(NEW YORK) — Following a year of both extreme heat and drought, Lake Tahoe has seen a record-breaking amount of snow this December, according to the U.C. Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab.
The Tahoe area has seen 210 inches of snow since the beginning of the month, the lab, based in Soda Springs, California, reported Wednesday. That makes this month the third snowiest on record and the snowiest December ever, per tracking from the lab that started in 1970.
If weather modeling holds up, it’s possible December could also overtake the current No. 2 record holder, February 2019, which saw a whopping 221 inches of snow, Dr. Andrew Schwartz, who works at the lab, told ABC News.
According to data from the lab, typically about 110 inches of snow will have fallen by Jan. 1 in a given water year, which begins on Oct. 1. But, so far, 2021 has already seen 264 inches of snowfall, putting the region at 258% of its average for this point in the year and breaking the 51-year-old October through December snowfall record of 260 inches set in 1970.
California recorded its second driest water year on record in 2021, according to a report from the state’s Department of Water Resources. But there’s hope that the abnormal amount of snow the Sierra has seen could help break the state’s ongoing drought.
“The snowfall that we’ve received has given us an amazing start to the water year and developed a solid foundation for upcoming snow,” Schwartz said, “but we still need average or above average snowfall in the upcoming months for it to impact the drought.”
Schwartz added that the lab has recorded receiving 70% of its average annual snowfall already, “which is great because the remaining four months with snow only need to make up that remaining 30%.”
He cautioned, however, that if those months end up being dry, then California could end up short of its average snowfall and there won’t be any improvement in the drought at all.
The Sierra snowpack typically holds about a third of California’s water reservoirs, but several are still running lower than normal, even with the increased precipitation.
Data from the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has shown mild improvement in California’s drought, with 79% of the state in an extreme or exceptional drought as of Dec. 21, down from 88% three months ago.
“So, we’re off to an incredibly promising and exciting start,” Schwartz said, “but we need some cautious optimism going forward.”
ABC News’ Hope Osemwenkhae and Daniel Manzo contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Jury deliberations in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial resumed Wednesday morning. Maxwell was walked partway into the courtroom around 9:25 a.m., wearing a burgundy turtleneck and clutching a green folio.
While the trial is in its 18th day, the jury has deliberated for about 37 hours. And it appears that the jury is no rush to render a verdict before the New Year’s holiday.
The jury, which told Judge Alison Nathan at the end of the day Tuesday, that it was “in a good place,” sent a note to the judge Wednesday morning.
“May we please have the following transcripts,” the note said before listing several names: Shawn, Cimberly Espinoza, Amanda Young and Jason Richards.
When Nathan stepped off the bench after addressing the first note, Maxwell and defense attorney Bobbi Sternheim had a close conversation while standing. Maxwell’s sleeves were rolled up and her hands were clasped behind her back. A short time later she was huddled with her other attorneys, seated at the defense table.
“May we please have the Larry Visoski testimony?” the jury also asked in a note.
Visoski, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s private pilots, was the very first witness for the prosecution. He recalled accuser “Jane” on Epstein’s plane, along with her “piercing powder blue eyes.”
The jury has now asked for transcripts of testimony from a third of the witnesses.
Shawn was the boyfriend of an alleged Maxwell victim, identified only as Carolyn.
Espinoza was the first witness called by the defense. She was Maxwell’s assistant in 1996 in Epstein’s New York office. This is the first time the defense has asked for testimony from a defense witness.
Amanda Young and Jason Richards are both FBI agents on the Epstein-Maxwell case. The defense called the two agents to testify about inconsistent statements by the accusers.
In the same note, jurors also asked about their own schedules.
“May we have clarification regarding our schedule going forward. Are we required to continue our deliberations everyday including 12/31 and 1/1? We ask in order to plan our schedules accordingly,” the note said.
Jurors asked for testimony from an additional witness but neither the judge nor the lawyers could read the name. Upon clarification, the jury asked for the transcript of Elizabeth Loftus, the defense expert witness who testified about the frailty of memory.
Regarding the schedule, the judge said she would tell jurors that deliberations would continue as needed every day going forward, including Dec. 31, Jan. 1 and Jan. 2, until there’s a verdict.
The judge said jurors could inform the court of a “substantial hardship because of unmovable commitments” but otherwise the judge said deliberations would continue uninterrupted by the holiday.
“By this I don’t mean to pressure you. You should take all the time that you need,” Judge Alison Nathan said in her reply.
Nathan cited the “high likelihood that a necessary member of the trial participants or one or more members of the jury would need to quarantine for ten days should they test positive.” She said that would result in “a substantial delay.”
(ATLANTA) — Georgia is planning to deploy the National Guard to hospitals and testing sites as the state set a single-day record for COVID-19 cases.
Over the next few days, the Georgia Department of Community Health said it will provide troop assignments depending on the centers that are in need of the most assistance.
Additionally, Gov. Brian Kemp will speak with nine hospital systems in the state Wednesday to determine where the most help is needed.
A spokesperson for Kemp’s office told WSB-TV there is not yet a breakdown of where troops will be sent.
It comes as Georgia recorded 13,670 new confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases Tuesday, the most reported in a single day and shattering the previous record of 10,165 set on Jan. 8.
Rising cases have led to an increased demand for testing. Drive-up centers have seen cars lined up for blocks with people waiting several hours to be screened.
Dr. Lynn Paxton, head of the Fulton County Board of Health, which includes Atlanta, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the National Guard will help reduce the long waits for testing.
“Basically, the cavalry is coming in,” she said.
The governor’s office told WSB-TV it is encouraging to see data suggesting fully vaccinated people with a booster shot are well-protected and — if they do suffer a breakthrough infection — tend to develop only mild symptoms.
Kemp, who is fully vaccinated and boosted, continues to ask residents to get their shots, but is not planning to institute any vaccine or mask mandates.
“He will continue to urge Georgians to talk with their doctors about the benefits of getting the vaccine or receiving their booster shot,” a spokesperson for Kemp said in a statement.
“Ultimately, he feels that we must trust our citizens to do what’s right for themselves and their families. He will not be implementing any measures that shutter businesses or divide the vaccinated from the unvaccinated or the masked from the unmasked.”
Kemp’s office did not immediately reply to ABC News’ request for comment.
This is not the first time that Georgia has asked for the National Guard’s help.
In August, during the state’s delta-fueled surge, Kemp deployed more than 2,500 National Guard troops to Georgia hospitals overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients.
The recent rising number of cases also led to Atlanta canceling the annual Peach Drop — Georgia’s New Year’s Eve ball drop celebration. Additionally, Emory University announced that spring semester classes will be remote until at least Jan. 31.
(LONDON) — France this week became the latest European country to tighten its coronavirus restrictions, with nations across the continent posting record numbers of COVID-19 infections in an omicron-fueled surge.
On Dec. 21, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, Dr Hans Kluge, warned that the omicron variant — believed by scientists to be far more transmissible than delta — was set to become the dominant variant on the continent following confirmation that it already had in Denmark, Portugal and the U.K.
Since then, the rate of infection has increased, with France, Italy, the U.K. and Spain posting historic record numbers of COVID infections in recent days. Infections, according to Kluge, are 40% higher than during the same period last year.
In France, where nearly 90% of the eligible population is fully vaccinated, from Jan. 3 there will be an obligation to work from home for three days a week and mask mandates in outdoor city centers. Several countries announced prior to Christmas that they would be introducing restrictions for after the holiday weekend.
In Germany, that means that nightclubs will have to close, large-scale events such as soccer games cannot occur with a live audience and the sale of fireworks is also banned and large-scale events for New Years’ Eve are prohibited.
The Netherlands, meanwhile, is already in an effective lockdown to combat COVID-19 infections, with schools, non-essential stores, bars and restaurants closed until Jan. 14. In the U.K., Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland have reintroduced social distancing restrictions not seen since before the summer, while England has introduced health passports for mass gatherings and reintroduced mask mandates for public transport and outdoor settings.
However, England has been a notable outlier in that Boris Johnson’s government, encouraged by data that indicates the risk of hospitalization is lower from omicron than the delta variant, has not announced any new restrictions for the New Years’ period — despite the U.K. posting record numbers and more than 100,000 daily infections on several days last week.
Despite relatively high vaccination rates — around 68% of the European Union’s population has been fully vaccinated — there are concerns that not enough has been done to institute a booster drive across the continent which officials say is needed to drive up resistance against omicron.
For interstate European travel, the European Commission announced that their EU Digital COVID Certificate will only be valid for 9 months, meaning that boosters will be required for certificates to be renewed.
In several countries, life is set to become far more difficult for the unvaccinated. This month, Germany has placed major restrictions on access to public life for unvaccinated people — with only those who have been vaccinated or recently recovered allowed entry into non-essential stores, leisure facilities, bars and restaurants.
France meanwhile is set to change its COVID “health pass” into a “vaccine pass” from next month — now it is only valid with vaccination, rather than vaccination or proof of a negative test.
Several European officials have indicated that mandatory vaccinations are likely to become a fact of life in the future. Austria from February will institute a monthly fine on people who do not take up the offer of a vaccine. EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen has suggested vaccine mandates could be welcome, with concern that the estimated 150 million Europeans still unvaccinated are the group driving increases in hospitalizations.
(STATESVILLE, N.C.) — A North Carolina mom is celebrating after losing over 200 pounds, half of her original weight.
Tiesha Robinson, of Statesville, North Carolina, said she lost the weight even after struggling with it for her entire life.
“I can’t think back of when I haven’t had to lose weight or when I wasn’t trying to lose weight,” Robinson, 35, told Good Morning America. “Obesity runs in my family and then also I made a lot of wrong food choices.”
The push to lose weight came on strong for Robinson after she experienced two family tragedies, the death of her beloved aunt in 2016 and then the death of her son’s father in 2018.
“I didn’t want my son to have to go through that pain again if I could prevent it,” she said. “So that was kind of my motivation to save myself so that I could be here for my son.”
Speaking of her aunt’s death in 2016, Robinson said: “My aunt was kind of like everyone’s hero, like the backbone, so to watch her struggle to live was a turning point. It really made me realize that even though I’m strong and I try to be here for everyone, I have to show up for myself because if I’m not here, then I can’t help anyone.”
In 2017, one year after her aunt’s death, Robinson said she hit her highest weight of 416 pounds.
In 2019, after her son’s father died, Robinson began tracking her food using WW, formerly known as Weight Watchers.
“I didn’t know that I would be as successful as I am, but I knew I had to try,” she said of WW. “I knew I couldn’t give up because if I gave up on me, it would be like I’m giving up on my son, and that wasn’t an option, so I just had to throw away all the excuses and all the distractions.”
Robinson said WW’s method of tracking food showed her how to balance what she was eating and “now just indulge in everything that I wanted in one day.”
“I was able to balance healthy choices and just learn a new healthy lifestyle,” she said. “It saved my life by just learning how to eat healthy, be healthy, stay active.”
In the past two years, Robinson said she has lost 208 pounds and changed her life. Her weight loss transformation is featured in People magazine’s 2021 “Half Their Size” issue, available on newsstands now.
She said she is now more “mindful” and in control of her diet, and has taken up hobbies like Zumba, walking and writing poetry that she turns to instead of food.
Robinson said she and her son, now 15, joined a gym together just before the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but she has since learned to love working out at home, which she said helps her eliminate any excuses.
“I learned to exercise at home and that way I don’t have no excuse,” she said, noting she takes Zumba classes on YouTube or plays a dance game on an Xbox. “If it’s too late, I’m in my house so I can exercise. If it’s early and I have energy, I have the opportunity to exercise.”
Through her weight-loss journey, Robinson said she has learned to “set goals, not limits,” which is the advice she gives to others.
“I will say just refuse to give up on yourself,” she said. “Refuse to give up, learn to adapt and if you mess up, don’t make that an excuse to give up.”
Robinson said she has also learned the importance of celebrating her own accomplishments on her weight-loss journey, instead of waiting for other people’s approval.
Her most important advice, she said, is to just start out on the journey, saying, “In order to finish, you have to start, so just get started and keep going.”
(NEW YORK) — Westchester District Attorney Mimi Rocah has declined to pursue criminal charges against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for allegations made by two women that he kissed them on the cheek.
While her investigators found “credible evidence” that the alleged conduct had occurred, Rocah said the actions did not meet the requirement to be prosecuted as a criminal act.
“Our investigation found credible evidence to conclude that the alleged conduct in both instances did occur,” Rocah wrote in a statement. “However, in both instances, my Office has determined that, although the allegations and witnesses were credible, and conduct concerning, we cannot pursue criminal charges due to the statutory requirements of the criminal laws of New York.”
Rocah’s investigation, which began after the release of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ report on Cuomo, examined the accusations made by a state trooper on Cuomo’s security detail and by a woman who alleged Cuomo gave her an unwanted kiss during an event at White Plains High School.
The trooper alleged that she was on duty at the governor’s home in Mount Kisco when he asked if he could kiss her. She said that she said “sure” because she was afraid of the ramifications of saying no. He allegedly kissed her on the cheek and “then said something to the effect of, ‘oh, I’m not supposed to do that’ or ‘unless that’s against the rules,'” according to the attorney general’s report.
The second woman alleged in the report that Cuomo grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him to kiss her on the cheek.
Rocah is the second prosecutor in recent weeks, after Nassau County District Attorney Joyce Smith, to decline to prosecute Cuomo based on his actions not meeting the statutory requirements for a criminal act. Smith made similar comments as Rocah, saying she found the allegations “credible, deeply troubling, but not criminal under New York law.”
Editor’s Note: This story originally said charges were not pressed because they were outside the statute of limitations. It has been updated to say that charges were not pressed against Cuomo because they did not meet the statutory requirements of the law, not because they were outside the statute of limitations.
(NEW YORK) — Over the past year, routine space tourism emerged from science fiction to reality, digital art you can’t even touch auctioned for millions at Christie’s, and malicious attacks emanating from cyberspace crippled real-world critical infrastructure in the U.S.
The technology industry unceasingly shaped the way Americans lived in 2021, embedding its brands and tools into intimate parts of daily life as the ongoing pandemic further normalized virtual work, school and socializing.
The promises of tech’s ability to make our lives easier and more efficient continued to drive U.S. economic growth in the shadow of the relentless health crisis, but also exposed new pitfalls as more Americans lived their lives in a digital world where misinformation on everything from elections to vaccines thrives. This manifested off-the-screen in ominous ways during 2021, including an unprecedented post-election riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and an “anti-vax” movement that has prolonged the suffering wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The gatekeepers of Big Tech saw their net worth surge over the past year, but also endured a year of major shakeups: from Jeff Bezos stepping down as Amazon CEO, to a scandal-plagued Facebook rebranding as Meta, to Jack Dorsey resigning from Twitter. The mounting power of tech giants also came under renewed scrutiny — albeit accompanied by little action — from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
Despite the wild 12 months where Americans watched, seemingly in real time, as technology transformed society in good and bad ways, experts are holding onto hope that the lessons we’ve learned in 2021 can inform us going forward.
“I’m trying desperately to be optimistic,” Karen Kornbluh, the director of the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative at the German Marshall Fund, and a former U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development during the Obama administration, told ABC News of the tech industry’s past year. “This has been a learning year. We didn’t need another learning year — but I do think a lot of people learned a lot about how this all works and how entrenched it is and how dangerous it is.”
Still, Kornbluh argues that the tech sector is “so innovative and creative and allows people to do so many things we never could have imagined before.”
“We can’t lose our sense of wonder about it all, and because there are these new opportunities, I do think the industry is going to try to put a lot of these problems behind it before we move into this new era,” she said.
Here is a look at the year in tech, lessons the industry has learned and what to expect looking forward into 2022.
Jeff Bezos becomes an astronaut and routine space tourism blasts off
While it used to take the backing of entire nations to launch humans into space, that has all changed in the past year as the new billionaire-backed corporate space race officially blasted off to new heights.
A record-high 13 human spaceflights were launched in 2021, more than triple the number launched in 2020. Eight of them were launched with the backing of private industry and one more carried a Japanese millionaire tourist as a passenger.
Key players in the emerging space tourism sector — including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic — all flexed their muscles over the past year in a series of launches that sought to prove humanity’s new capability of routine spaceflight.
The industry took heat from some as simply a new playground for the ultra-wealthy, as pandemic-battered Americans watched billionaires including Bezos and Branson blast off on back-to-back joyrides to the edge of space this past summer and initial seats sold for up to $28 million. While economic inequality and environmental concerns compounded animosity towards this new arena, experts have argued that private sector involvement in the new space race has saved money for NASA and driven new innovations that can improve everyday life back on Earth.
For Star Trek actor William Shatner, who became the oldest person to go to space this past October at the age of 90 on a Blue Origin flight, the new technology that allows humans to take a quick trip to the edge of space instilled a deep sense of awe.
“What you have given me is the most profound experience. I am so filled with emotion,” the actor, who spent his career pretending to cruise the cosmos, told Bezos immediately upon landing. “I hope that I can maintain what I feel now. I don’t want to lose it. I am overwhelmed.”
“Everybody in the world needs to do this,” Shatner added.
NFT craze goes mainstream, upending the art world and headlining Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade
Over the course of 2021, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) went from an obscure buzzword among blockchain insiders to an inescapable craze that even headlined the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
NFTs, or one-of-a-kind digital artifacts that use blockchain technology (the same digital ledger system that supports cryptocurrency) to prove ownership and individuality, exploded in popularity over the past year in a craze that has left some scratching their heads.
In February, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey sold the first-ever tweet (a 2006 social media post that reads “just setting up my twttr”) as an NFT for some $2.9 million. In April, a collage made by digital artist Mike Winklemann (also known as Beeple) fetched a whopping $69 million when it was auctioned by Christie’s.
The sum at which Beeple’s art sold especially raised eyebrows for some. The artist has been known to upload his digital artwork for free on Instagram and his website, leading many to question what is driving the value of him now selling it in the form of an NFT. More perplexing for some, viral memes and gifs that were once sources of free and seemingly useless entertainment online are also fetching huge sums of cash when sold as NFTs. The so-called “nyan cat” meme, a digital image of a pixelated feline flying on a rainbow, racked in nearly $600,000 when it was sold as an NFT in February.
It’s estimated that total NFT sales are expected to generate a staggering $17.7 billion in 2021 alone, according to research compiled by crypto industry outlet Cointelegraph.
Despite some skeptics calling the craze a bubble, many experts don’t see demand for NFTs dwindling anytime soon — especially as the world increasingly shifts online and with the mainstream launch of the metaverse.
“They’re here to stay,” Christian Catalini, the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Cryptoeconomics Lab, told ABC News of NFTs. “Because they do represent a fundamentally novel way to design all sorts of interactions.”
“I think we’re still in a very embryonic phase and I would assume as the space matures, that’s when actually these things will become more useful,” Catalini added.
“Often with technology, we tend to overestimate how quickly it can change our lives in the short term, or we also tend to underestimate how much it will change them in the long term,” Catalini said. “With all of these technologies, there’s a lot of potential in the long run, and there’s a lot of things that need to be figured out in the immediate term — and I think that’s all happening live, right now.”
The rise of ransomware
The widespread adoption of new technology also led to new threats emerging from the cyber world. A spate of high-profile cyberattacks, many involving ransomware, revealed new potential dangers for businesses and even critical infrastructure as attackers seemingly grew more brazen with their targets in 2021.
A cybersecurity attack in May on Colonial Pipeline, operators of one of the largest fuel conduits in the U.S., led to a multi-day shutdown of the pipeline that provides nearly half of all fuel used on the East Coast — by hospitals, schools, and much more. The company ended up paying the hackers some $4.4 million in cryptocurrency, some of which the Department of Justice eventually seized back. Just weeks later, the world’s largest meat processor, JBS, revealed it was also hit by a cyberattack involving ransomware.
Experts say use of this malicious technology surged over the past year due to a confluence of factors, including the rise of harder-to-trace cryptocurrency and a work-from-home boom that has resulted in novel IT vulnerabilities for many firms.
“Ransomware attacks are becoming more prevalent, and especially with more enterprises in a semi-remote environment,” tech industry analyst Dan Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, told ABC News, “and the ransomware attacks, we expect they could be up another 50%, going into 2022.”
“That’s really going to catalyze more spending for cybersecurity,” he added. “We think cybersecurity spend is going to skyrocket over the next year given the amount of threats facing enterprises, as well as governments, around the world.”
Tech fuels a ‘green tidal wave’ in autos
Also over the course of 2021, it became undeniable that the auto industry as a whole was reaching an inflection point and shifting away from the gasoline-burning combustion engines that have been used for generations and toward electrification.
Nearly every major car producer — from General Motors to Ford to Toyota — announced massive new investments into electrification of vehicles over the past year, and the Biden administration unveiled the goal of half of all new car sales in the U.S. to be electric vehicles by 2030.
“It’s really a green tidal wave that’s taken hold in terms of more consumers wanting to purchase electric vehicles,” Ives told ABC News. “Today, only 3% of automobiles in the world of EVs. We think that that goes to 6% by 2022 and 10% by 2025, and this green tidal wave we view as a $5 trillion market over the next decade.”
“You’re also seeing a blurring of lines between technology and autos” Ives said. “I think that’s going to be a big theme as companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon focus more and more on electric vehicles.”
In the shadow of scandal and scrutiny, Big Tech pivots toward the metaverse
In the wake of multiple scandals plaguing his beleaguered tech giant, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this year that he was changing the company’s name from “Facebook” to “Meta” to reflect a shifting focus on the metaverse.
The three-dimensional digital world created by augmented and virtual reality products and services, will be “the successor to the mobile internet,” Zuckerberg said during his keynote at Facebook’s Connect conference in late October. The chief executive’s vision for the metaverse will be a place where people meet, socialize, work and shop — all via a digital avatar of themselves and VR hardware.
2021 marked the year the metaverse took “center stage of growth, as more investors realize this is not just about the gaming sector,” Ives told ABC News.
“It’s going to take time for the metaverse to ultimately form, to unleash the potential that many see for it today,” he added, but said ultimately, “the metaverse is going to be a trillion-dollar market over the next decade.”
It’s not just Facebook-turned-Meta that has its eyes on the new digital horizon either, Ives added, saying, “We believe Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook combined could spend $10 billion on the metaverse over the next two years.”
Public trust in tech giants to build a new digital world safely has dwindled over the past year, as whistleblower Frances Haugen accused Facebook of “choosing to prioritize its profits over people” in her opening statement while testifying before lawmakers in October. Haugen alleged blatant disregard from company executives for potential harms their services can cause to democracy and the well-being of young people.
Kornbluh, who has spent the past year working with policymakers and beyond on potential reforms for an industry that has been largely left unregulated, also testified alongside Haugen in front of a House panel at a separate hearing earlier this month.
“It’s been a year when sort of the collective ‘we,’ like the policymakers in general, came to a better understanding of the problem and solution set,” she told ABC News of the renewed focus out of Washington on Big Tech. Still, with partisan politics and a midterm election year, she said she’s skeptical we will end up seeing any actual law changes in the near-term.
“I think Congress has made a lot of progress in thinking about it, but I think it’s hard to imagine that they’ll come to some agreement in an election year,” she said of any new legislation.
Ives echoed her sentiments, saying that despite the new focus, investors don’t see law changes coming on the immediate horizon.
“It feels like there’s been a tipping point from a regulatory perspective, both in Brussels as well as the Beltway, focused on the antitrust, monopolistic nature of these businesses,” Ives told ABC News. “The lack of consensus within the Beltway continues to be the dividing issue to get law changes.”
Despite the apparent impasse, Kornbluh says with Facebook and tech giants “moving onto the metaverse, do they want to keep having all these same discussions about social media?”
“I think the platforms may want to move on, and realize it’s not going to fix itself,” she said, suggesting companies themselves have signaled they are more open to reforms related to internet regulation.
Despite the volatile past year, Kornbluh said she remains optimistic about the future of tech, and especially the metaverse.
“It’s going to open up all kinds of creativity and innovation and hopefully, because there are these new opportunities for new industry and new businesses, that that will clear up a lot of this underbrush that we learned about before we get there,” she said. “Hopefully this was like a run, and we’ll figure out what to do differently before we move on.”
(WASHINGTON) — Harry Mason Reid, the former five-term U.S. senator from Nevada who led Senate Democrats for a decade spanning the Bush and Obama presidencies, died Tuesday, his wife, Landra Reid, confirmed in a statement. He was 82.
“I am heartbroken to announce the passing of my husband, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He died peacefully this afternoon, surrounded by our family, following a courageous, four-year battle with pancreatic cancer. Harry was 82 years old. We were married for 62 years,” she said. “We are so proud of the legacy he leaves behind both on the national stage and his beloved Nevada. Harry was deeply touched to see his decades of service to Nevada honored in recent weeks with the re-naming of Las Vegas’ airport in his honor. Harry was a devout family man and deeply loyal friend.”
Landra Reid thanked the doctors and nurses that cared for her husband over the past several years and said funeral arrangements will be announced in the coming days.
Reid’s more than half a century of public service tracked the arc of American opportunity. From a hardscrabble upbringing in Searchlight, Nevada, Reid rose to become one of the most powerful politicians in the country.
He got an early taste of politics working as a U.S. Capitol Police officer to put himself through law school. He started out as a trial lawyer and city attorney before seeking elected office to advance his belief that government had a responsibility to improve lives.
“Harry Reid was one of the most amazing individuals I’ve ever met,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a Twitter statement Tuesday night. “He was tough-as-nails strong, but caring and compassionate, and always went out f his way quietly to help people who needed help. He was a boxer who came from humble origins, but he never forgot where he came from and used those boxing instincts to fearlessly fight those who were hurting the poor and middle class.”
“He was my leader, my mentor, one of my dearest friends. He’s gone but will walk by the sides of many of us in the Senate every day,” Schumer added.
Reid was elected state assemblyman, lieutenant governor and gaming commission chairman. In 1986, Nevadans sent him to Washington as a member of the U.S. Senate.
“He and his family benefited from Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and he never forgot it,” said Jim Manley, Reid’s former senior communications adviser and spokesman. “He always was looking out for the little guy after seeing firsthand how beneficial government could be.”
As Senate Democratic leader, Reid championed the $787 billion Recovery Act economic stimulus program to blunt the impact of the Great Recession in 2009 and fought to enact the landmark Affordable Care Act of 2013 — two bills he considered among his greatest legislative achievements.
Former President Barack Obama said in a statement Tuesday that when Reid was nearing the end, his wife asked some of his friends to share letters that she could read to him.
“Here’s what I wrote to my friend,” Obama said. “Harry, I got the news that the health situation has taken a rough turn, and that it’s hard to talk on the phone. Which, let’s face it, is not that big of a change cause you never liked to talk on the phone anyway! Here’s what I want you to know. You were a great leader in the Senate, and early on you were more generous to me than I had any right to expect. I wouldn’t have been president had it not been for your encouragement and support, and I wouldn’t have got most of what I got done without your skill and determination.”
“Most of all, you’ve been a good friend. As different as we are, I think we both saw something of ourselves in each other – a couple of outsiders who had defied the odds and knew how to take a punch and cared about the little guy. And you know what, we made for a pretty good team,” Obama continued in his letter. “Enjoy your family, and know you are loved by a lot of people, including me. The world is better cause of what you’ve done. Not bad for a skinny, poor kid from Searchlight.”
President Joe Biden also praised the life and legacy of Reid in a statement late Tuesday, calling him one of the greatest Senate majority leaders in history.
“I’ve had the honor of serving with some of the all-time great Senate Majority Leaders in our history. Harry Reid was one of them. And for Harry, it wasn’t about power for power’s sake. It was about the power to do right for the people,” Biden said of his former Senate colleague.
While the two men grew up on opposite sides of the country, Biden said they “came from the same place where certain values run deep.” Biden ticked through many of Reid’s legislative accomplishments, including the Recovery Act, the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform, as well as his role in ending “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and ratifying the New START Treaty.
But despite Reid’s lengthy professional achievements, Biden noted it was his family what was most important to Reid.
“But above all, Harry was first and foremost the devoted husband to his dear Landra. Over six decades together, they built a remarkable family with their children — Lana, Rory, Leif, Josh, and Key — and all of their grandchildren and great-grandchild. Jill and I send our love and prayers to Landra and the entire Reid family,” Biden wrote. “A son of Searchlight, Nevada, Harry never forgot his humble roots. A boxer, he never gave up a fight — whether in politics or even against cancer. A great American, Harry looked at the challenges of the world and believed it was within our capacity to do good, to do right, and to do our part of perfecting the Union we all love.”
Reid worked to stymie Republican efforts to privatize Social Security, and famously invoked the “nuclear option” in Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster for executive branch appointments and judicial nominations. That change meant confirmation by a simple majority vote, a drastically lower threshold which in 2018 benefitted former President Donald Trump and his controversial pick for the Supreme Court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“If there’s one thing we know about Harry, he doesn’t give up easily,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said of Reid in a farewell tribute in 2016.
Reid was a liberal firebrand but not always in lockstep with the Democratic mainstream. He vacillated on abortion rights over his career and had a mixed view of gun control, twice opposing the assault weapons ban. In 2003, he voted in favor of the Iraq War which he later called a “horrible mistake” that “tainted my heart.”
“My biggest regret is having voted for the Iraq War,” Reid said in a speech from the Senate floor in 2016. “I was misled, as a number of people were, but it didn’t take me long to figure that one out. So I became convinced that it was a mistake, and I spoke out loud and clear.”
As the longest-serving senator from Nevada, Reid was also a fierce defender of the state’s gaming and hospitality industries and advocate for the burgeoning renewable-energy sector.
On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell released a statement on Reid’s passing, calling Reid’s rise to power “quintessentially American” and praising their “cordial” relationship.
“Nevada and our nation are mourning a dedicated public servant and a truly one-of-a-kind U.S. Senator, my former colleague Harry Reid,” McConnell wrote. “The nature of Harry’s and my jobs brought us into frequent and sometimes intense conflict over politics and policy. But I never doubted that Harry was always doing what he earnestly, deeply felt was right for Nevada and our country. He will rightly go down in history as a crucial, pivotal figure in the development and history of his beloved home state.”
Vice President Kamala Harris also praised Reid in a statement, calling him an “honorable public servant,” who “got things done.”
“Whenever we had a chance to speak, Leader Reid was kind, generous, and always to the point,” Harris said. “Tonight, Landra and the entire Reid family are in our thoughts.”
Despite a taciturn and soft-spoken demeanor, Reid’s high profile in party leadership made him a political lightning rod. And he often kindled controversy with his willingness to sling insults and personal attacks against rivals, most recently drawing comparisons to Trump.
He famously blasted President George W. Bush as both a “liar” and a “loser,” only later apologizing for the “loser” remark. On the Senate floor, Reid called Trump a “human leech” and attacked McConnell as a “poster boy for Republican spinelessness.”
Reid was known for being frank and blunt, never one to worry about political correctness. He once suggested that no one of Hispanic heritage “could be a Republican,” lashed out at sweaty and smelly tourists in the nation’s capital, and called Bush’s dog “fat” — on a visit to the Oval Office.
In 2010, Reid was forced to apologize for disparaging Obama as “a light-skinned” Black man “with no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one” during a 2008 campaign trail interview.
During the 2012 campaign, Reid attacked GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney as a tax cheat — without evidence. Fact checkers debunked the claim, but Reid remained unapologetic.
Republican leaders admonished Reid as he headed for retirement in 2016. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas accused him of being a “cancerous leader” whose “ramblings” were “bitter, vulgar and incoherent.” Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming characterized Reid’s tenure as “failure, obstruction and gridlock.”
“He was a plainspoken individual,” said Manley, “and when he said something he meant it. Sometimes it got him in trouble, but I always found it refreshing.”
For his part, Reid — an amateur boxer — never apologized for the fight.
“I don’t have any regrets whatsoever about my efforts to push forward a Democratic agenda,” he said at his final press conference on Capitol Hill in late 2016.
Reid retired to Nevada with his health in decline. He had suffered broken ribs, facial bones and loss of vision in his right eye after an exercising accident in 2015 when a rubber resistance band snapped, hurling Reid into some gym cabinets.
In 2018, doctors discovered a tumor on Reid’s pancreas and performed surgery to remove it.
“As soon as you discover you have something on your pancreas, you’re dead,” Reid bluntly told the New York Times in an interview in January.
Reid often spoke of finding comfort in his Mormon faith and marriage of 60 years to wife Landra.
“Hand in hand, sweat on the brow, they’ve always moved forward together through it all,” McConnell said in his 2016 tribute. The couple had five children and 19 grandchildren.
Friends and former associates say Reid was content with his retreat from the limelight — surrounding himself with family — but never surrendering a passion to be plugged in to politics.
Reid told longtime Nevada political reporter Jon Ralston, in one of his final interviews, that he had been offering advice to Democratic presidential hopefuls for 2020.
“I had one of the presidential wannabes call me, and she said, ‘You know, I’ve heard so much about you and we’ve met, but it was very brief. Tell me, why do you think you’ve been successful?’ I said, I’ve been successful because I’ve always been willing to take a chance,” Reid told Ralston.
The senator from Searchlight could be a case study in taking a chance and defying the odds.
As Reid liked to tell it, the tiny Nevada mining town had “no mines and 13 brothels” when he was born in 1939 in the shadow of the Great Depression. His miner father committed suicide; his mother did laundry for the brothels in town. His childhood home has been described as a shack, with no toilet, running water or telephone.
The lack of health care facilities and schools in Searchlight forced the young Reid to seek an escape to a better life.
“He knows there are Searchlights all across the country,” President Obama told a Nevada radio station of Reid in 2015. “There are kids just like he was, and he was fighting for them.”
ABC News’ Roey Hadar, Kelsey Walsh, Chris Donato and Trish Turner contributed to this report.
(WILTON MANORS, Fla.) — Police in Florida have arrested the driver involved in a hit-and-run crash that killed two children and injured four others in Florida on Monday.
On Tuesday, the Broward Sheriff’s Office identified the suspect as 27-year-old Sean Charles Greer.
Greer is in custody and facing charges of leaving the scene of an accident involving death, police said.
Earlier on Tuesday, the sheriff’s office said they located the 2009 Honda Accord involved in the incident, which occurred in the city of Wilton Manors, in Broward County.
Investigators said the driver veered around a school bus that was trying to merge onto the road, drove off the roadway onto the sidewalk and struck multiple children.
The driver then allegedly fled the scene, according to investigators.
The victims were all between 2 and 10 years old, according to police.
Andrea Fleming, 6, and Kylie Jones, 5, were the two kids killed at the scene.
Draya Fleming, 9, Johnathan Carter, 10, Laziyah Stokes, 9, and Audre Fleming, 2, were rushed to Broward Health Medical Center with injuries, police said.
Anyone with information is urged to call (954) 493-TIPS (8477).
(HONG KONG) — Hong Kong’s national security police arrested six people linked to Stand News, an independent online media outlet, in another sign that the city’s once-thriving press freedom is taking a turn for the worse.
Police also froze $7.8 million in assets and raided the outlet’s headquarters, where they seized “subversive articles,” officers said at a press conference on Wednesday.
Stand News announced after the raid that it would close, saying staff would no longer speak to the media.
The raid and arrests came about six months after the pro-democracy paper Apple Daily was forced to shut down following a newsroom raid, seizure of its assets, and arrest of its founder, Jimmy Lai.
Those arrested on Wednesday included former Stand News board members Denise Ho, a well-known pop singer and democracy activist, and Margaret Ng, an ex-lawmaker. Ronson Chan, deputy assignment editor and Hong Kong Journalists Association chairman, was also detained.
The arrests were made at their homes under a colonial-era law covering conspiracy to print or distribute seditious materials, police said in a statement. Chan attempted to live-stream police arriving at his door.
Chief Secretary John Lee said that anyone who uses “journalism as a disguise and a tool to carry out acts that endanger national security will be severely struck by the SAR government.”
The HKJA in a statement posted on Facebook said it is “deeply concerned that the police have repeatedly arrested senior members of the media and searched the offices of news organizations … HKJA urges the government to protect press freedom in accordance with the Basic Law.”
Around 200 officers raided the Stand News office, with a search warrant under the national security law, allowing them to “search and seize relevant journalistic materials.”
Police were seen carrying boxes out of the Stand News office.
