Richard Branson’s moment of destiny in space will happen 50 miles above a town called Truth or Consequences. In the high desert of New Mexico, a dream that was born when Branson watched the moon landing two days after his 19th birthday will, he hopes, finally be realised. It has been a long journey for
US
People are being evacuated from a community in the US state of Nevada as a wildlife that started in neighbouring California spreads. The inferno, near Doyle, northeast of the Sierra Nevada region, has doubled in size in recent days as it has rushed through the bone dry timber amid record temperatures in the region. On
A 14-year-old girl has made history by becoming the first African American to win the 96-year-old US Scripps National Spelling Bee. Zaila Avant-garde, a sporting prodigy with several Guinness World Records to her name for dribbling multiple basketballs at a time, won the event by correctly spelling Murraya – a genus of tropical Asiatic and
Police bodycam footage shows officers rescuing a six-year-old girl after she was kidnapped from outside her home in Kentucky. The victim was riding her bicycle in Louisville on 2 July when she was snatched by a stranger in a car, witnesses told the Louisville Metro Police Department. Neighbour Prentiss Weatherford told WHAS-TV that he saw
Recent record-high temperatures in the US and Canada, which caused hundreds of deaths and huge wildfires, would be “virtually impossible” without climate change, analysis has found. A rapid analysis of last week’s heatwave in parts of North America by an international team of climate scientists found global warming driven by human activity made it at
Authorities have called off a search for survivors in the rubble of a collapsed apartment building in Florida, saying there is “no chance of life”. Emergency workers shifted their efforts to recovery on Thursday after a fortnight of searching the ruins of the Chaplain Towers South, in Surfside, Miami. A total of 54 bodies had
Ten more bodies have been pulled from the rubble of a Miami building that collapsed two weeks ago, bringing the total death count to 46, authorities have said. Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah told family members in a private briefing on Wednesday that additional human remains had also been found in the wreckage. It comes
Eight more people have been confirmed dead in the Florida apartment block collapse – taking total deaths to 36, while 109 residents are still missing. Emergency teams appear increasingly pessimistic of finding any more survivors among the rubble and say they have detected no new signs of life since the immediate aftermath. Miami-Dade County fire
A grizzly bear killed a person in a remote campsite in Montana early on Tuesday morning, police have said. The animal is said to have previously wandered through the site before the attack, which happened between 4am and 5am. The people of the village of Ovando – home to fewer than 100 people – were
Many of the 2,312 US military personnel who have been killed on duty in Afghanistan are buried in Arlington Cemetery, Virginia. Row upon row of white gravestones stretch into the distance, each of them representing a family ripped apart in a matter of seconds by events in a foreign land. But few have suffered a
Hackers who claim to be behind a mass ransomware attack that has affected hundreds of companies have demanded $70m in Bitcoin to restore the data. The attack was executed on Friday and has affected at least 200 companies in the United States. On Sunday, a ransom demand was posted on a blog typically used by
A Florida apartment building which partially collapsed last month has been demolished. Champlain Towers South, in the city of Surfside, collapsed 11 days ago while many of its residents were asleep. Some 24 bodies have been recovered but more than 120 people are still missing. Image: There were fears that the remaining section of the
Stephen Dorff was just a teenager when he landed his first major film role in the 1987 horror The Gate. Since then he’s gone from child star to leading man, and his career has seen him play a range of characters including a vampire overlord in Blade, the fifth Beatle in Backbeat, and one of
The remainder of the 12-storey apartment block that collapsed in Miami will be demolished on Sunday, city officials have said. It comes as authorities announced that two more bodies have been pulled from the rubble in Florida, bringing the number of people that have died in the collapse to 24. There have been concerns over
Joe Biden has said his government is not sure who was behind a major ransomware attack that hit hundreds of US businesses – but he did not rule out Russian influence. A “colossal and devastating” ransomware attack is thought to have paralysed the networks of at least 200 US companies. The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure
Hundreds of people are thought to have died in a record-breaking heatwave sweeping across parts of the US and western Canada. More than 700 “sudden and unexpected deaths” have been reported in British Columbia, Canada, over the past week – while nearly 100 deaths are being investigated as heat-related in Oregon in the US. Deaths