U.S. ESTA Travel Pass News

The Associated Press and CNN reported on the 3rd that heavy rain fell on a festival held in the Nevada desert, leaving more than 70,000 participants stranded in the mud and one person dead.

The ‘Burning Man’ festival has been held since the 27th of last month in the Black Rock Desert, about 177km north of Reno, Nevada, and there was a surprise heavy rain from the 1st to the morning of the 2nd. As a result, the normally dry land was flooded and turned into mud, and as car wheels were unable to get out of the mud and became mixed up, causing chaos, the organizers completely restricted vehicle access for safety reasons.

The Pershing County Sheriff’s Office, which oversees the area, said that about 70,000 people were stranded at the site and that one death occurred during the event and is being investigated. However, the police did not reveal the identity of the deceased or the suspected cause of death. There are also stories online of people having to walk several kilometres to get to the site because it was impossible to move by car.

Pop star DJ Diplo, who was there, posted a video on social media of himself riding in the bed of a pickup truck with comedian Chris Rock, revealing that he walked 6 miles (9.7 km) in the mud before getting into the car.

“We walked down the street for hours with our thumbs up (trying to catch the car),” he wrote, “and no one would have believed we would get to (Washington) DC for tonight’s show.”

Law professor Neil Katyal, who also attended the festival, posted on social media this morning, “It was an incredibly harrowing hike that involved walking six miles through heavy, slippery mud in the middle of the night, but I made it out of Burning Man safely.” He added, “(The festival) was fantastic with gorgeous art and great music,” adding, “Except for the ending.”

Festival organizers said that it could rain again this afternoon and asked participants to stay within the event site as much as possible and to conserve or share the food and supplies they had prepared.

“Burning Man is a community of people ready to help each other, and we knew this was the place to bring everything we needed to survive,” organizers said in a statement. “We are well prepared for these extreme weather events.” He spoke.

This festival, which has a somewhat anti-establishment character, combines camping and avant-garde cultural performances, and lasts for about a week. The principle is that participants are self-sufficient by bringing their own water, food, and other necessary items. Despite the adverse conditions, some participants took pictures of themselves dancing while covered in mud or enjoying a dip in a puddle made of rain and posted them on social media.

“Honestly, we’re having fun,” festival attendee Teresa Galleani told The Associated Press. “I haven’t seen anything negative or difficult.”

The organizer said, “We will continue to restrict vehicle access until the roads are dry enough for cars to drive safely,” and predicted that vehicle movement will be possible on Monday the 4th when weather conditions improve.

Home prices in Southern California hit record highs last month, despite extremely low home sales due to soaring mortgage rates.

Housing prices in the Southern California area, which showed stagnant housing price increases last year, have been showing a steady upward trend since January this year.

Last month, the median home price in Southern California recorded $743,000, which is close to the record high of $750,000 for a home in Southern California set in April of last year.

This year, the median home price in Southern California increased by $73,000.

In Southern California last month, median home prices hit record highs in Orange County, Ventura County, and San Diego County.

The median home price in Orange County hit $175,000, with Ventura County breaking records at $813,000 and San Diego County at $850,000.

Last month, Southern California home prices soared, but home sales were sluggish.

A total of 130,998 homes were sold, the lowest number of sales in 35 years.

The number of housing transactions through July of this year was 97,197, which is also the lowest record.

As mortgage interest rates soared, rising monthly payment burdens appear to have dampened home sales.

With interest rates soaring, the average monthly mortgage payment in Southern California is now $3,891, up by $1,600 in the past two years.

However, there were not enough houses for sale, which pushed up the price of houses.

According to housing information company Redfin, the number of homes for sale in Southern California last month was 40,866, the lowest number of homes sold in July in the past decade.

Usually, in July, the average number of homes for sale in Southern California is about 64,000.

The boom in establishing labor unions in the US stores of Starbucks, a global coffee chain, appears to be slowing down.

According to the Chicago media on the 28th, employees of the world’s largest Starbucks store, “Chicago Roastery,” located on Michigan Avenue, downtown Chicago, refused to form a union.

On the 26th, under the supervision of the federal authority’ National Labor Relations Board’ (NLRB), they put the union membership plan to a vote and rejected it with a vote of 90 to 119 in favor.

CBS Broadcasting said that after the first union was formed at a Starbucks store in Buffalo, New York in December 2021, the Labor Union won the vote to establish a union at 355 Starbucks stores across the United States. Quotation: “There are 81 places that have been defeated.”

Starbucks currently operates a total of 16,000 stores in the U.S. and 35,000 stores worldwide.

Three people have died, and three others have been hospitalized after eating milkshakes in Washington State. According to local media on the 21st, the Washington state health authorities said that between February 17 and last month, 3 people died and 3 people were hospitalized among customers who drank milkshakes at a hamburger franchise restaurant in Tacoma, southern Seattle, Washington.

State health officials launched a full-scale investigation after a string of deaths and hospitalizations from customers who ate at the restaurant. Authorities explained that an investigation found listeria bacteria in milkshakes sold by hamburger restaurants. It turned out to be the same bacteria found in hospitalized patients.

Listeria is a type of food poisoning bacteria that is frequently found in contaminated meat or dairy products and can survive even at temperatures as low as -20 degrees Celsius.

State health officials suspect that the ice cream machine was not properly cleaned and harboured listeria, which was transferred to the milkshake. In response, state health officials have asked customers who have visited the store since May 29 to contact a medical institution immediately if they show symptoms of listeria infection. The store stopped using the ice cream machine on the 8th.

According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an average of 1,600 people is infected with listeria each year, and 260 of these people die. Even if you are infected with this bacterium, you can pass without any special symptoms, but in the case of weak immunity or the elderly, symptoms such as fever and diarrhoea appear, and in severe cases, it can lead to severe diseases such as sepsis.

A Georgia court in charge of trialling former President Donald Trump on charges of attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election set a bail of $200,000 for former President Trump.

Local media Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) reported on the 21st that Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County, Georgia, issued these orders. The order, which was agreed upon by both prosecutors and former President Trump’s attorney, stipulates that former President Trump must not contact and influence witnesses during bail or contact other co-defendants without the intervention of a lawyer.

Nineteen people, including former President Trump and his aides, were indicted on the 14th for exerting pressure to overturn the voting results in Georgia, a contested state during the 2020 presidential election. Former President Trump’s aides and lawyers John Eastman and Kenneth Cheeseboro were each bailed at $100,000, and another attorney, Ray Smith III, was set at bail of $10,000.

During the bail period, they are required to confirm whether the bail conditions have been fulfilled once a month by phone or in the form of a court appearance. Former President Trump and his aides must appear at the prosecutor’s office in Fulton County, Georgia by the 25th and then proceed with the trial process.

Former President Trump is likely to go through the process of being imprisoned in a detention centre after appearing at the prosecution this time, unlike the previous three court proceedings (a process for clarifying the position on whether the prosecution acknowledges the prosecution’s indictment in court) are being discussed.

President Joe Biden obtained more than half of the support and showed a relative advantage in terms of competitiveness in the finals. According to a survey conducted by the Associated Press on the 10th to 14th of 1,165 adults in the United States with the University of Chicago Public Opinion Research Centre (NORC) on the 16th, 63% of respondents said they would never or probably would if former President Trump was elected as a candidate. He said he would not support it.

Only 36% of respondents expressed their support for former President Trump. By political orientation, 74% of Republican supporters supported former President Trump, while 93% of Democratic supporters turned their backs.

US President Biden had relatively few negative answers. If President Biden is elected as a candidate, the answer that he would never or probably would not support it was less than a majority with 45% of the total. 54% said he would support it. By political orientation, 82% of the Democratic Party confirmed their intention to support it. 91% of Republicans were against it. However, for both candidates, the opposition outweighed the approval in terms of candidate suitability.

When asked if they wanted President Biden to be the next presidential candidate, 75% of respondents answered no, and 69% of former President Trump’s aphorisms answered negatively. President Biden was opposed by 55% of the Democratic supporters, while former President Trump was opposed by only 37% within the Republican Party.

The Associated Press said, “The results of this survey show that there is no significant change in divided public opinion even after the unprecedented series of prosecutions of former President Trump.”

The same pattern was evident in the prosecution of former President Trump by federal prosecutors. The investigation was conducted before former President Trump was sued for the fourth time in Georgia. In the survey, 53% of respondents rated former President Trump’s campaign fraud prosecution as appropriate, and 51% pointed out that former President Trump had committed an illegal act. By political party support, 85% of Democratic supporters admitted the prosecution, while only 47% of non-party supporters and 16% of Republican supporters admitted the legitimacy of the prosecution.

Regarding former President Trump’s allegations of election fraud, 70% of the responses said that President Biden won the 2020 presidential election, which was the majority. 98% of the Democratic supporters supported it, and only 41% of Republicans acknowledged the victory of President Biden.

The Biden government entered college student loan relief for 800,000 people.

ABC News reported on the 15th that Americans who took out federal student loans the day before began receiving emails from lenders saying, “Your student loan has been forgiven.”

It is expected that about 800,000 students who are subject to the cancellation of student loans will receive guidance on ‘loan forgiveness’ within a few weeks. Of these, 614,000 people are expected to have their entire remaining loans forgiven, and for the rest, measures will be applied only to some of their loans.

This measure follows the student loan relief measures announced by the Biden government last month.

Targeting Americans who have participated in so-called “income-based repayment (IDR)” plans, the main point of the measure is that the federal government forgives the remaining loans after paying off the loans over 20 or 25 years, depending on the repayment plan.

Initially, the IDR itself was a program with this purpose, but the Ministry of Education and others explained that a system error caused some student loan borrowers to continue repaying their loans even after the repayment deadline.

In a statement, President Joe Biden said, “If a person who borrowed money under the IDR repays it in 20 or 25 years, the remaining balance of the loan can be forgiven, but due to a system error that started before I took office, more than 804,000 people have been affected by the IDR. “I am determined to right this wrong,” he said. “We will look for alternatives to provide student loan relief to as many people as possible,” he said.

Prior to the midterm elections in November of last year, President Biden announced a policy of cancelling student loan-related loans for up to 43 million people, up to $20,000 per person. However, the Supreme Court overruled the policy in June, saying that “the government has no authority to do so.”

The Biden government then announced follow-up measures related to student loan relief for 800,000 people. Regarding this, conservative groups recently filed a lawsuit demanding a ‘stop of implementation’, but it was dismissed the previous day because they did not qualify for the lawsuit, the Congressional media outlet The Hill reported.

President Biden’s student loan relief pledge and implementation are aimed at young voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election. As a super-close confrontation with former President Donald Trump, who is likely to have a rematch, is expected to take place, the need to target young voters who are Democratic-oriented but relatively weak in support has increased.

The defeat of the U.S. national team in the Women’s World Cup was blamed on leftist ideology.

When the U.S. national team, which tried to win the FIFA Women’s World Cup three times in a row, lost in the round of 16, former President Donald Trump criticized the national team, citing leftist ideology as the background.

“The U.S. women’s national soccer team’s shocking and completely unexpected loss to Sweden symbolizes what is happening under corrupt Joe Biden,” former President Trump wrote on his social media account TruthSocial.

“Most of our players have been openly hostile to the United States, and no other country has done anything like it,” he said. “Woke equals failure.” Walk, which means ‘awakening’ or ‘awareness’, originally meant awakening to racial inequality in the black community.

However, former President Trump and the Republican Party are criticizing the work as a ‘leftist agenda’ that imposes a progressive identity throughout society while pursuing excessive political correctness.

Former President Trump’s attack on the women’s World Cup team seems to have played a part in the past.

Former President Trump had a war of words over inviting them to the White House when the US national team won the Women’s World Cup in 2019, when he was in office.

LGBTQ activist and national team captain Megan Rapinoe criticized the Trump administration at the time, saying, “We will not be invited, and we will not go to the White House.” Former President Trump also criticized Rapinoe by directly mentioning him in a social media post that day.

In May 2020, an additional prison sentence was handed down to a former police officer involved in an incident in which a white police officer arrested and killed a black man, George Floyd, by crushing him with his knee.

According to US media including the New York Times (NYT) on the 7th, Judge Peter Cahill of the Hennepin County Court in Minnesota sentenced former Minneapolis police officer Tu Tao to four years and nine months in prison for aiding and abetting murder.

Thao pleaded not guilty, claiming that Derek Chauvin was merely controlling the onlookers at the scene during the nine-and-a-half minutes when former police officer Derek Chauvin held his knee on Floyd’s neck, but the judge did not accept it.

Judge Cahill determined that Thao’s conduct isolated Chauvin and two other officers from the crowd, allowing Chauvin to continue overpowering Floyd. He also concluded that he had even blocked access by first responders, rendering him unable to receive medical attention.

“There is evidence that Thao’s actions are objectively unreasonable from the point of view of a reasonable police officer,” Judge Cahill said.

Tao was sentenced to three and a half years in prison by a federal court in July of last year for allegedly violating Floyd’s constitutional rights and is currently serving his sentence. The state court’s prison sentence against Thao will be executed concurrently with the federal court’s sentence.

Unlike other police officers who abetted the case who admitted guilt and chose to receive a reduced sentence, Thao chose a formal trial, saying, “To admit guilt is to make a false confession and sin.”

With the sentencing of Tao on this day, all first-instance trials related to the police involved in the Floyd case were concluded. Derek Chauvin, the senior officer who had previously choked Floyd by choking him, was found guilty by a Hennepin County jury in April 2021 on all counts of second-degree murder, second-degree manslaughter, and third-degree manslaughter and sentenced to 22 years in prison.

The George Floyd case is an incident in May 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Floyd, a black man, was crushed to death while being arrested by the police.

Controversy over the excessive suppression arose, triggering large-scale racist protests and riots across the United States.

Despite successive prosecutions, former President Donald Trump, who received overwhelming support in the race for the Republican Party’s internal presidential election, tied with Democratic President Joe Biden in a virtual bilateral confrontation.

It was investigated that support within the Democratic Party for President Biden, his senior, is also expanding. In the absence of a clear alternative candidate ahead of the 2024 presidential election, supporters of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are mobilizing in support of President Biden and former President Trump, respectively.

As a result, the 2024 US presidential election is likely to be held as a return match between President Biden and former President Trump.

According to a poll conducted by the New York Times (NYT) and Siena University, 1,329 voters released on the 1^st, respondents who would support President Biden or former President Trump in the 2024 presidential election 43% of each 4% said they would choose another candidate, and 10% did not respond.

Compared to the survey conducted by the NYT and the University of Siena on July 5-7 last year, the approval ratings of President Biden and former President Trump decreased by 1 percentage point for President Biden and increased by 3 percentage points for former President Trump.

In the case of former President Trump, it was found that he maintained his competitiveness in the finals despite being indicted one after another this year on charges of keeping the sex scandal quiet and leaking confidential information. It is analysed that this is due to the overwhelming support of Republican supporters for former President Trump.

In a survey released the day before by the NYT and the University of Siena, 54% of Republican-leaning voters supported former President Trump. President Biden is also gaining solid support in the Democratic Party. 64% of voters with a propensity to support the Democratic Party chose President Biden as their next candidate. Furthermore, when asked whether the Democratic Party should elect the incumbent President Biden as its presidential candidate regardless of competing candidates, 45% of Democratic-leaning voters answered yes. Compared to the survey a year ago (26%), support within the party for President Biden’s re-election has risen significantly.

The New York Times (NYT) cited economic policies such as the Supreme Court’s decision to abolish abortion rights, the Democratic Party’s midterm elections, and slowing inflation as the reasons for this ‘change in voter sentiment’. However, 50% of the answer was that someone other than President Biden should be nominated. Although it has decreased from 64% in July last year, it is still a high figure.