Millions of Americans face air quality alerts from Minnesota to New York as authorities urge people to stay indoors

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Smoke from wildfires burning in south-central Canada and parts of Minnesota is spreading across the US, prompting air quality alerts in more than 20 states with millions of Americans expected to face unhealthy air conditions this week.

The smoke from the more than 180 active wildfires in northern Ontario briefly made Toronto’s air quality among the worst in the world on Wednesday. By Wednesday night, the smoke had spread across several US states, from Minnesota, where multiple wildfires are also burning, to New York, blanketing the skies in haze and worsening air quality.

Money from rail selloff could help solve Ohio city’s most pressing problems but political mistrust dictates how profits can be used

Cincinnati, Ohio’s City of Seven Hills, has been drawing residents in from its suburbs – and, increasingly, other large cities – for years now. The only flat thing in sight is the housing supply.

“Our city’s growing,” Aftab Pureval, Cincinnati’s mayor, said in an interview. “For the first time in a generation, our population is growing.”

Group accused of planning sniper and drone attack on Donald Trump’s UFC cage-fighting show in June

Eight men were indicted on murder and terrorism conspiracy charges Thursday for their alleged roles in a thwarted drone and sniper attack on the UFC cage-fighting show staged at the White House in June.

The indictment, returned in Ohio, charges all eight in two separate conspiracies, one to provide material support to terrorists and a second to commit murder on federal government territory and to murder a federal government official.

Illness surging in Michigan and other US states is rarely life-threatening, CDC says – but it can have severe effects

Cases of cyclosporiasis – a parasitic illness that can cause “explosive”, watery diarrhea – have surged across the United States in recent days, health officials have said, with an abnormally large outbreak of almost 1,000 cases reported in Michigan.

Michigan typically reports about 50 cases a year, making the current outbreak the largest in the state’s history and one of the nation’s biggest in recent years. Ohio has also reported a sharp increase, with 177 cases as of 2 July, since the CDC’s last count.

Modern forensic analysis leads to arrest in murder of traveling salesman John Warren, authorities say

Items that were found discarded behind a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Georgia in 1985 have led to charges against a suspect in an Ohio killing committed at about that time, investigators announced recently.

As told by authorities, the case centering on killed traveling salesman John Warren is among the latest in the US criminal justice system to illustrate how the application of modern forensic testing techniques on evidence collected decades earlier can lead to closure of cold murder cases.