Environmental and community groups have sued Utah officials over failures to save its iconic Great Salt Lake from irreversible collapse.

The largest saltwater lake in the western hemisphere has been steadily shrinking, as more and more water has been diverted away from the lake to irrigate farmland, feed industry and water lawns. A megadrought across the US south-west, accelerated by global heating, has hastened the lake’s demise.

A public feud has broken out between the US’s leading pro-Israel lobby groups over who represents the true interests of the Jewish state in Washington under the most rightwing government in its history.

The hardline American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) has called its smaller and more liberal rival, J Street, a “grave threat” to Israel’s security and accused it of endorsing the country’s “most virulent critics” in Congress.

J Street has responded by portraying Aipac as a front for Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist coalition, while accusing it of failing to support unprecedented Israeli public protests against an undemocratic power grab by the government.

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Russia is suffering “mounting casualties” on the battlefield in Ukraine and is trying to recruit foreigners to replace its depleted troop numbers, Britain’s Ministry of Defence has said.

The Kremlin has tried to sign up salaried recruits from Armenia, Kazakhstan and Uzbek migrant builders, the MoD said in a statement.

It added: “Russia likely wishes to avoid further unpopular domestic mobilisation measures in the run-up to the 2024 presidential elections.

A proposed regulation announced Thursday by the Biden administration would require thousands of gun sellers to register with the federal government and conduct background checks of their customers.

A federal judge on Wednesday ruled in favor of two Georgia election workers who sued Rudy Giuliani for defamation, further ordering the attorney associated with former President Trump to pay sanctions.

Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss sued Giuliani in December 2021 over his baseless statements claiming the duo helped commit election fraud.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in a 57-page opinion ruled in favor of the two election workers by default after Giuliani resisted turning over discovery in the case. Her ruling suggested Giuliani may have done so to reduce his legal exposure in other cases.

The fatal shooting of a University of South Carolina student has been ruled justifiable, authorities confirmed Wednesday.

Nicholas Anthony Donofrio, 20, of Connecticut, was shot and killed Sunday morning while attempting to enter the wrong home. Police said Donofrio lived on the same street where he was shot but that he had attempted to enter another home.

Following an investigation, the Fifth Circuit Solicitor’s Office and the Columbia Police Department now say charges will not be filed against the homeowner and ruled the shooting justifiable.

Police said Donofrio repeatedly banged and kicked the door, then broke the glass window and reached inside for the doorknob. That’s when police said the homeowner shot and killed Donfrio.

Authorities have not released any additional information about the homeowner.

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It’s been a strange, cruel summer in the United States. From the dystopian orange skies above New York to the deadly immolation of a historic coastal town in Hawaii, the waning summer has been a stark demonstration of the escalating climate crisis – with experts warning that worse is to come.

A relentless barrage of extreme weather events, fueled by human-caused global heating, has swept the North American continent this summer, routinely placing a third of the US population under warnings of severe heat and unleashing floods, fire and smoke upon communities, with a record 15 separate disasters causing at least $1bn in damages so far this year.

The heat has been particularly withering in places like Phoenix, Arizona, which had a record 31 consecutive days at temperatures above 110F (43C), while an enormous heatwave across the central swath of the US this week caused schools to be closed in states such as Wisconsin, Colorado and Iowa and food banks to be shut in Nebraska.

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For Pat Bennett, 68, every spoken word is a struggle.

Bennett has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a degenerative disease that has disabled the nerve cells controlling her vocal and facial muscles. As a result, her attempts to speak sound like a series of grunts.

But in a lab at Stanford University, an experimental brain-computer interface is able to transform Bennett's thoughts into easily intelligible sentences, like, "I am thirsty," and "bring my glasses here."

The system is one of two described in the journal Nature that use a direct connection to the brain to restore speech to a person who has lost that ability. One of the systems even simulates the user's own voice and offers a talking avatar on a computer screen.

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