Burning Man: Thousands of partygoers allowed to leave festival after flooding
Tens of thousands of partygoers stranded for days at the Burning Man festival in Nevada because of flooding have started to leave the camp.
Attendees at the festival were told to conserve food and water and find shelter after around 1.5 inches of rain fell on Friday in the north Nevada desert, causing flooding and foot-deep mud.
Police also said the death of a man in his 40s at the festival was not weather-related but provided no further details.
The sheriff of nearby Pershing County said he was investigating but has not identified the man or a cause of death.
Organisers had started to let traffic flow out of the makeshift city on Monday afternoon, with delays of around five hours to leave the site. The festival had been closed to vehicles.
“It really looked apocalyptic,” said festival volunteer Evi Airy about the exodus of people.
Pic: Eddie Codel
“When you see the people walking barefoot in such a cold with the children. Some people have a small child here like three years old, four years old. I don’t know how they survived.”
Attendees were also asked not to walk out of the Black Rock Desert – about 110 miles (177km) north of Reno – as others had done throughout the weekend, including celebrity DJ Diplo and comedian Chris Rock.
Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies.
Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies.
Diplo, whose real name is Thomas Wesley Pentz, posted a video to Instagram on Saturday evening showing him and Rock travelling in the back of a fan’s truck.
He said they had walked six miles through the mud before finding a lift.
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Chris Rock and Diplo escape Burning Man
“I legit walked the side of the road for hours with my thumb out,” Diplo wrote.
President Joe Biden told reporters in Delaware on Sunday that he was aware of the situation at Burning Man, including the death, and the White House was in touch with local authorities.
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The annual gathering, which launched on a San Francisco beach in 1986, attracts nearly 80,000 artists, musicians and activists for a mix of wilderness camping and avant-garde performances.
Some of the 64,000 people who remained on site have chosen to stay an extra night and watch the festival’s giant namesake effigy go up in flames on Monday, one day late.
Vladimir Putin told Donald Trump he “will not back down” from Russia’s goals in Ukraine during a phone call today, the Kremlin has said.
The Russian president spoke to his US counterpart for almost an hour, and Mr Trump “again raised the issue of an early end to military action” in Ukraine, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters.
In response, Mr Putin said “Russia will not back down” from its aims there, which include “the elimination of the well-known root causes that led to the current state of affairs,” Mr Ushakov said.
The phrase “root causes” is shorthand for Moscow’s argument that it was compelled to invade Ukraine in order to prevent the country from joining NATO.
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Trump and Putin’s latest call on Ukraine
Ukraine and its European allies say this is a pretext to justify what they call an imperial-style war, but Mr Trump has previously shown sympathy with Russia.
At the same time, Mr Putin told the US president that Russia is ready to continue negotiating, the aide said.
The Russian president said any prospective peace deal must see Ukraine give up its NATO bid and recognise his country’s territorial gains.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, seen with Mr Trump in June, is pushing for Ukraine to join NATO. Pic: Reuters
He also briefed Mr Trump on agreements made last month, which saw Russia and Ukraine exchange prisoners of war and dead soldiers.
Specific dates for the third round of peace talks in Istanbul were not discussed – nor was the US decision to halt some shipments of critical weapons to Ukraine.
Mr Putin and Mr Trump’s call came after the Pentagon confirmed some weapons due to be sent to Ukraine have been held as it reviews military stockpiles.
The paused shipments include air defence missiles and precision-guided artillery, two people familiar with the situation have said.
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The decision led to Ukraine calling in the acting US envoy to Kyiv on Wednesday to underline the importance of military aid from Washington.
Kyiv also cautioned that the move would weaken Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against intensifying Russian airstrikes and battlefield advances.
Mr Putin and Mr Trump’s phone call was the sixth they have publicly disclosed since the US president returned to the White House in January.
Donald Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’ has been passed by the US congress, sending it to the president to sign into law.
The controversial tax breaks and spending cuts package cleared its final hurdle as the Republican-controlled House of Representatives narrowly approved the bill with a 218-214 vote.
The bill delivers tax breaks Mr Trump promised in his 2024 election campaign, cuts health and food safety programmes, and zeroes out dozens of green energy incentives.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), it will lower tax revenues by $4.5trn over 10 years and add $3.4trn to the US’s $36.2trn debt.
But despite concerns over the 869-page bill’s price tag – and its hit to healthcare programmes – Republicans largely lined up in support, with just two rebelling on the vote.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is congratulated following the vote. Pic: Reuters
Every Democrat in Congress voted against the bill, blasting it as a giveaway to the wealthy that will leave millions of Americans uninsured.
House Speaker Mike Johnson made the Republicans’ closing argument for the bill, telling Congress: “For everyday Americans, this means real, positive change that they can feel.”
Earlier, the House’s Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries gave a record-breaking eight-hour and 44-minute speech against it.
“The focus of this bill, the justification for all of the cuts that will hurt everyday Americans, is to provide massive tax breaks for billionaires,” he said.
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The bill’s spending cuts largely target Medicaid, the health programme that covers 71 million Americans on low incomes.
It will tighten enrolment standards, institute a work requirement and clamp down on a funding mechanism used by states to boost federal payments.
The changes could leave nearly 12 million people without health insurance, according to the CBO.
On the other side of the ledger, it will stave off tax increases that were due to hit most Americans at the end of the year, when tax cuts from President Trump’s first term were due to expire.
It also sets up new tax breaks for overtime pay, seniors and tipped income.
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The bill narrowly passed the US Senate on Tuesday after vice president JD Vance cast the deciding vote to break a 50-50 tie.
Mr Trump will sign it into law on Friday at 5pm local time (10pm in the UK), the White House said.
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