(NEW YORK) — A powerful storm is bearing down on western Alaska, with historic tidal surges, damaging winds and widespread power outages expected throughout the weekend.
As is typical for fall storms in Alaska, this one was a typhoon at one point. The remnants of post-tropical typhoon Merbok are tracking northeastward through the Bering Strait.
The center of ex-typhoon Merbok is about to make its way through the Bering Strait and enter the Chukchi Sea this morning. GOES water vapor imagery from the overnight hours. #akwxpic.twitter.com/bpoMSRhQeH
Historic coastal flooding is forecast for many communities in the region Saturday into Sunday, according to Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
“There hasn’t been a September storm this strong in the northern Bering Sea region in the past 70 years,” he said on Twitter.
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said Saturday that he has verbally declared a disaster for communities impacted by the storm.
“We will continue to monitor the storm and update Alaskans as much as possible,” he said on Twitter, noting that the state has not received any reports of injuries at this time.
The National Weather Service has issued coastal flood warnings for much of the northwestern coast of Alaska.
In the Yukon Delta, some regions have seen high winds, floods and power outages. Footage out of Hooper Bay shows homes floating off foundations.
“Significant” coastal flooding is also forecast for the Seward Peninsula, where a number of remote communities are already threatened by erosion. Water levels are expected to be as high as 18 feet above the normal high tide line in the communities of Elim and Koyuk, near Nome.
“Major” flooding has been reported in the region in Golovin, the National Weather Service said Saturday.
“The highest water levels not expected until this afternoon, flooding will get worse,” it said. “Water is surrounding the school, homes and structures are flooded, at least a couple homes floating off the foundation, some older fuel tanks are tilted over.”
Across the bay in Shaktoolik, south of the Seward Peninsula, residents have evacuated to the local school and clinic as “significant waves” have started to break and are getting close to homes, the National Weather Service said Saturday.
Peak levels in and around Nome are expected Saturday afternoon through Sunday morning, the National Weather Service warned. Many roads are likely to close and homes, businesses and local airports “inundated,” it said.
High wind warnings also are in effect into Saturday evening, with some regions in the Yukon Delta and Bering Straight Coast expected to see hurricane-force wind gusts of up to 90 mph, according to the National Weather Service. Widespread power outages are expected.
(NEW YORK) — Even as healthcare professionals battle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 300 Americans dying each day on average from the virus, doctors nationwide are raising awareness about the growing epidemic of suicide within their ranks.
Saturday, Sept. 17, is National Physician Suicide Awareness Day. It’s a day marking a sobering fact: physicians have a higher suicide rate than the general population, according to an article published in the science journal PLOS One.
Doctors dying by suicide means that patients lose good physicians. The growing number of suicides is a public health crisis, health professionals say.
According to a 2019 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, depressed physicians may also commit more medical mistakes. Many physicians are hesitant to seek treatment due to the stigma and fear of losing their jobs.
“It’s a culture that rewards toughness” and “the emphasis is on caring for others, not for yourself,” said Dr. Mimi Winsberg, a psychiatrist and chief medical officer of Brightside, an online therapy organization.
Dr. Sansea Jacobson, a psychiatrist and program director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, says suicide is more likely to occur when multiple risk factors pile up.
“And most importantly, when they’re unaddressed or under addressed mental health issues,” said Jacobson.
She added, “We know as doctors that we have all the stressors and risk factors of the general public. Plus, we have our own unique stressors, like the pandemic, patient deaths, medical errors, and malpractice lawsuits.”
In response to the crisis, President Joe Biden signed the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act into law in March. The law establishes grants to promote and study ways to improve mental health for health care providers.
The bill was named after Dr. Lorna Breen, an emergency medicine physician who died of suicide in April 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic. She may have feared losing her medical license and did not get help, according to a foundation set up in her honor.
The Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation recently helped to launch ALL IN, a campaign that hopes to remove mental health questions from forms that doctors fill out prior to getting a medical license.
There are several steps that a physician, or anyone dealing with a mental health crisis, can take, experts say.
“The first thing to do is to take an assessment. I always say that’s what gets measured gets managed, so I think understanding the scope of what you’re feeling is really important. And then the second thing is to seek help,” said Winsberg.
One silver lining of the pandemic is that it raised awareness of these issues, Winsberg said. She added, “Reducing stigma has made it more normal to express feelings of loneliness and depression and anxiety. I hope that that will spill over into the medical profession as well.”
Doctors can reach out on the Physician Support Line at 1 (888) 409-0141. The free and confidential hotline connects physicians to psychiatrists from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. Eastern, 7 days a week.
Anyone struggling with mental health is also encouraged to dial 988, a nationwide number to connect to the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Evelyn Huang, MD is a resident physician in emergency medicine from Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and a member of the ABC News Medical journalism rotation.
After close to a decade serving in the Marine Corps, Ron Self could knot a rope that was strong enough to drag military vehicles across combat zones in Africa. But serving time in a prison cell years later, he couldn’t get the bedsheets he’d tied together to hold.
“When I attempted to hang myself and the rope broke and I was on my knees and I realized immediately this is not — this was not — the solution,” he told ABC News.
After more than a decade of incarceration for a freeway shooting, Self said he was still processing the anger and shame of his arrest.
He is not alone: One-third of veterans say they have been arrested, according to a new report by the Council on Criminal Justice, citing a 2017 study focused on military service and crime.
“When you separate and you’re no longer part of something that’s bigger than anything you’ve ever been a part of your entire life — which is military service — and you don’t have that camaraderie anymore, it can take a, definitely, a dark turn,” Self said.
That’s what happened to him, he said: Self was a decorated Marine, awarded for his bravery in a helicopter crash in South Korea, by the time he was being medically discharged in the ’90s. But, he said, he felt increasingly unstable and estranged from civilian life. Which he thinks is why, in part, he agreed to be a hired gun and attempt to take someone’s life during their commute to work.
“I was laying in the back of a truck in a sniper hole built into this truck,” Self remembers of the 1994 incident, in which he armed himself on the freeway with a sniper rifle. “I was looking at him [the victim] through the crosshairs of the telescope on the rifle and I remember thinking how easy that would be, to just do that, and then take the off-ramp and go.”
Instead, Self said he aimed for the lower-right corner of the car windshield and shot two rounds, several seconds apart, in what he says was an attempt to avoid taking the man’s life.
“My intent was to make it public so that [the person who wanted him killed] couldn’t do it with someone else when this failed,” Self said.
He can still remember the reaction of a woman in a nearby car.
“The terror on her face from that windshield exploding and the gunshots — that terror is something I’ve only ever seen in combat,” he said. “The difference was we were there to stop the people causing it, and in that moment, it was me … I can’t even articulate how that hit me psychologically.”
The driver behind the shot-through windshield was injured but alive. Self was later arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder and firing a weapon within city limits.
“The fact that I did what I did, I think at a subconscious level, was me removing myself from society because I felt I didn’t belong in society,” he said.
Self was convicted and initially sentenced to 32 years to life in prison, with the possibility of parole.
After attempting to kill himself while incarcerated, he decided that he couldn’t let other former service members experience the same anguish.
“The solution would be a program that would help other veterans not make the poor choices I did,” he said.
While in prison, Self created a peer-to-peer mentor program, Veterans Healing Veterans from the Inside Out, to support other former service members navigating incarceration, past trauma and suicidal ideation.
He was later able to successfully argue in a parole hearing that he was attempting to avoid taking anyone’s life on the freeway and was released from prison in 2017 after serving 23 years.
The former Marine recently joined the Council on Criminal Justice as an inaugural member of the Veterans Justice Commission, which launched last month.
Self will work alongside two former defense secretaries, Chuck Hagel and Leon Panetta, as a part of a 15-member body investigating veteran arrest rates. The two-year long commission will also make policy recommendations to better support former service members.
“There’s been an injustice suffered here,” Hagel told ABC, adding “no one’s paid attention.”
He believes the council provides “a strength, a position, a structure that we can work within and we can work on to attract some of the best minds in the country on this issue.”
“We need to do a better job,” he said of society supporting veterans returning from war. “And it’s not good enough to just say, well, we can do more. With this commission, hopefully what we can do is we can be specific.”
The commission recognizes more than 181,500 veterans in prison or jails across the U.S., citing the latest count estimated in 2011-2012 by the Department of Justice. According to the same data, 8% of people incarcerated in local jails and state and federal prisons in the U.S. are veterans.
The majority of incarcerated veterans are sentenced for violent crimes and close to twice as many veterans are serving life sentences than their non-veterans counterparts, according to the commission’s report, citing a 2016 survey by the DOJ.
The commission defined unique risk factors among people returning from war that make them more likely to engage in criminal activity. These factors include post-traumatic stress disorders, traumatic brain injuries, heightened mental health concerns, more frequent substance misuse and financial insecurity.
Federal, state and local programs have been established to assist incarcerated veterans. The Veterans Justice Outreach Program was launched in 2009 by the Department of Veterans Affairs to better identify incarcerated veterans and connect them to appropriate resources. While the U.S. House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs references 138,000 veterans served by this program over a four-year period, the commission also acknowledges a pervasive lack of awareness from service members of what support systems are available to them both before and after their arrests.
When Self was being processed through his medical discharge after his military service, he said he was not made aware of all of the resources available to him.
“I had no clue that I had a potentiality for service-connected benefits or actual monetary benefit,” he said. “I had no idea about any of that.”
“I don’t want to blame the military,” Self continued. “And I’m not. And I’m not playing the victim. I own a very poor decision I made. But I also take into consideration now — I made this decision five months after several people I served with were killed, and I never processed that.”
After years in the military, the Marine Corps had become his family, where he said he found “people that have basically chewed the same dirt, spit the same bud.”
The chronic pain he faced that caused his eventual medical discharge from the Marines, he says now, was more tolerable overseas because of his relationships with his fellow service members. “To be removed from that — it was an absolute loss of identity.”
“It’s an inappropriate cry for help,” Self said of service members committing crimes.
He recognizes his unique position as a formerly incarcerated veteran on the commission to answer those cries.
“Everyone that raised their hand to serve was trusted to carry a weapon in defense of this country. I violated that trust by doing what I did,” he said of his shooting. “I may not ever be able to regain that level of trust. I can definitely spend the rest of my life trying to.”
Self believes the commission will be an important next step in studying the larger issue and ensuring incarcerated veterans know they are not alone or beyond correction and rehabilitation.
“We all have the ability for redemption. We all have the ability to change how we frame and view our past,” Self said of fellow service members who may have found themselves in a similar position to him. “If we can reframe how that drives us through the rest of our lives, it could be a lot more helpful to all people leaving the military and the society in which we fought for.”
(WASHINGTON) — Confused yet on where the abortion debate stands? If not, you probably should be.
Three months after securing the biggest victory in their political lives at the Supreme Court, a close ally of former President Donald Trump and a major anti-abortion rights group proposed a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks.
The plan by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America included some exceptions for rape and incest, and got a nod from former Vice President Mike Pence, a hero of the cause.
Yet, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the vast majority of abortions occur by 15 weeks. In fact, 93% of abortions happen before 13 weeks.
That means that after decades of promising to end abortions, a major slice of the anti-abortion rights movement just rallied around legislation that would curb only a fraction of them. Why?
“It’s political opportunism by Graham, who is trying to give Republicans a place to stand,” said Chuck Coughlin, a Republican strategist who runs the Arizona-based consulting firm HighGround.
“But it’s like standing in the middle of a highway,” he added. “There’s no base that’s going to support that.”
It’s an unexpected twist in the never-ending U.S. debate on abortion: As Republicans in statehouses, including those in Georgia, Indiana and West Virginia, embrace near-total abortion bans, strategists are warning these hard-line positions could spook more moderate and independent voters.
With midterm elections on the horizon, several GOP candidates have begun avoiding the issue with at least one — Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters — scrubbing his website of a previous declaration that he is “100% pro life.”
To political strategists like Coughlin, Graham’s proposal was clearly aimed as a lifeline to flailing conservative candidates, even as the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he had no intention of trying to get a floor vote on the bill.
“I think that’s where the country is at. So, I don’t mind talking about pro-life issues,” Graham said Wednesday, adding, “I think my proposal over time will be supported by the public at large.”
Polls show that a majority of Americans support upholding Roe v. Wade, which ruled a right to an abortion up until viability of a fetus, usually around 24 weeks. At the same time, support for abortion rights dwindle as a woman’s pregnancy continues.
Mallory Carroll, vice president of communications for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told ABC News that it opted to swing behind Graham’s proposal as a way of setting a “federal minimum” that showed strong voter support.
The proposed legislation includes a provision that would still allow states to enact tougher restrictions.
“Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America has consistently urged elected officials at the federal and state level to be as ambitious as possible to save unborn children while using the tools of democracy to debate and arrive at a consensus,” Carroll wrote in a statement.
Another benefit of Graham’s legislation to his fellow Republicans, some strategists say, could have been to turn the tables on Democrats by asking them to explain their support for second-trimester abortions.
As the CDC data show, such procedures are extremely rare and doctors say they can occur because of severe abnormalities with the fetus or because of risks to their own health.
Yet, as this week wore on, all of that nuance was lost.
GOP lawmakers in Washington and candidates in the field dodged questions on the bill, while Democrats cited a federal ban as extreme. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quipped that Republicans “think that life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.”
Sarah Isgur, a former Trump administration official and now an ABC News contributor, said that at the end of the day, Graham’s political move just didn’t make sense.
“He’s dividing the GOP base even among pro-life Republicans, and he’s nationalizing a conversation that conservatives argued for decades they wanted decided at the state level,” she said.
Also, Republicans fare better when talking about issues like inflation and crime, she added.
“So why is Graham trying to keep abortion — an issue that clearly energizes Democratic voters more than Republican ones–at the top of the agenda?” Isgur said.
Either way, the underlying message from both parties this week to voters: Let’s not get too caught up in the details on abortion.
“I, for one, want to focus on the inflation numbers that came out today” and the possible railway strike, Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina told reporters at one point.
(NEW YORK) — A disgruntled man upset about Merriam-Webster dictionary’s update to their definitions of gender pronouns and adjectives to make them more fluid has pleaded guilty in a federal court to making bomb threats and for threatening to kill the company’s employees in a mass shooting.
The U.S. Attorney’s in the District of Massachusetts alleges that Jeremy David Hanson, 34, of Rossmoor, CA, anonymously sent “various threatening messages and comments demonstrating bias against specific gender identities submitted through its website’s ‘Contact Us’ page and in the comments section on its webpages that corresponded to the word entries for ‘Girl’ and ‘Woman,’” between the dates of Oct. 2 and Oct. 8, 2021. Authorities later identified the user as Hanson.
“Specifically, on Oct. 2, 2021, Hanson used the handle ‘@anonYmous’ to post the following comment on the dictionary’s website definition of ‘female:’ ‘It is absolutely sickening that Merriam-Webster now tells blatant lies and promotes anti-science propaganda. There is no such thing as ‘gender identity.’ The imbecile who wrote this entry should be hunted down and shot,’” authorities said in the statement.
A short time later, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Hanson sent them another message, this time via the “Contact Us” page on their website.
“You [sic] headquarters should be shot up and bombed. It is sickening that you have caved to the cultural Marxist, anti-science … agenda and altered the definition of ‘female’ as part of the Left’s efforts to corrupt and degrade the English language and deny reality,” the second online threat read in part. “It would be poetic justice to have someone storm your offices and shoot up the place.”
A third threat was sent to Merriam-Webster as a comment on their website on Oct. 8, 2021 which read: “I am going to shoot up and bomb your offices for lying and creating fake definitions,” the message said. “Boys aren’t girls, and girls aren’t boys … I will assassinate your top editor.”
Following these specific and credible threats, Merriam-Webster closed its offices in Springfield, MA, as well as in New York City for five days.
Hanson also admitted in court this week that he often selected the object of his threatening communications because of the “gender, gender identity and/or sexual orientation of various persons,” said the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“Every member of our community has a right to live and exist authentically as themselves without fear. Hate motivated threats of violence that infringe upon that right are not tolerated in Massachusetts in any capacity,” said United States Attorney Rachael S. Rollins. “This conviction represents my office’s dedication to protecting targeted communities and bringing accountability and justice when those who aim to endanger act upon their hatred.”
Hanson pleaded guilty on Wednesday to one count of interstate communication of threatening communications to commit violence against the employees of Merriam-Webster, which carries a potential sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000, according to a statement released by U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts.
“Jeremy Hanson is now a convicted felon after admitting to making hate-fueled threats of violence related to the LGBTQ+ community,” said Joseph R. Bonavolonta, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston Division. “If you believe you are a victim or a witness to similar conduct, we encourage you to report it to the FBI so we can hold the perpetrators behind these crimes accountable for their actions, like we did in this case.”
Hanson is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 5, 2023.
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Coast Guard has recovered almost 30,000 pounds of cocaine and marijuana, valued at more than $475 million, after seizing the drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean.
The crew aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Legare offloaded 24,700 pounds of cocaine and 3,892 pounds of marijuana at Base Miami Beach Thursday, according to a U.S. Coast Guard press release.
The drugs recovered were found in international waters, and efforts were taken by the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, the Dutch Caribbean Coast Guard and the Royal Netherlands Navy to confiscate the drugs from suspected drug cartels.
“I am proud of the crew’s continued devotion to duty that made this offload possible,” said Cdr. Jeremy M. Greenwood, commanding officer of Legare. “Through the coordinated efforts of the Legare, the LEDETs, HNLMS Groningen, CGC James, and the USS Billings crews, we significantly contributed to the counter-drug mission and the dismantling of transnational criminal organizations. The drugs seized through this coordinated effort will result in significantly fewer drug-related overdoses.”
The Coast Guard said that fighting cartels and criminal organizations that traffic drugs takes a lot of unity at different phases of the process.
“From detection and monitoring to interdiction and apprehension, and on to criminal prosecutions by international partners and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices in districts across the nation,” the Coast Guard said. “Detecting and interdicting illegal drug traffickers on the high seas involves significant interagency and international coordination.”
Stationed in Portsmouth, Virginia, the Legare has an extremely large patch and patrols the offshore waters from Maine to Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, the Eastern Pacific and the Caribbean.
The 270-foot Famous-class medium endurance cutter’s missions include “law enforcement, search and rescue, protection of living marine resources, homeland security and defense operations, international training and humanitarian operations,” according to the statement released by the Coast Guard.
“The U.S. Navy and allied foreign ships conduct law enforcement missions under the authority of embarked Coast Guard LEDETs from Tactical Law Enforcement Teams based in Miami and San Diego,” the Coast Guard confirmed.
ABC News’ Victoria Arancio contributed to this report.
Neil Diamond may be nicknamed the Jewish Elvis, but he also has a little Santa Claus in him. The legendary singer/songwriter has released four Christmas albums over the years, and he’s now curated a new holiday compilation featuring select highlights from those records.
A Neil Diamond Christmas is due out October 28 as a two-CD set, a single-CD collection and as a two-LP 180-gram vinyl package pressed on either standard black vinyl or limited-edition gold-opaque vinyl.
The retrospective features a mix of traditional and modern yuletide tunes, as well as original holiday songs culled from 1992’s The Christmas Album, 1994’s The Christmas Album Volume II, 2009’s A Cherry Cherry Christmas and 2016’s Acoustic Christmas.
A Neil Diamond Christmas also includes a new mix of Neil’s rendition of “O Holy Night.”
Among the other tracks featured on the record are versions of the John Lennon classic “Happy Christmas (War Is Over),” as well as “The Christmas Song,” “Jingle Bell Rock,” “White Christmas,” “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and “Winter Wonderland.”
Disc 1
“Happy Christmas (War Is Over)”
“The Christmas Song”
“Jingle Bell Rock”
“White Christmas”
“You Make It Feel Like Christmas”
“Morning Has Broken”
“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”
“Silver Bells”
“Cherry Cherry Christmas”
“Sleigh Ride”
“Winter Wonderland”
“Christmas Medley: It’s Almost Day/Make a Happy Song/We Wish You a Merry Christmas”
Disc 2
“O Holy Night”*
“Little Drummer Boy”
“O Come, O Come Emmanuel/We Three Kings of Orient Are”
“Silent Night”
“O Come All Ye Faithful”
“Mary’s Boy Child”
“Children Go Where I Send Thee”
“The First Noel”
“Hark the Herald Angels Sing”
“God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman”**
“Angels We Have Heard on High”
“Christmas Prayers”
“Joy to the World”
* = new mix
** = does not appear on two-LP vinyl version.
Moonage Daydream, the David Bowie documentary that’s the first movie about the late rock legend to be officially sanctioned by his estate, premiered today in theaters around the world.
As previously reported, Moonage Daydream, which was written and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Brett Morgen, includes previously unseen footage and performances of the late rock legend, as well as unheard music, and features Bowie’s own narration.
The movie is described as “a sublime kaleidoscopic experiential cinematic odyssey that explores Bowie’s creative, spiritual, and philosophical journey.”
The film includes 47 musical tracks, mixed from the original recordings. David’s longtime friend, collaborator and co-producer Tony Visconti served as the musical producer of the project.
Visit MoonageDaydream.film to find out where the movie is playing in the U.S. and Canada.
The Tony-winning production, the longest running in Broadway’s history, has reportedly been losing money since performances resumed at the Great White Way’s Majestic Theatre on October 21, 2021, following the pandemic shutdown.
The musical will celebrate its 35th birthday in January; that iconic chandelier will fall one last time on February 18, 2023.
The Times reports that some 19.8 million people have seen the musical since it launched on January 26, 1988, and the production has grossed over $1.3 billion in that time.
The musical will live on elsewhere, however, including at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London. The publication notes Phantom has been seen by more than 145 million people in 183 cities around the world.
Alice Cooper, Bad Company/Free frontman Paul Rodgers and ex-Guns N’ Roses drummer Matt Sorum are among the artists who will perform at Rock the Plaza, an upcoming fundraising concert supporting the restoration of the historic Plaza Theatre in Palm Springs, California.
The show takes place November 11 and is being presented by the Save the Plaza Theatre initiative. The city-run campaign aims to bring the venue, which first opened in 1936, back to its “former glory” following years of disrepair.
Other artists on the concert’s lineup include Paul McCartney touring guitarist Brian Ray, Queen touring multi-instrumentalist Spike Edney, Who touring bassist Jon Button, Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme and Australian guitar virtuoso Orianthi.
Many of the participating acts live in or have close connections to Palm Springs.
The event will feature a silent auction that includes an autographed Brian May “Red Special” guitar, a guitar signed by Cooper, an autographed fan that Adam Lambert used during Queen concerts, a pair of go-go boots signed by Nancy Sinatra and a two VIP tickets for a Barry Manilow concert in Las Vegas.
