A 12-year-old boy made the discovery of his lifetime when he found dinosaur skeleton dating back 69 million years. The amateur palaeontologist was out hiking with his father in a fossil-rich part of Alberta, Canada this July, when he saw bones protruding from a rock. On Thursday, the skeleton’s excavation was completed.

The boy, Nathan Hrushkin, says when he first laid eyes on the bones, he was “literally speechless”. “I wasn’t even excited, even though I know I should have [been],” he tells the BBC. “I was in so much shock that I had actually found a dinosaur discovery.” Nathan, who has been interested in dinosaurs since he was six, often goes hiking in the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s protected site in the Albertan Badlands with his father. “I’ve always just been so fascinated with how their bones grow from bones like ours to solid rock.” A year ago, they had found small fragments of fossils, and his father guessed that they were falling down from the rock above. So this summer Nathan decided to inspect. The fossilised bones were growing out of the side of a hill.(BBC)…[+]

The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have seized their largest-ever domestic haul of methamphetamine – more than 1,000kg (2,200 pounds). The drugs were found during raids just outside of Los Angeles this month. Another federal agency intercepted an even larger amount of meth at a San Diego port the week before. The two hauls are “enough to provide a dose of meth, for every man, woman, and child in the United States and Mexico”, a DEA chief said on Wednesday.

Timothy Shea, the acting agency administrator, told a press conference that the latest seizure came from two apparent stash houses in the Moreno Valley and Perris. Officials also found 400kg of cocaine. They said the drugs had been stuffed inside dozens of duffel bags, which were ready for distribution. In the prior raid, US Customs and Border Protection officials – acting on information from the DEA – recovered almost 1,400kg of meth at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in San Diego. They also discovered heroin, fentanyl powder and pills laced with fentanyl – all disguised in a lorry delivering medical supplies from Mexico.(BBC)…[+]

Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris will halt campaign travel until Monday after two members of her staff tested positive for coronavirus. The California senator’s communications director, Liz Allen, and a flight crew member received the results on Wednesday, a Biden official said. Neither aide had close contact with the candidates in the 48 hours prior to their positive tests, she added. Ms Harris had been scheduled to fly to North Carolina on Thursday. Biden Campaign Manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said the senator had no close contact with either infected staff member in the two days before the positive test, and was therefore not required to quarantine. “Regardless, out of an abundance of caution and in line with our campaign’s commitment to the highest levels of precaution, we are cancelling Senator Harris’s travel through Sunday,” she said…[+]