(NEW YORK) — The New Mexico Environment Department filed an administrative complaint against Rust Movie Productions, after the production company had contested citations issued in April alleging hazards on the set that may have led to the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the “Rust” movie set last October.
The contested citations also included a fine of $136,793, making for the highest level of citation and maximum fine allowable by law in New Mexico.
Hutchins died and the film’s director, Joel Souza, was hospitalized after a gun held by Alec Baldwin as a prop fired a live round.
NMED issued the citations following a six-month investigation into workplace safety conditions after the shooting. During its investigation, NMED conducted interviews with 14 employees, requested information and documentation from Rust Movie Productions, and communicated with the production company via email to address the work-related fatality and injury.
Rust Movie Productions then contested the citations in May and an informal administrative review was started.
NMED and the production company were unable to reach a settlement of the citations during a 90-day administrative review period. NMED was then required to file a complaint with the Occupational Health and Safety Review Commission.
Rust Movie Productions now has 15 days to submit a response with the commission, before it schedules a hearing.
When it issued the citations, the New Mexico Environment Department’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau called Hutchins’ death “avoidable.”
The administrative complaint alleges that Rust Movie Productions did not create a workplace free from recognized hazards that were causing or likely to cause “death or serious physical harm to employees in that employees were exposed to being struck by discharged rounds or projectiles when firearms were used on the set of the motion picture production.”
(BORDEAUX, France) — A wildfire is raging at an “unprecedented” rate in the famed wine region south of Bordeaux, France, firefighters said Wednesday.
The prefecture of Gironde in southwest France ordered an estimated 10,000 residents to evacuate.
“Prepare your papers, the animals you can take with you, some belongings,” the Gironde municipality of Belin-Beliet posted on their Facebook before evacuations.
No casualties have been reported as of Wednesday afternoon. Sixteen homes have been destroyed, according to the prefecture of Gironde.
The wildfire began around 1 p.m. on Tuesday in Saint-Magne and Hostens before growing rapidly due to “unfavorable weather conditions,” the prefecture said.
Nearly 14,826 acres were engulfed by the flames around Hostens and Belin-Béliet on Tuesday night.
Over 1,000 firefighters, nine planes and two helicopters have been mobilized to address the fire, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said in a statement Wednesday.
The community of Landiras, the epicenter of the current wildfire, lost over 34,000 acres of forest in July.
According to officials, firefighters are facing at least three other fires in the south of France on Wednesday.
French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne tweeted that she will be visiting the region on Thursday.
“The mobilization of the Government and State services, alongside local elected officials, volunteers and residents, is absolute,” Borne tweeted.
In southern France, temperatures are forecast to reach up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit through the end of the week, according to Meteo France, the country’s metorological service.
Currently, 63% of the European Union and U.K. are under either drought warnings or alerts on Wednesday, according to the EU’s European Drought Observatory.
Over 140,000 acres of French land has burned so far this year, nearly six times more than the average for the country from 2006 to 2021, according to the European Forest Fire System.
(PALO ALTO, Calif.) — Forty years after a 15-year-old girl was stabbed to death in Northern California, DNA has led to the arrest of her suspected killer, prosecutors announced.
Karen Stitt was last seen on the night of Sept. 2, 1982, heading toward a Sunnyvale bus stop after spending time with her boyfriend, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office said.
The next morning, her naked body was found about 100 yards from the bus stop, according to prosecutors.
The Palo Alto teen had been sexually assaulted and stabbed 59 times, prosecutors said.
Stitt’s boyfriend was cleared based on the DNA evidence left behind at the scene, prosecutors said.
Decades went by without a major lead, prosecutors said, until investigators turned to genetic genealogy, which uses an unknown suspect’s DNA to trace his or her family tree.
Genetic genealogy made headlines in 2018 when the novel investigative tool was used to find the Golden State Killer. Genetic genealogy takes an unknown suspect’s DNA left at a crime scene and identifies it using family members who voluntarily submit DNA samples to a DNA database; this allows police to create a much larger family tree than if they only used law enforcement databases like CODIS.
Through genetic genealogy, the search for Stitt’s killer last year narrowed to four brothers from Fresno, California, including 75-year-old Gary Ramirez, prosecutors said.
Investigators then “used traditional investigative techniques to start eliminating the brothers one-by-one,” Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Rob Baker told ABC News via email Wednesday. “After extensive investigation, we felt confident Gary was the source of the crime scene evidence.”
Last week, the district attorney’s crime lab confirmed Ramirez’s DNA matched the sample at the murder scene, prosecutors said.
On Aug. 2, Ramirez was arrested at his home in Maui, Hawaii, prosecutors announced Tuesday.
Baker said he’s surprised Ramirez’s DNA was not in CODIS, adding that Ramirez has no criminal record at all.
Gary Ramirez served in the U.S. Air Force in the early 1970s after which he spent time in Northern California, Southern California, Colorado and Hawaii, according to prosecutors.
Ramirez is due in court in Hawaii on Wednesday for extradition proceedings, prosecutors said. Once in California, he will be arraigned on murder, rape and kidnapping charges, prosecutors said.
Information on an attorney for Ramirez was not immediately available.
(NEW YORK) — After several weeks of steady increases in coronavirus infections and hospitalizations, there are encouraging signs that the latest viral resurgence may be abating in the United States.
The rate of new infections appears to be dropping, with the U.S. now reporting 107,000 new cases each day — an average that has fallen by 12% in the last week, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The number of virus-positive Americans currently receiving care in hospitals across the country has plateaued at around 43,000 patients, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Throughout the summer, hospital admission rates had been rising in many areas of the country, particularly in the South.
Hospitalizations, however, remain significantly lower now than during every other COVID-19 surge. There were more than 160,000 patients hospitalized with the virus during the surge last winter.
On average, nearly 400 American deaths to COVID-19 are reported each day, a daily total that has not seen any significant declines since the spring.
Over the last seven days alone, the U.S. has reported just under 2,700 COVID-19 deaths.
The latest viral surge has been largely driven by highly infectious variants, which continue to infect and reinfect Americans. It has been more than eight months since the original omicron variant emerged, and although the original strain is no longer circulating in the U.S., its subvariants continue to spread.
BA.5, a subvariant of omicron, is currently estimated to account for more than 87% of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S.
Omicron and its subvariants have been better at chipping away at vaccine efficacy, which has caused health experts to reignite their call for Americans to get vaccinated and boosted.
Last week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, warned that Americans who are not up to date on their COVID-19 vaccinations may be in “trouble” this fall, with immunity waning over time.
Although the burden of hospitalization and death continues to affect primarily individuals who are still unvaccinated, as well as those at highest risk, such as the elderly or the immunocompromised, other people who “don’t fall into those categories” may also find themselves at-risk for severe disease, Fauci said during an interview with KNXAM.
More than 70 million Americans remain unvaccinated. Less than half of eligible Americans have received their first booster and only about one-third of people 50 years and older, who are eligible for a second booster, have received their supplemental shot.
Fauci stressed that in order to “get your arms around” the pandemic, more people must be vaccinated, domestically and globally, “so you don’t give this virus such ample opportunity to freely circulate, and when you do that, the virus has more of an opportunity to mutate, and when you give it an opportunity to mutate, that’s when you get new variants.”
(WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.) — Supporters and critics of Donald Trump continued to gather outside Mar-a-Lago two days after it was searched by the FBI.
Trucks toting Trump flags were seen on the road outside of his residence and private club in Palm Beach, Florida, though the former president was in New York on Wednesday for a previously planned deposition in state Attorney General Letitia James’ investigation into allegations he inflated the value of his business and properties. (He has said he did nothing wrong and indicated he pleaded the Fifth in the deposition.)
It isn’t clear how many people have been congregating outside Mar-a-Lago on Monday and Tuesday. But a report from ABC affiliate WPBF showed that at one point it was less than a few dozen, along with press and law enforcement.
WPBF reported that the groups grew larger as it got later both Monday and Tuesday.
Residents there gave differing views on the FBI search and not all of them were pro-Trump.
“It’s wrong. It’s wrong. It’s wrong,” Stephen Moise, of Jupiter, told WPBF on Monday. “They shouldn’t be doing this to him.”
“I think it’s high time that we’ve seen the government finally take some action against this man,” said Michael Kennedy, of West Palm Beach.
According to WPBF, those gathered at Mar-a-Lago broke down multiple times into “profanity-laced arguments,” but there was no violence.
Trump said the raid was “not necessary or appropriate” and amounted to persecution by “Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024.
Sources told ABC News that agents were at Mar-a-Lago as part of an investigation into the removal of classified documents from the White House when Trump left the presidency and decamped to his Florida resort.
While it’s not yet known precisely what the FBI was searching for or what was seized, Republicans in Congress have panned the unprecedented search as an egregious overreach and vowed to open investigations into it should they retake the House in November.
ABC News confirmed that, separately, law enforcement agencies across the country have been actively monitoring angry and violent rhetoric online sparked by the raid, with agencies preparing for possible acts of violence they fear could occur at or near pro-Trump protest demonstrations.
ABC News’ Josh Margolin contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Three towns on Maryland’s Eastern Shore will pay $5 million to the family of a Black teenager who was killed in an encounter with police officers almost four years ago, according to the attorneys for the family.
Anton Black, a 19-year-old former star high school athlete, died on Sept. 15, 2018, after being restrained by three officers from the Centreville, Greensboro and Ridgley police departments who held him face down for about six minutes, pinning his shoulders, legs and arms, according to a lawsuit filed in federal district court in Baltimore in late 2020.
“I had to watch those police officers kill my son, while he pleaded for his life and called out to me. There are no words to describe the immense hurt that I will always feel when I think back on that tragic day, when I think of my son,” Black’s mother, Janell Black, said in a statement Monday.
Under the settlement, the three towns have also agreed to make changes in their police departments’ training of officers in order to avoid future deaths of this nature, according to the family’s lawyers.
The changes include an overhaul in “use of force” policies for the three Eastern Shore municipalities, more resources for police confronting mental health emergencies and mandated officer training in de-escalation, intervention and implicit bias, the lawyers say. The policy changes also strengthen hiring transparency and public complaint reporting.
The federal lawsuit was filed after local prosecutors declined to pursue charges over Black’s death. The police officers involved argued that they did not use excessive force and that drug use or Black’s mental illness instead contributed to the cardiac arrest that ended his life.
On the night of his killing, a woman called 911 claiming that Black was fighting with another boy, according to the lawsuit. Another witness said the boys were engaged in “ordinary roughhousing,” according to the lawsuit.
Black had been diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder just months before the incident, the lawsuit said. At the time of the 911 call and police response, Black was enduring a mental health crisis, according to the lawsuit.
Black ran when confronted by a responding police officer, the lawsuit said. The other officers and a bystander then chased him, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit said that the officers used a taser to get him on the ground, where he was pinned face-down until he went unconscious.
One of the officers wrote in a court affidavit that he and another officer had to struggle with Black in order to keep him restrained and handcuffed.
That lawsuit argued that the officers involved used excessive force and then tried to cover up the killing by using false claims that Black was under the influence of marijuana that was laced with another drug, leading to the officers accusing Black of demonstrating “superhuman” strength.
A toxicology report released months after Black’s death showed no drugs in his system, according to the lawsuit.
David Fowler, the state medical examiner at the time, released an autopsy four months after the incident that instead blamed congenital heart abnormalities for Black’s death, classifying the death as an accident. Fowler said there was no evidence that the police officer’s actions had caused the death.
Black’s family is still pursuing litigation against the medical examiner’s office and Fowler, who have been linked to the cover-up of Black’s killing, according to the family’s lawyers.
Lawyers representing Fowler and the medical examiner’s office have not yet responded to ABC News’ request for comment. A response from Fowler to the family’s lawsuit said that his and his office’s actions were “reasonable and legally justified.” The response stated that Fowler is not liable for Black’s death and neither are the officers involved.
“No one deserves to be killed like this,” Black’s sister, LaToya Holley, said in a statement Monday. “Anton Black did not deserve this. He will never be forgotten. He was such a sweet, nice, and loving person. There will always be a part of him in my heart.”
The settlement reached with the towns also covered the family’s claims against individuals involved in Black’s death, including Thomas Webster IV, a former Greensboro police officer; Michael Petyo, the former chief of the Greensboro Police Department; Gary Manos, the former chief of the Ridgely Police Department; and Dennis Lannon, a former Centreville police officer.
Lawyers representing the defendants, and the three towns, did not immediately respond to ABC News’ requests for comment.
“Today, we are hopeful that by reforming these local police departments, we will start to move a little closer in the right direction, away from white supremacy and closer to a nation of true equality and justice,” Richard Potter, a member of the Coalition for Justice for Anton Black which joined the lawsuit against the three towns, said in a statement Monday.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday enacted legislation that will expand the Department of Veterans Affairs, providing health care support to millions of veterans — as well as their families and caretakers — who were exposed to toxic burn pits.
Known as the PACT Act, the package grants more time to enroll in VA-provided care for veterans exposed to the toxins while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the White House.
“This is the most significant law our nation has ever passed to help millions of veterans who are exposed to toxic substances during their military services,” Biden said in remarks during the bill signing ceremony in the White House’s East Room.
The legislation simplifies how the VA determines if someone’s service put them at risk, which the White House and veterans say is often difficult to prove on an individual basis.
Some veterans or their survivors diagnosed with one of 23 specific conditions will no longer need to prove a direct service connection, per the new law, which also invests in toxic exposure research, among other things.
Burn pits in Afghanistan and Iraq could be “the size of football fields,” Biden said at the signing. The U.S. military used them to incinerate waste from operations there, which included “tires, poisonous chemicals, jet fuel and so much more,” he said.
The issue is personal for the president, who for years has wondered if late-son Beau’s brain cancer stemmed from exposure to burn pits during his deployment in Iraq.
“When they came home, many of the fittest and best warriors that we sent to war were not the same. Headaches, numbness, dizziness, cancer. My son Beau was one of them,” Biden said.
But the PACT Act, which the president called on Congress to take up last year, almost didn’t make it to his desk for a signature.
The proposal had faced uncertainty in the Senate after some Republican lawmakers changed their minds, voting against ending debate on the bill after they voted in favor of it weeks earlier — a convoluted timeline because a change to the text in the House required a re-vote.
It ultimately passed the Senate a second time, last Tuesday, with 11 Republican holdouts after protesters, many of them veterans, spent days advocating for their cause in front of the Senate steps. (GOP lawmakers had cited concerns about what they said were Democratic spending maneuvers bundled in the bill.)
Among the demonstrators urging PACT’s passage was actor and comedian Jon Stewart, who himself protested for hours outside the Capitol and walked the halls of Congress to meet with senators last week. He attended the bill signing Wednesday morning.
“What you’ve done matters,” Biden told Stewart, who received a standing ovation. “It really, really matters … And we owe you big.”
Some veterans and survivors who lobbied on the Hill last week also joined Biden and lawmakers at the signing.
Biden spoke with several of them before he left the East Room, handing out challenge coins to some, embracing others and thanking them for their service.
“This law is long overdue, but we finally got it done together,” he said.
ABC News’ Mary Bruce and Justin Gomez contributed to this report.
Shahram Poursafi is wanted for his alleged involvement in criminal activities to include material support to terrorism and the attempted murder for hire of a former high-ranking United States Government (USG) official. – FBI
(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department on Wednesday unsealed charges against an Iranian national and member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps whom prosecutors say allegedly tried to arrange the murder of Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton in “likely” retaliation for the killing of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani when Trump was president.
The criminal complaint against 45-year-old Shahram Poursafi, who remains at large abroad, accuses him of attempting to pay various individuals in the U.S. $300,000 to kill Bolton, beginning in October.
Poursafi is charged with use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire and with providing and attempting to provide material support to a transnational murder plot.
In a statement after the case was unsealed Wednesday, Bolton said, in part: “I wish to thank the Justice Department for initiating the criminal proceeding unsealed today; the FBI for its diligence in discovering and tracking the Iranian regime’s criminal threat to American citizens; and the Secret Service for once again providing protection against Tehran’s efforts.”
“While much cannot be said publicly right now, one point is indisputable: Iran’s rulers are liars, terrorists, and enemies of the United States. Their radical, anti-American objectives are unchanged; their commitments are worthless; and their global threat is growing,” Bolton said.
The complaint and supporting law enforcement affidavit further allege how the Tehran-based Poursafi and the person he wanted to hire in the U.S. to arrange the killing — identified by the FBI as a confidential human source — conducted months of video and photo surveillance of Bolton at his home and office, in the Washington area, in late 2021 and early 2022.
According to the affidavit’s timeline, on Oct. 22 Poursafi asked an unnamed U.S. resident to take photographs of Bolton while claiming it was for a book that Poursafi was writing. The resident later introduced Poursafi to the FBI’s confidential source and Poursafi offered this person money to hire someone to “eliminate” Bolton, adding he had another “job” for which he would pay $1,000,000, the affidavit claims.
Investigators also said that Poursafi appeared to have private information about Bolton’s routine and schedule, though the source of his information was not clear.
At one point Poursafi allegedly suggested Bolton be killed by car or in the parking garage at his work and later said he should be shot — either while he was alone or, if he was in a group, without harming anyone else — the FBI said in the complaint affidavit.
The source whom Poursafi allegedly worked with told Poursafi they were working with a third individual who had ties to a cartel, the affidavit states.
The complaint affidavit also documents extensive communications between Poursafi and the confidential source. At one point, according to the complaint, he advised the source that killing someone “was like crossing the street; it was better not to spend too much time looking in one direction, but just to do it.”
Poursafi also told the FBI’s source that his “group” would require video confirmation of the target’s death, according to the affidavit. Poursafi repeatedly made further contact with the source, stating he was under pressure from his “group” or “his people” to have the killing carried out.
In January, the FBI alleged in the affidavit, Poursafi told the source he had a second “job” once Bolton was killed and he suggested that someone working for the Revolutionary Guard Corps was conducting surveillance on an unnamed second target in the U.S.
“This is not the first time we have uncovered Iranian plots to exact revenge against individuals on U.S. soil and we will work tirelessly to expose and disrupt every one of these efforts,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen said in a statement Wednesday.
ABC News’ Adam Carlson and John Santucci contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Donald Trump on Wednesday indicated he invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against testifying against himself during a scheduled deposition that day as part of the New York attorney general’s civil investigation into his family real estate business.
The former president was seen arriving at the attorney general’s office in New York City around 9 a.m. local time.
In an emailed statement to reporters about an hour and a half later, Trump said, in part, “Under the advice of my counsel … I declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution.” His statement also included lengthy attacks on the state attorney general’s investigation.
A source with knowledge of the matter subsequently confirmed to ABC News that Trump was declining to answer questions from investigators.
As of early Wednesday afternoon, Trump remained at the attorney general’s office — across the street from one of the Trump-branded buildings included in the civil investigation.
A spokesperson for New York Attorney General Letitia James declined to comment.
The deposition in the civil case follows an escalation in a separate federal investigation into Trump’s handling of classified material. On Monday, the FBI searched Trump’s residence in Palm Beach, Florida.
Wednesday’s deposition, which had been delayed from July due to the death of Trump’s ex-wife Ivana, comes after a months-long court fight during which Trump was held in contempt as he fought the attorney general’s subpoena.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has called the investigation politically motivated.
“My great company, and myself, are being attacked from all sides. Banana Republic!” he said in a statement on his social media outlet, Truth Social, shortly before Wednesday’s deposition.
Two of his grown children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, have already been deposed as part of the civil probe, sources said.
Trump argued unsuccessfully that he should not have to sit for a deposition while the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office was conducting a parallel criminal investigation. While the Manhattan DA’s case remains active, two senior prosecutors who had been leading it resigned earlier this year over the lack of an indictment.
James has said her office uncovered evidence of potentially fraudulent conduct in the way the Trump Organization valued its real estate holdings when seeking loans and when asking for tax breaks.
Lawyers in her office have said in court that the office is nearing a decision on an enforcement action.
ABC News’ Will Steakin contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Inflation data released on Wednesday revealed that price increases slowed in July, easing the strain on household budgets as the Federal Reserve fights inflation with a series of borrowing cost hikes.
While still elevated, price hikes waned from the near-historic pace reached in June, giving hope to policymakers and consumers that inflation has peaked.
The consumer price index, or CPI, rose 8.5% year-over-year in July, a marked slowdown from 9.1% in June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
On a monthly basis, the consumer price index rose 1.3% in July, remaining unchanged from the rise seen in June, according to the bureau. While food and shelter costs increased over the last month, the gasoline index price fell 7.7% in July to offset those increases.
The inflation data arrives as other indicators have sent mixed signals about the economy in recent weeks.
A slowdown in the inflation rate emerged in part because the national average price of gasoline, which makes up a key portion of the consumer price index, has declined for more than 50 consecutive days, according to AAA.
Meanwhile, a government report on Friday revealed that hiring in July more than doubled economists’ expectations, defying Fed efforts to slow the economy and rebuking fears of a recession.
The significant uptick in hiring last month — an added 528,000 jobs and unemployment rate drop to 3.5% — came alongside elevated wage increases that may put upward pressure on consumer prices.
The heightened wage increases match a pattern that stretches back months. A closely observed measure of U.S. wages, called unit-labor costs, rose 9.5% over the second quarter of this year, the fastest rise of that metric since the first quarter of 1982, according to data released by the federal government on Tuesday.
When facing high inflation, policymakers fear what’s referred to as a price-wage spiral, in which a rise in prices prompts workers to demand raises that help them afford goods, which in turn pushes up prices, leading to a self-perpetuating cycle of runaway inflation.
The Fed has sought to avoid a price-wage spiral with a series of borrowing cost increases, Maurice Obstfeld, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, told ABC News. At meetings in each of the past two months, the central bank has increased its benchmark interest rate 0.75% — dramatic hikes last matched in 1994.
“The data is telling us not that rate hikes have been ineffective but that the Fed will have to go quite a bit further,” Obstfeld said.
However, other data suggests that inflation fears have waned significantly.
A survey released by the New York Federal Reserve on Monday showed that consumers expect inflation to slow down.
Individuals who responded to the July survey said they expect inflation to run at a 6.2% pace over the next year and a 3.2% rate for the next three years, both of which marked significant declines from the inflation expectations expressed by consumers in the month prior.
