TV News LIES

Fire crews battling California’s largest wildfire this year have corralled a third of the blaze aided in part by cooler weather, but a return of triple-digit temperatures could allow it to grow, fire officials said Sunday.

Cooler temperatures and increased humidity gave firefighters “a great opportunity to make some good advances” on the fire in the Sierra Nevada foothills, said Chris Vestal, a spokesperson for the California department of forestry and fire protection.

The Park fire has scorched 627 sq miles (1,623 sq km) since igniting 24 July when authorities said a man pushed a burning car into a gully in Chico and then fled. The blaze was 30% contained as of Sunday.

The huge fire has scorched an area bigger than the city of Los Angeles, which covers about 503 sq miles (1,302 sq km). It continues to burn through rugged, inaccessible and steep terrain with dense vegetation.

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Educators in Oklahoma are refusing a state order to incorporate the Bible into their lesson plans, setting up an inevitable showdown with the start of the school year just weeks away.

Ryan Walters, the state superintendent of public instruction, last week released guidelines to schools for how they should be integrating the Bible into classrooms, saying educators who are against the initiative “will comply, and I will use every means to make sure of it.”

The message from some schools in the state: Bring it on.

Kristin Bride lost her 16-year-old son, Carson, to suicide in 2020. She says shortly before he took his own life he was bullied on the social media site Snapchat.

"Carson received over 100 harassing and sexually explicit texts from his high school classmates through an anonymous messaging app on Snapchat," Bride says. "The last search on his phone before he ended his life was for hacks to find out who was doing this to him."

Shortly after her son's death, Bride joined Parents for Safe Online Spaces, an organization of families who lost their children after they were exposed to toxic online content. Some died by suicide after cyberbullying or sextortion; others after participating in viral challenges involving self-harm or taking drugs sold by online dealers.

Bride is also part of an ongoing effort on Capitol Hill to craft legislation that would hold social media sites and other tech companies accountable for keeping minors safe online.

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The mayor of a Louisiana city near the state’s border with Texas abruptly resigned from her post days before authorities jailed her on suspicion of raping a boy while she served in office.

Misty Roberts became the first woman to be elected as mayor of DeRidder in 2018, and she was well into her second term in the position when she handed in her resignation – with immediate effect – to the local city council on Saturday.

The letter did not provide a reason for Roberts’s decision. But the day before, Louisiana state police had begun investigating an allegation that Roberts engaged in “sexual relations” with a minor who was too young to be able to legally provide consent, according to a news release from the agency.

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