National

(OAKLAND, Calif.) — Red tide on a northern California lake has caused the shore to be lined with dead fish, local experts said.

The recently red-brown, murky shores of Lake Merritt in Oakland have been linked to the largest algae bloom in the region’s recent history, officials said.

According to both the California Department of Public Health and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the dominant algae species forming the bloom is Heterosigma akashiwo.

H. akashiwo, while not usually considered an acute risk to humans, is lesser-studied species of harmful algae that emits toxins, harming fish and wildlife, the SF Baykeeper, an environmental advocacy organization, told ABC News

The SF Baykeeper said while this algae is not new to the area, a bloom of this level has not occurred in the region since 2004.

H. akashiwo has been associated with fish kills and the release of neurotoxins, the SF Baykeeper said. It also may contaminate shellfish.

The algae is not toxic to humans but it can cause skin and eye irritation, according to the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board.

That said, the SF Baykeeper advises individuals to be cautious when considering going in the water or consuming fish, particularly shellfish, caught in the lake.

Ian Wren, a scientist at the SF Baykeeper, has been working to better understand the algae bloom and how it happened.

“We’re not quite sure what’s causing it,” Wren told ABC News affiliate KGO. “There are some physical factors that might have sparked this bloom such as that it’s been relatively clear out, the winds have died down a little bit, we have warmer waters, however, it’s really hard to associate what causes this kind of bloom.”

Baykeeper executive director Sejal Choksi-Chugh said in a statement that treated sewage discharges from the Bay’s 40 sewage treatment plants and the pollutants from five dirty oil refineries create conditions ideal for algal blooms.

“Baykeeper scientists have been actively working for the past five years through agency technical advisory committees to prevent large blooms of any number of potentially toxic microorganisms from becoming commonplace in the Bay,” Choksi-Chugh said.

Choksi-Chugh said “excessive” sewage and refinery discharges are affecting the algae growth in the lake and called on officials to invest in water recycling to keep wastewater out of the water in the first place.

“These changes must happen fast in order to keep algal blooms like the ones cropping up right now in the Bay from taking over more regularly,” Choksi-Chugh said. “Hopefully this is a wake-up call for the agency to take faster action, because consistent algal blooms in the Bay would be detrimental to wildlife and people recreating in and around the Bay.”

Wren told KGO that a combination of more nutrients flowing into the water and changes in water temperature due to climate change will likely increase the possibility of blooms in the future.

“It’s quite conceivable that in other years a different type of species could take off and with much more harmful consequences,” Wren told KGO. “Things like higher temperatures, more nutrient upwelling from the ocean, changes in title circulation and wind patterns, these are all things that really produce a lot of unknowns but could still spark a lot of these blooms.

While the algae will eventually die off on its own, the SF Baykeeper said, it may leave more harm in its wake, as it may deplete oxygen and harm to fish and wildlife, especially in shallower areas of the Bay.

According to the Lake Merritt Institute, an organization that leads volunteer clean-ups, green algae usually grows in large quantities during the spring and early summer. The algae that dominates the shallows usually dissipates by the end of June, the organization reports.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — A lawsuit alleges the Navy “harbored toxic secrets” after jet fuel leaked from a storage facility in Hawaii operated by the Navy, contaminating locals’ drinking water and sickening hundreds of families.

“You’ve got American citizens being poisoned by an American asset on American soil,” Army Major Amanda Feindt, whose family is suing, told ABC News.

In November 2021, health officials and the Navy ordered residents of Pearl Harbor and the surrounding area to stop using tap water after dangerous levels of petroleum products were found in the Navy’s Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam water system. The source was pinpointed back to the jet fuel leak from the nearby Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility.

Hundreds of families reported petroleum odors coming from residential tap water supplied by the Navy water system, alongside reports of health issues caused by the contaminated drinking water.

The DOH had received almost 500 complaints of fuel or gasoline-like odor from people who receive water from the Navy water system.

Numerous families allege that they’re still battling long-term, chronic health issues in the lawsuit. A PGA golf professional says he has had five surgeries since and continues to battle internal bleeding. One family said it has been plagued with abdominal pain, vomiting, memory loss, skin rashes, brain fog, eye irritation, seizures, and teeth and gum issues, all according to the lawsuit.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, many people remain in temporary housing due to the drinking water crisis. Healani Sonoda-Pale, a Hawaii sovereignty activist, says many are still afraid to drink the water.

Activists are calling on the Navy to take action almost a year after the Hawaii Department of Health issued an emergency order against the military agency to address the closure and defueling of the Red Hill facility.

“If the Navy has committed to closing the facility, they need to move with the sense of urgency we as the Kanaka Maoli, native people of Hawaiʻi, feel they must,” said resident and protester Keoni DeFranco in an interview with ABC News.

“We have no other home,” DeFranco added.

“Thousands of O’ahu residents, most especially those still relying on the Navy water system, are still depending on bottled water for their daily needs,” Sonoda-Pale told ABC News. “The employees at the schools directly affected by the last leak are still cautious about their drinking water … even though the Board of Water Supply has said it is drinkable.”

Investigations by the U.S. Pacific Fleet found that the water contamination was a result of the Navy’s “ineffective immediate responses” to the fuel releases at Red Hill. It listed the Navy’s failures in resolving “deficiencies in the system design and construction, system knowledge and incident response training.”

It also said the agency failed to “learn from prior incidents that falls unacceptably short of Navy standards.” The facility leaked 27,000 gallons of fuel from a single tank in January 2014, according to environmental group Sierra Club of Hawaii.

The DOH ordered the Navy to immediately install a drinking water treatment system at the Red Hill Shaft and submit a work plan to assess system integrity. Within 30 days of completing the correction action, the Navy must then defuel the underground storage tanks there.

The EPA partnered with the Navy, Army and the Hawaii Department of Health to restore safe drinking water conditions to the affected residents and workers. The agency say they completed drinking water restoration in March 2022.

The Navy has since released a plan, stating that defueling the underground storage tanks may take until the end of 2024, identifying Dec. 31, 2024 as the earliest date “that is consistent with the safe defueling of the facility.”

However, that plan was rejected — deemed incomplete and “disappointing” by state officials.

Locals say 2024 is too long to wait for the promise of clean water.

“Until the facility is fully defueled and decommissioned, Oʻahuʻs aquifer will not be safe,” said DeFranco.

ABC News has reached out to the Navy for comment on the lawsuit and the demands but has yet to receive a response.

Activists and residents are asking for a new, improved plan for defueling that speeds up the timeline to ensure residents have safe water sooner.

“We fear the Navy will continue to backpedal, stall and drag out the timeline while our aquifer is currently experiencing petroleum contamination directly as a result of their neglect. Red Hill continues to be an ongoing threat to life on Oʻahu,” said DeFranco.

The Red Hill storage facility sits directly above the Southern Oʻahu Basal Aquifer.

According to the DOH, the Navy is responsible for ensuring safe water for nearby residents and ordered the agency to provide alternative drinking water for the roughly 93,000 people who may have been affected.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Fox News host Sean Hannity, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, is set to be deposed on Wednesday as part of a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit against his network.

The $1.6 billion dollar suit was filed against Fox News last March by the voting machine company Dominion, which was at the center of numerous unproven conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election.

According to the lawsuit’s court docket, Hannity’s deposition would be the latest in a string of scheduled depositions of some of Fox’s biggest names. Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Jeannine Pirro were scheduled to be deposed last week, and former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs was scheduled for earlier this week according to the docket, though it has not been confirmed if those depositions occurred.

Experts say the depositions could be “potentially very important,” and that they could play a key role in the direction of the case moving forward.

“The critical issue here is the state of mind of Fox and those individual people,” Floyd Abrams, one of the country’s leading experts on First Amendment law, told ABC News. “What did they say about Dominion, and did they believe it?”

“In order for Dominion to win, it has to show that what was said was not just false, but that it was known or suspected to be false,” said Abrams, who has argued over a dozen cases before the Supreme Court.

In its complaint against Fox, Dominion alleges that the network pushed “outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched” accusations that the voting company had rigged the 2020 election in order to “lure back viewers” so it could boost ratings and make a profit.

“Fox sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion the process,” Dominion said in its complaint.

In a statement, a Fox News spokesperson said, “We are confident we will prevail as freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected, in addition to the damages claims being outrageous, unsupported, and not rooted in sound financial analysis, serving as nothing more than a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs.”

Dan Webb, an attorney who was recently added to Fox’s legal team, has also said that Fox News was simply doing its duty by reporting on the allegations.

“There are very few events in the last 50 years in this country that I think are more newsworthy than our president alleging that our entire Democratic system was put on its head by a voting machine company stealing votes,” Webb told The Washington Post.

A Dominion spokesperson declined to comment.

Roy Gutterman, an expert on free speech at Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, said depositions in these kinds of cases can get heated.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually they get down to some very blunt questions: Did you know these statements you were putting on the air were false? What kinds of information were you basing that on?” Gutterman said.

“No one’s going into this deposition without being thoroughly prepared,” said Gutterman. “There will be lawyers from both sides of the room, and it can get pretty rancorous, but you have to answer the questions.”

The Fox News suit is part of a string of lawsuits Dominion has filed against those it says helped push false accusations that it helped sway the election — a group that includes several of Trump’s close allies.

Efforts by attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell to have the lawsuits against them thrown out were denied by a judge last summer.

Powell, who promised to “release the Kraken” in what turned out to be a series of unsuccessful legal challenges alleging voter fraud, had argued that that “no reasonable person” would have believed her theories were “truly statements of fact.”

After Dominion’s suit against Giuliani was filed last January, he called it “another act of intimidation by the hate-filled left-wing to wipe out and censor the exercise of free speech, as well as the ability of lawyers to defend their clients vigorously.”

At the first public hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, former Attorney General Bill Barr said in a clip played by the committee that the baseless allegations that Dominion machines switched votes from Joe Biden to Trump were “complete nonsense” and “amongst the most disturbing.”

“I told them it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on it, and they were doing a great disservice to the country,” Barr said of the Dominion conspiracy theories. “I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations, but they were made in such a sensational way that they obviously were influencing a lot of people.”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — The United States Army said Tuesday it has grounded its entire fleet of Chinook cargo helicopters after fuel leaks caused a “small number” of engine fires.

The Army has identified the cause of the leaks among an “isolated number” of Boeing H-47 Chinooks and is working to resolve the issue, according to Army spokeswoman Cynthia Smith.

“While no deaths or injuries occurred, the Army temporarily grounded the H-47 fleet out of an abundance of caution, until those corrective actions are complete,” Smith said in a statement Tuesday. “The safety of our Soldiers is the Army’s top priority, and we will ensure our aircraft remain safe and airworthy.”

A U.S. official told ABC News there are about 70 aircraft that teams are looking at because they have a part that is suspected to be connected to the problem.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report the grounding.

The Army has about 400 Chinooks in its fleet around the world, using them to transport troops and equipment as seen in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The CH-47F, one of the latest versions of the Chinook, is the Army’s only heavy-lift cargo helicopter supporting combat and other critical operations, according to the Army’s website.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — At the end of the 2021 school year, sixth-grade teacher Anita Carson decided to resign.

Carson, of Polk County, Florida, told ABC News that she didn’t want to leave her students behind. But when new laws began to restrict what teachers could teach about diversity, she said it would make “an already hard job — even if you love it — really unmanageable.”

Across the country, legislation has forced strict limitations on classroom curriculum and discussions concerning race and LGBTQ issues.

Schools and libraries have reported a massive increase in book-banning efforts from legislators and parents on topics like racism, race, sexual orientation, gender and more.

The U.S. has 300,000 teacher and school staff vacancies according to the National Education Association. And the culture wars over censorship and diversity in the classroom have pushed out teachers like Carson from schools.

“We are seeing that teachers are personally targeted. They’re targeted in social media, they’re targeted in everyday life,” said Emily Kirkpatrick, the executive director of the National Council of Teachers of English. “It is leading towards an extinguishing of the passion of why teachers got into the profession in the first place.”

The fight over education

Several bills across the nation have broadly targeted race, gender and sexual orientation in classroom education.

Supporters of these bills say that students should not feel shame, guilt or discomfort based on school lessons. Many teachers have reported heavy vetting when it comes to books and curriculum; several math textbooks in Florida were rejected for allegedly having racial “indoctrination.”

“We can and should teach this history without labeling a young child as an oppressor or requiring he or she feel guilt or shame based on their race or sex,” said Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt when he signed an anti-race education bill in May 2021. “I refuse to tolerate otherwise during a time when we are already so polarized.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis shared similar sentiments when signing the now-blocked Stop WOKE Act, which limited education on race and was deemed unconstitutional by a judge.

“No one should be instructed to feel as if they are not equal or shamed because of their race,” DeSantis said in June. “In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida.”

Some teachers say these efforts will block them from discussing the nation’s past and present accurately.

They also say these efforts are eroding the quality of public education and making it harder for students and teachers from marginalized groups to succeed.

“We have a nationwide challenge with getting students to read and to want to read,” Kirkpatrick said. “Teachers work so hard to find books that will appeal to students and that students can identify with and relate to. And so what legislators are doing is making that extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible.”

Stories from teachers who left

Michael James, a former special education teacher in Escambia County, Florida, resigned after he alleged that pictures of historic Black figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Harriett Tubman were taken down from his classroom walls because they were inappropriate.

The district has refuted the claims, saying officials were “astounded by Mr. James’ allegations, as his demeanor in the classroom that day was very friendly and accommodating.”

The district claims officials told James he would have to change his board to accommodate state standards and that he obliged, though James said he did not agree to this.

James told ABC News that he taught in a diverse school district where 34.6% of students are Black and felt it was important that his students see themselves represented in the classroom.

“Bottom line — this is all about small precious children that need to be protected, loved and rigorously educated and not treated less than others in a higher income area or poorly because of race or income,” James said in a statement.

Similarly, 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year Willie Carver resigned from his position at Montgomery County High School after he says he faced harassment from parents and residents over his sexuality, as well as restrictions on what educators could teach about race.

“The last year began with me hearing administrators telling us not to teach racial things and us having to push back pretty hard,” Carver told ABC News. “I have very few students of color. It is all the more important for us to make sure they feel seen or that they feel represented. It’s also all the more important that my students who are white have experiences with perspectives outside of their own, especially when they’re faced with such racism at home, often, or in their communities.”

Carver, a gay man, also said his school district did little to defend him from attacks on his identity from a local woman who claimed he was “grooming” children in a student-run LGBTQ group.

Carver is now working as an academic adviser at the University of Kentucky.

Montgomery superintendent Matt Thompson told ABC News in an email, “Mr. Carver is a wonderful English and French teacher. We wish him well in his new endeavor.”

Carson, the former Florida teacher, now works as a community organizer for the local political advocacy group Equality Florida. The activist group fights against the very bills that pushed Carson to leave her work as an educator. She said if parents can come to understand what’s being taught in the classroom, kids would benefit.

“This idea that teachers are trying to hide things from parents when we’ve been spending decades, begging for parents’ involvement and having curriculum nights and parent conferences and constantly having events that parents can come to … it’s incredibly false and toxic,” Carson said.

She said these bills pit parents against teachers and severely limit conversations about how to best serve the students.

“I left teaching but I could not leave advocating for my kids and advocating for students,” Carson said.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Officials have released a remarkable new image of the Phantom Galaxy — about 32 million light-years away from Earth — taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.

Published first by the European Space Agency, which has been collaborating with NASA on the Webb telescope, the image shows the galaxy — located in the Pisces constellation — in great detail.

Also known as Messier 74, the Phantom Galaxy, with its two well-defined spiral arms, falls under a class known as a “grand design spiral.”

The galaxy has low surface brightness, making it hard to see and requiring clear, dark skies to do so. However, Webb’s sharp lens have captured the clearest image of the galaxy’s features.

“These spiral arms are traced by blue and bursts of pink, which are star-forming regions,” NASA wrote in a social media post. “A speckled cluster of young stars glow blue at the very heart of the galaxy.”

It also provides an unobstructed view of the star cluster at the center of the galaxy, without it being obscured by gas. The Webb telescope can past through gas and dust, which can appear opaque to the human eye.

“The addition of crystal-clear Webb observations at longer wavelengths will allow astronomers to pinpoint star-forming regions in the galaxies, accurately measure the masses and ages of star clusters, and gain insights into the nature of the small grains of dust drifting in interstellar space,” the ESA said.

In the NASA post, there are also differences seen in the way the Webb telescope captured the Phantom Galaxy compared to the Hubble telescope.

The Webb telescope is an infrared telescope, meaning it uses infrared radiation to detect objects in space.

It can observe celestial bodies, such as stars, nebulae and planets, that are too cool or too faint to be observed in visible light — that is, what’s visible to humans.

By comparison, the Hubble telescope sees visible light, ultraviolet radiation and near-infrared radiation.

While Hubble did manage to capture many of the same star-forming regions and young stars, the images are not as clear as the one captured by Webb.

The Webb telescope was launched last December and NASA and ESA began releasing images from the new technology in July.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(JACKSON, Miss.) — Staffing shortages, system issues and multiple equipment failures have led to a crisis where Jackson, Mississippi, residents have lost running water for an indefinite amount of time, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said at a press conference on Tuesday.

Lumumba attributed the city’s water crisis to a lack of maintenance over the last few decades, adding that it will cost billions of dollars to fix the issue.

“This is a set of accumulated problems based on deferred maintenance that’s not taken place over decades,” Lumumba said.

Lumumba estimated it would cost at least $1 billion to fix the water distribution system and billions more to resolve the issue altogether.

“The residents of Jackson are worthy of a dependable system, and we look forward to a coalition of the willing who will join us in the fight to improve this system that’s been failing for decades,” Lumumba said.

At least 180,000 people will go without reliable drinking water indefinitely in Jackson after pumps at the main water treatment plant failed this week, officials said.

A major pump at Jackson’s O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant was damaged, forcing the city to use backup pumps, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said at a news conference Monday evening.

Reeves declared a State of Emergency on Tuesday and activated the state’s National Guard to help officials deal with the ongoing water emergency.

“The state is marshaling tremendous resources to protect the people of our capital city,” Reeves said at the conference.

Residents will not have reliable running water in the state’s capital until the problem is fixed, officials said.

Reeves said the water shortage would make it more difficult for Jackson to produce enough water to fight fires, flush toilets and other essential needs.

Residents have lined up on roads and highways throughout the city to get to water distribution sites.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Mississippi has not formally asked the federal government to help bring in water but is ready to help “in any way that we can” when that request is made.

“We stand ready and we are eager to assist further as soon as we receive an official request from the state,” she said on Air Force One Tuesday.

Officials are warning the city’s residents not to drink the water because it’s raw water from the reservoirs being pushed through the pipes.

Jackson has been under a boil water notice since July 29.

In February 2021, freezing temperatures caused water and power outages in Jackson.

A day after the current water crisis was announced, Jackson’s Public Works Director Marlin King was reassigned to another role, Lumumba said.

King now serves as the deputy director of public works, while the former director of planning and development, Jordan Hillman, will fill King’s old position, according to ABC News Jackson affiliate WAPT.

ABC News’ Darren Reynolds and Emily Shapiro contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — At least two people have died amid severe storms in the Midwest.

In Michigan, a 14-year-old girl was electrocuted and killed on Monday when an electrical line fell during a thunderstorm, according to the Monroe Public Safety Department. She was walking with a friend in her backyard and reached for what she thought was a stick, but it was the charged electrical line, authorities said.

And in Toledo, Ohio, a woman was killed when a tree fell on her, fire officials said, according to ABC affiliate WTVG-TV.

More than 250,000 customers were without power across Michigan, Illinois and Indiana as the storms rolled through Monday.

That cold front is now moving to the East Coast on Tuesday, bringing strong storms from Virginia to Maine. Damaging winds will be the biggest threat.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — The parent company of InfoWars has agreed to face a second defamation trial over the false claims its founder, conspiracy theorist and right-wing provocateur Alex Jones, made about the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Free Speech Systems said at a bankruptcy court hearing in Houston on Monday it would no longer oppose the trial in Connecticut despite the company’s bankruptcy proceeding, which would ordinarily offer a reprieve from legal action.

“The parties have reached a settlement on this. This will help facilitate the trial in Connecticut,” U.S. bankruptcy judge Christopher Lopez said on Monday. “The fact that the parties reached agreement on this, I want to thank all the professionals.”

The Connecticut trial is expected to begin in September.

Judge Barbara Bellis found Jones liable in a defamation lawsuit for calling the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School a hoax. The trial in Connecticut does not involve a question of guilt or innocence, but rather, of damages, as the judge already determined that Jones is guilty.

In exchange for allowing the second trial to move forward, the families agreed not to oppose the company’s choice of lawyers, both of whom are under investigation for leaking sensitive medical records about the plaintiffs, something Bellis said “gravely concerned” her at a court hearing earlier this month.

Jones was successfully sued by the parents of a 6-year-old boy who was killed in the massacre after he claimed that the shooting — where 20 children and six adults were killed — didn’t happen. Jones later said at trial he thinks the shooting was “100% real.”

The plaintiffs, immediate family members of children and educators killed in at Sandy Hook as well as one first responder, successfully sued Jones for defamation in November 2021 and are seeking to hold him financially liable for his comments, which include calling them “crisis actors,” saying the massacre was “staged” and “the fakest thing since the three-dollar bill.”

At issue in the Connecticut trial, is how much Jones and Free Speech Systems will have to pay the families of children killed in the massacre.

Jones’ attorney did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.

Earlier this month, a Texas jury decided Jones should pay the parents of the 6-year-old victim $45 million in punitive damages and $4 million in compensatory damages.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(EL PASO, Texas) — One person has died after a train derailed in El Paso, Texas, Monday night, the El Paso Fire Department said.

“Nearby homes are being evacuated as a safety precaution. Please avoid the area of Franklin and Barton as it is an active emergency scene. TXGas en route,” the fire department tweeted.

There were no other injuries reported at this time, according to the fire department.

Story developing…

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.