Event: California

Former Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein appears in Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City, U.S., onJune 25, 2026. | Photo Credit: Reuters An appeals court on Friday (June 26, 2026) upheld Harvey Weinstein's 2022 rape and sexual assault conviction in California, but ordered his trial judge to resentence him.A three-judge panel from the California's 2nd District Court of Appeal unanimously issued the decision.“We are disappointed by today’s decision and respectfully disagree with the Court of Appeal’s conclusions regarding the fairness of Mr. Weinstein’s trial,” Weinstein spokesperson Juda Engelmayer said in an email. “At the same time, the court correctly recognized that his sentence cannot stand.”The decision came a day after prosecutors in New York decided Weinstein would not face a fourth trial there, dropping the #MeToo-era case on Thursday (June 25, 2026) after the accuser said she could not bear to testify again.The former movie magnate still stands convicted of another sexual felony in New York, and he remains behind bars. But the New York rape charge had remained unresolved after an overturned conviction followed by two hung juries.In California, Weinstein, 74, was convicted in December 2022 of one count of rape and two counts of sexual assault against an Italian model and actor known during the trial as Jane Doe 1. Weinstein was sentenced to 16 years in prison.Weinstein's lawyers argued in his appeal that in his Los Angeles County trial, the testimony of the head of a film festival was unfairly limited by Superior Court Judge Lisa B. Lench, and had been seeking a new trial.In New York, Weinstein is awaiting a September sentencing on his still-standing assault conviction involving a different woman. Prosecutors are seeking a 20-year prison term. He would serve his California sentence only after that.After the Los Angeles trial, Jane Doe 1 later…

LatestHere’s the latest.As American rescue workers began to arrive in Venezuela, the double earthquakes that had devastated the country’s north provided a test of the new alliance between the two countries since President Trump engineered the ouster of Venezuela’s long-ruling autocratic leader earlier this year. Emergency workers from Virginia, Florida and California were among hundreds of search-and-rescue specialists who flooded in from at least a dozen countries, as the beleaguered Venezuelan authorities appeared to be struggling with the scale of the disaster. At least 920 people have died, Jorge Rodríguez, the leader of the National Assembly, said in a televised address on Friday, and at least 3,300 more people were injured. He added that about 1,400 buildings have been damaged, including 13 hospitals.Hospitals were overwhelmed with the injured and dead. One hospital in La Guaira, the hardest-hit state, was operating without running water, forcing staff to wash their hands and clean bloodstained floors with stored water and intravenous saline, one doctor said.With little heavy machinery to clear rubble and few medical supplies to help the wounded, many survivors found themselves largely on their own. Some dug through mountains of bricks and cement with bare hands, hushing one another to listen for whispers of life and praying for help in reaching people still trapped beneath the ruins. Others ferried tools and supplies on motorcycles and in cars from Caracas.The sluggish government response has increased pressure on President Delcy Rodríguez and on President Trump, who embraced her as Venezuela’s leader after U.S. forces seized the country’s longtime dictator, Nicolas Maduro.The United States has sent a Marine Corps major general to direct U.S. military relief efforts, which include two ships, heavy cargo planes for delivering aid and helicopters. But it remains unclear how much the Trump administration ultimately will do to help the…

A detainee gestures near a window outside the Delaney Hall detention center, in Newark, New Jersey, U.S. File. | Photo Credit: Reuters The United Nations human rights chief on Friday called for independent investigations ‌into deaths of people in U.S. immigration custody, saying that 19 people have died in detention so far this ‌year.“Those responsible for violations of the law must be ‌held ⁠to account, and the rights of the victims’ families to ⁠truth, justice and reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence must be upheld,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turksaid in a statement.The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s ​inspector general is examining deaths of ‌people in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody from October 2021 through March 2026.Nineteen people died in ICE detention this year so far, the U.N. human rights office said, citing U.S. ‌government data. Five of those deaths were classified as suicides. ​Last year 33 deaths were recorded, the office said after U.S. President Donald Trump launched his mass deportation ⁠campaign in January 2025.The Department of Homeland Security, which has federal oversight of immigration, said it has maintained a higher standard of care ‌than most prisons.“There has been NO spike in deaths. Consistent with data over the last decade, death rates in custody under the Trump administration are 0.009% of the detained population,” a spokesperson said.A Reuters analysis of ICE data found that the death rate among immigration detainees has more than doubled since Trump returned to ‌office in 2025. The number of people detained has grown by 50% since ​early 2025 to 60,000 people, the U.N. human rights office said, citing U.S. official data.ICE, which is part ⁠of the Department of Homeland Security, has been at the center of ⁠Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown that rights groupshave said violates free speech and due process rights…

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe groups that include firefighters, doctors and structural engineering specialists began arriving on Friday to join the race to find survivors. Members of the County of Los Angeles search and rescue team on Thursday before leaving for Venezuela.Credit...Blake Fagan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJune 26, 2026Search and rescue teams from Virginia, California and Florida began arriving in Venezuela on Friday, joining efforts to pull survivors and recover bodies from the rubble of back-to-back earthquakes that leveled buildings and left more than 900 dead. The units from Los Angeles County and Fairfax County, Va., are the only two from the United States that are trained to work internationally. They were joined by two search and rescue teams from Florida because of their proximity to Venezuela, according to Anthony Marrone, the Los Angeles County fire chief. The Los Angeles County team, which took off in a C-17 aircraft from March Air Force Base in Riverside, Calif., on Friday morning, consisted of 73 people that included firefighters, medical personnel, handlers of six canine teams, and structural engineering specialists. They will be hauling 84,000 pounds of equipment, such as concrete-busting machines, using listening devices to detect people buried under the wreckage and deploying generators for where the power is out. “When the team hits the ground, they’ll go to assigned areas and start searching to prioritize rescues,” Chief Marrone said. “Then they’ll fold into a 24-hour mission, day shift and night shift. We won’t stop searching at night.”The team from Fairfax County is roughly the same size, with 80 people and six dogs. The teams were sent by the State Department under new protocols meant to make it easier for the United States to help in international disaster areas. The emergency workers from Fairfax and Los Angeles Counties — known respectively as USA 1…

LatestHere’s the latest.As American rescue workers began to arrive in Venezuela, the double earthquakes that had devastated the country’s north provided a test of the new alliance between the two countries since President Trump engineered the ouster of Venezuela’s long-ruling autocratic leader earlier this year. Emergency workers from Virginia, Florida and California were among hundreds of search-and-rescue specialists who flooded in from at least a dozen countries, as the beleaguered Venezuelan authorities appeared to be struggling with the scale of the disaster. At least 920 people have died, Jorge Rodríguez, the leader of the National Assembly, said in a televised address on Friday, and at least 3,300 more people were injured. He added that about 1,400 buildings have been damaged, including 13 hospitals.Hospitals were overwhelmed with the injured and dead. One hospital in La Guaira, the hardest-hit state, was operating without running water, forcing staff to wash their hands and clean bloodstained floors with stored water and intravenous saline, one doctor said.With little heavy machinery to clear rubble and few medical supplies to help the wounded, many survivors found themselves largely on their own. Some dug through mountains of bricks and cement with bare hands, hushing one another to listen for whispers of life and praying for help in reaching people still trapped beneath the ruins. Others ferried tools and supplies on motorcycles and in cars from Caracas.The sluggish government response has increased pressure on President Delcy Rodríguez and on President Trump, who embraced her as Venezuela’s leader after U.S. forces seized the country’s longtime dictator, Nicolas Maduro.The United States has sent a Marine Corps major general to direct U.S. military relief efforts, which include two ships, heavy cargo planes for delivering aid and helicopters. But it remains unclear how much the Trump administration ultimately will do to help the…

A 5.6-magnitude earthquake struck a rural part of northern California on Wednesday. Hours later, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake hit the northern coast of Japan and two powerful earthquakes rocked Venezuela in a devastating mass casualty event.The tremors happened in the span of eight hours, prompting online speculation over whether they were related.Experts say they were not.The episodes do share a similarity in that they all occurred along well-known plate boundaries with high seismic hazard, according to William Barnhart, assistant coordinator for the US Geological Survey’s earthquake hazards program. But their timing on Wednesday was simply a coincidence.A man stands outside a building with a wall damaged by an earthquake in Hachinohe, Aomori prefecture, Japan, on 25 June 2026. Photograph: KYODO/Reuters“Earthquakes happen every day all over the world. Most of them happen far from people,” Barnhart said. “Yesterday was just a very peculiar day where you had a couple of fairly significant earthquakes happen in areas where people felt them.”It is possible for a large earthquake to trigger tremors in other parts of the world, Barnhart said.But it’s unusual that such a cascade effect would happen thousands and thousands of miles apart, according to Martin Hudson, an adjunct professor of civil and environmental engineering at UCLA.“If you look at the last 100 years of earthquakes, we’ve never seen earthquakes this far apart be related,” he said.In comparison, the initial 7.1-magnitude temblor in Venezuela likely triggered the ensuing 7.5-magnitude quake because of their proximity.Redwood Valley Market owner Alex Chehada looks at damage after an earthquake in Redwood Valley, California, on 24 June 2026. Photograph: Kent Porter/The Press Democrat/AP“A fault might be ready to go, and then if there’s a nearby earthquake, it causes it to tip over the edge,” Hudson said.In any given year, there are dozens of earthquakes greater than magnitude 7…

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTExperts said the powerful earthquakes that struck California and Japan are likely not connected to the devastating tremors in Venezuela.A pedestrian passes a damaged wall of a building following an earthquake in Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture, Japan, on Thursday.Credit...Kyodo, via ReutersJune 25, 2026Two powerful, deadly earthquakes struck Venezuela, just 39 seconds apart, on Wednesday.But in addition to those temblors, two other strong earthquakes struck across the world in less than 24 hours. A 5.6-magnitude tremor hit Northern California at 8:10 a.m. Pacific time, with some reports of injuries and power outages, and a 6.9-magnitude quake off the coast of Japan, with no reports of serious damage, soon after the Venezuela quakes.While that may seem like an unusual number of strong earthquakes in a short time, experts said there was no indication they had any relation to each other.The quakes in Venezuela are “not a coincidence,” said William Barnhart, a geodesist with the United States Geological Survey. Large earthquakes can lead to more quakes, but only in the same region, and usually along the same fault line, he added.Dr. Barnhart said the first magnitude 7.3 earthquake that struck in Venezuela was likely a foreshock, with the magnitude 7.5 earthquake being the main shock.The quakes in Japan and California were “coincidental,” he said.Neither earthquake in Japan nor California was close enough to transfer stress to the tectonic plates under Venezuela, said Martin Hudson, an expert in geotechnical engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. But the strength of the first Venezuelan quake could have triggered the second.“The shaking of the first earthquake increases the stress on a nearby fault,” he said. “If the other one was close to going off anyway, it wouldn’t take much to set it off.”Scientists are increasingly recognizing that earthquakes can happen in pairs, like the ones…