Thirteen die in California tour bus crash

Thirteen people have been killed and more than 30 injured in southern California after a tour bus ran into the back of a lorry, media reports say.

Most of the passengers are reported to be from Latin America.

The crash happened on Interstate 10 close to the resort town of Palm Springs in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Investigators are examining the cause of the crash, which happened as the bus was bound for Los Angeles.

Rescuers used ladders to climb into the bus windows to remove bodies. Five of the injured passengers are in critical condition.

The Los Angeles Times described the crash as the deadliest in California for several decades. It said that the bus careered into the rear of the truck at high speed, mangling the front third of the bus.

Most of those who died were apparently at the front of the bus, the newspaper reported. The driver was among the fatalities.

Officials quoted by the paper said that identifying the victims could take days, because some were not carrying identity cards or had lost their belongings when they were taken to hospital.

They have warned that it may not be possible to determine exactly why the accident happened because of the driver's death.

Investigators will assess whether he might have fallen asleep or had a heart attack, in addition to determining if there was a mechanical failure or some other kind of emergency.

The westbound lanes of the interstate were closed near the crash site but are now reported to have been reopened.

According to the Desert Sun newspaper, the tour bus, run by US Holiday, was coming from Red Earth Casino, near Salton City in California.

The small Los Angeles-based company, runs trips to casinos in California and Las Vegas. The driver of the bus was one of the owners of the tour company.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration records show the company had one vehicle and one driver. According to the data the company held a satisfactory safety rating and had not been in a crash for two years.

Hillary Clinton cancels California trip after pneumonia forces 9/11 ceremony departure

Hillary Clinton has cancelled a trip to California to attend fundraising events after it emerged the Democratic presidential nominee has pneumonia and been advised to rest by her doctor.

An aide announced the cancellation on Sunday night following Clinton’s abrupt departure from the 9/11 memorial ceremony in downtown Manhattan because, her campaign initially said, she felt “overheated”.

Clinton was scheduled to attend fundraisers on Monday and Tuesday in California, and tape an episode of the Ellen DeGeneres Show.

On Sunday morning Clinton was helped into a car away from the memorial, where she had been attending a ceremony marking the 15th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. She later travelled to her daughter’s apartment, and eventually to her home in Chappaqua, New York, before her campaign gave a more complete explanation of what had happened.

“Secretary Clinton has been experiencing a cough related to allergies,” Dr Lisa R Bardack said in a statement. “On Friday, during follow up evaluation of her prolonged cough, she was diagnosed with pneumonia. She was put on antibiotics, and advised to rest and modify her schedule.

“While at this morning’s event, she became overheated and dehydrated. I have just examined her and she is now re-hydrated and recovering nicely.”

Clinton left the Ground Zero ceremony after an hour and 30 minutes. Video posted by a bystander to Twitter appeared to show the former secretary of state extremely unsteady and supported by aides, being helped from the curb into a vehicle.

A security official who did not wish to be identified told the Guardian Clinton had walked from the ceremony without support, got into a vehicle and been driven away.

“She didn’t look great,” he said. “Maybe she was dehydrated. These guys work 16 hours every day.”

A statement from campaign spokesman Nick Merrill subsequently said: “Secretary Clinton attended the September 11th Commemoration Ceremony for just an hour and 30 minutes this morning to pay her respects and greet some of the families of the fallen.”

Later versions of the statement omitted the word “just”.

Merrill added: “During the ceremony, she felt overheated so departed to go to her daughter’s apartment, and is feeling much better.”

Clinton’s van and security detail travelled to Chelsea Clinton’s Manhattan apartment, in the Flatiron at 26th and Madison Avenue.

Reporters travelling with the campaign noticed Clinton’s departure from the memorial at about 9.36am. The campaign did not respond to their questions or those from the Guardian until 11.03am local time, an unusually long lapse from a meticulous campaign organisation. The campaign later said Clinton had not intended to stay for the entire ceremony at Ground Zero, where temperatures were in the low 80s fahrenheit, around 28C, with relatively low humidity of around 46%.

Clinton left her daughter’s apartment at about 11.45am, smiling and waving to a scrum of cameras and posing for a picture with a young girl before stepping into a campaign vehicle.

“I’m feeling great. It’s a beautiful day in New York,” she said, before heading for her home in Chappaqua, in New York state. According to the Clinton campaign, Dr Bardack examined Clinton there.

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Clinton, who spoke at a fundraising event in New York on Friday night, recently sustained a coughing attack during a campaign event in Cleveland, fuelling rightwing suspicion about her health and leading to the creation of a hashtag, #HackingHillary. Her opponent, Donald Trump, used reaction on social media to push his case that the press is biased, tweeting: “Mainstream media never covered Hillary’s massive ‘hacking’ or coughing attack, yet it is #1 trending. What’s up?”

Despite a lack of evidence that Clinton is in poor health, Trump and his allies have insinuated that her health is declining and she “lacks the stamina” to be commander-in-chief at the age of 68. Clinton’s campaign has accused her 70-year-old opponent of peddling conspiracy theories.

Clinton has made light of such speculation, joking to talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel: “Back in October, the National Enquirer said I’d be dead in six months. So with every breath I take, I feel like it’s a new lease on life.”

Rumors about Clinton’s health appear to stem from a 2012 incident in which Clinton fell, a mishap attributed to a stomach virus. She suffered a concussion and a subsequent blood clot in the brain, which later testing showed to have cleared completely.

Dr Bardack is chair of internal medicine at the Mount Kisco Medical Group in New York and has been Clinton’s personal physician since 2001. She addressed Clinton’s concussion in 2012, for which the Democratic nominee still takes an anticoagulant. In a doctor’s note released last summer, Bardack declared Clinton “in excellent physical condition and fit to serve as president of the United States”.

In 2008, Barack Obama, then 47, released a 276-page report about his health. His opponent, John McCain, then 71, made available more than 1,000 pages related to his own medical history.

In contrast, Clinton has released only a few pages of records and Trump has released only a letter from his personal physician which contains few details and which the doctor subsequently said was “rushed”, prompting calls for more detail from both candidates.

Trump is scheduled to appear on the Dr Oz television show later this week, to discuss both presidential nominees’ health.

A spokesman for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian nominee, said in a statement to the Guardian on Sunday: “Given Governor Johnson’s level of fitness and exercise, his medical records haven’t been much of an issue. We will discuss with him how and what information to release.”

(The Guardian UK)

Behold the Apple's new iPhone 7 - Contains 256GB of storage

Apple Inc. announced on Wednesday the upgrade of its flagship product, the smartphone known as iPhone, with new features such as water resistance, double-lens camera, stereo speakers and wireless headphone.

Along with the new iPhone 7, which will be available for pre-order on Friday and for delivery starting a week later, Apple said at an event in San Francisco, northern California, that it had upgraded its smart watch, known as Apple Watch, to be water resistant.

However, away from its description in the initial offering of the watch nearly two years ago, when Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook called the product "a collection," Apple renamed the previous version "Series 1" and the new wearable "Series 2", which includes global positioning system (GPS) function.

Apple Watch, once expected to catch up with the popularity enjoyed by iPhone, has extended its working with luxury brand Hermes and sports brand Nike by highlighting features of the two brand names.

About the iPhone, the new series has a new A10 central processing unit (CPU) chip with 4 cores to run hardware and software operations, improved battery life that is claimed to last two more hours on average than iPhone 6.

Significant changes to the hardware include the elimination of headphone jack; the introduction of AirPod, a wireless headphone with 5 hours of battery life on each charge; the two speakers imbedded to replay stereo sound; and the camera with a wide-angel lens and a telephoto lens to better suit different situations.

Compared with previous Apple events of the kind, the technology company headquartered in Cupertino, south of San Francisco, brought fewer executives onto the stage, and the response seemed to be less enthusiastic off the stage.

Cook, like in the past five years, did speak as a host at the two-hour event on Wednesday, but he and other Apple officials did not mention the company's other products, which include iPad tablet and MacBook notebook and Macintosh desktop computers.

In a video clip shown at the beginning of the event, Cook seemed to be in the passenger seat of a vehicle and on the way to Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, San Francisco, where the event was held, and the driver talked about the security of iPhone 7 and called it the best. Cook agreed. But he did not discussed the topic once within the auditorium.

Apple has bragged about security features of its products, especially iPhone. Earlier this year, when it refused to work with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to access an iPhone 5c used by one of the two gunmen in the San Bernardino, California, terror attack on December 2, 2015, Cook opened his speech at a similar event in late March by talking about data security.

"We believe strongly that we have a responsibility to help you protect your data and protect your privacy," he said then.

However, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which runs the FBI, on the same day scraped its request for Apple's assistance at a federal court and said a week later it had retrieved the data from the phone in question.

In the months thereafter, there have been reports about vulnerabilities in iPhone's operating system iOS that could expose users to hackers.

Couple wanted in woman's murder, children's kidnapping arrested in Colorado

A California couple wanted in connection with a woman's killing and the kidnapping of her three children in the Los Angeles area were arrested Thursday in Colorado.

Joshua Aaron Robertson, 27, and Brittany Humphrey, 22, were arrested without incident in Pueblo, about 40 miles south of Colorado Springs, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

The couple was wanted in connection with the death of Humphrey's half-sister, Kimberly Harvill, whose body was found with multiple gunshot wounds along a road in a remote area of Los Angeles County on Aug. 14.

Investigators said the couple kidnapped Harvill's three young children, who were found safe Wednesday in a motel on the outskirts of Albuquerque.

Humphrey is Harvill's half-sister, and therefore the children's aunt.
Humphrey and Robertson were found after officers from the Pueblo Police Department were conducting an unrelated investigation at a local motel, the sheriff's department said.

Humphrey and an 18-month old baby were found in the hotel, while Robertson was found about two blocks away. The baby girl, who is Robertson's, was safe.

Harvill and her children had most recently lived in Fresno and were transitory, moving from motel to motel, sheriff's Capt. Steve Katz said Wednesday, adding that they depended on panhandling to survive.

Harvill was involved with methamphetamine, as were Humphrey and Robertson, Katz said.

Humphrey and Robertson were living in Lebec, the unincorporated area of Los Angeles County where Harvill was recently staying with her children and where she was killed, Lt. Joe Mendoza said.
It appears that Harvill and her children had been staying with Humphrey and Robertson, he said.

Investigators know of no ongoing conflict between the sisters, Mendoza said.

An arrest warrant for kidnapping was issued for the couple. Investigators say the couple are considered persons of interest in Harvill's death.

"Due to the fact that immediately after the murder or sometime shortly after, it is suspicious that they did not come forward to law enforcement and instead they fled eastbound towards other states," Mendoza said.

The father of Harvill's children, Kenneth Chad Watkins, killed himself by lying in front of a train last year, according to the Fresno County Coroner.

Authorities said they believe Harvill was killed within 24 hours of being found, though it's unclear where the killing took place.

Harvill's Facebook page shows a photo of her with Humphrey and a man who resembles Robertson two days before her body was found.

Harvill's children were in the process of being returned to California, where authorities said it would be determined whether they would be placed with relatives or in state care.