Feb. 24 (UPI) — Actor and comedian Russell Brand pleaded not guilty to two additional sexual charges in a British court Tuesday, including one for rape.
Brand, 50, was charged in December with the rape and sexual assault of two women, which allegedly happened in 2009. He appeared at Southwark Crown Court for the plea and trial preparation hearing.
He has pleaded not guilty charges of two counts of rape, one charge of indecent assault and two counts of sexual assault for offenses against four women that happened between 1999 and 2005.
He appeared Tuesday in a glass-paneled dock carrying a Bible stuffed with sticky notes. He spoke to confirm his name and plea.
Judge Joel Nathan Bennathan said, “Mr. Brand I’m sure you’ve heard everything we’ve been talking about. I will renew your bail.”
Bennathan asked if Brand understood his bail conditions, and Brand replied, “Yes, your lordship.”
His trial on the other five charges is expected later this year.
Brand has previously denied all allegations against him.
He is also a defendant in a civil case that alleges he sexually assaulted an anonymous plaintiff on the set of the remake movie “Arthur” in 2010.
Brand was married to singer Katy Perry from October 2010 to December 2011. He is now married to Laura Gallacher, who is the mother of Brand’s two daughters and a son.
European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas arrives for a Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Brussels on Monday. She vowed to find a solution to a threat by Hungary to veto the bloc’s latest round of sanctions against Russia. Photo by Olivier Matthys/EPA
Feb. 23 (UPI) — A new package of European Union sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, the 20th such set of measures, was stalled Monday after being blocked by Hungary, which is demanding Ukraine reopen a pipeline supplying it with Russian oil.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said there was “not going to be progress” on the new round of sanctions at Monday’s meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels in time for the fourth anniversary of the war, which falls Tuesday.
“We are doing our utmost to have the sanctions package, through, and we are looking for ways how we can do it. But as we have heard some very strong statements from Hungary. I don’t really see they are going to change this unfortunately today,” she said.
“We should not tie together things that are not connected to each other at all. But let us listen to them explaining the reasons why they are blocking, and then see whether there are possibilities to overcome.”
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto took to social media Sunday to make Hungary’s quid pro quo stance clear.
“The EU aims to adopt the 20th sanctions package at the Foreign Affairs Council. Hungary will block it. Until Ukraine resumes oil transit to Hungary and Slovakia via the Druzhba pipeline, we will not allow decisions important to Kyiv to move forward,” Sijjarto wrote on X.
The pipeline was damaged in a Russian attack, but Hungary insists Ukraine is dragging its feet getting it up and running again.
The financial services, trade and energy sanctions package drawn up by the European Commission would bring in a full maritime services ban for Russian crude oil, reducing its income from energy and making it more difficult to find customers. Access to oil tankers for Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” will also be tackled, along with measures targeting its gas exports.
Transaction bans will be imposed on 20 more Russian banks as part of an effort to hobble Russian efforts to create its own payment systems to circumvent a ban on using the SWIFT international payments system while tightening restrictions on exports to Russia, including military-use goods and technologies, and import bans on Russian rare earth minerals, metals and chemicals, worth at least $1.1 billion in total.
Hungary’s block drew sharp criticism from Hungary’s EU partners with Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard telling Euronews it was a “shame” and a “disgrace.”
“Every delay that we have in the adoption of a sanctions package is a failure for Europe,” she said.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said he was certain the sanctions package would pass, saying it was a matter of when, not if, while Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw accused the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban of leveraging anti-Ukrainian sentiment it had whipped up to boost its fortunes in elections in April.
Hungary announced Friday it would also block a $105 billion EU loan to Ukraine, accusing Ukraine of blackmailing Hungary by shutting off the pipeline and conspiring with Brussels and the Hungarian opposition to “create supply disruptions” in Hungary to push up fuel prices ahead of the election.
Orban previously agreed not to veto the loan, along with Slovakia and the Czech Republic, provided it was exempted from contributing financially.
Populist Orban has been in power since 2010 after a first term between 1998 and 2002 and has been president of his Fidesz, or Hungarian Civic Party, for the past 23 years.
Former South African president Nelson Mandela speaks to reporters outside of the White House in Washington on October 21, 1999. Mandela was famously released from prison in South Africa on February 11, 1990. Photo by Joel Rennich/UPI | License Photo
WASHINGTON — A dispute over whether federal immigration agents should be allowed to wear masks during enforcement operations has become one of the biggest obstacles to keeping the Department of Homeland Security funded, pushing the government toward a partial shutdown early Saturday.
Democrats have described the practice as corrosive to public trust, arguing that masked agents create the appearance of a “secret police” force. Republican lawmakers, President Trump and his top advisors, meanwhile, have drawn a hard line against requiring officers to remove their face coverings, insisting that doing so would expose them to harassment, threats and online doxxing.
“They want our law enforcement to be totally vulnerable and put them in a lot of danger,” Trump said at a White House event Thursday. He added that it would be “very, very hard to approve” Democrats’ demands, such as unmasking federal officers.
The standoff over masking stalled negotiations as lawmakers raced to meet a funding deadline for the Department of Homeland Security at midnight Friday. Without a deal, key agency functions — from airport security to disaster relief coordination — could be affected if the shutdown drags on.
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) rides the Senate subway Thursday ahead of the latest partial government shutdown.
(Graeme Sloan / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
As with every shutdown, the agency’s essential functions will continue to operate, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant Homeland Security secretary for public affairs, said in a statement. But employees performing those functions at agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard, and the Transportation Security Administration could go without pay if the shutdown stretches for weeks.
The heads of those agencies told the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee on Wednesday that the shutdown is expected to create severe and lasting challenges.
Vice Adm. Thomas Allan, the acting vice commandant of the Coast Guard, said a shutdown would delay maintenance for boats and aircraft, and halt pay for 56,000 active-duty reserve and civilian personnel. Ha Nguyen McNeill, acting administrator of TSA, recounted how the last government shutdown affected her workers and spiked wait times at airports.
“We heard reports of officers sleeping in their cars at airports to save money on gas, selling their blood and plasma and taking on second jobs to make ends meet,” she said, adding that some are still recovering from the financial impact.
Operations within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection — the agencies that are central to the budget impasse — are likely to be the least affected. That’s because both agencies still have access to $75 billion in funding approved last year as part of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”
By midday Friday, it remained unclear when the partial shutdown would end, as lawmakers left Washington for a security conference in Munich and progress between Democratic and White House negotiators remained nebulous.
“We’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters on Friday when asked about cutting a deal. “We always have to protect our law enforcement.”
The partial government shutdown comes at a moment of acute public anger at the agency’s approach to immigration enforcement, which has included the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis.
But Democrats maintain that they need reforms written into law. Among their demands is requiring officers to wear and turn on body cameras, banning them from wearing masks, and ending the practice of “roving patrols” and instead requiring that they carry out only targeted operations.
“We will not support an extension of the status quo, a status quo that permits masked secret police to barge into people’s homes without warrants, no guardrails and zero oversight from independent authorities,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday.
Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of ICE, told a Senate panel Thursday that he does not want to see federal agents masked either, but said he is hesitant to bar face coverings because the threats to agents are too severe.
“I would work with this committee and any committee to work with holding individuals accountable that doxx ICE agents, because ICE agents don’t want to be masked,” Lyons said. “They’re honorable men and women, but the threats against their family are real.”
Federal immigration officials are more supportive of body cameras.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott told a House committee on Tuesday that he supports expanding the use of body cameras, but said more funding is needed to hire personnel to oversee the rollout.
“Fund the entire program so that we can be transparent and that we can make sure America knows what we’re doing, because that trust is critically important,” he said.
Ben Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn., said that while the White House has made some “tweaks around oversight,” its actions continue to fall short.
The association, which represents 18,000 immigration attorneys, has urged Congress to refuse more funding for ICE and CBP before implementing reforms.
“The American public wants and deserves real, meaningful guardrails that are written into law that ensure this administration — and, quite frankly, any administration — will abide by the Constitution and respect fundamental principles of due process,” Johnson said Wednesday on a call with reporters.
“Congress has a critical opportunity right now to meet that demand,” he added.
Republican Sens. James Lankford of Oklahoma, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky talk during a hearing Thursday on oversight of federal immigration agencies.
(Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images)
So far, Democrats maintain they will continue to bock funding bills without accountability measures in place.
California’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, were among the Senate Democrats who helped block passage of funding bills Thursday that would have averted a shutdown because they lacked accountability measures.
“I will not support more funding for ICE until there are new guardrails to rein in its lawless conduct,” Schiff wrote on X. “I’m a no on anything but real reform.”
Padilla said he would be a “firm no” until lawmakers agree that federal immigration officers need to be held accountable.
“Donald Trump and Republicans want Americans to forget about their lawless immigration roundup, but we won’t,” Padilla said.
California and three other states sued the Trump administration Wednesday over its plans to slash $600 million from programs designed to prevent and track the spread of HIV, including in the LGBTQ+ community — arguing the move is based on “political animus and disagreements about unrelated topics such as federal immigration enforcement, political protest, and clean energy.”
“This action is lawless,” attorneys for California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota said in a complaint filed in federal court in Illinois against several Trump administration departments and officials, as well as President Trump himself.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding had been allocated to disease control programs in all four states, though California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office said California faces “the largest share” of the cuts.
That includes $130 million due to California under a Public Health Infrastructure Block Grant, which the state and its local public health departments use to fund their public health workforce, monitor disease spread and respond to public health emergencies, Bonta’s office said.
“President Trump … is using federal funding to compel states and jurisdictions to follow his agenda. Those efforts have all previously failed, and we expect that to happen once again,” Bonta said in a statement.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the named defendants, has repeatedly turned his agency away from evidence-backed HIV monitoring and prevention programs in the last year, and the Trump administration has broadly attacked federal spending headed to blue states or allocated to initiatives geared toward the LGBTQ+ community.
The White House justified the latest cuts by claiming the programs “promote DEI and radical gender ideology,” but did not explain further. Health officials have said the cuts were to programs that did not reflect the CDC’s “priorities.”
Neither the White House nor Health and Human Services immediately responded to requests for comment on the lawsuit Wednesday.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said the cuts would derail an estimated $64.5 million for 14 different county grant programs, resulting in “increased costs, more illness, and preventable deaths,” the department said.
Those programs focus on response to disasters, controlling outbreaks of diseases such as measles and flu, preventing the spread of diseases such as West Nile, dengue and hepatitis A, monitoring and treating HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, fighting chronic illnesses such as diabetes and obesity, and supporting community health, the department said.
Those cuts would also include about $1.1 million for the department’s National HIV Behavioral Surveillance Project, which is focused on detecting emerging HIV trends and preventing outbreaks.
Dr. Paul Simon, an epidemiologist at the UCLA Fielding School and former chief science officer for the county’s public health department, said slashing the program was a “dangerous” and “shortsighted” move that would leave public health officials in the dark as to what’s happening with the disease on the ground.
Considerable cuts are also anticipated to the City of Long Beach, UCLA and nine community health providers who provide HIV prevention services, including $383,000 for the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s community HIV prevention programs, local officials said.
Leading California Democrats have railed against the cuts. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said the move was an unlawful attempt by Trump to punish blue states that “won’t bend to his extremist agenda.”
“His message to the 1.2 million Americans living with HIV is clear: their lives are not a priority, political retribution is,” Padilla said in a statement.
The states argue in the lawsuit that the administration’s decision “singles out jurisdictions for disfavor based not on any rational purpose related to the goals of any program but rather based on partisan animus.”
The lawsuit asked the court to declare the cuts unlawful, and to bar the Trump administration from implementing them or “engaging in future retaliatory conduct regarding federal funding or other participation in federal programs” based on the states exercising their sovereign authority in unrelated matters.
TUCSON — Savannah Guthrie told the potential kidnappers of her mother, Nancy Guthrie, on Saturday that the family is prepared to pay for her safe return, as the frantic search for the 84-year-old has entered a seventh day.
“We received your message, and we understand. We beg you now to return our mother to us so that we can celebrate with her,” Guthrie said in a video posted on social media, flanked by her siblings. “This is the only way we will have peace. This is very valuable to us, and we will pay.”
It was not immediately clear whether the longtime co-host of NBC’s “Today” show was referring to a new message from someone who might have kidnapped Nancy Guthrie. The Associated Press reached out to the FBI and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department seeking additional details.
Tucson TV station KOLD said Friday that it received a message via email that was tied to the Guthrie case, the contents of which it could not disclose. The FBI said it was aware of a new message and was reviewing its authenticity.
No suspects identified
Investigators think Nancy Guthrie was taken against her will from her home just outside Tucson last weekend. DNA tests showed blood on Guthrie’s front porch was a match to her, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos has said. Authorities have not identified any suspects or ruled anyone out.
The sheriff said Friday that he was frustrated that a camera at Nancy Guthrie’s home was not able to capture images of anyone the day she went missing.
Investigators have found that the home’s doorbell camera was disconnected early Sunday and that software data recorded movement at the home minutes later. But Nancy Guthrie did not have an active subscription, so none of the images were able to be recovered.
“It is concerning, it’s actually almost disappointing, because you’ve got your hopes up,” Nanos told the Associated Press in an interview. “OK, they got an image. ‘Well, we do, but we don’t.’”
President Trump, speaking on Air Force One on Friday, said the investigation was going “very well.”
“We have some clues that I think are very strong,” Trump said en route to his Florida estate for the weekend. “We have some things that may be coming out reasonably soon.”
Investigators return to scene
Investigators were back in Nancy Guthrie’s neighborhood on Friday.
The Sheriff’s Department posted on social media to say access was restricted to the road in front of the home to give investigators space. Journalists staked out there were directed to move.
The Catalina Foothills Assn., a neighborhood group, told residents in a letter that authorities were resuming searches in the area immediately.
“I know we all stand together in our collective disbelief and sadness and greatly appreciate your willingness to speak with law enforcement, share camera images and allow searches of your properties,” the association president said in the letter.
The sheriff said Thursday that investigators have not given up on trying to retrieve camera recordings.
“I wish technology was as easy as we believe it is, that ‘here’s a picture, here’s your bad guy.’ But it’s not,” Nanos told the AP. “There are pieces of information that come to us from these tech groups that say, ‘This is what we have and we can’t get any more.’”
TV station receives note
The sheriff also said he had no new information about the note to the TV station or other purported ransom letters sent to some media outlets, saying the FBI is handling that side of the investigation.
Meanwhile, concern about Nancy Guthrie’s health condition has grown, because authorities say she needs vital daily medicine. She is said to have a pacemaker and have dealt with high blood pressure and heart issues, according to sheriff’s dispatcher audio on broadcastify.com.
“Her conditions, I would imagine, are worsening day by day,” Nanos said. “She requires medication. And I have no way of knowing whether they’re getting that medication to her.”
Pleas from family
Savannah Guthrie and her siblings released a previous video message on Wednesday, saying they were ready to talk but wanted proof of life. Camron Guthrie, Savannah’s brother, repeated that in a video Thursday.
It is not clear if all of the ransom notes were identical. Heith Janke, the FBI chief in Phoenix, said details included a demand for money with a deadline that passed Thursday evening and a second deadline for Monday if the first one was not met. At least one note mentioned a floodlight at Guthrie’s home and an Apple watch, Janke said.
The four-mile trail from the village of Haworth to Top Withens in West Yorkshire is well trodden; numerous footprints squelched into the boggy ground by those seeking the view said to have inspired the setting for Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights. The landscape rolls in desolate waves of brown bracken. A lone tree punctuates the scene. It’s bleakly, hauntingly beautiful.
With the release of Emerald Fennell’s new film of the Gothic masterpiece starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi next week, Haworth and many of the filming locations in the Yorkshire Dales national park, where the book is set, are braced for a slew of visitors.
The local residents, though, seem distinctly unfazed by the attention.
“We’re used to crowds,” shrugs Craig Verity, the landlord at the Kings Arms, a pub at the top of Haworth’s steep cobbled Main Street, just steps from the parsonage where the Brontës were raised.
Brontë country has been milking the connection for decades. On a wall in the Kings Arms, a board promotes a selection of Bridgehouse cask ales named Charlotte, Anne, Emily and Branwell, the latter being the lesser-known Brontë brother.
In the surrounding streets, there’s the Brontë Hotel and the Brontë Bar and Restaurant, as well as – somewhat tenuously – Brontë Balti.
Haworth’s steep cobbled Main Street, just steps from the parsonage where the Brontë sisters were raised. Photograph: Ian Dagnall Commercial Collection/Alamy
The Brontë Parsonage, where the sisters lived, wrote and – in Emily and Charlotte’s case – died, is now a museum housing artefacts, personal items and manuscripts, as well as hosting events such as workshops, talks and screenings of adaptations of the books. It draws around 75,000 visitors annually, a number almost sure to rise this year; a screening of 1992’s Wuthering Heightsplanned for 12 February has already sold out.
Scenes from this version, starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliet Binoche, were filmed at East Riddlesden Hall, about five miles from Haworth. The exterior of the 17th-century National Trust property also featured in the 2009 mini-series as Wuthering Heights itself, as well as in the now-lost 1920 silent version.
The 1939 Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon film was shot in California and on set in Hollywood.
“We only know about the use of the property because of a January 1921 article in the Shipley Times and Express,” said Sophie Fawcett, a senior marketing and communications officer with the National Trust.
Coinciding with the release of Fennell’s new adaptation, East Riddlesden Hall will be holding a Lights, Camera, Brontë exhibition, which will showcase, for instance, the “vast oak dresser” thought to have inspired the one described in the opening pages of the book. It came originally from Ponden Hall – about an hour’s walk from Haworth and now a bed and breakfast – to which the sisters were frequent visitors.
One room here features a box bed and window, likely to have inspired the scene in which the ghost of Cathy appears to a terrified Lockwood.
For this new film, the cast stayed at Simonstone Hall, a sumptuous country house hotel in Yorkshire Dales. It’s a 20-minute drive from here to Swaledale, where many of the scenes were shot.
“They were lovely people, and brilliantly undemanding,” said the owner, Jake Dinsdale, noting that Robbie had since been back for a stay with her husband. “Although they’d booked out all 20 rooms, our restaurant was still open to the public, and the cast enjoyed being around the firepit to toast s’mores, or sitting down to a roast dinner or afternoon tea.”
Haworth, pictured here, and many of the filming locations in the Yorkshire Dales national park are braced for a slew of visitors. Photograph: grough.co.uk/Alamy
His own attitude is equally relaxed. “I don’t know what the film will do,” he said. “It could all be a flash in the pan, and that’s fine. If it sticks, that’s also great. What I do know is that I won’t be renaming any rooms as ‘The Jacob Elordi Room’ or ‘The Heathcliff Room’.
“Commercial naffness isn’t for us – I’ll just be happy if guests understand why so many people love the Yorkshire Dales.”
In the meantime, Simonstone Hall is offering a Wuthering Heights Romantic Getaway package until 13 March: two nights for £738 per couple, including champagne on arrival, candlelit dinners, bedtime brandy and truffles, leisurely breakfasts and late checkout. Copies of the novel are also available in the gift shop.
Tony Watson, head of economy and tourism for North Yorkshire council, said: “The area has featured in so many films and series; we’re experienced in managing that. Post-Covid, we were already seeing more younger people getting outdoors and exploring the county, and this demographic will doubtless grow as the film showcases the area’s beauty and authenticity.
“We’ll have to wait until the release to see whether there’s some iconic shot that people want to replicate. If there is, hopefully it will be somewhere like Aysgarth Falls, which has all of the necessary infrastructure in place – otherwise, we’ll need to suggest alternatives that don’t make mountain rescue unhappy.”
Back at The Kings Arms, Jack Greatrex, who lives in the area, is sanguine. “The Brontë sisters shaped this village for future generations, and for lovers of landscape and literature,” he said. “This film could mean that they continue to do so.”
Whatever effect the new film has, said Watson, they’re ready for it. “I’m the luckiest head of tourism imaginable – the film is going to do my job for me.”
US says two people were killed in strike on a vessel in the Pacific Ocean, continuing a campaign denounced as illegal.
Published On 6 Feb 20266 Feb 2026
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The United States military has said that it killed two people in its latest attack on a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which oversees US military operations in Latin America, said on Thursday that “two narco-terrorists were killed during this action”.
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SOUTHCOM did not provide any evidence to support its claim that the vessel and the two victims were involved in drug trafficking.
US strikes on vessels in the Pacific and Caribbean, which have killed at least 126 people in 34 attacks since the first recorded incident in September 2025, have been widely denounced as illegal under international law.
The latest strike appears to be the first conducted by the Trump administration in 2026, according to records of the strikes tabulated by the watchdog group Airwars.
This is a breaking news story. More to follow shortly.
The statements are objectively true: The Timbisha Shoshone have lived in what’s now popularly known as Death Valley for thousands of years. And they still live there, in a small village inside the national park that has about 30 full-time inhabitants.
In 2000, Congress officially recognized these two facts in the text of the hard-fought Homeland Act, which transferred nearly 7,800 acres of land, including the village site, back to the Timbisha Shoshone.
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But federal officials have now taken issue with those seemingly innocuous sentences, according to Mandi Campbell, tribal historic preservation officer for the Timbisha Shoshone and a resident of the village.
The rationale? Orders from President Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum directing the National Park Service to review interpretive materials for content that the administration feels “inappropriately disparages Americans.”
Only certain types of Americans, as it turns out: The executive order also has been cited in a lawsuit by the city of Philadelphia as the presumptive reason the NPS removed an exhibit on enslaved people from Independence National Historical Park.
Participants take time out for a photo during a march organized by the Timbisha Shoshone to mark the 25th anniversary of the Homeland Act.
(Kim Stringfellow)
And it’s prompted Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts to stop showing films about women and immigrant textile mill workers, according to the New York Times, which also reported that plaques referencing climate change have been removed from Muir Woods National Monument in California and Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park in South Carolina.
On top of that, Trump officials recently ordered the removal or editing of signs and other materials in at least 17 national parks in Arizona, Texas, Colorado, Utah, Montana and Wyoming, The Washington Post reports.
Back to Death Valley — a name that, by the way, members of the Timbisha Shoshone have never liked. Campbell told me that a celebration of the Homeland Act’s 25th anniversary that took place Friday at the national park’s Furnace Creek Visitor Center was supposed to include the unveiling of updates to its interpretive exhibit. The tribe had planned to place in a display case earrings and a medallion that members once gifted to former park Superintendent J.T. Reynolds to mark the passage of the act, along with some descriptive language, she said.
Ahead of the event, the Park Service submitted the additions to its parent agency, the Interior Department, for review. Campbell said that agency officials replied that not only could the new exhibit not include the new phrases “these are our homelands” or “we are still here,” but that similar language that’s been on display since 2012 would also be placed under review.
Interior Department spokesperson Elizabeth Peace said this is not true. “The Department has a long-standing history of working closely with tribal partners as part of exhibit development and review, and the park was never told they could not use that specific language or phrases,” she wrote in an email.
Peace went on to explain that although the new exhibit is under review pursuant to the executive and secretarial orders — both titled “restoring truth and sanity to American history” — the department hasn’t made any final decisions.
The review, according to Peace, is meant to ensure that parks tell “the full and accurate story of American history,” which includes addressing enslaved and Indigenous people, “informed by current scholarship and expert review, not through a narrow ideological lens.”
So, the 25th anniversary celebration went ahead without acknowledging the ongoing debate about the new exhibit.
There was a march from the village to the visitor center in which tribal members walked behind a banner that read, “We are still here,” which, Campbell said, was meant to echo a protest staged on Memorial Day in 1996 in which the Timbisha Shoshone demanded the restoration of their homelands after negotiations with the federal government broke down. That rally was widely credited with restarting the talks that eventually led to the passage of the Homeland Act.
Three decades later, the struggle continues. “Why do we still have to fight to be heard?” Campbell wondered earlier this week. “We weren’t even in history books. And we still can‘t tell our story. When do we get our chance?”
Despite the recent controversy, the tribe has a good relationship with the Death Valley-based NPS officials, Campbell said, and she’s confident they’ll be able to work through whatever happens next together.
After Friday’s march, tribal council members and park officials gave a series of speeches at the visitor center saluting their strong partnership and all the work that it’s taken to get to this point. Then they took pictures and ate cake.
More recent land news
If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, you probably are aware of how lawmakers have been using the Congressional Review Act, which enables Congress to overturn recent federal rules with a majority vote, to revoke specific Bureau of Land Management plans that limit mining and drilling in specific places. This was unprecedented until last year but has since been used to throw out BLM plans in Alaska, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming.
Now, a decision by the Government Accountability Office has cleared the way for Congress to throw out the BLM plan for Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which protects the land from mineral extraction, limits grazing and prioritizes conservation. Experts expect Republican Rep. Celeste Maloy or another Utah member of Congress to introduce a bill to do so this year, according to Caroline Llanes of Rocky Mountain Community Radio. If it passes, it would mark the first time the act has been used to roll back protections in a national monument.
Four former U.S. Forest Service chiefs are speaking out against the agency’s move to repeal the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. The 2001 rule protecting 58 million acres of national forests from road building and logging was supported by both political parties, and is needed to protect sensitive wildlife and maintain clean drinking water, argues an op-ed published in the Hill.
The Forest Service has revised its oil and gas leasing rules to “streamline” the permitting process by replacing parcel-by-parcel environmental reviews with a broader review that can sometimes cover millions of acres, reports Jake Bolster of Inside Climate News. Environmental groups told Bolster that the move will increase the likelihood that the agency misses sensitive habitat when deciding where to allow drilling.
Some environmental advocates are concerned about a new order from Interior Secretary Burgum that seeks to expand hunting and fishing access on federal public lands. “It flips conservation on its head and treats wildlife protection as the exception,” said Michelle Lute, executive director of nonprofit Wildlife for All. Others say the directive is more of a statement of values than something that will result in drastic changes on the ground. “It’s a nice nod to the hunting and angling community that acknowledges ‘we know these areas mean a lot to you,’” said Ryan Callaghan, president and chief executive of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers.
A few last things in climate news
Much has been made of a record-setting rainy season that’s helped lift California out of drought. But an extraordinarily warm January has left the snowpack across the Sierra Nevada and much of the Western U.S. far smaller than usual, Times water and climate change reporter Ian James writes. That means more hard times for the snowmelt-fed Colorado River, which provides water for farms and cities across seven states.
Peninsular bighorn sheep seeking to migrate back and forth across the California-Mexico border, as they’ve long done, are now being hampered by razor wire installed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in the Jacumba Wilderness, according to our wildlife and outdoors reporter Lila Seidman. Similar scenarios are playing out across the Southwest, where the 1,954-mile border cuts through the habitat of more than 80 threatened and endangered species.
This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.
The Enhanced Games launched as a concept in 2023, with some doping measures permitted under medical supervision.
Only substances approved by the United States’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA) can be taken, which is different to the list the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) allows for elite athletes.
Organisers have claimed the event “will deliver transparency and health safety by removing the stigma of enhancement – bringing its responsible usage into the light, within an approved medical framework, and one that protects athletes who would otherwise risk their health by operating in the dark to circumvent punitive structures in place today”.
However, the event has been criticised for endangering athletes’ health and undermining fair play, with Wada describing it as a “dangerous and irresponsible project” and Travis Tygart, chief executive of the US Anti-Doping Agency, calling it a “clown show”.
Earlier this month, UK Athletics (UKA) said it did not recognise the Enhanced Games as a “legitimate sporting competition”.
UKA said it “places athletes’ health and welfare at serious risk”, adding that “any event that promotes or permits the use of harmful substances with the aim of pushing the human body to its limit for short-term goals is not sport as we value it”.
The Enhanced Games are planned to be an annual competition, initially comprising short-distance swimming, sprinting and weightlifting, with the inaugural event set to be held in Las Vegas on 24 May 2026.
The event offers appearance fees and bonuses, with Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev receiving a prize of $1m (£739,000) for beating a world record time in the US in February 2025.
Organisers said he swam 20.89 seconds in a 50m freestyle time trial, 0.02 seconds quicker than the world record set by Brazil’s Cesar Cielo in December 2009, although the time will not be recognised by World Aquatics.
