(NEW YORK) — Damage from weather and climate disasters in 2022 could exceed $100 billion in the U.S. by the end of the year, according to estimations from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
So far this year, 15 events — including the recent Hurricanes Fiona and Ian — have incurred damages of more than $1 billion, NOAA announced on Tuesday. It is the eighth consecutive year in which the U.S. has endured 10 or more billion-dollar disaster events.
The current tally for 2022 is $29.3 billion in destruction, but the costs from Fiona, Ian and the wildfires in the West are still being tallied, according to NOAA.
More than 340 people have died in these events, but death tolls could rise as search and rescue crews continue to comb through battered portions of Southwest Florida and Puerto Rico.
Ian made landfall in Florida on Sept. 28 as a strong Category 4 hurricane and tracked across the state before exiting into the Atlantic Ocean and making another landfall in South Carolina as a Category 1 storm. Entire neighborhoods on Sanibel Island and Fort Myers Beach were decimated with storm surge and up to 150 mph winds.
On Sept. 18, Fiona brought major flooding, damage and loss of life to Puerto Rico — five years after the island was devastated by Hurricane Maria.
Since 1980, the U.S. has sustained 338 weather and climate disasters in which the overall damages exceeded $1 billion, according to NOAA. The total cost of those 338 events exceeds $2.295 trillion.
Climate scientists warn that extreme weather events such as hurricanes, wildfires and drought will become more severe as global temperatures continue to rise.
(WASHINGTON) — Two leading Republican senators traveled to Carrollton, Georgia, on Tuesday to support the state’s GOP Senate nominee, Herschel Walker, who has been embroiled in controversy after denying a report claiming that in 2009 he paid for an abortion for a woman who said she’s also the mother of one of his children.
Both Florida Sen. Rick Scott — chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, a major financial backer of Walker’s campaign — and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton spoke at a stop Tuesday on Walker’s “Unite Georgia Bus Tour,” though they made little more than veiled references to the woman’s abortion claim against Walker, who has campaigned as staunchly anti-abortion.
“I know we’re in the time in a political campaign when people get tired of television ads and the lies they tell about Herschel Walker,” Cotton said. “But let me promise you: The most important advertisement that Herschel Walker can have for the next 28 days is all of you — talking to your friends and your family and your neighbors and your coworkers and saying simply, ‘I’m for Herschel.'”
After the event, the senators — who were not joined by Walker — did not answer questions from reporters about if they had spoken to the candidate regarding the abortion allegations. Scott reiterated that “he’s denied the allegations.”
“Warnock and the Democrats want to make this about Herschel Walker’s yesterdays. Herschel Walker wants to make this about Georgia’s tomorrows,” Cotton said.
He and Scott spent most of their time on the stump applauding Walker’s positions on crime, inflation and border security, among other issues. They criticized Walker’s opponent, incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, as a “rubber stamp” for President Joe Biden and Democratic policies.
“You want to vote for a man who believes America is a great country, a man who has overcome great adversity, a man who wants to bring the people of Georgia together and a man who believes our best days can be ahead of us. Well, then you should vote for the next U.S. senator from the great state of Georgia: Herschel Walker,” Scott said.
“If you like paying more for everything, you should vote for Warnock. Because he and Joe Biden did that. If you like paying double for gas, vote for Warnock, because he and Joe Biden did that,” Scott said.
Warnock — who has tried to highlight his bipartisan record in Congress — commented on the abortion claim against Walker on Thursday. He said at a campaign event that “what we’re hearing about my opponent is disturbing. I think the people of Georgia have a real choice about who they think is ready to represent them in the United States Senate.”
At Tuesday’s even with Cotton and Scott, Walker briefly touched on the claim, which he cast as a politically motivated “October surprise” in the final weeks of the race.
“Don’t let them be campaigning, come campaigning for you. They’re campaigning for your vote … They’ll do whatever it takes,” Walker said.
Scott, the head of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, said last week he was standing by Walker and pointed to Walker’s denial of the unnamed woman’s claim to The Daily Beast that he reimbursed her for an abortion more than a decade ago.
The woman, who described herself as an ex-girlfriend, told The Daily Beast that she has documents supporting her allegation: a receipt from an abortion clinic, a bank deposit receipt with an image of a $700 check that she said was signed by Walker sent within a week of the abortion and also a “get well” card that she said was signed by Walker.
ABC News has not independently verified the reporting.
Walker has repeatedly denied paying the woman for an abortion, including in a Tuesday interview with ABC News’ Linsey Davis.
He has not, however, disputed that he and the woman share a young son together and his campaign provided an NBC News reporter with some text messages between the woman and his wife that appear to show she has been in touch with them for years.
Walker said this summer that he has four children, including another son with his ex-wife.
After Walker denied the initial Daily Beast story, Scott said the NRSC would continue to back Walker and he argued that Democrats will “lie, cheat, and smear” because Walker was “winning” his race against Warnock.
“Herschel has denied these allegations and the NRSC and Republicans stand with him, and Georgians will stand with him too,” Scott said in a statement last week.
In a radio interview on Thursday, Walker again denied the abortion allegation but acknowledged past troubles that he said he overcame through his faith: “I wasn’t perfect. I had my problem with mental health. And I was, I’ve been, I hate to say I’ve been born again — but I have a new life.”
Walker is locked in a tight race against Warnock. The winner could decide control of the now 50-50 Senate.
Currently, Walker is trailing Warnock in the polls by about 3.5%, according to FiveThirtyEight.
(WASHINGTON) — Karine Jean-Pierre, the first openly gay White House press secretary, marked National Coming Out Day on Tuesday with a personal story — sharing in a series of tweets and then remarks to reporters how “coming out wasn’t an easy thing to do.”
On Twitter, Jean-Pierre wrote that she was proud to share her own story even though for her “traditional and conservative” family, being gay “wasn’t something that you mentioned out loud or celebrated.”
But Jean-Pierre, who was born in Martinique in the Caribbean and then raised in New York, said her family grew to accept her.
“They saw that who I loved didn’t change who I was as a person,” she said at Tuesday’s press briefing, echoing her tweets and noting that she wanted to mark her own identity “particularly as we continue to see a wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation across the country.”
“The beauty of America is its freedoms and the promise that you can achieve your dreams, no matter your race, sex, country of origin, sexual orientation or gender identity,” she said. “This is something we continue to strive toward and fight for.”
In May 2021, when she was serving as a deputy press secretary, Jean-Pierre became the first openly gay person to brief reporters on behalf of the president while stepping in for her predecessor, Jen Psaki.
Jean-Pierre — who has a daughter with partner Suzanne Malveaux, a CNN correspondent — became the first openly gay White House press secretary nearly a year later when she took the helm from Psaki on May 13.
On #NationalComingOutDay, I’m proud to share my coming out story. Like so many in the LGBTQ+ community, coming out wasn’t an easy thing to do. My family was traditional and conservative. Being gay in my family wasn’t something that you mentioned out loud or celebrated.
A week earlier, she appeared behind the podium with Psaki to speak about the opportunity when the White House announced her promotion.
“This is a historic moment and it’s not lost on me. I understand how important it is for so many people out there, so many different communities that I stand on their shoulders, and I have been throughout my career,” Jean-Pierre said at the time.
Psaki noted the significance then as well, saying Jean-Pierre set an example.
“She will be the first Black woman, the first out LGBTQ+ person to serve in this role, which is amazing because representation matters,” Psaki said.
In an interview with ABC News’ Gio Benitez this summer, Jean-Pierre said her coming out story traced back to her teen years: “When I was 16 years old, I realized that I was different — and I kind of knew,” she said.
That was when she came out to her mom.
“You could see her head spinning,” Jean-Pierre said then.
“She saw me … having a totally different life,” she said of her mother.
“Years down the road” with the birth of her daughter, “almost everything changed” — for the better — with their relationship, she said.
Jean-Pierre has since used her platform as President Joe Biden’s spokeswoman to criticize policies that she says target LGBTQ people, such as a Florida ban on teachers discussing gender and sexuality in younger classrooms, which critics called the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
“This is discrimination, plain and simple. It’s part of a disturbing and dangerous nationwide trend of right-wing politicians cynically targeting LGBTQI+ students, educators, and individuals to score political points,” Jean-Pierre wrote in a White House statement in July.
She added then that teachers who identify as LGBTQ are “being told to take down family photos of their husbands and wives—cherished family photos like the ones on my own desk.”
Jean-Pierre ended her series of tweets on Tuesday, for National Coming Out Day, with a message of reassurance to other LGBTQ people.
“Don’t feel discouraged if you come out and your family doesn’t embrace you right away,” she wrote. “Love always wins!”
(SAN ANTONIO) — A former San Antonio police officer was charged with two counts of aggravated assault by a public servant on Tuesday in the shooting of a teenager last week, according to the San Antonio Police Department Homicide Unit.
The department fired Officer James Brennand after bodycam footage showed him shooting a teenager who was eating a hamburger in a McDonald’s parking lot in Texas.
Brennand turned himself in, police said during a press conference Tuesday night. There were two charges of aggravated assault because of the two passengers in the car, police said.
The 17-year-old, identified by police as Erik Cantu, was shot multiple times and remains hospitalized. He was in critical condition as of Tuesday night, police said.
The SAPD terminated Brennand last Wednesday over the incident due to his actions, which violated department tactics, training and procedures, according to San Antonio Police Chief William McManus.
According to police, Officer Brennand was responding to a disturbance call on Oct. 2 when he noticed a vehicle he thought had fled from him the night before during an attempted stop.
The footage shows the officer approaching the car and opening the door, when he sees Cantu eating a hamburger alongside a female passenger and orders him out.
Police said the officer reported the car door hit him as the teen started to reverse the car.
Bodycam video shows the officer firing 10 times at the moving vehicle before chasing after it on foot.
Police said that the passenger in the vehicle was not injured during the incident.
In a statement to ABC News on Sunday, Cantu’s family, through his attorney, said the teenager is on life support and fighting to stay alive.
“We thank you for the heartfelt thoughts on the status of Erik’s recovery. We will inform you that he’s still in critical condition and literally fighting for his life every minute of the day as his body has endured a tremendous amount of trauma,” Cantu’s attorney, Brian Powers, said. “He is still on life support. We need all the blessing we can receive at this time. We kindly ask for privacy beyond this update as this is a delicate moment in our lives and we are focusing on one thing and that’s getting him home.”
The San Antonio Police Officer’s Association had no comment immediately following Brennand’s dismissal from the force, but in a new statement to ABC News, the president of the union, Danny Diaz, said that the organization will not represent Brennand because he had not completed his 1-year probationary period for new officers at the time of the shooting.
“New police recruits must complete a 1-year probationary period before becoming eligible for benefits provided by the union,” Diaz said. “We understand the San Antonio Police Department’s decision to terminate Officer James Brennand but will refrain from further comment until a full investigation is completed.”
(MENLO PARK, Calif.) — A tree trimmer has died after falling into a wood chipper while he was working, police say.
The incident occurred at approximately 12:53 p.m. on Tuesday in Menlo Park, California, approximately 30 miles south of San Francisco, when the Menlo Park Police Department responded to a report of an incident involving a tree trimmer who had managed to accidentally fall into a wood chipper on the 900 block of Peggy Lane while he was working, police say.
“When police units arrived on scene, a male subject was found deceased from injuries sustained in the incident,” the Menlo Park Police Department said in a statement confirming the fatality.
Authorities from the Menlo Park Fire Protection District and the San Mateo County Coroner’s Office also responded to the tragic accident. The street was shut down while authorities conducted their investigation but all other roads in the area were open to traffic during this period.
The worker’s identity has not yet been released and is currently under the jurisdiction of the coroner’s office while they notify the male victim’s next of kin, authorities said. It is unclear when they will be making a further statement on the identity of the victim and the coroner’s office did not release any further details on the incident.
The Menlo Park Police Department confirmed that his death will be investigated by the Cal/OSHA Division of Occupational Safety and Health.
(NEW YORK) — Russia’s missile strikes across Ukraine on Monday were a direct retaliation for the attack damaging the key bridge connecting Crimea with Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin said this week.
The bombardment was the largest against Ukrainian cities in months and focused heavily on civilian targets, killing at least 19 and injuring dozens more, Ukrainian officials said. It was also the first time the very center of Kyiv had been directly hit.
But while the barrage was intended to terrorize, independent analysts said it underlined not Russia’s strength but growing weakness, illustrating its inability to shift the military situation in its favor. They called it a desperate attempt by Putin to respond to critics at home but said the strikes would have no effect in reversing Russia’s battlefield defeats.
“This is not, therefore, a new war-winning strategy but a … tantrum,” Lawrence Freedman, a professor of War Studies at Kings College London, wrote in a post his Substack blog of Monday’s strikes.
The Crimean bridge that was partially collapsed by a blast over the weekend was a target with major symbolic and military significance for Russia. The bridge was an expensive physical symbol of Putin’s annexation of Crimea and a key supply line for Russian forces already under intense pressure in southern Ukraine.
The attack on the bridge was a personal humiliation for Putin that underscored how badly the war is going for Russia. Russian nationalists were demanding a commensurate response, experts said.
Russia’s strikes on Monday were unable to hit anything comparable, instead resorting to bombing civilian targets without any military significance, including a university and a children’s playground in Kyiv, local officials said.
“The occupiers are not capable of opposing us on the battlefield already, that is why they resort to this terror,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a social media post on Monday.
In the capital, for example, a Russian missile targeted a pedestrian bridge that crosses through a park and that’s only used for sightseeing. The missile missed the bridge, leaving it intact, but it did hit the surrounding park. It’s unclear if that strike resulted in any injuries.
Russia also targeted several power stations around the country that Ukrainian and Western officials have said are part of a strategy of destroying heating infrastructure as winter approaches.
The strikes are designed to spread fear, but will have no impact on Ukraine’s ability to keep advancing in the northeast and south where Russia is on the defensive, several military analysts said. Russia is also running out of the long-range missiles it used in Monday’s strike, meaning it will be unable to maintain such intensity even short-term, analysts said.
Pavel Luzhin, a military expert and political scientist, told the Russian independent news site The Insider that after Monday’s strikes, Russia already had insufficient advanced missiles to repeat such a large-scale attack.
“The 83 missiles that Russia used today, it had been hoarding for several months,” Luzhin, who writes for Riddle Russia, told The Insider.
Russia produces no more than 200 advanced cruise missiles a year, he said, and upping production or buying them from other countries was impossible.
Luzhin said Russia still had larger quantities of older, less advanced missiles and now Iranian drones, but these were not enough to have a significant military impact.
“Enough for terror, but not for anything more,” he said.
White House spokesman John Kirby said in an interview on ABC News’ Good Morning America on Tuesday that Russia’s bombing campaign across Ukraine didn’t appear to be enough to turn the military tide in Russia’s favor.
“It doesn’t appear like they’re going to do that,” Kirby said. “I mean, we don’t know what the next steps here are for Mr. Putin. But you can see just from the–just from the reaction of the Ukrainian people over the course of the weekend, they’re not backing down. They’re not slowing down. They’re gonna continue to conduct their counteroffensives. They are still active on the battlefield.”
Greg Yudin, a professor of political philosophy at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, told ABC News the Russian hardliners were “the target audience” for Monday’s strikes.
He said Putin was now fully aligned with the hardliners and that he would escalate further despite his military’s growing weakness.
“He doesn’t care about reality. He will push until the end. He will escalate further and further, hoping that perhaps the final escalation will make the opponent surrender,” Yudin said.
He said, in Putin’s view, the real opponent he must force to surrender was the West.
“The hardliners have been demanding attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure for some time and they now have got what they wanted. But they will inevitably be disappointed with the results. The electricity will be turned back on, the rubble cleared, and Ukraine’s armies will continue to press forward,” Freedman wrote in a post on his Substack.
Russia has been bombing Ukrainian infrastructure since the start of the war, hitting Ukrainian cities most days, but the number of its strikes has fallen dramatically since the summer, which is a sign it has to ration its limited missile stockpile, most military experts say.
Short on missiles and pushed back from Ukrainian cities, Russia is often turning to anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles to strike ground targets in order to preserve its more valuable cruise missiles, experts said. Ukraine is also increasingly effective at shooting down Russian missiles.
One of Britain’s top spy chiefs on Tuesday also said Russia was increasingly short on ammunition and supplies of all types.
“We know — and Russian commanders on the ground know — that their supplies and munitions are running out,” Sir Jeremy Fleming, the head of Britain’s GCHQ intelligence will say in a speech he is expected to give Tuesday, the BBC and other media outlets reported. “Russia’s forces are exhausted. The use of prisoners to reinforce, and now the mobilization of tens of thousands of inexperienced conscripts, speaks of a desperate situation.”
As Ukraine has routed Russian forces in parts of the country in recent weeks, hardline nationalists in Russia have been calling for Putin to adopt a total war approach that would destroy civilian infrastructure and flatten Ukrainian cities. On Monday some of those critics hailed the strikes.
“We must hope that this is not a one-time act of revenge but a new system of waging war,” Alexander Kots, a prominent military reporter for the pro-Kremlin Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, wrote on the social media platform Telegram. “Across the entire Ukrainian government. Until they lose the ability to function.”
The Kremlin last week appointed a new overall commander for its Ukrainian operations, Gen. Sergey Surovikin, known for leading a brutal indiscriminate bombing campaign in Syria. Monday’s strikes may suggest the Kremlin may be shifting to a similar strategy of intensifying attacks on civilians in the hope of counterbalancing its military’s failures while also placating its most aggressive supporters, experts said.
In a short speech on Monday, Putin said the strikes were in response to the Crimean bridge explosion and warned Ukraine more would come if it repeated similar attacks.
“No one should have any doubts about that,” Putin said.
But Ukrainian officials said the threats would not intimidate them, noting Russia has barraged the country since February and instead calling for western countries to provide more air defenses.
Kyiv has pleaded for such defenses for months, and Zelenskyy did so again Tuesday at the G7 meeting.
“I thank you for all the help already provided. It is big, it is significant,” Zelenskyy said Tuesday. “But the Russian leader, who is now in the final stage of his reign, still has room for further escalation. This possibility of his is a threat to all of us.”
Zelenskyy told the G7 that air defense systems are critical for peace to be achieved in his country.
“We have a formula for peace. And now, reacting to Russian terror, sham referenda and the attempt to annex our territory, we can apply the peace formula so that the terrorist state stands no chance,” he said.
“The first point is defense support. Air shield for Ukraine. This is part of the security guarantees that are an element of our peace formula,” Zelenskyy said Tuesday. “When Ukraine receives a sufficient number of modern and effective air defense systems, the key element of Russian terror – missile strikes – will cease to work.”
In a phone call on Monday with Zelenskyy, President Joe Biden pledged to continue support, including “advanced air defense systems.”
The United States announced in July it would provide two NASAMS surface-to-air defense systems, although they have not yet arrived.
Kirby wouldn’t provide any more details on what more, in terms of air defense systems, the U.S. may provide Ukraine.
“Clearly, air defense is a need, and we’re going to work with them on that going forward,” he told GMA on Tuesday, adding: “Clearly, after this weekend, air defense capabilities continue to be a significant need for Ukraine.”
(NEW YORK) — NASA successfully disrupted the orbit of an asteroid in a mission last month that tested a strategy to defend against a potential asteroid headed toward Earth, the agency said on Tuesday.
“This is a watershed moment for planetary defense and a watershed moment for humanity,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said on Tuesday.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft, or DART, collided with an asteroid on Sept. 26 after traveling roughly 7 million miles to reach its point of impact.
On the receiving end of that collision was Dimorphos, a small asteroid that is the moon of a bigger space rock, Didymos.
NASA confirmed that the collision changed the trajectory of Dimorphos by comparing the length of its orbit before and after impact, Nelson said.
Before impact, it took Dimorphos 11 hours and 55 minutes to complete its orbit around Didymos. After impact, the orbit took 32 fewer minutes, Nelson said.
“It was expected to be huge success if it only slowed by 10 minutes,” Nelson said. “It was a bull’s eye.”
At the moment of impact, the refrigerator-sized DART spacecraft was traveling at 13,000 mph, Nelson said.
Asteroid Dimorphos, which NASA said is the size of a football stadium, does not pose a threat to the planet, in this case. But the mission aimed to test technologies that could prevent a potentially catastrophic asteroid impact.
Dimorphos, which means “having two forms” in Greek, spans 525 feet or 160 meters in diameter.
The results from the mission show that this technique could be used to deflect a future asteroid headed toward Earth, Nelson said.
“All of us have a responsibility to protect our home planet,” Nelson said. “After all, it’s the only one we have.”
“This mission shows that NASA is trying to be ready for whatever the universe throws at us,” he said.
Giorgio Saccoccia, the president of the Italian Space Agency, a partner on the mission, celebrated its success.
“This is something we can really be proud of as an international endeavor,” he said. “I think our planet can feel a bit more safe for the future.”
Before Ciara was singing and making hit dance tracks like “1, 2 Step” and “Jump,” she had her eyes set on a different occupation — becoming a hairstylist.
The superstar entertainer opened up about her love of doing hair for Allure Magazine’s November issue.
“You would’ve asked me what my job was going to be when I was this 8-year-old girl in Decatur, Georgia, and I would’ve told you I’m going to be doing hair,” she said.
The Atlanta native says it was her vision to own hair salons. “Hair was a big part of how we expressed in Georgia.”
Noting her roots in the South, Ciara says she takes great pride in where she comes from.
“There’s something in the water, as they would say. Even down from being a cheerleader growing up in the South. There’s so much sauce, so much character. The people. How we all talk. Sometimes, when I go home, it’s like speaking another language because of our Southern drawl. It’s different,” she adds. “You don’t really know it until you see it. It’s an energy.”
Her music career took off in 2004 with the success of “Goodies.” Now, more than 18 years since its release, the singer is working on her seventh album, one she feels is similar to her first.
“It’s a lot of bass,” Ciara said of the upcoming project. “There’s a strong R&B core, which is also really fun.”
While expected sometime soon, Ciara has yet to reveal the album name or release date.
Darius Rucker is a southerner at heart, especially when it comes to food.
Born and raised in Charleston, S.C., Darius learned how to cook by his hard working single mother, Carolyn, who in between her shifts as a nurse taught Darius and his five siblings the art of cooking, which became a frequent activity in their household.
“Both my mom and my grandma cooked and my my sisters when I got older. Cooking was, I wouldn’t say a prerequisite, but everybody cooked. Everybody in the house learned how to do something because cooking was such an integral part of the day,” he explains to Southern Living.
His favorite meal revolves around a vegetable that’s classic in southern dishes, one that holds special memories from his childhood that he stills connects to today.
“My favorite meal was always Okra soup,” he says of the dish that also features tomatoes and ham hocks and other “Southern stuff.” “It’s still my favorite meal. My sisters make it for me every now and then. I love it.”
(NEW YORK) — A man in South Carolina was arrested for allegedly shooting and killing three family members, including a local councilman, the Horry County Police Department said.
Police arrested Matthew Allen DeWitt, 25, on Monday regarding the triple shooting.
The suspect was charged with murder and possession of a weapon during a violent crime, online arrest records show.
Horry police arrived at a home near Conway, South Carolina, on Sunday afternoon to investigate a death where they discovered the body of 52-year-old Natasha Stevens.
Later that evening, police conducted a welfare check outside of Columbia, South Carolina, where they found two people with “apparent gunshot wounds,” the Horry Police Department said on Facebook.
Police identified the two people as Gloria DeWitt, 52, and James DeWitt, II, 52.
According to the Town of Atlantic Beach website, James “Jim” DeWitt II served as a councilman for the Atlantic Beach community.
Atlantic Beach did not respond to a request for comment.
According to its website, the predominately Black town is known as the “Black Pearl” and was a refuge for African Americans in the area who faced discrimination in the 1930s.
