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Early vote count surpasses ordinary midterm turnout

October 17, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — More than 2 million people have already voted in the 2022 general election, according to data analyzed by the University of Florida’s U.S. Elections Project.

The project, which compiles public data on early voting at ElectProject.org, had counted 2,030,730 early votes, of which 1,842,115 mail-in ballots have been returned and 188,615 ballots have been cast in person thus far, as of Oct. 17. There have been 14,892,186 total mail ballots requested.

University of Florida professor Michael McDonald, who oversees the Elections Project, said that early turnout so far in 2022 was higher than usual for a midterm election.

“It’s clear that we are above the 2018 midterm at the same point in time in states where we have comparable data to look at,” McDonald told ABC News.

With 21 days and millions more ballots left before Nov. 8, McDonald noted that 2022 turnout is likely to be on par with 2018 midterm turnout, which broke records previously set more than a century earlier. Midterm elections typically turn out fewer voters than during years when a presidential election is held, but the recent numbers indicate a growing trend of participation over the past few years.

“We do know that interest is running high for the election. We can see the sorts of indicators that would suggest that we’re in for a high-turnout election, much like we had in 2018. And 2018, was the highest midterm turnout rate since 1914,” he said.

“So, it was a fairly exceptional election, I mean 2020 was also exceptional in that it had the highest turnout for presidential elections since 1900.”

Early voting is underway in more than a dozen states, with more to start early voting sometime this week. Early voting periods range in length from four days to 45 days before Election Day, with an average length of 19 days, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Between 2006 and 2018, the percentage of national voters who cast their vote at a polling site on Election Day dropped from roughly 80% to roughly 60%, according to voter data. During that same period, the percentage of voters who chose early in-person voting grew from 5.8% to 16.7%, and the percentage of voters who mailed in their ballot increased from 13.8% to 22.3%.

But a rise in the use of early voting began to really spike during the 2020 presidential election, when the COVID-19 pandemic dampened in-person voting and triggered many state legislatures to expand mail-in options. The 2020 election saw record breaking turnout and also was the first time more people voted before Election Day than on it.

McDonald noted that the current midterm early voting trends may be indicative of a more permanent, stronger pattern of early voting.

“What we’re observing here is that some people have changed their behavior. They’re either voting early, where they may not have done so in a past midterm election, or they’re voting sooner than they would have,” he said. “Those are both things that we saw in 2020, where people were not only voting by mail, and in person early at greater frequencies then they had past elections, but they were also voting earlier than they had in prior presidential elections.”

Of the states that record party registration, the U.S. Elections Project shows more Democrats have voted early this cycle — 52.3% compared to only 31.1 % of Republicans.

The share of Republicans who are recorded saying voters should be allowed to vote early or absentee without a documented reason fell drastically in the past few years, according to a 2021 Pew Research survey– down 19% from 2018.

The use of absentee and mail-in ballots have been subject to conspiracy and skepticism after former President Donald Trump said that mail-in ballots lead to voter fraud in 2020.

McDonald noted on Twitter that the early vote count numbers crested 2 million as their project now has included totals from Arizona, one of the latest states to open ballot casting options ahead of election day. The Copper State began mailing ballots out to constituents on Oct. 12.

Arizona was ground zero for election fraud claims, with Trump alleging mass fraud in the state — joined later by now-gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, and the courts have refuted these baseless allegations, saying there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud or irregularities associated with the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous.

Sunday on CNN, Lake again refused to commit to conceding if she loses and laid the groundwork for sowing mistrust in mail-in voting options: “We don’t want to be counting for 10 days,” Lake said.

Florida leads in early voting participation

According to the U.S. Elections Project data, nearly a third of all of the early votes that have been cast so far, were done so in Florida– it’s the only state where early vote totals exceed 600,000. The rest of the 21 states that the project has recorded as imposing some sort of early vote method spans from 100,000 to 500,000 votes cast thus far this cycle.

“Quite remarkable, right. Considering that early voting is going on in many other states,” McDonald. “Florida has been piling on another 100,000 every day, at this point. Florida’s really why the numbers have moved so quickly.”

McDonald said that because of Florida’s larger size, broader voter turnout activity is expected, along with the fact that Floridians tend to use mail ballots more frequently than some of the other states has so far been casting votes early.

Large states like California, which sent their mail-in ballots out later than the Sunshine state, will quickly catch up, he said.

“California will catch up really quick and pass Florida within the next week or so. But in this period of time, right now, we’re Florida is the state that sent out well over a million mail ballots.”

Florida leads the pack as GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday signed an executive order which allows voters in areas devastated by recent Hurricane Ian — coastal counties Lee, Charlotte and Sarasota — more flexibility to request and cast their ballots.

The expanded voting order adds three days to early voting, and waives the requirement for voters to supply a signature when requesting a vote by mail ballot at a new address– a new voting law passed in 2021– and authorizes election supervisors to designate additional early voting locations, among other measures.

DeSantis said he signed the order at the request of the Supervisors of Elections in Charlotte, Lee, and Sarasota counties, and at the recommendation of Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd, following the storm which destroyed polling places and displaced thousands of people.

DeSantis encouraged Republicans to vote by mail at a campaign event on Saturday, saying he has “confidence” in Florida’s elections. The governor polled the crowd at the event, asking how they’d vote: attendees erupted into cheers when he asked who might cast ballots on Election Day, followed by silence when he asked if they might vote by mail.

“What I would say is whatever you like is fine. We’ve got good returns on absentee, and I have confidence in early voting, in person [voting], and of course Election day [voting],” DeSantis said.

ABC News’ Miles Cohen contributed to this report.

Radioactive waste found at Missouri elementary school: Report finds

October 17, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(ST. LOUIS, Mo.) — A considerable amount of radioactive waste was found at a Missouri elementary school near St. Louis, according to a new report.

In August, Boston Chemical Data Corp. studied soil, dust and plant samples at Jana Elementary School in Florissant, Missouri, according to the company’s report.

Boston Chemical Data’s finding coincides with findings from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which first detected radioactive contaminants near the school in 2018 and again in 2019, 2020 and 2021, the report said.

“The results show the presence of low-level radioactive contamination on this property located in the banks of Coldwater Creek within the property boundary,” the Army Corps told the superintendent of the Hazelwood School District earlier this year, according to the report.

The company said that it tested soil samples from as much as six feet below the ground surface, but it’s unclear how deep the radioactive contamination goes.

The school is in the flood plain of Coldwater Creek, which was contaminated with uranium and other radioactive waste during World War II.

According to the reports, engineers studied samples from homes in the same neighborhood of the school facing the creek. They found the same type of radioactive material discovered at Jana Elementary, both outside and inside the homes in the neighborhood.

In 2019, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry found that the waste would enter homes from the creek because of flooding, Boston Chemical Data Corp. said.

The Hazelwood School District, where Jana Elementary School is located, said in a statement that it’s aware of the report concerning the radioactive waste.

“Safety is always our top priority, and we are actively discussing the implications of the findings,” the district said. “The Board of Education will be consulting with attorneys and experts in the area of testing to determine next steps.”

Cigna received millions of Medicare dollars based on invalid diagnoses, lawsuit claims

October 17, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Health care giant Cigna improperly obtained tens of millions of dollars in Medicare funding by making certain Medicare Part C recipients seem sicker than they actually were, the federal government alleged in a civil lawsuit filed Monday.

Cigna submitted false and invalid diagnoses to artificially inflate the payments it would receive for providing insurance coverage to its Medicare Advantage plan members, the suit said.

The lawsuit resulted from a whistleblower complaint and seeks damages and penalties.

“CIGNA knew that, under the Medicare Advantage reimbursement system, it would be paid more if its plan members appeared to be sicker,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement. “This Office is dedicated to holding insurers accountable if they seek to manipulate the system and boost their profits by submitting false information to the Government.”

Cigna relied on diagnoses based solely on forms completed by vendors retained and paid by the company to conduct in-home assessments of plan members, according to the lawsuit.

The nurse practitioners who typically conducted these home visits did not perform or order the testing or imaging that would have been necessary to reliably diagnose the serious, complex conditions reported, the lawsuit claims.

The nurse practitioners spent limited time with the patients and did not conduct a comprehensive physical examination. Instead, they relied largely on the patient’s own self-assessment and their responses to various basic screening questions, the government said.

There was allegedly no access to the patient’s full medical history and they typically did not obtain or review relevant medical records in advance of the visit.

Still, Cigna submitted these diagnoses to Medicare to claim increased payments and falsely certified on an annual basis that its diagnosis data submissions were “accurate, complete, and truthful,” the lawsuit said.

In response to the lawsuit, Cigna said in a statement: “We are proud of the high-quality, affordable Medicare Advantage benefits we are privileged to provide to beneficiaries nationwide in compliance with government rules. We reject these allegations and will vigorously defend our Medicare Advantage business against them. Our focus remains on serving our Medicare customers and advancing our mission of making health care more affordable, predictable, and simple for all.”

Medicare Advantage, also known as Medicare Part C, provides health insurance for tens of millions of Americans who opt out of traditional Medicare through private insurers like Cigna. They receive payments from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services based on demographic information and the diagnoses of each beneficiary.

CMS then uses the diagnosis data, in conjunction with demographic factors, to calculate a “risk score” for each beneficiary and, in turn, the amount of the monthly payment the private insurer will receive for covering that beneficiary. The model is intended to pay more to provide health care for sicker enrollees.

According to the government’s lawsuit, Cigna structured home visits for the primary purpose of capturing and recording lucrative diagnosis codes that would significantly increase the monthly capitated payments it received from CMS.

When identifying plan members to receive home visits, the lawsuit said Cigna targeted individuals who were likely to yield the greatest risk score increases and thus the greatest increased payment.

Jury begins deliberations in case against ‘Steele dossier’ ‘collector’

October 17, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(ALEXANDRIA, Va.) — A federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia, is deliberating the fate of Igor Danchenko, the Russian national accused of lying to federal investigators about information he collected in 2016 for former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele that was compiled in Steele’s now-infamous “dossier” detailing Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.

A Washington-based think tank analyst, Danchenko was hired by Steele to contribute intelligence information to Steele’s research. He became a primary source to what came to be known as the “Steele dossier,” which included explosive and unproven claims about Trump.

In a November 2021 indictment, prosecutors accused Danchenko of misleading FBI agents about his sources of information. Danchenko has pleaded not guilty.

Danchenko’s trial is the final case of three prosecutions secured by special counsel John Durham in his years-long probe into alleged misconduct by the FBI and intelligence community in their investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia.

On Monday, Durham himself questioned prosecution witnesses and delivered the prosecution’s rebuttal at the end of closing arguments.

Danchenko served as a paid FBI informant from 2017 to 2020, when the bureau was pushed to sever its relationship with him after the Justice Department named him as a source for the Steele dossier.

Federal prosecutors have argued during the trail that Danchenko misled the FBI during three days of voluntary interviews in January 2017 about where the dossier’s information came from and about his contact with other individuals. They said Danchenko told a “shifting story” to the agents who were trying to trace the source of the information.

The government alleges that false information provided to the FBI by Danchenko was used to renew the bureau’s application to continue its secret surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page after Page’s visits to Moscow.

After the prosecution rested its case Friday, the defense asked U.S. Judge Anthony Trenga to dismiss all five counts in the indictment against Danchenko, saying that Durham did not prove Danchenko lied to the FBI and obstructed its investigation into Trump’s alleged Russian ties.

Trenga dismissed one count: the prosecutions’ accusation that Danchenko falsely told the FBI that he never spoken with “a long-time participant in Democratic Party Politics” about any allegations included in the dossier. The judge ruled that Danchenko’s denial was “literally true” because the communication occurred over email and not via the spoken word.

In the defense’s closing argument, Danchenko attorney Stuart Sears accused prosecutors of being on a “mission to prove [Danchenko] a liar” and said they failed to present evidence which “doesn’t support their narrative that he’s a liar.”

Sears also pointed to the defense’s cross examination of the prosecution’s FBI witnesses, during which they spoke of the value of Danchenko’s contributions as an intelligence source and said that his outing as a source had damaged U.S. national security.

“They didn’t say what [the prosecution] wanted them to say,” said Sears, who contended that the prosecutor’s own evidence “proves the defendant is not guilty.”

In the government’s closing argument, prosecutors told jurors that Danchenko’s “own words” in emails from 2016 demonstrate that he provided misleading statements to investigators.

“You didn’t check your common sense at the courthouse door. You need to use it,” prosecutor Michael Keilty told the jury.

Missouri police allegedly dismissed claims about abducted Black women before woman escaped from basement

October 17, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(EXCELSIOR SPRINGS, Mo.) — Missouri police officers have faced criticism from some members of the community after they were accused of dismissing claims about the abduction of Black women weeks before a woman made a dramatic escape from a basement she was being held captive in.

Excelsior Springs, Missouri, resident Timothy M. Haslett, 39, was arrested on Oct. 7 after a woman escaped his home, according to a probable cause affidavit for the arrest.

She told neighbors that she had been held captive for a month in the basement.

After the 22-year-old woman fled, she showed up at the front door of a neighbor’s home wearing lingerie, a metal collar with a padlock and duct tape around her neck, according to the court document.

“It was readily apparent that she had been held against her will for a significant period of time,” Excelsior Springs Police Lt. Ryan Dowdy told reporters during a news conference on Oct. 7, according to ABC News Kansas City affiliate KMBC.

Last month, The Kansas City Defender, a nonprofit media startup, posted to Twitter and TikTok alleging that a serial killer had been targeting young Black girls in the area, The Kansas City Star reported.

The post, which has since been deleted, alleged that four girls have been killed and three went missing in the area. In response to the claim, a Kansas City Police Department spokesperson said in a statement there was “no basis to support this rumor,” according to The Star.

In the video posted to TikTok, Bishop Tony Caldwell, a local Kansas City community leader, said he was one of many in the area who had made reports to police of numerous murdered and missing Black women who had been taken from an area on Prospect Avenue in Kansas City, according to the Kansas City Defender.

After the video went viral, Kansas City Police Department spokesperson Donna Drake said in a statement there was “no basis to support this rumor,” according to The Kansas City Star.

The woman who escaped, who is Black, told investigators that Haslett allegedly picked her up on Prospect Avenue in September and then kept her in a small room in a basement he built. Haslett allegedly kept her restrained by her feet and ankles and whipped her repeatedly, according to the probable cause affidavit.

She was only able to escape when Haslett left to take his child to school, the woman said, according to the court document. She was treated at the hospital and released on Oct. 7, Excelsior Chief of Police Greg Dull told ABC News last week.

After the victim escaped and searched for help, she told neighbors that her friends “didn’t make it,” alleging that Haslett killed them, Ciara Tharp, whose grandmother provided shelter for the victim until police arrived, told CBS Kansas City affiliate KCTV. Excelsior Springs police confirmed to the Daily Mail that detectives are actively investigating the possibility of two more victims.

Kansas City Police Department spokesperson said in a statement to ABC News that there have been no reports of missing persons, more specifically women missing from Prospect Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri, filed to the department.

“In order to begin a missing person’s investigation, someone would need to file a report with our department identifying the missing party,” the statement read. “Again, we notify the media/public anytime our department responds to a homicide in our city and none match, or have been reported to what has been described.”

Dull declined to provide any further updates as to the status of the investigation.

Haslett was charged with first-degree rape or attempted rape, first-degree kidnapping and second-degree assault, to which he has entered a not guilty plea. A search of his home revealed a small room in the basement that was consistent with what the victim described, the affidavit stated.

Several items were taken from the home as evidence, Dull said.

ABC News could not immediately reach an attorney for Haslett, who is currently being held in a Clay County jail on $500,000 bond. He has been assigned a public defender and will appear for a bond reduction hearing scheduled for Tuesday.

The Kansas City Defender did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment on why the original post to Twitter and TikTok was removed.

ABC News’ Matt Foster, Sabina Ghebremedhin and Kendall Ross contributed to this report.

4 friends killed in ‘violent’ shooting, dismembered, thrown in Oklahoma river; person of interest named

October 17, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(OKMULGEE, Okla.) — Four close friends who mysteriously disappeared in Oklahoma were killed in a “violent” shooting at a scrapyard, dismembered and thrown in a river, according to police.

The owner of the scrapyard, Joe Kennedy, is a person of interest in the quadruple murder, Okmulgee Police Chief Joe Prentice said at a news conference Monday.

Prentice said authorities want to speak to Kennedy, who is missing, and stressed that he has not been named a suspect.

The victims, Mark Chastain, 32, Billy Chastain, 30, Mike Sparks, 32, and Alex Stevens, 29, were last seen leaving one of their homes in Okmulgee on the night of Oct. 9, reportedly riding bicycles, according to Okmulgee police.

“I’ve worked over 80 murders in my career … but this case involves the highest number of victims and it’s a very violent event,” the chief said.

The victims planned to commit a crime that night, Prentice said Monday, citing an individual who had been asked to participate but declined. Police do not know what the alleged planned crime involved.

Their four dismembered bodies were found in a river on Friday.

There’s nothing to indicate any relationship between Kennedy and the victims, Prentice said. Kennedy has denied knowing them, he added.

The victims’ bicycles remain missing, police said.

ABC News’ Nadine El-Bawab and Irving Last contributed to this report.

With Trump subpoena likely this week, what’s next for the Jan. 6 committee?

October 17, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — In a dramatic end to what might be its last public hearing, the Jan. 6 committee took the historic step to vote to subpoena Donald Trump.

The subpoena will likely be formally issued this week.

On Thursday, all nine members of the panel approved the resolution to compel the former president to testify about the Capitol attack, which the committee argues was the violent culmination of Trump’s many efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

“He must be accountable,” chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said before the vote. “He is required to answer for his actions.”

There’s been discussion among committee members and staff for months about whether they would want Trump to testify in a live setting. There’s no doubt they want him to testify under oath, as committee members made clear in the hearing.

Some members are hesitant to give Trump a live stage, while others view it as beneficial to their investigation as they would get to question him under oath. And there appears to be more of an openness among committee members to have him appear live.

Trump has told advisers he’d welcome a live appearance, according to sources familiar with his thinking, but has yet to say publicly whether he’ll cooperate.

The committee would need to negotiate with Trump if he were to offer to testify live in response to the panel’s subpoena, Rep. Adam Kinzinger said Sunday.

“I think that’s going to be a negotiation,” Kinzinger, R-Ill., a member of the committee, told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos. “I’ll only address that when we know for sure whether or not the president has tried to push to come in and talk to us live.”

“He’s made it clear he has nothing to hide, [that’s] what he said. So he should come in on the day we asked him to come in. If he pushes off beyond that, we’ll figure out what to do next,” Kinzinger said.

Trump did not answer whether he would appear in a 14-page memo sent to Thompson Friday, in which he continued his attacks on the panel and continued to make false claims about the presidential race.

“This memo is being written to express our anger, disappointment, and complaint that with all of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on what many consider to be a Charade and Witch Hunt,” he wrote.

Some experts are wary the public will ever see Trump testify before the Jan. 6 committee.

“Before Donald Trump comes to answer questions about this under oath not only will pigs fly but they will circumvent the globe,” attorney Jeff Robins told ABC News Live anchor Linsey Davis.

What if he doesn’t cooperate?

If Trump refuses to cooperate, the committee could move to have the full House hold him in contempt and refer the matter to the Justice Department for prosecution.

“If they’re not going to do that, then it is essentially symbolic,” Nick Akerman, a former Watergate special prosecutor, told ABC News.

Chairman Thompson wouldn’t say when asked after the hearing how the committee planned to handle any eventual litigation or defiance of their subpoena.

The House has referred four people to the Justice Department after votes to hold them in contempt — former Trump White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, Trump’s former social media director Dan Scavino, former Trump White House trade adviser Peter Navarro and form political adviser Steve Bannon. DOJ declined to press charges against Meadows and Scavino. Bannon was found guilty in July for defying the Jan. 6 committee subpoena. Navarro was also indicted on contempt of Congress charges and is scheduled to go to trial next month.

Trump could also attempt to run out the clock by fighting the subpoena if the committee took it to court, as he’s done with other investigations and records requests he’s faced over the years.

“There are myriad legal and separation of powers issues raised by the subpoena, including whether a congressional committee can compel the president to appear as well as the procedural hurdles in attempting to enforce a subpoena in court which previous court decisions have cast serious doubt upon,” Stanley Brand, a former counsel to the House of Representatives who has represented some of the Jan. 6 witnesses, including Scavino, told ABC News.

“There is also a question of timing given the substantial delays in litigating such a subpoena,” Brand said, pointing to congressional efforts to subpoena testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn. The case stretched out in court for nearly two years, and ended with a voluntary agreement by McGahn to testify.

Brand said this issue, if litigated, could take just as long.

Republicans, if they win back control of the House this midterm election cycle as expected, are expected to drop the Jan. 6 investigation and turn to other matters. Top Republicans have already promised investigations into Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

“Time is not on their side,” Akerman said, “considering it’s mid-October and there’s going to be a new Congress coming in Jan. 1, and there’s no guarantee it’s going to be controlled by the Democrats.”

US Atlantic Coast becoming ‘breeding ground’ for rapidly intensifying hurricanes due to climate change, scientists say

October 17, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — The East Coast of the U.S. will need to brace for more devastating storms like hurricanes Fiona and Ian should the global reliance on fossil fuels remain business as usual, scientists are warning.

Warming temperatures around the world are the root contributor that will cause more storm systems to behave like Fiona and Ian, with increased moisture and the likelihood of rapid intensification as they head toward land, according to a study published in Geophysical Research Letters on Monday.

This will make the Atlantic Coast of the U.S. a “breeding ground” for rapidly intensifying hurricanes, the researchers said.

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory studied data over the past four decades of hurricane activity and the conditions that shaped them and found that the rates at which hurricanes strengthen near the U.S. Atlantic Coasthave significantly climbed since 1979.

The direct observations made by the researchers showed that the increase was “very likely due to climate change,” Karthik Balaguru, a climate scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and author of the study, told ABC News.

The trend will likely continue if the current level of greenhouse gas emissions continues around the world, according to the study.

A mix of environmental conditions caused by a unique phenomenon along the Atlantic Coast makes it more conducive to hurricane development, Balaguru said.

Land is already generally warmer than ocean waters. Still, as greenhouse gases build and global temperatures rise, land is heating up much more rapidly, and the ocean and the difference in temperature between land and ocean continue to grow, Balaguru said. The increase in the temperature difference between the land and the sea can create stronger storms, he added.

“Unlike the ocean with unlimited water supply, there’s much less water in soil,” Ruby Leung, an atmospheric scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, said in a statement. “That means the land can’t evaporate as much as water, so it can’t get rid of the extra heat trapped by greenhouse gases as quickly as the ocean.”

The same mix of hurricane-favoring conditions doesn’t appear in the Gulf of Mexico but could form in other regions, including those near the East Asian coastline and the northwest Arabian Sea, the researchers said.

Combined with warmer ocean waters and greater atmospheric humidity, these conditions allow the storm systems to jump multiple storm categories in a short amount of time, according to the study. And because of the speed of the strengthening, the storms can often elude meteorological predictions, even with modern-day technology, the researchers said.

Last month, Hurricane Fiona caused widespread destruction in Puerto Rico — five years after Hurricane Maria wiped out much of the island’s infrastructure. Just 10 days later, Hurricane Ian did the same to southwest Florida, completely decimating Sanibel Island and Fort Myers Beach with deadly storm surge and catastrophic winds. Both storm systems strengthened into powerful Category 4 hurricanes before landfall.

Damage from weather and climate disasters could exceed $100 billion by the time 2022 comes to a close, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced last week.

A study published in Nature in January found that annual costs of flooding alone in the U.S. could climb by 26% to $40.6 billion by 2050 as a result of climate change.

DOJ seeks six months in prison, $200K fine for Steven Bannon over contempt conviction

October 17, 2022 by WDNY Radio

DOJ seeks six months in prison, 0K fine for Steven Bannon over contempt conviction

(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department is asking a federal judge to sentence Steve Bannon, adviser to former President Donald Trump, to six months in prison and make him pay a $200,000 fine for his conviction on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress, according to a new court filing.

“From the moment that the Defendant, Stephen K. Bannon, accepted service of a subpoena from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, he has pursued a bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt,” prosecutors said Monday. “The Committee sought documents and testimony from the Defendant relevant to a matter of national importance: the circumstances that led to a violent attack on the Capitol and disruption of the peaceful transfer of power. In response, the Defendant flouted the Committee’s authority and ignored the subpoena’s demands.”

The statement continued, “For his sustained, bad-faith contempt of Congress, the Defendant should be sentenced to six months’ imprisonment—the top end of the Sentencing Guidelines’ range—and fined $200,000—based on his insistence on paying the maximum fine rather than cooperate with the Probation Office’s routine pre-sentencing financial investigation.”

Bannon was found guilty in July of defying a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

He had been subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 panel for records and testimony in September 2021.

Story developing…

What to know as retailers overhaul return shipping policies

October 17, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — As the holiday shopping season begins to ramp up, online shoppers should keep an eye out for changes to return policies at some of their favorite stores.

Some major retailers, like Zara, Abercrombie & Fitch and J.Crew, are adjusting their shipping return policies, making free returns a thing of the past.

But, experts say, there are still ways to avoid those fees.

ABC News’ Chief Business Correspondent Rebecca Jarvis appeared on Good Morning America Monday to discuss some of the changes shoppers may soon see:

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