TV News LIES

After almost a year of deliberation, an injunction blocking Utah’s near-total abortion ban will remain in place after a ruling by the Utah Supreme Court.

In a 4-1 decision, the justices determined that The Planned Parenthood Association of Utah has standing to challenge the state’s so-called “trigger law,” which bans virtually all abortion in the state with few exceptions. Associate Chief Justice John A. Pearce wrote for the majority that a lower court did not abuse its discretion when granting the injunction in 2022.

However, the court did “not decide the merits of PPAU’s claims that SB 174 infringes on rights the Utah Constitution protects.”

This means the injunction stays in place while the underlying case is determined in the lower court. Abortion is still legal in Utah up to 18 weeks of pregnancy.

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The Biden administration has doled out more than $2bn in direct payments for Black and other minority farmers discriminated against by the US Department of Agriculture, the president announced Wednesday.

More than 23,000 farmers were approved for payments ranging from $10,000 to $500,000, according to the USDA. Another 20,000 who planned to start a farm but did not receive a USDA loan received between $3,500 and $6,000.

Most payments went to farmers in Mississippi and Alabama.

As wildfires raged across the western US, authorities said on Wednesday that human remains had been found inside a burned house in Colorado.

There are nearly 100 active wildfires burning in the west, including a massive wildfire in California that has grown swiftly in recent days to become the fifth-largest in state history.

In Colorado, a wildfire near the city of Loveland in the Rockies grew to more than 5,000 acres (2,023 hectares) on Tuesday evening as more homes were placed under mandatory evacuation orders and a looming column of smoke could be seen for miles around.

A body was discovered in a home that burned about 1 mile (1.6km) north of Lyons, Colorado, according to Curtis Johnson, the Boulder county sheriff. He said detectives were assisting the investigation into the death but declined to provide further details.

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Thunderstorms and torrential rain brought another wave of violent floods Tuesday that caved in roads, crushed vehicles, pushed homes off their foundations and led to dramatic boat rescues in north-eastern Vermont, nearly three weeks after flooding from Hurricane Beryl.

Flash flood warnings remained in effect through Tuesday afternoon hours after some areas got 6 to more than 8in (15 to more than 20cm) starting late the night before.

In Lyndonville, a village about 40 miles (64km) north-east of Montpelier, the state capital, Deryck Colburn said he awoke before daybreak to a neighbor pounding on his door. Colburn said he heard the same surge of rushing water from an overflowing brook that he’d heard earlier in July, along with the unnerving sound of tumbling boulders carried by the water.

“I went down the road to her house, and there was no road. There was just a river,” he said.

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