British actor Julian Sands, best known for his appearance in the film A Room with a View, has been missing for several days after hiking in a Southern California mountain range.

Search and rescue teams have looked for him, but their efforts have been called off because a series of storms has created adverse trail conditions and avalanche risks.

The Associated Press reports that drones and helicopters are being employed in the search for the actor when weather conditions allow.

Sands has also appeared in Warlock, 1990’s Arachnophobia, 1991’s Naked Lunch, 1993’s Boxing Helena, and 1995’s Leaving Las Vegas.
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U.S. President Joe Biden repeated his warnings about climate change on Thursday during a visit to California as he toured the damage caused by recent storms.

The president promised more federal help and touted his plan to mitigate the effects of extreme weather, which Biden said are caused by climate change.

“We have to invest in stronger infrastructure to lessen the impact of these disasters because they become cumulative, in a sense,” he said. “We’ve already allocated funding from the infrastructure law that I signed a year ago.”

His top emergency official delivered a sobering assessment of the situation as Biden flew across the nation to witness the damage firsthand with California Governor Gavin Newsom.

“California has really experienced some unprecedented storms — nine atmospheric rivers that have gone through since right before the new year,” said Deanne Criswell, who heads the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “When I talk to people on the ground, what they told me is that, you know, these storms are coming with hurricane-strength winds, and they’re also making incredible storm surge-like conditions with the surf. And so, they felt like it was being hit by hurricane after hurricane.”

Biden said he’s made strides toward managing the effects of climate change through the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, which sends nearly $400 billion in federal funding to clean energy — a move aimed at meeting the U.S. commitment under the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius.

And he’s promoted U.S. innovation in clean energy through electric vehicles and more.

‘We’re not prepared’

Sherri Goodman, who served as the first deputy undersecretary of defense for environmental security during the Clinton administration, told Voice of America that the U.S. government has long seen climate change as a threat.

“We have to understand it in terms of these compound and cascading risks, because one risk — wildfire-fueled storms — then has an impact on the next set of climate events, these extreme events, these atmospheric events. They all interact,” she said via Zoom. “So, that is very important. And we’re not prepared, unfortunately, as societies around the world.”

The burden, Goodman said, should be shared by the government and the private sector — a message also being heard by global power players at the World Economic Forum. Biden sent his top climate envoy to this week’s meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

Goodman said change will take time.

“We can’t just go cold turkey on fossil fuels,” she said. “We’re going to be using oil and gas for some time still.”

Critics push for declaration of emergency

But Biden’s critics say leaders should be more aggressive, especially when it comes to confronting polluting industries.

“We cannot fix this problem without strong government action,” said Kassie Siegel, who leads the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. She spoke to VOA via Zoom. “And that needs to start by confronting the fossil fuel companies that are at the heart of the problem and have sought to distract, deny and delay for so long.”

Siegel and other environmental campaigners are urging Biden to declare a climate emergency.

“How many more lives must be lost?” asked Caroline Henderson, Greenpeace USA senior climate campaigner. “How many more decimated homes must President Biden and Governor Newsom visit? … Last year, President Biden said that he would deal with the climate emergency, but we have seen very little action. It’s time for him to make good on those words by declaring a climate emergency.”

Some of Biden’s political opponents, even fellow Democrats like Senator Joe Manchin, have blunted more sweeping legislation, arguing that those industries create valuable jobs.
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An investigative report released Thursday failed to identify who was behind the May 2022 leak of a draft version of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision on abortion rights, and it criticized the security measures of the nation’s top judicial body.

The report detailed an eight-month investigation conducted by Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley at the direction of Chief Justice John Roberts. The leak – with the news outlet Politico publishing the draft ruling on May 2 – prompted an internal crisis at the court and ignited a political firestorm, with abortion rights supporters staging rallies outside the courthouse and at various locations around the United States. 

It was an unprecedented violation of the nine-member court’s tradition of confidentiality in the behind-the-scenes process of making rulings after hearing oral arguments in cases.  

The report did not identify a specific source of the leak, noting that none of the 97 court employees interviewed by investigators confessed to the disclosure. 

Risky court environment seen

It was critical of some of the court’s internal security protocols, and it made clear that investigators would continue to pursue any new leads. If a court employee was responsible, the report said, that person “brazenly violated a system that was built fundamentally on trust with limited safeguards to regulate and constrain access to very sensitive information.” 

“The pandemic and resulting expansion of the ability to work from home, as well as gaps in the court’s security policies, created an environment where it was too easy to remove sensitive information from the building and the court’s [information technology] networks, increasing the risk of both deliberate and accidental disclosures of court-sensitive information,” the report said. 

The report recommended that regardless of whether the source is identified, the court should “create and implement better policies to govern the handling of court-sensitive information and determine the best IT systems for security and collaboration.” 

The leak investigation was conducted at a time of increased scrutiny of the court and concerns about an erosion of its legitimacy, with opinion polls showing dropping public confidence in the institution. Only 43% of Americans have a favorable view of the court, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted January 13-15, down from 50% last May. 

In examining the court’s computer devices, networks, printers and available call and text logs, investigators found no forensic evidence indicating who disclosed the draft opinion, the report said. 

“In time, continued investigation and analysis may produce additional leads that could identify the source of the disclosure,” the report stated. 

The draft opinion, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, was only marginally different than the final decision issued on June 24. The ruling upheld a Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy and ended the recognition of a woman’s right to an abortion under the U.S. Constitution. 

Several Republican-governed states moved rapidly after the ruling to enact abortion bans.

‘An affront’

Roberts, the day after the publication of the leaked opinion, announced an investigation into what he called “a singular and egregious breach” of the Supreme Court’s trust “that is an affront to the court and the community of public servants who work here.” 

Roberts, in announcing the investigation, defended the court’s workforce as “intensely loyal to the institution and dedicated to the rule of law,” adding that court employees have a tradition of respecting the confidentiality of the judicial process. 

Protesters gathered outside the homes of some justices after the leak. A 26-year-old California man armed with a handgun who expressed his intention to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh was charged with attempted murder on June 8 after being arrested near Kavanaugh’s Maryland home. 

Justice Elena Kagan in September said the court’s legitimacy could be imperiled if Americans come to view its members as trying to impose personal preferences on society. In October, Alito warned against questioning the court’s integrity. 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor on January 4 said she felt a “sense of despair” at the direction taken by the court during its previous term. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. 

Alito found himself in the middle of another leak controversy in November after The New York Times reported a former anti-abortion leader’s assertion that he was told in advance about how the court would rule in a major 2014 case involving insurance coverage for women’s birth control. 

The ruling, authored by Alito, exempted privately held companies from a Democratic-backed federal regulation that would have required any health insurance they provided employees to cover contraceptives if the business expressed a religious objection. 

Alito said that any allegation that he or his wife leaked the 2014 decision was “completely false.” The court’s legal counsel concluded “there is nothing to suggest” Alito violated ethical standards.
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Prosecutors announced that actor Alec Baldwin will be charged with involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer who was killed on a New Mexico movie set.

Halyna Hutchins died shortly after being shot during rehearsals at a ranch on the outskirts of Santa Fe on Oct. 21, 2021. Baldwin was pointing a pistol at Hutchins when the gun went off, killing her and wounding the director, Joel Souza.

Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza, who led the initial investigation into Hutchins’ death, described “a degree of neglect” on the film set. But he left decisions about potential criminal charges to prosecutors after delivering the results of a yearlong investigation in October. That report did not specify how live ammunition wound up on the film set.

Taking control of the investigation, Carmack-Altwies was granted an emergency $300,000 request for the state to pay for a special prosecutor, special investigator and other experts and personnel.

Baldwin — known for his roles in “30 Rock” and “The Hunt for Red October” and his impression of former President Donald Trump on “Saturday Night Live” — has described the killing as a “tragic accident.”

He sought to clear his name by suing people involved in handling and supplying the loaded gun that was handed to him on the set. Baldwin, also a co-producer on “Rust,” said he was told the gun was safe.

In his lawsuit, Baldwin said that while working on camera angles with Hutchins during rehearsal for a scene, he pointed the gun in her direction and pulled back and released the hammer of the weapon, which discharged.

New Mexico’s Office of the Medical Investigator determined the shooting was an accident following the completion of an autopsy and a review of law enforcement reports.

New Mexico’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau has levied the maximum fine against Rust Movie Productions, based on a scathing narrative of safety failures, including testimony that production managers took limited or no action to address two misfires of blank ammunition on the set prior to the fatal shooting.

Rust Movie Productions continues to challenge the basis of a $137,000 fine by regulators who say production managers on the set failed to follow standard industry protocols for firearms safety.

The armorer who oversaw firearms on the set, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, has been the subject of much of the scrutiny in the case, along with an independent ammunition supplier. An attorney for Gutierrez Reed has said she did not put a live round in the gun that killed Hutchins, and she believes she was the victim of sabotage. Authorities said they have found no evidence of that.

Investigators initially found 500 rounds of ammunition at the movie set on the outskirts of Santa Fe — a mix of blanks, dummy rounds and what appeared to be live rounds. Industry experts have said live rounds should never be on set.

In April 2022, the Santa Fe Sheriff’s Department released a trove of files, including lapel camera video of the mortally wounded Hutchins slipping in and out of consciousness as a medical helicopter arrived. Witness interrogations, email threads, text conversations, inventories of ammunition and hundreds of photographs rounded out that collection of evidence.

State workplace safety regulators said that immediate gun-safety concerns were addressed when “Rust” ceased filming, and that a return to filming in New Mexico would be accompanied by new safety inspections.

The family of Hutchins — widower Matthew Hutchins and son Andros — settled a lawsuit against producers under an agreement that aims to restart filming with Matthew Hutchin’s involvement as executive producer.

“Rust” was beset by disputes from the start in early October 2021. Seven crew members walked off the set just hours before the fatal shooting amid discord over working conditions.

Hutchins’ death has influenced negotiations over safety provisions in film crew union contracts with Hollywood producers and spurred other filmmakers to choose computer-generated imagery of gunfire rather than real weapons with blank ammunition to minimize risks.
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The U.S. State Department said Wednesday that two of the people who died in a Sunday plane crash in Nepal were U.S. citizens, while two others were permanent U.S. residents. 

The Yeti Airlines flight crashed as it approached the Pokhara International Airport in the foothills of the Himalayas, killing all 72 people on board. 

“Our thoughts are with the families of those on board,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters at a briefing. “The United States stands ready to support Nepal in any way we can at this difficult hour.” 

An investigation into what caused the crash is ongoing, with teams from the plane’s manufacturer, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency and the French air accidents investigations agency all taking part. 

Searchers found the cockpit voice and flight data recorders a day after the crash. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
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