(NEW YORK) — As the holiday travel rush begins, a major storm is expected to move from the West Coast to the East Coast, bringing heavy snow, blizzard conditions and damaging winds.
This week’s forecast
On Tuesday morning, the storm is hitting Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, dropping several inches of snow.
By Wednesday afternoon, snow and brutal cold will slam Denver to Minneapolis.
On Thursday, the snow moves into Kansas City, St. Louis and Chicago.
Snow totals could top 1 foot in parts of the Midwest.
On Friday, gusty winds will blow all that snow around and may produce blizzard conditions in the Heartland and Chicago. Major airport delays are possible.
Meanwhile, on the East Coast, heavy rain and damaging winds are possible Thursday night into Friday night. Winds gusts could reach 50 to 60 mph from Washington, D.C., to Boston. Major flight delays are possible.
Brutal cold
Behind this winter storm will be brutally cold air.
The temperature in Denver might remain below zero all day on Thursday, making it the coldest day in eight years.
In Montana, actual temperatures on Thursday are expected to be in the minus 40s, with a wind chill — what temperature it feels like — near minus 60 degrees. This could be the coldest air for the region in almost 40 years.
On Friday morning, the wind chill is forecast to plunge to minus 42 degrees in Minneapolis and minus 31 degrees in Chicago and Kansas City. On Christmas morning, the wind chill will be slightly more bearable with forecasts of minus 29 degrees in Minneapolis, minus 16 degrees in Chicago and minus 6 degrees in Kansas City.
This bitter cold moves into Texas, the Gulf Coast and Florida on Friday and will last through Christmas weekend. On Christmas morning the wind chill is forecast to be 24 degrees in Houston, 23 degrees in New Orleans and 32 degrees in Tampa.
In New York City, a brutal wind chill of 5 degrees is forecast for Christmas morning.
Preliminary data placed the center of the quake along the Pacific coast about 7.5 miles away from Ferndale, California, USGS said. The quake was recorded at about 2:34 local time.
A tsunami wasn’t expected, according to the U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center, which reported the quake at a preliminary magnitude of 6.1.
More than 59,000 customers — about 60% of those in Humboldt County — had lost power as of about 3:30 a.m. local time, according to tracking website PowerOutage.us.
Power is out across the county,” officials said on Twitter, adding in all-caps: “Do not call 911 unless you are experiencing an emergency.”
The quake was large enough to trigger a “ShakeAlert” that was sent to cell phones by FEMA’s Wireless Emergency Alert System, USGS said.
“We hope everyone is safe and if you felt shaking or got an alert you took a protective action like Drop, Cover, and Hold On,” the agency said.
(NEW YORK) — With a new year comes a host of new laws and regulations in states and cities across the country.
Residents and business leaders will have to abide by some major changes to their current policies following laws passed by state legislatures and ballot measures approved by voters. These laws deal with issues like raising the minimum wage, improving workplace pay transparency and legalizing marijuana.
Here are some of the notable new laws to hit the books next year:
Minimum wage
Twenty-six states will see their minimum wages rise starting Jan. 1.
The new salary floor comes following calls from workers’ rights groups, elected officials and others to increase wages for low-income workers.
Of the states that increased their minimum wages in 2023, Montana is the state with the lowest rate at $9.95 an hour, while Washington state is the highest at $15.74 an hour.
New York City, and its surrounding counties, will have a $15.00 minimum wage, which is 80 cents higher than the new minimum wage for the rest of the state, according to New York’s minimum wage laws.
Pay transparency
Two states are joining Oregon and New York City as locations that will require employees to post information about their salaries to prospective employees starting Jan. 1.
Under California and Washington state’s pay transparency laws, businesses and organizations with more than 15 employees must include a pay scale for any external job postings for non-employee applicants, including postings published by third parties.
The California law also requires employers who have over 100 employees to submit an annual report to the California Civil Rights Department that includes their organization’s pay data, the number of employees by race, ethnicity and sex for 10 specified job categories, and the mean hourly rates and summaries of earnings.
New legalized drug laws
Maryland and Missouri are slated to roll out their rules and regulations for legalized recreational marijuana for adults over 21.
Voters in both states, which currently offer medical marijuana to adults, passed ballot measures in November that approved the change.
As of Jan. 1, 21 states and the District of Columbia offer adult residents legalized recreational and medicinal marijuana.
In 2020, Oregon voters approved a ballot measure that made the state the first in the nation to legalize recreational psychedelic mushrooms, specifically Psilocybin. However, adult residents will only be allowed to use the drug in a supervised, state-approved center.
Starting Jan. 4, 2023, the Oregon Health Authority will begin accepting applications for Psilocybin manufacturers and the agency is expected to begin opening Psilocybin centers for residents later in the year.
Colorado voters also passed a ballot measure in the last election to legalize psychedelic mushrooms. While the substance won’t be available for some time as the state works out the specifics of its regulations, the state will decriminalize those substances by Jan 4. 2023, according to the Colorado Sec. of State’s office.
Criminal justice reform
Several states will implement changes to their criminal justice policies beginning Jan. 1.
Illinois is slated to become the first state in the union to end cash bail. Under the “SAFE-T Act,” courts will use “a more equitable system where pre-trial detention is based on community risk rather than financial means,” according to Gov. JB Pritzker’s office.
California will become the first state to restrict the use of rap lyrics in criminal investigations in 2023. Under the law, a judge will have to determine the admissibility of the lyrics in question as evidence, and whether they are directly linked to an alleged crime.
Several states will have new regulations that will expunge the records of former felons who don’t commit any crimes after they are released from prison.
Under Michigan’s new rules, up to two felony convictions will automatically be expunged 10 years after a person’s sentence is complete if they don’t commit another crime.
There are several exceptions, including felonies that involve sex crimes, and a felony conviction for domestic violence.
California will allow people with violent felony records to petition to have their records sealed if they completed their sentence and have not had a new felony offense in four years.
(CHARLOTTE, N.C.) — Law enforcement officials investigating the disappearance of Madelina Cojocari, an 11-year-old girl who was reported missing on Dec. 15, searched a lake in her North Carolina town on Monday, the FBI and local police said.
“As part of the normal investigative process, we are expanding our search to include Lake Cornelius as a precautionary measure,” the FBI’s Charlotte bureau said on Twitter. “There’s nothing we won’t do to #FindMadalina.”
Cojocari has been missing since Nov. 23, but her disappearance wasn’t reported to her school’s resource officer until Dec. 15, according to the Cornelius Police Department.
The girl’s mother, Diana Cojocari, 37, and stepfather, Christopher Palmiter, 60, were arrested on Saturday on the charge of failure to report the disappearance of a child to law enforcement, police said in two statements.
Police said in a statement on Monday that the expansion of their search to the lake was “part of the normal investigative process,” which includes adding search locations outside Cojocari’s home.
“While the public will not see the majority of our investigative work, today you may see our lake patrol units and partners at the Cornelius Fire Department,” the department said on Facebook.
The department also said it was working with the FBI and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation to speak with “every person” who may have info about Cojocari’s disappearance.
Police said they’re seeking to make an “exact timeline of when she was last seen.”
(UVALDE, Texas) — An undercover inspector posing as an intruder was able to access a school cafeteria during a December security audit in Uvalde, Texas, the school district’s superintendent revealed Monday evening.
Student safety wasn’t jeopardized, interim superintendent Gary Patterson told a surprised school board during its meeting. But the news served as a shocking reminder of what occurred at Robb Elementary School on May 24, when a shooter entered through a door that was supposed to be locked and killed 19 students and two teachers.
The auditors tested three schools in Uvalde, one of which was accessed through an exterior door with a faulty latch near the school’s loading dock, Patterson said. The specific school was not identified.
The inspector noticed that the door did not latch closed unless the door was slammed, according to the audit. A delivery was in progress during the audit, and they were able to slip in the faulty door as it was left ajar. The fake intruder made it to the cafeteria, which was empty, before being stopped and questioned by school staff members.
“That is 100% my responsibility to see that that doesn’t happen,” Patterson said. “The delivery of goods and to loading docks was quite frankly something I overlooked, but I won’t overlook it next time.”
The other two schools that were part of the audit passed, with 100% of their exterior doors locked, according to Patterson. The interim superintendent said they plan to have an additional security training day for teachers and staff the day before school restarts in January.
The audit was part of a program started in October by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to randomly test Texas schools’ fortitude against outside threats, something prompted by the Robb shooting. The tests are being conducted statewide by the Texas School Safety Center at Texas State University, with hundreds already completed.
In the more than six months since the Uvalde massacre, the school district has spent millions of dollars adding additional security measures. They have spent or plan to spend almost $5 million combined on stronger fencing, auto-locking doors, security cameras and additional patrols.
Patterson also detailed his plans to increase security at Uvalde schools, including rebuilding the school police department. All of the department’s officers were put on suspension in October. Josh Gutierrez was hired in late November as the new school police chief, replacing Pete Arredondo, the chief on the day of the shooting who was fired in August amid criticism of his response during the shooting.
Gutierrez spoke Monday for the first time about his plans to rebuild the force. He told San Antonio ABC affiliate KSAT-TV that he’s in the process of vetting officer applicants, conducting interviews and doing deep background checks.
“I have the ability to come out here and help the community heal, help our community heal, and the ability to reestablish a good foundation for our police department,” Gutierrez told KSAT.
Going into this school year, parents expressed concerns over the safety of the Uvalde schools during summer school board meetings. Some families elected to switch to private school, home school or remote learning as an alternative.
At Monday’s meeting, Patterson said that efforts to install new, upgraded doors and security gates have been hampered by supply chain issues and a lack of materials. The high school and junior high school are still waiting to get auto-locking doors. They have already been installed at the elementary schools.
“All the supply chain, equipment shortages, personnel shortages are working against us,” Patterson said. “But we are making good progress.”
(ROANOKE, Va.) — A bronze statue honoring Henrietta Lacks, the woman whose “immortal” cells have resulted in countless medical breakthroughs, will be built in her birthplace of Roanoke, Virginia.
Artist Bryce Cobbs unveiled a life-sized preliminary drawing of Lacks in a ceremony announcing the statue on Monday.
“The fact that I’m involved in this project means the world,” Cobbs said at a press conference. “I’m humbled to be a part of history in this way and just to be trusted with the task of making sure that I just captured Mrs. Henrietta Lacks the best way I could.”
Sculptor Larry Bechtel said he will reference the drawing in his design, which is set to be unveiled in October 2023.
Roanoke Hidden Histories, an initiative of the Harrison Museum of African American Culture, and Roanoke Vice-Mayor Trish White-Boyd are working to “surface the hidden histories of the African American experience in Roanoke.” They commissioned the project, which recently surpassed its $160,000 goal.
The statue will stand in downtown Roanoke’s Henrietta Lacks Plaza, previously named Lee Plaza after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
A statue of Lee was removed from the site after being toppled over in 2020 in the wake of the Black Live Matter movement following George Floyd’s murder.
Lacks’ grandson, Ron Lacks, said he was excited about the project.
“This is an honor and a privilege to be here in Roanoke with my father, Lawrence Lacks, Henrietta’s oldest and only living child,” he said at the ceremony on Monday. “This historical moment, occasion, has been a long time coming.”
The family was joined by attorney Ben Crump, who said the statue will serve as a reminder that Henrietta Lacks lives on through her legacy and great, though unwitting, contribution to science and medicine.
“I just think it’s so fitting in the state of Virginia … where in the past we commemorated a lot of men with statues that divided us. Now here in Roanoke, Virginia, we will have a statue of a Black woman who brings us all together,” he said.
In 1951, Lacks received treatment for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital, one of the only medical centers accepting Black patients at the time. There, a gynecologist took a sample of her cells, sending it to a lab for research without her knowledge or consent, her family says.
Though Lacks died just months later, her cells, later named “HeLa” cells, were discovered to be remarkably “immortal,” lasting longer than any other samples scientists had seen, even multiplying every 24 hours, according to Johns Hopkins.
Scientists say HeLa cells are estimated to have saved millions of lives through medical advancements, including the polio vaccine, coronavirus vaccines, cancer treatments, AIDS treatments, Parkinson’s treatments, and human survival in zero gravity.
Crump is also heading a lawsuit against biotech company Thermo Fisher Scientific filed by Lacks’ family last year that his firm says will “lay the foundation for genetic justice.” Lacks’ family claims the corporation has unjustly made money off Lacks’ cells without permission from the family.
“When you consider issues of genetic justice, reproductive rights, and stem cell research, there are a lot of historical figures who we like to suggest that their contributions changed the world,” Crump said on Monday. “Well, in the case of Henrietta Lacks, we have objective evidence. If I was in the court of law, I would say we have empirical evidence that Henrietta Lacks’ immortal cells literally changed the world.”
Thermo Fisher told ABC News it does not comment on pending litigation.
“Although these were the first cells that could be easily shared and multiplied in a lab setting, Johns Hopkins has never sold or profited from the discovery or distribution of HeLa cells and does not own the rights to the HeLa cell line,” Johns Hopkins said in a statement. “Rather, Johns Hopkins offered HeLa cells freely and widely for scientific research.”
“Having reviewed our interactions with Henrietta Lacks and with the Lacks family over more than 50 years, we found that Johns Hopkins could have – and should have – done more to inform and work with members of Henrietta Lacks’ family out of respect for them, their privacy and their personal interests. Though the collection and use of Henrietta Lacks’ cells in research was an acceptable and legal practice in the 1950s, such a practice would not happen today without the patient’s consent,” the statement said.
(CHICAGO) — Students at a Chicago high school staged a classroom walkout Monday afternoon to protest gun violence just days after a shooting near their campus left two teenagers dead and two others wounded.
Students at Benito Juarez Community Academy in the Pilsen neighborhood on the city’s southwest side, left their classrooms and gathered around a makeshift memorial where Friday’s shooting occurred. The students called on city leaders to bolster security on their campus and crack down on gangs.
Many of the students released balloons into the air as they held a vigil for the victims.
“I want Benito Juarez to be safer because, honestly, I felt like this situation wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t a lot of gang activity around the school,” one of the student protest organizers, Kiya, told ABC Chicago station WLS-TV. “It’s scary for people like me, who are not gang-affiliated, that have to go to school every day and then wonder, ‘Dang, am I going to get shot?'”
Gunfire erupted around 2:30 p.m. Friday just outside the Benito Juarez campus, police said. Killed in the shooting were 15-year-old Brandon Perez, a Benito Juarez student, and his friend, 14-year-old Nathan Billegas, a freshman at Chicago Bulls College Prep, family members told WLS. Chicago police said both victims were shot in the head.
Two other teenagers, a 15-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl, were hit by gunfire and are expected to fully recover, according to police.
During a news conference Friday evening, Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown said the shooting occurred just as school was being dismissed for the day in staggered phases.
No arrests have been announced in the case.
“We are conducting a pretty aggressive investigation and all of our resources are being dedicated to insure that we bring these people to justice that caused this,” Brown said.
Police released a surveillance image Saturday of a person they believe was involved in the shooting, running away from the scene.
“I don’t want anyone to feel like they’re scared to come to school or anything, like, that’s why I’m doing it,” Kiya said of the planned classroom walkout. “I’m doing it for other schools, too, that have to go through this.”
Overall, homicides in Chicago are down 15% from 2021 and shooting incidents have also fallen 20% from a year ago, according to the latest Chicago police crime statistics.
(MOSCOW, Idaho) — About 10,000 tips have been submitted so far in the unsolved murders of four University of Idaho students, police said Monday, but investigators still don’t have a suspect.
Roommates Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen and Xana Kernodle, as well as Kernodle’s boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, were all stabbed to death in the girls’ off-campus house in Moscow in the early hours of Nov. 13.
Investigators are still combing through “hours and hours of digital content,” including surveillance videos submitted by residents and business owners, Moscow police said in a statement Friday.
“There is a massive amount of digital content to review with a robust team dedicated to handling digital submissions,” police said. “Other members of the investigation team are dedicated specifically to email tips, while another team is assigned to Tip Line calls.”
Among the videos under review is this surveillance video from a Moscow gas station that shows a white 2011-2013 Hyundai Elantra near the victims’ house when the crimes occurred.
Authorities are “confident” that the person or persons in the Hyundai Elantra has “information that is critical” to the case, Moscow police Capt. Roger Lanier said last week.
“We have many tips that have come in on the 2011-2013 Hyundai Elantra,” Moscow Police Chief James Fry said in a video Monday. “But what we’re asking is, anybody else who still hasn’t sent in a tip, if you own one or if you know someone who was driving one the day before [the crimes] or the day after, please send that tip in.”
Police have released this white Hyundai Elantra stock photo.
Police said the investigation won’t slow down over the university’s winter break.
Much of the case remains a mystery, including a motive and how two other roommates survived.
The surviving roommates, who police said are not suspects, were at the house and likely slept through the murders, according to police. They were on the ground floor while the four victims were on the second and third floors.
Lanier said last week that police “do have a lot of information” in the case that they’re choosing not to release to the public.
“We’re not releasing specific details because we do not want to compromise this investigation,” he said in a video statement.
Authorities urge anyone with information to upload digital media to fbi.gov/moscowidaho or contact the tip line at tipline@ci.moscow.id.us or 208-883-7180.
(EL PASO, Texas) — The Texas National Guard has deployed a “contingency border force” of over 400 personnel to El Paso, TX, as the city continues to deal with a surge of asylum-seekers arriving at the border.
The Texas Military Department said the deployment is part of Governor Abbott’s “enhanced border security effort” and will include a Security Response Force comprised of “elements” from the 606th Military Police Battalion “trained in civil disturbance operations and mass migration response.”
A spokesperson confirmed to ABC News that these types of Security Response Forces are also sometimes dispatched to large protests, like those that rattled the country after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, MN.
“The equipping of riot shields would be mission dependent and based on the situation in their area of operation,” the spokesperson said.
The move came hours before Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued a temporary stay on an order that would end Title 42, a Trump-era health policy used over 2.4 million times to expel and prevent migrants from requesting asylum in the United States, citing the risk of COVID-19 spread.
In November, a U.S. district judge ruled that the policy was “arbitrary and capricious” and ordered it to end. A coalition of 19 states appealed that judge’s decision, now the Supreme Court will weigh that appeal, but it’s unclear when their final ruling might come.
El Paso saw a sharp increase of asylum-seekers in recent days leading up to the Title 42 deadline, with U.S. Border Patrol making over 2,200 apprehensions on average per day this month.
“Texas National Guard is increasing its posture along the border in response to high levels of illegal border crossings over the past week and the pending expiration of Title 42. The end of Title 42 is expected to lead to a massive influx of illegal immigrants, allowing criminals to further exploit gaps while federal authorities are inundated with migrant processing,” the Texas Military Department said in a statement before the stay was issued.
The Security Response Force is used to “safeguard the border and repel and turn-back” some immigrants, TMD said, adding that a second one will be on standby and ready to deploy to El Paso, or other parts of the border. The deployment is also part of a statewide effort to stem the flow of immigrants attempting to come into the country.
Texas Gov. Abbott is among the leaders that joined the appeal to prevent Title 42 from ending.
“If the courts do not intervene and put a halt to the removal of Title 42, it’s gonna be total chaos,” Abbott told ABC’s “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz before the stay was issued.
(LOS ANGELES) — A Los Angeles jury has found disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein guilty of three of seven counts, including one count of rape of Jane Doe 1, in his Los Angeles sexual assault trial.
The jury found Weinstein not guilty of one count — sexual battery by restraint of Jane Doe 3 — and it was hung on three counts, including forcible rape of Jane Doe 4. The jury will return Tuesday to hear arguments on special findings.
Weinstein, who is already serving a 23-year prison sentence in New York for criminal sexual assault and third-degree rape, was accused by four women of assaulting them in hotels between 2004 and 2013. He faced two counts of rape and five counts of sexual assault.
The 70-year-old former movie executive pleaded not guilty and has said all of the encounters were consensual.
Jane Doe 1’s lawyer, Dave Ring, said in a statement, “No victim should have to endure what Jane Doe 1 did the past five years after she came forward. Weinstein and his lawyers did everything they could to intimidate her and discredit her, and they failed miserably. Jane Doe 1’s life has been incredibly difficult since she revealed the rape in 2017; but she persevered and brought Weinstein down. We are all very proud of her.”
In a separate statement, Jane Doe 1 said, in part, “Harvey Weinstein forever destroyed a part of me that night in 2013 and I will never get that back. The criminal trial was brutal and Weinstein’s lawyers put me through hell on the witness stand, but I knew I had to see this through to the end, and I did.”
“I hope Weinstein never sees the outside of a prison cell during his lifetime,” she added.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón thanked the survivors in a statement following the verdict, saying, in part, “I stand in awe of their fearlessness. They deserve better than what the system has given them.”
“I also want to thank the jurors for their service during this lengthy trial and for examining all of the evidence carefully,” he said. “I am of course disappointed that the jury was split on some of the counts, but hope its partial verdict brings at least some measure of justice to the victims.”
Weinstein initially faced 11 counts in the trial, but four charges relating to Jane Doe No. 5, including two counts of forcible rape and two counts of forcible oral copulation, were dropped by the prosecution.
The four women all testified during the trial, including Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Siebel Newsom was referred to as Jane Doe No. 4 during the trial, but she has been publicly identified by her lawyer.
Over more than two hours of testimony, beginning Nov. 10, Siebel Newsom often broke down recalling the 2005 encounter with Weinstein at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills in which she said she was raped. Siebel Newsom, then an aspiring actress and currently a documentary filmmaker, said she accepted an invitation to a meeting with the producer at his hotel suite because “you don’t say no to Harvey Weinstein.”
“I was so violated and I don’t know how that happened,” Siebel Newsom testified about how she felt after the incident. “I didn’t see the clues and I didn’t know how to escape.”
Prior to the trial, Seibel Newsom’s lawyer, Beth Fegan, said of her client’s testimony: “Like many other women, my client was sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein at a purported business meeting that turned out to be a trap. She intends to testify at his trial in order to seek some measure of justice for survivors, and as part of her life’s work to improve the lives of women. Please respect her choice to not discuss this matter outside of the courtroom.”
The trial in Los Angeles came 2 1/2 years after Weinstein was found guilty of similar crimes in New York City, a landmark decision after the so-called #MeToo movement, in which powerful men were exposed for sexual misconduct, began largely around bombshell reports about the Miramax founder’s behavior in The New York Times and The New Yorker in fall 2017.
Weinstein’s lawyer, Mark Werksman, said in opening arguments during his LA trial that each allegation was a “weak and unsubstantiated trickle that will evaporate upon your close scrutiny.”
“The evidence in this case is based upon emotion, not facts,” Werksman said. “You will learn that the allegations can be traced directly to a movement called the #MeToo movement.”
Weinstein did not testify during the trial.
In his closing argument, Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson said the witnesses testified “credibly,” even under intense cross-examination, and that the defense has the difficult task of arguing that every single woman who took the stand in the case is lying.
Defense attorney Alan Jackson told the jury in his closing argument that the evidence was “smoke and mirrors” and accused the women who testified of being “fame and fortune seekers.”
