Yosemite National Park extends closure until Monday due to winter storm conditions

The National Park Service said starting Monday, February 8, visitors will have to reserve a day-use pass to enter the park.

Recommended Stories

  • Nasa's Perseverance rover takes its first drive on Mars

    The one-tonne robot wiggles its wheels before rolling forwards across Jezero Crater's dusty terrain.

  • Love Island to return this summer, ITV confirms

    The broadcaster announces the dating show will return this summer, but doesn't confirm the location.

  • A CA Democrat compiled a report of social media posts by GOP lawmakers who voted to overturn the 2020 election - including 177 pages on Paul Gosar

    The longest section of the report is Arizona at 257 pages, with 177 pages listing social media activity by Rep. Paul Gosar, a Republican from Arizona.

  • Trump sued for 'incitement to riot' and terrorism over Capitol attack by House Democrat who served as impeachment manager

    "Trump directly incited the violence at the Capitol ... and then watched approvingly as the building was overrun," the suit states.

  • Kim Kardashian calls out tabloids for comparing her to a whale and shaming her on a 'weekly basis' during her 1st pregnancy

    The 40-year-old "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" star reshared several offensive magazine covers about her pregnancy weight gain in 2013.

  • In Brazil's Amazon, isolated indigenous people welcome COVID vaccine

    YAUARETÊ, Brazil (Reuters) - An army helicopter flew to two isolated indigenous villages in Brazil's Amazon jungle this week with a welcome cargo - coronavirus vaccines. Traditional medicine prescribed by a shaman is highly respected here, but there was no resistance to receiving the vaccine by China's Sinovac Biotech. "We are grateful for the vaccination, so we will not catch the disease," said Hupda chieftain Jorge Pires in the village of Santo Antanasio, near the Colombian border and a 25-minute helicopter flight from the nearest military outpost.

  • India has reportedly threatened to jail Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp employees if the firms don't give up data regarding the farmers protests

    India wrote letters to Facebook and Twitter citing specific employees in the country who risk jail time, The Wall Street Journal reported.

  • 'I'll believe it when I see it' - Saudi Arabia doubts oil recovery and keeps taps tight

    This week's surprise decision by Saudi Arabia and other top oil producers to broadly stick with output cuts despite rising crude prices was influenced by events in an unexpected place - Italy. "Take a look at what is happening in Milan today," Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman Al-Saud told a news conference on Thursday after a meeting of OPEC and its allies. Restrictions on movement destroyed up to a fifth of oil demand last year and led OPEC and its allies - known as OPEC+ - to make record output cuts.

  • Adesanya fights Blachowicz for 2nd title belt at UFC 259

    Israel Adesanya stepped onto the UFC 259 scale in a mask and sweatpants. Few fighters love a little extra cheese more than Adesanya, whose charismatic flamboyance is as much fun as his otherworldly fighting skill. Adesanya's attempt to join the UFC's most exclusive champions' club tops the long list of reasons to be curious about UFC 259 on Saturday night in Las Vegas.

  • Doug Emhoff and Chasten Buttigieg were spotted hanging out in Washington, DC, proving their campaign-trail friendship is still going strong

    Doug Emhoff and Chasten Buttigieg bonded on the 2020 campaign trail as spouses of presidential candidates.

  • Putin Ramps Up RT’s Propaganda Budget as Poll Rating Slumps

    Mark Schiefelbein-Pool/GettyMOSCOW–With Vladimir Putin’s popularity already in decline, news of the United States’ latest round of sanctions on Russia has alarmed the Kremlin, prompting its cast of experts, advisers, and anti-American ideologues to float several possible responses.Senator Olga Kovitidi promised that Russia would “send America to a blind knockout.” One expert suggested publishing lists of Russian media “spreading fake news.” Certain military experts proposed the formation of “information battalions” in cyberspace, modeled after the masked Russian soldiers deployed in the 2014 Ukraine crisis. Ultimately, the government landed on a familiar strategy: they will try to change the perception of Russia by pouring even more money into propaganda.After the sanctions were announced—this time in response to the poisoning of the opposition politician Alexei Navalny–the Russian government is reportedly aiming to expand the global audience of the Kremlin-funded RT television channel from 800 to 900 million viewers. They want to raise viewership on online platforms by promoting the internet content of the entire fleet of both Russian and foreign-oriented media outlets, including RT, RIA Novosti and Sputnik radio. In order to achieve this, the Kremlin has ramped up the state media budget to 211 billion rubles (about $2.8 billion)—a 34 billion-ruble ($460 million) increase from previous years.“No doubt, RT’s information soldiers will use this significant budget effectively to influence Euro-sceptics, anti-globalists, and Washington critics,” an opposition politician in Moscow, Ilya Yashin, told The Daily Beast. “Putin believes that if the West has its state-sponsored Radio Liberty or BBC, the Kremlin should become serious in what they like to call a ‘mirror response.’ This is a new stage of the ongoing Cold War.”“Do not underestimate RT’s growing influence,” he added.Some say the media battle goes both ways. Maria Baronova, a former opposition activist covering Russian social issues for RT, was banned from American social media platforms last year. “The Cold War goes for both sides. I have been banned on Twitter for working for RT in April, 2020. That is nonsense,” Baronova added.Russia’s Opposition Movement Starts To CrackInvestment in propaganda at home has already turned Russia into a nation of skeptics. In the early days of the conflict in Ukraine, 48 percent of Russians told the Public Opinion Foundation that they think propaganda harms their society.According to a social study by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, 88 percent of young Russians aged 18-24 said they were on YouTube. Even the Kremlin’s most notorious propagandist, Vladimir Solovyev, admitted in a recent interview for Komsomolskaya Pravda that “the television audience is growing terribly old.”Young Russians are hungry for the truth, and in recent years, influential Russian YouTubers have started to take a more open approach with their content. Russia’s top online interviewer, Yury Dud, has 8.7 million subscribers and more than 500 million views on his channel. Tens of millions watched Dud’s documentaries on the AIDs epidemic and poverty and neglect in Kamchatka, Russia’s forgotten peninsula. More than 29 million people viewed Dud’s interview with Alexei Navalny soon after the politician recovered from his poisoning attack.In spite of state pressure on opposition bloggers, emerging YouTube stars are now covering some of Russia's most acute political issues. Irina Shikhman, another popular blogger, focuses on making celebrity-oriented videos in which she asks public figures uncomfortable questions about their personal lives. But some of her most popular clips are political in nature: over two million people viewed Shikhman’s interview with Navalny ally Lyubov Sobol.Russia’s only independent online television channel, TV Rain, has 2.3 million subscribers on YouTube. The channel’s founder and owner, Natalya Sindeyeva, says she isn’t worried about the Kremlin’s boosted promotion of RT.“We have been competing with state television channels without any state budget, without any administrative resources, for 11 years and we managed, which means money is not the main thing,” Sindeyeva said. “If they boost social media, the algorithms would recognize the artificial traffic. We don’t see any threat, since we are experienced in responding to challenges. Our audience trusts us and independent bloggers, our main job is not to lie. Trust cannot be purchased for money,” she said.It is too early to know for sure whether RT’s reports will crowd out independent media in Russia. “It depends on the quality of their content,” TV Rain’s editor-in-chief, Tikhon Dzyadko, told The Daily Beast.Some independent bloggers saw the government’s increase of spending on internet content as a positive sign. “It seems the Kremlin realized they cannot ban YouTube, so they decided to choke it with propaganda,” blogger Karen Shainyan, host of the YouTube show “Straight Talk with Gay People”, told The Daily Beast. “Authorities spend shockingly huge money on RT, more than on any other television channel.”Pavel Kanygin, who manages a YouTube channel for Novaya Gazeta, a legendary independent newspaper in Russia, says the government has begun to view social media platforms as a real threat. “We can see that the Kremlin has become serious about YouTube,” he said, especially after over 100 million people viewed an investigative report about Putin released by Navalny’s organization on the site in January.“One thing is to get clicks and another to get people engaged, to comment on the publication–that is a completely different story that cannot be artificially created,” Kanygin said.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle's wedding-dress embroiderer says she hasn't heard from the royal family since revealing she's on the brink of homelessness

    "It just makes me feel like I don't exist," Chloe Savage, who worked on Kate Middleton's and Meghan Markle's wedding dresses, told Insider.

  • Stimulus 'vote-a-rama' derailed for nearly 11 hours over clash on unemployment benefits in relief package

    Joe Manchin opposed a Democratic plan for unemployment benefits. Opposition from Senate Democrats to a $15 minimum wage was also laid bare.

  • Jeanine Pirro Accuses Immigrants of Bringing ‘All Kinds of Diseases’ Into U.S.

    Fox NewsDuring a shouting match with Geraldo Rivera on Fox News on Thursday night, Judge Jeanine Pirro went on a tirade that was shocking in its blatant racism—even for her. “We’ve got people being released at the border right now who’ve got COVID,” Pirro screamed at Rivera, who was attempting to push back on her argument. “Wait a minute, I listened to you, you listen to me! They’ve got COVID! They’ve got all kinds of diseases! They are being released into the United States!”“Now, you’re not going to tell me that a governor is going to shut me down and not allow me to do my job and let in illegals because we’ve got a heart? Mexico ought to have a heart!”Maybe only drink half of the box of wine next time pic.twitter.com/n9IC7UCw7D— Acyn (@Acyn) March 5, 2021 The host’s comments were reminiscent of ones made by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that set off a major firestorm and advertiser boycott in late 2018. “It’s indefensible, so nobody even tries to defend it,” Carlson said at the time of policies that would allow immigrants into the country. “Instead, our leaders demand that you shut up and accept this. We have a moral obligation to admit the world’s poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poor and dirtier and more divided.”A few months after that, Pirro was suspended by Fox News for questioning the patriotism of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). “Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to Shariah law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?” Pirro asked on her Saturday night show. After an outcry from advertisers, Fox temporarily took her off the schedule. Drunk Fox News Host Jeanine Pirro Chugs Bleach on SNL Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • House impeachment manager sues Trump, allies over riot

    Rep. Eric Swalwell, who served as a House manager in Donald Trump’s last impeachment trial, filed a lawsuit Friday against the former president, his son, lawyer and a Republican congressman whose actions he charges led to January’s insurrection. The California Democrat’s suit, filed in federal court in Washington, alleges a conspiracy to violate civil rights, along with negligence, inciting a riot and inflicting emotional distress. It follows a similar suit filed by Rep. Bennie Thompson last month in an attempt to hold the former president accountable in some way for his actions Jan. 6, following his Senate acquittal.

  • Biden signals support to replace war power authority

    President Joe Biden on Friday signaled support to replace decades-old authorizations for the use of military force in the Middle East, a little more than a week after he relied on the authorizations to carry out a retaliatory airstrike against Iranian-backed militia in eastern Syria. The Biden administration announced its position after a bipartisan bill was introduced earlier this week that would repeal the 1991 and 2002 authorizations for the wars in Iraq that presidents from both parties have relied on for legal justification to carry out strikes in the region. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden was committed to working with Congress to “ensure that the authorizations for the use of military force currently on the books are replaced with a narrow and specific framework that will ensure we can protect Americans from terrorist threats while ending the forever wars.”

  • Boris Johnson rebukes EU over AstraZeneca blockade as France signals it 'could follow Italy'

    Boris Johnson has accused Brussels of endangering global efforts to combat the covid-19 pandemic, as France signalled it could follow Italy and block AstraZeneca vaccines leaving the EU. Downing Street suggested the European Commission had reneged on previous assurances it had made, after it approved Italy’s request to stop 250,000 jabs destined for Australia from leaving the country. A “frustrated” and “disappointed” Australia has also demanded a review of the decision, and has sought assurances from Brussels that future vaccine shipments will go ahead. The blockade is the first time that EU-wide export controls, which require manufacturers to seek permission from the national authorities and Commission to export vaccines outside the bloc, have been used. It has already led France to threaten similar action, as member states seek to catch up with other nations which have surged ahead in their vaccination programmes. Defending the move on Friday the Commission’s chief spokesman said that it was necessary to send a “message” to AstraZeneca over its failure to hit its contractual targets with the bloc. He added: “The EU continues to be a leading provider of vaccines around the world. During the period from 30 January to 1 March, 174 requests for exports requested in the context of the Regulation have been approved by the Member States.”

  • Israel postpones drive to vaccinate Palestinian workers

    Israel on Friday postponed plans to vaccinate Palestinians who work inside the country and its West Bank settlements until further notice. COGAT, the Israeli military agency coordinating day-to-day affairs with the Palestinian Authority, attributed the postponement to “administrative delays,” adding that a new start date for the campaign would be determined later. The vaccination program was supposed to begin on Sunday at West Bank crossings into Israel and at Israeli industrial zones.

  • Civil war within the GOP continues as Trump fires back at strategist Karl Rove

    Former President Donald Trump intensified his war with the Republican establishment on Thursday by attacking Karl Rove, a longtime Republican strategist who criticized Trump's first speech since leaving office for being long on grievances but short on vision.

  • Everything we know about 'Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness'

    "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" has a March 25, 2022, release date and ties into "WandaVision," "Loki," and "Spider-Man: No Way Home."