictures and spectroscopic data from the newly operational observatory follows a six-month process of remotely unfurling various components, aligning its mirrors and calibrating instruments.

LOS ANGELES, July 9 (Xinhua) -- The United States had reported 767 confirmed monkeypox cases in 39 states as of Friday, and experts criticized the weakness in the country's public health system to address the snowballing outbreak.

New York had the highest monkeypox case count in the country with 153 cases, followed by California at 136 and Illinois at 91, according to latest data of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — When Antonio McGowan left the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman after serving 17 years, he was free for the first time since he was 15. But as an adult finally out from behind bars, he immediately found himself confined to menial labor.