Stephen Colbert will executive produce a TV adaptation of the late Roger Zelazny’s beloved fantasy novels The Chronicles of Amber, according to Variety. The 10-book series follows the story of Corwin, who is said to “awaken on Earth with no memory, but soon finds he is a prince of a royal family that has the ability to travel through different dimensions of reality — called ‘shadows’ — and rules over the one true world, Amber.” George R.R. Martin cited the books as an influence for Game of Thrones, and recently expressed an interest in seeing the books brought to the screen…
NBC has given a pilot order to Murder by the Book, a drama series starring Good Girls alum Retta. Per the network, the plot line follows “A big city Instafamous book reviewer” who “takes a page from the murder mystery books she reviews and becomes an unlikely detective to uncover the shocking truths about an eccentric seaside town.” Besides her role as Ruby in Good Girls, Retta’s also known for playing Donna Meagle in Parks & Recreation. She’s also guest-starred in TV’s of Tuca & Bertie, DuckTales, Big Mouth, Drunk History and Kroll Show, and in the films Good Boys, Where’s the Money and Sex Ed…
The Drew Barrymore Show has been renewed through the 2023-2024 season on the CBS Stations, CBS Media Ventures announced on Tuesday. The daytime chat show averages 1.21 million viewers — up nearly half a million viewers year to year — and ranks as syndication’s #4 talk show, according to CBS Media Ventures. Host Drew Barrymore‘s guests this season have included President Joe Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden in their first joint sit-down in daytime, as well as George Clooney, Kate Hudson, Adam Sandler, Michelle Obama, Katy Perry, Cameron Diaz, Tyler Perry and Susan Sarandon…
Craig Ferguson is eyeing a return to the talk show arena, according to Deadline. Channel Surf with Craig Ferguson will feature the former host of CBS’ The Late Late Show, joined by his friends as they “review the shocking, surprising and hilarious moments of the week’s shows.” Ferguson left The Late Late Show in 2014 and was succeeded by James Corden. Since then, he’s hosted the syndicated Celebrity Name Game, ABC’s The Hustler and History’s Join or Die. Channel Surf with Craig Ferguson is currently seeking a TV home…
(PEORIA, Ill.) — Police are hunting for a person involved in a suspected arson attack at a Planned Parenthood clinic in central Illinois just two days after the state enacted sweeping abortion protections into law.
The incident occurred at approximately 11:31 p.m. on Sunday when police in Peoria, Illinois, responded to the 2700 block of N. Knoxville to reports of a structure fire at a commercial building due to an “unknown person throwing a Molotov cocktail” into it, police spokesperson Semone Roth told ABC News’ Chicago station WLS-TV.
“Within minutes, the Peoria Fire Department responded to the scene and extinguished the fire that was contained to one room,” said the Peoria Police Department.
The building, which houses the Peoria Planned Parenthood Clinic, sustained “significant damage,” according to a statement from Jennifer Welch, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Illinois, which was obtained by WLS.
No patients or staff were inside during the fire but one firefighter sustained non-life-threatening injuries while attempting to extinguish the flames, according to the Peoria Police Department.
“Fire investigators determined the preliminary cause of the fire was arson,” authorities said, and during the course of their investigation, the Peoria Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Division managed to obtain video footage that identified a suspect vehicle in the vicinity at the time of the crime.
The arson attack on the Planned Parenthood clinic came just two days after Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed comprehensive reproductive health care legislation into law that protects out-of-state abortion seekers and allows them to get an abortion.
Illinois is just the latest of a number of states that have managed to enact legal reinforcements around abortions following last year’s Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which had been in place since 1973.
“The vast majority of our Peoria Health Center patients were coming to us for family planning, STI testing and treatment and other reproductive health care,” said Welch. “This act of vandalism will have a devastating impact on the community’s ability to access birth control, cancer screenings and gender-affirming care.”
The Planned Parenthood location that was attacked offered medication abortion but was not a site for in-clinic procedures, Welch told WLS. She also said that she planned to prosecute the perpetrator “to the fullest extent of the law.”
The clinic, which is currently closed due to fire damage, is rescheduling their patients to other health care facilities and is also now offering transportation assistance to those who may require it.
“We would never condone violence against any Planned Parenthood or any other abortion clinic,” Mary Kate Zander, executive director of the anti-abortion organization Illinois Right to Life, told WLS. “The primary reason that we stand against abortion is that it’s an act of violence. So it would be hypocritical of us to not say the same in the case of an act of violence against abortion workers.”
For now, authorities have been unsuccessful in their efforts to locate the suspected vehicle involved in the arson attack and the Peoria Police Department is asking for public assistance in identifying and locating the truck and the driver they think was involved in the criminal act.
Anybody with any information on this case is asked to call Peoria Police Detective Brian Terry at (309) 494-8390 or Crime Stoppers, which is an anonymous tip line at 673-9000.
Todd and Julie Chrisley of Chrisley Knows Best reported to prison on Tuesday to begin serving their respective sentences after being convicted of a multimillion dollar bank fraud and tax evasion scheme, according to People.
Todd, 54, reported to Federal Prison Camp Pensacola to begin his 12-year prison sentence, while 50-year-old Julie arrived at the Federal Correctional Institution and Federal Prison Camp Marianna to serve her seven-year sentence.
The couple, who will also serve an additional 16 months of probation following their release from prison, are currently in the process of appealing their convictions.
In a statement previously obtained by People, their attorney said, in part, “Their trial was marred by serious and repeated errors, including the government lying to jurors about what taxes the couple paid. Based on these issues, we are optimistic about the road ahead.”
Chrisley Knows Best, which premiered in March 2014 on USA, follows the lavish lifestyle of Todd, a wealthy real estate developer, and his family. It also spun off a series, Growing Up Chrisley, starring two of his children.
Chrisley Knows Best had been renewed in May 2022, a month before they were convicted by a federal jury. Multiple episodes of the 10th season were reportedly shot before the trial and are still scheduled to air in this year.
(NEW YORK) — Calorie restriction may be more effective at promoting weight loss than intermittent fasting, based on findings from a multi-site study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
Researchers at three major health care systems — Johns Hopkins Health System, Geisinger Health System and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center — studied weight trends, daily food intake and sleeping/eating time intervals charted in a mobile app over the course of six months for 547 adult men and women with a range of medical conditions and Body Mass Index (BMI) categories.
These weight trends were compared to weights and heights recorded during previous clinic visits, up to 10 years before the study enrollment. Meal sizes were categorized as either large (more than 1,000 calories), medium (500 to 1,000 calories) or small (less than 500 calories).
The average daily number of large- and medium-sized meals led to weight increases, the study showed, suggesting that overall caloric intake remains a key contributor to weight gain. In comparison, the total number of small meals was predictive of weight loss over time.
Additionally, the time interval between the first to last meal was not associated with weight change, according to the study. On average, this time interval was approximately 11 hours for adults enrolled in the study.
For the purposes of this study, intermittent fasting was defined by time-restricted feeding schedules. This allowed researchers to compare weight trends during sleep and feeding times, dividing up a 24-hour period into time spent sleeping, waking up to first meal, time spent between first to last meal, and time spent between last meal and sleeping.
“Our study does not support the use of time-restricted eating as [a] strategy for long-term weight loss. [Limiting] the frequency of large meals could be more effective in losing weight, but clinical trials are needed to confirm our findings,” said the study’s first author, Dr. Di Zhao, a researcher in the department of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research.
However, it should be noted that healthy, sustainable weight loss should be part of an individualized plan, and that these study findings are not universally applicable.
“The decision to lower calories or try intermittent fasting should really be individualized to the person. [Some] people find intermittent fasting easier to lower their calories and others find they just get too hungry when they fast and then they eat too much during their non-fasting time,” according to Liz Weinandy, a registered dietitian at The Ohio State University Medical Center and instructor of practice at OSU in Columbus, Ohio.
Instead, efforts should be focused on consuming a balanced diet, refraining from “excluding a specific food group or macronutrient. These diets do not work long-term and if they do work, they are generally not healthy,” Weinandy said.
(NEW YORK) — Even as U.S. households begin to enjoy relief from inflation woes, a spike in heating bills could crunch budgets this winter due to a rise in natural gas prices.
Nearly half of the nation’s households rely on natural gas for warmth. The price of the fuel surged last year following a jump in demand after extreme weather forced consumers to run heat and air conditioning more than usual, analysts told ABC News.
Exacerbating the greater need for natural gas, the U.S. suffered a dearth of supply as gas exports soared, analysts told ABC News.
Last year, the average price of natural gas reached its highest point since 2008, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA, a federal agency that tracks gas data.
The price was expected to climb even further this winter, increasing nearly 30% above where it stood a year prior, according to an EIA projection released in October.
“The prices people are paying for their heating bills right now are up enormously,” Eli Rubin, an analyst with EBW Analytics Group, told ABC News.
The sky-high prices are primarily due to a jump in U.S. gas exports in response to heightened demand from European countries that previously relied on natural gas from Russia, analysts told ABC News.
After Russia invaded Ukraine last February, those nations sought alternative sources of natural gas, including the U.S, they added.
“There was a huge shortage in Europe,” Rubin said.
In turn, the U.S. sent more natural gas for sale on the international market, leaving less available for U.S. consumption. When domestic demand outpaced supply, it sent prices soaring.
“There was a supply crunch,” Clark Williams-Derry, an energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told ABC News. “Essentially, we were exporting more and more natural gas and importing high prices as a result.”
As U.S. supply faltered, a bout of extreme weather increased the need for indoor air conditioning and heat, causing a jump in demand, analysts said.
Winter storm Uri, for instance, battered Texas with snow and sleet last February, besetting the Southwest with unusually frigid weather. The summer months, meanwhile, brought a string of dangerous heat waves across the U.S.
“We had a cold winter that flipped into a record-hot summer,” said Rubin, of EBW Analytics Group. “We used natural gas to fuel power generation to run everybody’s heat and air conditioners.”
That upward pressure on prices endured through the end of last year. The average price of wholesale gas rose 47% in December compared with the same month a year prior, said Williams-Derry, of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
The price of wholesale gas has fallen over the last couple of weeks, however, as a warm spell assuaged fears of a persistent gas shortage, Rubin said.
Still, the recent decline in prices likely won’t offer relief for consumers this winter, since there’s typically a lag between a change in the wholesale price and the amount paid by the end consumer in his or her heating bill, he added.
Looking ahead, however, the outlook for U.S. prices appears bright, since the country is unlikely to experience the massive increase in gas exports that it endured last year, analysts said.
Over the course of this year, the price of natural gas is expected to moderate, offering relief for heat bills by the time next winter arrives, they added.
That rosy prediction requires caveats, of course, Williams-Derry said. A period of erratic weather or another supply crisis akin to the Russia-Ukraine war could send prices rising again, he added.
“All sorts of things can make the price do funny things, but all else being equal, we can expect an easing of last year’s record prices,” he said.
Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Some Florida educators and students are concerned about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ vow against “trendy ideologies” in state colleges and universities.
“We must ensure that our institutions of higher learning are focused on academic excellence and the pursuit of truth, not the imposition of trendy ideologies,” DeSantis said during his Jan. 3 inauguration speech.
Some faculty members and students say they fear DeSantis’ “anti-woke” policies will be harmful, impacting school clubs, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) requirements and committees, as well as courses that touch on racial history, or race-based perspectives.
Bryn Taylor, a graduate student at the University of Florida, told ABC News that getting rid of DEI efforts would “take us back in social progress” and leave opportunities in higher education for privileged people.
“It’s about lowering barriers … for any marginalized group,” Taylor said, adding that it doesn’t just affect people of color and LGBTQ populations. “That includes first-gen students, low-income students, international students, students with disabilities.”
Taylor is the co-president of the Graduate Assistants United at the University of Florida and a member of a DEI committee at the school.
“Why don’t you want your base to become educated?” Taylor said. “Why don’t you want your citizens to have the best access to the best schools in the world?”
The DEI movement and critical race theory, the systemic racism via the legal system, have been around for decades, scholars have told ABC News.
DeSantis’ anti-“woke” efforts in education
The governor’s self-proclaimed war against “woke” beliefs has begun.
Woke is defined by the DeSantis administration as “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them,” according to DeSantis’ general counsel, as reported by The Washington Post.
In December, DeSantis’ office requested data on funding, staffing and more for courses and programs that include “diversity, equity and inclusion” and “critical race theory” in a recent memo to school administrators across the state.
In response to backlash, his office told ABC News that “the governor, as chief executive of the state, has every right to ask how public dollars are being spent by public state entities, like state colleges and universities. In fact, that is good government.”
However, DeSantis’ “Stop WOKE” Act — which restricts race-related curriculum and conversation in workplaces, schools and colleges — has been temporarily blocked from being implemented in colleges and universities. The law is still being battled out in the courts.
WOKE in the bill stands for “Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees.”
DeSantis has also stacked the board of trustees at Sarasota’s New College of Florida — a college known for its progressive campus culture — with conservative figures such as Christopher Rufo, who popularized misinformation on critical race theory.
The governor’s office told ABC News that DeSantis made his decisions because “the public expects their tax dollars to go towards [New College’s] statutorily stated mission of ‘provid[ing] a quality education.'”
“Instead, New College has publicly committed to ‘eliminating outcome disparities for underrepresented and underserved groups,'” a statement from DeSantis’ office read.
DeSantis’ office asserted that the college’s statement “quite literally admits the institution will adjust outcomes based on non-academic factors of their choosing.”
Educators and students fight back
Andrew Gothard, the president of the United Faculty of Florida union, said that one of the complaints he’s heard from faculty against recent education restrictions is that “nobody really knows what the governor and the Office of the Governor are looking for here.”
“When we listen to politicians talk about this subject matter, they seem to use it as a catch-all for any course or topic or subject matter that talks about people who aren’t white,” Gothard told ABC News. “In higher education, we know that DEI and CRT are much more specific in their usage, but they also can relate to a larger array of issues.”
Critical race theory, which is taught in universities and colleges, seeks to understand how racism has shaped U.S. laws.
“Students in a higher education classroom should be educated on what this is, so that then they can make their own decisions about how they feel about it,” Gothard said.
Educators and librarians are left to ask themselves: “How do I know if my subject area is DEI- or CRT-related in the way that the governor thinks those terms work?” according to one librarian.
Kestrel Ward, a librarian at the University of Florida, fears the reaction to the lists being made of the funding, staffing and production of programs and courses relating to DEI and race.
“People in power creating lists of people they find undesirable has not led anywhere good for the people who are on those lists,” Ward said.
Ward said restrictions on DEI and “critical race theory” could be far-reaching — and could affect their book displays, programs and library selection.
Ward has considered leaving the position at the library due to the impending restrictions.
“It is becoming increasingly untenable, particularly for marginalized people, but for lots of people to work in higher education because there’s so much hostility from the government, which is an infringement on our academic freedom, but it’s also an infringement on our First Amendment rights,” Ward said.
(NEW YORK) — A customer-service center uses artificial intelligence to identify a caller’s agitation, an insurance company scans voice data to flag illness and raise rates, a five-star restaurant denies a reservation over personal details revealed by the tone on the other end of the line.
Far from science fiction, such scenarios have leapt into the realm of possibility, said Joseph Turow, a professor at University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication and author of The Voice Catchers: How Marketers Listen In to Exploit Your Emotions, Your Privacy and Your Wallet.
The rise of voice-assisted products in homes and workplaces has driven a wave of private sector innovation, honing the intake of fast food drive-thru orders, replacing handheld tech typically used by warehouse employees, and refining smart home devices that adapt to a user’s vocal tics, according to privacy experts and advocates who spoke with ABC News.
But voice data collection also fuels targeted marketing based on personal information gleaned from recordings and risks data breaches that could place one’s voice in the hands of cyber criminals aiming to imitate it, they added.
“This has become a real issue as more and more people are using voice-activated devices like Alexa and Siri,” Marc Rotenberg, founder and executive director for the nonprofit Center for AI and Digital Policy, told ABC News. “There’s a ticking time bomb with the collection of voice recordings.”
“These companies gather voice recordings to improve a service,” Rotenberg added. “But their retention of these voice recordings is a real concern for privacy.”
While voice assistants recently arrived in consumers’ pockets and living rooms, the technology goes back more than a half-century.
In the early 1960s, IBM released the Shoebox, a calculator that could do basic arithmetic in response to voice commands. Roughly a decade later, the “Harpy” speech recognition system launched by Carnegie Mellon could identify more than 1,000 words in a user’s voice.
Ultimately, the technology reached an inflection point more than a decade ago, when Apple released Siri as a feature of the iPhone, equipping tens of millions with voice command. Three years later, Amazon came out with Alexa, a voice assistant that could play songs or look up facts in response to a simple utterance. Soon after, Google launched Google Assistant, a voice-recognition feature available on its Android and Google Home devices.
Meanwhile, the technology has grown well beyond a consumer curiosity, as businesses have sought it out to improve operations and marketers have explored secondary uses of voice data. In all, the worldwide voice recognition market surpassed $3.5 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $10 billion by 2028, according to research firm Global Market Insights.
In many cases, businesses deploy voice data because it bolsters productivity or betters the service encountered by a customer, Kristin Bryan, an attorney at Squire Patton Boggs who has worked on litigation involving the collection of voice data, told ABC News.
“Companies are increasingly finding novel ways to use voice technology to reduce human error and streamline operations,” she said.
For instance, a growing number of warehouses in the nation’s vast e-commerce network have replaced handheld tablets with wearable technology that allows employees to record their work through voice commands, freeing up both hands for lifting and sorting products, said Roberto Michel, a senior editor for Modern Materials Handling, a trade publication covering the manufacturing industry.
A survey conducted by the trade outlet last year found that 39% of warehouse companies use voice-assisted technology, an increase from 21% of such businesses who reported adoption of the devices a year prior, Michel said.
The technology “speeds up the order-selection process versus fumbling with a handheld,” Michel said.
However, even ostensibly innocuous uses of voice-assisted technology can trigger privacy concerns, said Turow, of the University of Pennsylvania.
Last week, Amazon-owned grocery chain Whole Foods agreed to pay almost $300,000 to workers in a settlement over allegations that a voice-assisted product used to track worker productivity at a Chicago warehouse had recorded employees’ voices without their consent.
Critics fear that voice-assisted products glean more revealing data than many users realize, allowing companies to profit off of utterances made at home or work through carefully honed advertising or the sale of intimate information.
A consumer’s voice could be used to reveal a wealth of knowledge about him or her, including height, weight, ethnicity, personality traits and possible health issues, said Turow, who spoke to scientists about audio sleuthing for his book on the collection of voice data.
In 2019, Amazon announced the development of “a deep learning model to detect when customers are frustrated” with its voice assistant.
“Alexa can now try to adjust, just like you or I would do,” the company said.
“With Frustration Detection, Alexa will recognize positive, negative, and neutral tone for a request. Alexa is not designed to detect distinct emotions like happiness, sadness, anger or surprise,” Amazon Spokesperson Lauren Raemhild told ABC News.
“Customers have several options to manage their Alexa voice recordings, including the option not to save their recordings at all,” she added.
Last June, TikTok updated its privacy policy, expanding data collected by the company to include voice recordings.
Companies that collect voice data could use information to sell products directly to consumers, or pass the data along to advertisers, Turow said.
“As we move into a world where people use voice over typing in their everyday lives, marketers want to know: What can I get out of the voice of this person?” he said.
Rotenberg, of the Center for AI and Digital Policy, warned that the collection of audio data could also result in nefarious actors accessing one’s voice, allowing them to commit fraud or other crimes through impersonation.
A thief deploying the tactic, known as deepfake audio, tricked a Hong Kong-based bank into sending $35 million to a criminal the bank thought was a corporate attorney, Forbes reported last October.
In a statement, Amazon spokesperson Lauren Raemhild said the company takes extensive measures to ensure the security of its data.
“Amazon has hundreds of employees dedicated to designing secure products, innovating on security, and finding and fixing vulnerabilities in Amazon services and devices,” Raemhild said. “We employ numerous tactics and features that help keep our devices and customer data secure, for example, rigorous security reviews during development, encryption to protect data, and regular software security updates.”
Apple and Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment about potential theft and abuse of voice data.
Despite the growing use of voice-assisted technology, laws protecting audio data collection remain limited, according to attorneys and advocates who spoke with ABC News.
The U.S. lacks a federal law governing such data, leaving regulation primarily at the state level. So far, four states have enacted laws pertaining to the collection of voice data: California, Texas, Washington and Illinois, said Bryan, of Squire Patton Boggs.
The strongest law, in Illinois, requires that companies obtain written consent from individuals before collecting such data, and afterward firms are prohibited from selling or profiting off of the information. Companies that violate the law face potential financial penalties.
The effort to limit voice data collection requires urgency, before voice-assisted products become more widely adopted, Turow said.
“Once this has congealed, we can’t do much about it,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — Four passengers were killed and another was hurt after a small plane crashed in Lavaca County, Texas, on Tuesday morning, the state’s Department of Public Safety said.
The injured survivor was taken south to a hospital in the nearby small city of Victoria.
Images from the wreck showed the remainder of the small single-engine plane lying in a flat grass field, surrounded by pieces of debris. More than 10 vehicles were visible near the taped-off site as officials stood over it in video filmed at the scene Tuesday.
Some residents living nearby said it was foggy in the area around 11 a.m. when the plane went down — crashing near county roads less than a mile from the Yoakum Municipal Airport in south central Texas. Yoakum, Texas, is a town of under 10,000 people located in between the four major cities of San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Corpus Christi.
Harvest Church in Germantown, Tennessee, posted online Tuesday afternoon identifying the victims as its members and asking for prayers. The Memphis-area church said Bill Garner, Steve Tucker, Tyler Patterson and Tyler Springer all died in the crash.
“All were beloved members of Harvest Church and their loss currently leaves us without the proper words to articulate our grief,” the church said, announcing its worship center would be open for prayer and mourning time Tuesday night.
The post said pastor Kennon Vaughan was the lone survivor taken to the hospital and he was in stable condition as of the last report.
The flight tracking website FlightAware showed the aircraft appeared to depart from Memphis International Airport hours before the crash and traveled round trip from Memphis to Dallas just days ago.
The National Transportation Safety Board released a statement Tuesday afternoon saying it is “investigating the Jan. 17, crash of a Piper PA-46-350P aircraft near Yoakum, Texas.”
The Federal Aviation Administration will investigate the crash as well.
(NEW YORK) — A fisherman is missing after he was reportedly pulled into the ocean when he hooked a “huge” ahi tuna off the coast of Hawaii.
The incident occurred at approximately 5 a.m. on Sunday morning when 63-year-old Mark Knittle of Captain Cook, Hawaii, was fishing with a friend on a boat near Hōnaunau on the west coast of the Island of Hawaii.
“Knittle and a friend were fishing near the ‘C’ buoy, four miles outside of the Hōnaunau Boat Ramp, when Knittle hooked an ahi,” the Hawaii Police Department in a statement detailing the accident. “The friend heard Knittle say, ‘the fish is huge,’ then saw Knittle go overboard into the water.”
Police say Knittle’s friend attempted to grab the line in an initial and unsuccessful attempt to save him.
“Knittle was seen on the surface and disappeared within seconds,” the Hawaii Police Department said. “The friend attempted to jump in after Knittle but could not see him anywhere.”
The Hawaii Fire Department and Coast Guard personnel were immediately dispatched and have been conducting a continuous 72-hour search for Knittle. Authorities have not disclosed whether any clues have been recovered during their search.
Knittle is described as 5’10” tall and weighs approximately 185 pounds. He has curly brown hair with a white mustache and beard. Police are asking anyone with any information regarding this incident to contact the Hawaii Police Department’s non-emergency line at (808) 935-3311.
The search and investigation for Knittle is ongoing.
(NEW YORK) — A polar bear chased down and killed a woman and a young boy when it entered a remote village community in Alaska before a resident was able to shoot and kill the bear during the attack.
The incident occurred at approximately 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday in Wales, Alaska — the westernmost point of the American mainland with an estimated population of about 170 people — when a polar bear reportedly entered the remote community, police said.
“Initial reports indicate that a polar bear had entered the community and had chased multiple residents,” according to a statement released by the Alaska Department of Public Safety on Tuesday in the aftermath of the attack. “The bear fatally attacked an adult female and juvenile male.”
The bear was shot and killed by a local resident as it attacked the victims, according to authorities.
Polar bear attacks are very rare but male polar bears can weigh anywhere from 600 to 1,200 pounds with female polar bears ranging between 400 and 700 pounds, according to the Alaska Department for Fish and Game. Their average life span is about 25 years.
“Current and predicted future declines in sea ice led the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list polar bears as threatened under the ESA (Endangered Species Act) throughout their range,” according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. “Thinner ice and longer ice-free periods in summer may reduce the length of time polar bears have to hunt, and result in population declines.”
An investigation into the attack is ongoing as “troopers and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game are working to travel to Wales as weather conditions allow,” the Alaska Department of Public Safety confirmed.
The identities of the victims have not yet been confirmed and the next of kin notifications are still in progress.
