New York City and much of the tri-state area has been blanketed by smoke caused by raging wildfires in Canada. The poor air conditions have continued to spread throughout the northeastern United States. On Wednesday (7 June), New York City was ranked number one for the worst air quality in the world, with the Air Quality Index (AQI) at 342 and air pollution levels described as “hazardous”. Many officials have since advised people to limit their time outdoors and wear masks to protect themselves from the smoke. Public schools have also cancelled outdoor activities, including recess and gym classes. Follow for live air quality alert updates. Experts estimate that each hour of exposure to wildfire smoke is equivalent to smoking cigarettes continuously for the same amount of time, but that’s just for humans. Imagine how wildfire smoke affects our beloved pets? In fact, poor air quality may pose an even greater risk to animals because of their much smaller size. Here’s how to protect your pets from wildfire smoke as air quality alerts continue throughout New York. The biggest danger to pets comes from the fine particles found in air pollutants, which can get into the lungs and cause a variety of health issues – like eye irritation or respiratory problems. Some of the most vulnerable pets are older animals suffering from heart or lung disease. Certain breeds, such as pugs and bulldogs, may be especially at risk of inhaling too much smoke, according to the American Kennel Club. There are several signs that indicate a pet may be having problems from poor air quality. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), some of the symptoms include coughing or gagging (particularly in cats), red or watery eyes, inflammation of the throat or mouth, trouble breathing, fatigue or weakness, and reduced appetite or thirst. The first thing pet owners should do at the sign of wildfire smoke exposure is to call their veterinarian. In the meantime, saturating a cotton ball with lukewarm water and squeezing it over an animal’s eyes can help with irritation and flush them out. In order to protect pets from wildfire smoke, try to reduce their exposure as much as possible. For outdoor pets like horses or livestock, bring these animals into a room with good ventilation, such as a utility room or garage. The EPA also states that smoke is especially tough on pet birds because of the construction of their respiratory systems. Birds that are exposed to too much smoke may act lethargic or struggle to breathe, and may sit in the bottom of their cages. Keeping the indoor air clean can also help protect animals against wildfire smoke. Pet owners should keep their windows closed and their pets in a room with an air purifier. Activities such as frying foods, burning candles, or using a fireplace can also be bad for pets because it adds air pollutants to your home. If necessary, pet owners take short potty breaks with their dog or cat before returning inside. It’s probably not best to go on a long run with an animal when air quality alerts are in effect, either. Read More Air quality – live: New York hits record pollution as Canada wildfire smoke shuts airports and risks millions From masks to AC units: All the dos and don’ts to keep safe from wildfire smoke New York air pollution spikes to hazardous ratings as wildfire smoke plagues East Coast How to protect pets from wildfire smoke amid air quality alert From masks to AC units: All the dos and don’ts to keep safe from wildfire smoke I tried anti-bloating pills for two weeks, and now I know the gassy truth

The best hope for a toddler missing in France is that “he’s been kidnapped and is alive,” the local mayor has said. Emile vanished from his maternal grandparents’ home in the quiet village of Le Vernet in the Alpes-des-Haute-Provence on Saturday and has not been seen since. After he was reported missing, a massive search operation to locate the two-year-old was launched but police admitted they had “no clue” what happened to Emile after five days of combing every part of Le Vernet. The physical search was called off on Thursday, after a final road was raked for clues about the boy’s whereabouts. In a new interview with French newspaper Le Figaro, Francois Balique has commented on the rescue efforts, that involved a helicopter broadcasting the voice of Emile’s mother over the region, the “curse” of the hamlet, and possible explanations for Emile’s disappearance. Mr Balique, who has been Le Vernet’s mayor since 1977, was asked about the likelihood of finding Emile alive – considering the boy’s age and the number of days that have passed since he was last seen. He responded: “Our only hope now is that he’s been taken and is alive. It’s the last thing we can hope for and it’s already terrible. “We could consider that someone wanting to cause harm to a child passed by the area, that he saw this beautiful little boy and took him away. He couldn’t survive alone in the wild, that’s for sure.” Elsewhere, Mr Balique said he never believed Emile’s disappearance to be a “sordid kidnapping because we see all the people who frequent the area”, adding that a “foreign car would have been noticed”. “It is difficult to favour one hypothesis over another,” he cautioned. “But the probabilities and the rationality would lead us to believe that we are dealing with an accident. “And since little Emile’s body has not been found, it means that he was not alone at the time. We can consider a car accident in which the driver would have panicked and concealed the body. That’s one hypothesis.” He also said the people of Haut-Vernet know that there are children in the area, and “they are careful on the road”. When asked about calling off the physical search for Emile, Mr Balique, 74, said the French military police (or the gendarmes) combed a combined area of one hundred hectares, “which is enormous”. “We did everything we could to find the child, alive or not. We found nothing,” he said. Locals speaking to the media in the wake of Emile’s disappearance said they wondered whether their hamlet may be “cursed” as a result of the tragedies which have taken place, including the murder of a cafe manager and a deadly plane crash. When asked about the “curse”, Mr Balique said “what is curious” are the facts of Emile’s disappearance – “not that it happened here”. Since the physical search was called off on Thursday, local prosecutor Remy Avon said investigators would now start sorting through all the evidence that has been collected to find new clues about what happened to the toddler. During a press conference on Friday, Mr Balique confirmed the last teams of gendarmes had left the village. Read More Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin ‘dead or in prison’ after Putin meeting, former US commander claims Land temperatures in Spain surpass 60C as deadly heatwave sweeps Europe Huw Edwards – latest: Former BBC journalists blast coverage ‘a disgrace’ as TV star in hospital Heatwave across Europe leaves Brits abroad sweltering: ‘I don’t cope well at all’ Watch: Macron and Modi give joint statement at the Elysee after Bastille Day parade Russia Ukraine war: Wagner forces training soldiers in Belarus after Prigozhin exile

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Since his entry onto the American political stage in 2015, former president Donald Trump has managed to avoid serious consequences from most investigations into his conduct through the loyalty of his close associates and by deploying the power of the office he held from 2017 to 2021. Even as he faces four criminal cases against him, Mr Trump’s continued campaigning for the presidency in next year’s general election has allowed his confidantes to credibly hold out the possibility that a win over President Joe Biden next year would allow him to deep-six at least the two cases currently being prosecuted against him by Special Counsel Jack Smith. And in the case pending against him in a New York court, he managed to avoid charges more serious than those he faces for allegedly falsifying business records thanks to the loyalty of his company’s executives, including a longtime aide who served a jail sentence rather than give evidence against him. But many legal experts believe the 40-count indictment brought against Mr Trump and 18 co-defendants by Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis will push his co-defendants, some who have been among his closest allies, beyond their breaking points and force them to turn on the ex-president rather than face the wrath of a Georgia jury. The list of targets who Ms Willis is now prosecuting includes some of the twice-impeached, indicted-four-times-over ex-president’s most high-profile confederates, including his former personal attorney, ex-New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who faces 12 separate felony charges as a result of his work to help Mr Trump push to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. Mr Giuliani, a former prosecutor who made a name for himself by bringing Racketeering Influenced and Criminal Organisation (Rico) prosecutions against the Italian-American mob in the 1980s, is now being prosecuted under a state version of the anti-organised crime law alongside John Eastman, the ex-law professor with whom he appeared at the 6 January 2021 rally which preceded that day’s attack on the US Capitol by a mob of Mr Trump’s supporters. They will also be joined in the dock by three ex-Trump administration officials: Mr Trump’s last White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, ex-Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark, and a Trump White House aide turned campaign official, Michael Roman, each of whom is understood to have been described in a federal indictment of Mr Trump as anonymised co-conspirators. Also charged alongside the ex-president are former Trump campaign lawyers Jenna Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell. In addition, Ms Willis successfully sought charges against a slew of other defendants associated with Mr Trump’s allegedly illicit efforts, including an alleged plan to submit forged electoral college certificates for counting by then-vice president Mike Pence. These other co-defendants include Georgia GOP officials, including ex-Georgia Republican Party chair David Shafer, ex-Coffee County, Georgia elections director Misty Hampton, and other GOP activists who signed the forced electoral certificates. According to legal experts, the sheer number of co-defendants, plus the harshness of the charges against them, will push at least some of them to flip on Mr Trump in hopes of a better deal. These experts say the particulars of Georgia’s criminal law, under which a friendly Republican governor could not issue a pardon for these offences, will also push many of the people named in the indictment to cooperate with prosecutors. Glenn Kirschner, a former assistant US attorney in Washington, DC who prosecuted several racketeering trials in the 1990s, told The Independent that Ms Willis appears to have already secured significant help from numerous individuals based on the number of unindicted co-conspirators described in the indictment. While Mr Kirschner suggested the “best” deals — including full immunity from prosecution — had most likely been handed out before Ms Willis brought her case to a grand jury, he also said the number of defendants who were ultimately indicted will necessitate more dealmaking if Ms Willis wants to take the case to trial. “There’s no way 19 are going to trial,” he said. The former federal prosecutor said his practice as an assistant US attorney was to “identify potentially valuable defendants that I wanted to develop into cooperating witnesses”. “Sometimes I succeeded, often I didn’t. But what I did find was that when you talk to them before they were indicted, the whole prospect of them being criminally indicted was a little theoretical, hadn’t quite hit home,” he said. “And then once they see their name on the wrong side of the ‘v,’ it tends to get their attention. And often, that’s when they would want to begin negotiating again. And we would develop a fair number of cooperating witnesses after they were indicted.” Mr Kirschner added that in his experience, the mechanics of holding trials would also limit the number of defendants who are tried and will give Ms Willis incentives to cut deals when possible. His suggestion that there has already been significant cooperation by people involved in the case was echoed by John Dean, the former White House counsel under Richard Nixon who testified against the disgraced president during the Watergate scandal. Mr Dean, who pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and turned state’s evidence for federal prosecutors, told CNN on Monday that he believes it’s “very likely” that Mr Trump’s co-defendants will “flip” now that charges have been filed. “They just wanted to see the indictment, and they’ve seen it now, and it’s not pretty,” he said, adding that he thinks Mr Meadows will “probably find a solution to get out of the Georgia case, too”. Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who worked for House Democrats during Mr Trump’s first impeachment trial, also told The Independent that he thinks co-defendants who cooperate now will be far worse off than they could have been had they turned on the ex-president earlier. “The best deals were already handed out. It’s like you know, it’s like getting a season ticket —the earlier you buy, the better the value,” he said. “The good deals were there for the fake collectors, many of whom got immunity without having to agree to any jail time.” Mr Eisen also noted that Ms Willis has a history of pleading out Rico defendants, “sometimes on very generous terms,” in exchange for cooperation. “So I think we may see some of these individuals turn on the former president and the remaining co-conspirators,” he said. But another attorney who spoke to The Independent, Georgia-based defence lawyer Andrew Flesichman, expressed significant doubts that any of the 18 co-defendants not named Trump would turn on the ex-president, citing the relatively tame penalties they could face if convicted and the lack of leverage which state prosecutors have compared to their federal counterparts. Mr Fleischman pointed out that the federal experts who have been opining on the case in the press aren’t taking into account how the federal system forces defendants into deals because of the lack of parole for convicted defendants who are sentenced to jail or prison. “The sentencing exposure for most of these people is not even that bad,” he said. “All these offences, you can get straight probation on them, and all these people are first-time offenders and this won’t count as a felony on their record, so I don’t think the state has as much pressure to turn people as some people are saying.” Mr Fleischman said it’s more likely that the people who were going to flip on Mr Trump have already done so. He also suggested that those co-defendants who were fake electors have a credible defence by claiming they were lied to by other co-defendants. “If you stick with Donald Trump, you can still raise your defence that you were lied to, which is a pretty good defence for these false electors, and then their sentencing exposure is not that bad,” he said. “I could understand if they want to take it to trial on some kind of principle.” The Independent has reached out to Mr Trump’s representatives for comment. Read More Fulton County DA Fani Willis proposes March 2024 date for Trump Georgia trial Trump judge makes barbed comment about Elon Musk as contents of Jack Smith’s Twitter warrant revealed Mark Meadows pushing to move Georgia charges to federal court Rudy Giuliani is furious about being charged with same mob law he claims he pioneered Will the Georgia gang of 18 turn on Trump? 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GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley says she’s concerned about the new allegations levied at Donald Trump by the Justice Department, a sign that the Republican field may be growing more comfortable with openly criticising the former commander-in-chief. Ms Haley was speaking in an interview that aired on Sunday on CBS’s Face The Nation when she was asked about new charges filed by the Department of Justice in a superceding indictment this past week accusing Mr Trump of showing classified information to guests at his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club — as well as a new charge of obstructing justice. The former UN ambassador, appointed under Mr Trump, responded that she was very concerned “if these accusations are true”. The most recent accusations, notably, are supported by an audio recording of the Bedminster meeting in question in which Mr Trump can be heard exclaiming that documents he was holding (or gesturing to) were classified. “I think we need to see it,” Ms Haley said, presumably referring to the extent of the DoJ’s evidence. “You know, I think we've heard about it. I think that we know that there's something out there. But look, everybody's innocent until they're proven guilty. And like I said, if this is true, it's incredibly dangerous to our national security. And I think that will play out, but I think that we have to go and see what all the facts are.” She added: “[I]f these accusations are true, it's incredibly dangerous to our national security. But again, this is coming down from a Department of Justice that, frankly, the American people don't trust. “ Mr Trump’s latest criminal indictment — his second — brings the total number of charges he now faces up to 74, split among state and federal jurisdictions. A third is expected to drop within days, charging him with crimes related to the months-long effort by his team to change the 2020 election results including his actions leading up to and during the January 6 attack. Altogether, the charges depict an unprecedented pattern of criminality stemming back from before Mr Trump was ever elected to the stunning end of his administration in January 2021. He now battles for the 2024 Republican nomination, eager to use the powers of the presidency to thwart as much of the legal pressure he now faces as possible, while facing a crowded GOP field seemingly undaunted by his continued polling dominance and utter rout of his party rivals in 2016. Mr Trump has denied guilt in any of the dozens of criminal counts of which he is accused, and maintains that the Justice Department is conspiring with the Biden White House to block him from the presidency. Read More Chris Christie slams Trumps as ‘Corleones with no experience’ Right-wing TV host at Trump rally denies he wants to kill liberals, globalists, and RINOs Trump returns to first impeachment roots by saying Ukraine aid should be linked to Biden probes Only four out of dozens of former Trump cabinet members say he should be re-elected Nikki Haley urges McConnell and Feinstein to ‘walk away’ after recent health concerns Donald Trump's defamation lawsuit against CNN over 'the Big Lie' dismissed in Florida

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