A 23-year-old man was reportedly swept over a waterfall in Yosemite National Park to his death, according to law enforcement.

A spokesperson for Yosemite confirmed to the LA Times that an incident occurred on June 20 at Nevada Fall, a 600-foot waterfall on the Merced River.

The official provided few details, only confirming that the incident involved a 23-year-old man and that “emergency personnel responded to the incident, which remains under investigation.”

“The National Park Service is investigating an incident involving a 23-year-old male at Nevada Fall in Yosemite National Park on June 20, 2026. Emergency personnel responded to the incident, which remains under investigation. No additional information is available at this time,” the NPS said in a statement.

The Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office confirmed to the Fresno Bee that the victim was Josue Baires Alfaro and that he was killed during the incident.

Alfaro was reportedly in the Merced River when the incident occurred, according to the Fresno Bee.

Unconfirmed witness reports from individuals posting on Reddit have been reported in other coverage of the story.

“We saw the girl and another person dragged by the current of the river. A person nearby handed the girl a branch, and she was rescued, but the other person couldn’t attach to anything and went with the current to the fall. That was horrifying to see,” a Reddit user wrote.

Reddit users can post anonymously. Police have not confirmed the details of the witness account. The Independent has requested comment from Yosemite National Park.

This is not the first fatality at the waterfall. In 2018, an Israeli teenager fell to his death while he was trying to take a selfie at the edge of Nevada Fall, according to the Fresno Bee.

In 2011, three people died when they were swept over the 317-foot Vernal Fall, which is downstream from Nevada Fall.

In that incident, a trio of visitors reportedly entered the waters above the falls approximately 25 feet from the precipice, according to the NPS. The agency noted that in order to access the area, the group would have had to illegally cross a metal guardrail meant to keep hikers away.

The trio was swept over the waterfall by the fast-moving river. All three were killed.

The National Park Service has warned that water-related accidents are the second most common cause of death in Yosemite National Park. It notes that incidents often can occur in areas where danger isn’t obvious.

“Visitors are urged to exercise extreme caution around all water in Yosemite National Park,” the NPS says on its website..

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — Rubén Vargas and Johan Manzambi both scored to give Switzerland a 2-1 victory over Canada on Wednesday at the World Cup as both teams advanced to the knockout round.

Promise David scored a late goal for Canada, which took second place in Group B behind the Swiss and earned a spot in the knockout round for the first time in its history.

Switzerland will face a third-place team on July 2 in Vancouver in the round of 32. Canada needed a win or a draw to finish at the top of the group and stay on home soil, but instead will travel to Inglewood, California, for its next game on Sunday against the second-place finisher in Group A.

After Manzambi came off the bench and scored two goals in Switzerland’s 4-1 victory over Bosnia-Herzegovina on Thursday, he earned a spot in the starting lineup against Canada. The-20-year-old midfielder became the youngest player to score two goals off the bench in the World Cup and is among the breakout young stars at the tournament.

Vargas broke through for Switzerland about 40 seconds into the second half with a strike that sailed past sliding Canada goalkeeper Maxime Crépeau, hit the post and went into the net.

Breel Embolo then crossed the ball to Manzambi, whose shot went through the hands of Crépeau to put the Swiss up 2-0 in the 57th minute.

Canada pulled a goal back in the 76th. David scored with a volley on his first touch of the game about a minute after he came on as a substitute.

Switzerland captain Granit Xhaka had a chance in the scoreless first half but his free kick in the 37th minute and sailed over the net as he let out a yell.

Ali Ahmed had one of Canada’s best attempts of the first half in the 42nd minute, but his shot to the near post was smothered by Switzerland goalkeeper Gregor Kobel.

On Thursday, Canada won its first World Cup match and put itself in position to advance. But the historic victory was bittersweet because Ismaël Koné was stretchered off with a broken left leg. Koné was at Wednesday’s game on crutches.

Bosnia beat Qatar 3-1 in the other Group B match and could still advance as a third-place team. Qatar has been eliminated.

The Swiss opened the World Cup with a lackluster 1-1 draw against Qatar before they routed Bosnia with a flurry of late goals. Considered the favorite in Group B, Switzerland has played at the last five World Cups and advanced to the round of 16 in the past three.

Canada, making its third World Cup appearance, opened the World Cup with a 2-2 draw against Bosnia.

___

AP World Cup: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-world-cup

York Gliding Club at Rufforth is playing host to Competition Enterprise, a gliding contest which has been held almost every year since 1974 at a number of sites around the UK.

The contest will be held between August 8 and 15, and is open to pilots who have a Silver C, from first-timers to world champions.

They will be set daily tasks that cater for all types of glider including glass and wood, small and big wings, with or without engines.

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Organiser Enterprise sets tasks that focus on maximising a day’s flying, rather than just aiming for speed, with points given for distance, bonus points for getting back, reaching turn points and even flying over the sea or visiting another country.

Richard Stembrowicz, who is on York Gliding Club’s organising committee, said almost 40 gliders had registered for the event.

He said: “These are all competition-experienced pilots. Someone is coming from Scotland and someone from the south coast, and everywhere in between. All gliders will be lined up across the runway and towed off in the morning.”

Richard added: “The car park will be quite restricted. We want to let locals know there will be a lot of tug and glider activities on those days. I think people will be arriving from the Thursday and Friday, ready for the competition on Saturday.”

York Gliding Club is on the former Rufforth Aerodrome – a Second World War Bomber Command base just west of York’s outer ring road which was established in the early 1960s and operates a number of modern gliders to suit different requirements.

Competition Enterprise 2025 was held at Cotswold Gliding Club when 34 competitors flew 56,513km in seven days.

Donald Trump has some advice for seemingly incoming Andy Burnham that Sir Keir Starmer refused to heed.

Trump didn’t seem to know very much about the all but anointed Labour leader who was the mayor of Manchester population 600,000.

Asked what he thought of Burnham, he said: ‘I don’t know, I think I see that he was, I guess, the mayor of a town.

‘I hear he’s extremely liberal, extremely, so that means he probably won’t open up the North Sea.’

Trump had made a parting shot at outgoing Sir Keir who he said had ‘two problems’ before naming three: immigration, North Sea oil and crime.

He added: ‘I gave Keir Starmer some pretty good advice. I said, open up the North Sea, go to Aberdeen, which was the hottest city of the whole continent.

‘It was the oil city of Europe, and they closed everything. It was terrible. I couldn’t believe it.

‘The North Sea is loaded, I have had every oil company come to see me “Sir, could you give us access to the UK? We would do anything to drill in the North Sea”.

‘The amazing thing is, they buy their oil from Norway, which gets the oil from the North Sea. Think of it, and they pay a big premium.

‘Norway’s got now two trillion dollars in the bank, and the UK is dying, so they should open up the North Sea, and it’s an easy one, and a lot of good things are going to happen.

‘It’s among the greatest deals in the world.’

Asked if he would want to be the first world leader for the new prime minister to visit globally, Trump said, ‘No, but I think we’re probably of a different persuasion.’

What does Andy Burnham think of Trump?

Well, it appears the feeling is mutual.

On the Makerfield campaign trail, Burnham warned: ‘Politics is getting more polarised. And the path we’re on, if we are not careful, is a path towards the politics of the United States of America.

‘A polarised, poisonous politics where people in communities don’t work together anymore.’

Last year, in an interview with The London Economic that included questions about the rise of right-wing, populist parties, he said: ‘I think we now have to have a real debate about what that means and the instability that [former prime minister] Liz Truss brought to Britain, I think Trump is bringing to the US and the world.’

In a 2024 book that he co-authored, Burnham did begrudgingly concede: ‘Whether we like it or not, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage have been effective in connecting with people who feel politicians have neglected the place where they live.’

And on January 6, as rioters stormed the Capitol, Burnham posted on X: ‘Any UK politician who gave Trump the time of day should be ashamed right now.’

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Former England youth basketball player Kwame Yeboah groomed his victim after meeting on a video chatroom.

A pilot and former sporting prodigy groomed a 12-year-old girl before driving hundreds of miles to rape her. Kwame Yeboah met the schoolgirl on video chat website Omegle before exchanging explicit messages, photographs and video calls on Instagram.

Liverpool Crown Court heard the 30-year-old British Airways pilot travelled from Reading to the Wirral, Merseyside, after around three months of communication with the youngster online.

The court heard the girl’s mum contacted Merseyside Police after learning from one of her daughter’s friends that she had been speaking to a man online and had later had sex with him, The Mirror reports.

Prosecutor Louise McCloskey said the mum was told the man drove a black Mercedes and had put his number in the girl’s phone under a false name to avoid suspicion.

The youngster was “initially dismissive” when speaking to cops. She told her mum, in the presence of police: “I don’t know why you had to tell the police. It’s not like I’ve been raped or anything.”

The court heard that, after being told she may need emergency contraception if sexual activity had taken place, she replied: “No, I’m not getting it. I’ll keep the baby.”

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The beast booked a hotel room in the Merseyside area before the girl escaped her home by climbing out of a window and met him in his black Mercedes.

Although the victim initially told Yeboah she was 17, the court heard she later sent him photographs of herself in school uniform and referred to being grounded during their conversations.

When she said she could not meet him, Yeboah sent messages including: “I can’t do this no more, because you’re not meeting me. I can’t call because it makes me sad, because I can’t see you.”

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The court heard Yeboah drove the girl around before asking to “go to a car park and do stuff”, telling her he was “horny”. After stopping the vehicle, he sexually assaulted and raped her.

When another car pulled up nearby, Yeboah drove to a second location where he instructed the youngster to perform a sex act before raping her again. Yeboah later messaged the girl after becoming concerned she might obtain the morning-after pill.

He told her: “You lied to me. They would have asked you a bunch of questions before they gave it to you.” She replied: “I just don’t want you to be mad at me. I love you. I wouldn’t lie to you. Don’t text for a bit, social services are at my house.”

Judge Gary Woodhall said there had been “clearly some grooming behaviour” and found that Yeboah had sought to “manipulate or emotionally blackmail” the girl.

Sentencing him, the judge said: “You had to travel from Reading. You booked a hotel room for the two of you. You agreed to collect her in your car. She had to sneak out of her home to meet you.”

Yeboah, of Drake Way, Reading, admitted three counts of rape of a child under 13 and assault of a child under 13 by penetration. He was jailed for eight years and four months and handed an additional year on licence.

The court heard the abuse had left the victim struggling with confidence, sleep and concentration at school. Yeboah was also handed a restraining order banning him from contacting the girl for 15 years and will remain on the sex offenders’ register for life.

The Dong people in China are an Indigenous ethnic group who are known to have lived in the mountainous regions of southwestern China for about 600 years. They don’t have a written language – instead their cultural knowledge is shared by word of mouth. This means that the outside world doesn’t know much about them.

But an ambitious university-led research project to document the Dong people’s distinctive architecture is revealing a great deal about this marginalised Indigenous group’s way of life.

There are an estimated 3 million Dong people living in the provinces of Guizhou, Hunan and Guangxi. They are renowned for their polyphonic choral singing, which has been inscribed by Unesco since 2009 as an example of world-class intangible cultural heritage. Their architecture, landscape and refined agricultural terracing are also distinctive, but less well known and never digitally recorded.

Dong buildings and settlements are typically hidden in fir forests with direct access to waterways at the bottom of valleys or halfway up hills. A Dong settlement typically has around 200 households of four to five people – although some larger villages can have as many as 500 households.

These villages tend to have a gatehouse marking their boundary, defining their territory in relation to neighbouring settlements. Many feature a distinctive “wind-and-rain bridge” – a mix of village gate and covered bridge – used for communal gatherings and blocking ceremonies. Ponds, wells, and granaries are scattered throughout the landscape.

At the heart of most villages, surrounded by wooden houses of two or three storeys, there is a “drum tower” and a “Sa-Sui shrine”. The former represents the connection of the people’s sacred belief of clan kinship and fir trees, while the latter represents the centre of the Dong’s worship of the “Sa” or grandmother. They are the most important buildings in a village – for security, social and spiritual reasons.

Culture at risk

Nowadays, the Dong’s built and cultural heritage are increasingly at risk. This is due to a combination of climate change, natural disasters, urban infrastructure development and the expansion of rural tourism.

A warming climate is increasingly triggering wild fires and causing mountain flooding. We are also seeing the encroachment of urbanism into the Dong’s rural settings. While bringing improvements in the quality of life, this often presents domestic fire hazards due to poor-quality electrical infrastructure. And in recent years, the growth of tourism and the encroachment of roads, railways and bridges is in danger of turning these villages into decorated stage-sets. This may bring in money, but threatens the Dong people’s unique architecture and landscape.

It’s a pressing challenge for this Indigenous people and for those of us dedicated to preserving their historic environment, their culture and their highly ritualised way of life.

Tragically, the scarcity of resources means that schemes for repair, restoration and regeneration works, as well as insufficient conservation policies and frameworks, have been slow to help preserve these precious villages. The far remote mountainous environment does not help. Both the local communities and government authorities have extremely limited resources to manage almost any change to their historic environment.

Despite the remote location of many of these villages, they are now being encroached upon by modern development. We’re seeing the growth of contemporary housing developments using modern structures and materials. It’s part of the rapid urbanisation of China over the past few decades – but, like elsewhere, it’s irreversibly changing the image and identity of the Dong settlements and their architecture.

The problem of modern tourist development can be seen in the way traditional-style drum towers are being built as theme park attractions. At the Danzhai Wanda Village, a newly developed theme park near Kaili in Guizhou, the nearest city to the Dong’s Indigenous areas, there are five newly built drum towers, billed as “iconic”, which are presented as standalone monuments with no sense of their relationship with the surrounding houses and forests.

Decoding Dong built heritage

The need to document and protect authentic Indigenous Dong culture is what has driven the Decoding Dong project.

This was launched in 2023 and completed in 2025 and set to digitally document Dong physical and cultural heritage.

This interdisciplinary project draws on humanities and social science disciplines ranging from architecture, anthropology, heritage sciences, sociology and digital humanities.

It put together a series of innovative and complementary research methods. This has involved 3D LiDAR scanning, aerial and terrestrial photogrammetry (the science of applying mathematics to photographs to extract accurate 3D measurements), 3D reality capture modelling, measured drawing, documentary film making and mapping. This has been complemented with oral histories from provided by Dong people.

The project has completed a first-of-its-kind digital documentation of the Dong architectural heritage, building digital and audio-visual documentaries of around 100 historic buildings across a dozen remote Dong villages.

A key part of the research process was to consult with key stakeholders, including clan leaders, elderly villagers and provincial policymakers wherever possible.

Indigenous Dong heritage is still under threat, due to the scarcity of resources faced by both the local authority and the communities themselves.

But this project represents a step change. By building a mutually beneficial store of information, supported by cutting-edge digital technologies, we hope to draw more attention to this distinctive people without threatening what it is that makes them unique.