Entertainment Weekly has revealed which stars will put their noggins to the test on the upcoming episodes of Celebrity Jeopardy!, which premieres Sept. 25 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC. Host Mayim Bialik will provide the answers to the likes of comics/actors Ray Romano and Patton Oswalt, Shang-Chi‘s Simu Liu, Constance Wu from The Terminal List, The Office‘s B.J. Novak, Archer‘s Aisha Tyler, and actor Michael Cera…
Another Bat project has had its wings clipped by Warner Bros. Variety reports the animated show Batman: Caped Crusader has been axed by HBO Max. The series, which was being developed by beloved Batman: The Animated Series co-creator Bruce Timm, along with The Batman director Matt Reeves and J.J. Abrams, could be “shopped elsewhere,” according to the trade. That said, Deadline reports Reeves’ sequel to The Batman has just signed a co-writer in Mattson Tomlin, and the director clinched a major development deal with Warner Bros…
King Kong is coming to Disney+, according to Deadline. The trade reports Aquaman director James Wan is producing a series for Disney Branded Television that set the Kong mythos into the modern world, for what is being described as a serial action/adventure series. Disney is the parent company of ABC News…
Apple TV+ on Tuesday revealed the new trailer for the upcoming documentary series event Gutsy. based on the the best-seller, The Book of Gutsy Women, the series features Hillary and Chelsea Clinton as they embark on “a thought-provoking journey to speak with pioneering women artists, activists, community leaders and everyday heroes who show us what it truly means to be gutsy.” They’re joined by and a lineup of “extraordinary, courageous and resilient women who have made an impact in their community and on the world.” The eight-episode series launches September 9…
Beginning next year, the Film Independent Spirit Awards will move to gender-neutral acting categories across both film and television. The awards were previously handed out based on male and female classifications. “We’re thrilled to join the other festivals and award shows that are already moving to celebrate great acting without reference to gender. We’re also happy to welcome non-binary performers into the Spirit Awards without forcing them to choose to identify as male or female,” said Josh Welsh, Film Independent’s president, in a press statement. Nominations for the 2023 Film Independent Spirit Awards will be announced on November 22, followed by TV nominations on December 13. The ceremony will take place on March 4…
Hulu on Tuesday debuted the trailer for the upcoming comedy series Reboot, from Modern Family creator Steven Levitan. Per the official tagline, the streamer “reboots an early 2000’s family sitcom, forcing its dysfunctional cast back together. Now they must deal with their unresolved issues in today’s fast-changing world. Reboot stars Keegan-Michael Key, Judy Greer, Johnny Knoxville, Paul Reiser, Rachel Bloom, Calum Worthy and Krista Marie Yu…(Trailer contains uncensored profanity.)
(KYIV, Ukraine) — As Ukraine prepared on Wednesday to celebrate its Independence Day, residents of Kyiv, the capital, took to the streets to take photographs with rows of destroyed Russian tanks, which have become a symbol of Russia’s failed strategy to take the city.
The Russian army may have failed in its early plans to replace the Ukrainian government, but a war of attrition has set into the country’s east, with analysts warning that the war may drag on for months or even years.
Despite the presence of the tanks, the atmosphere in the capital this week has been mostly muted, residents said. But authorities have warned that Independence Day may bring renewed Russian strikes on the city, far away from the frontlines.
The United States repeated those warnings, with Americans being advised to leave the country via private means. The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv said the State Department “has information that Russia is stepping up efforts to launch strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and government facilities in the coming days.”
With the city on high alert and the country under assault, the overlap of the two anniversaries has proven to be a moment for Ukrainians to reflect on the meaning of their independence.
Ukraine issued its Declaration of Independence from the Soviet Union on Aug. 24, 1991. The day has since been one of Ukraine’s state holidays, usually marked by a military parade.
“During these six months, we changed history, changed the world and changed ourselves,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a speech on Wednesday. “And the whole world learned who Ukrainians are. What Ukraine is. No one will say about it anymore: it is somewhere over there, near Russia.”
The Ukrainian public not only supports the struggle to liberate the Russian controlled-areas, but has said it believes that Ukraine will win the war, according to polling in the country, though reports suggest Ukrainians are more divided on how much territory taken back would constitute a victory.
But it has also left a nation traumatized by war. Millions have been displaced and hundreds of civilians are killed each week, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Humanitarians fear that the winter will bring more misery. There have been almost 1,000 verified deaths of children, according to the U.N., though observers say this number is likely higher.
For many, independence now carries a new significance.
“When Ukraine became an independent country, I was a little kid, I was only ten and at that time, I really couldn’t understand what is going on around, but I have heard many times from my grandmother about evil of Russian empire,” Andriy, 41, a musician, traumatologist and radio anchor from Lviv who now serves as a medic on the southern front, told ABC News. “When [the] Russian war exploded with more power on February 24, now I understand independence of Ukraine as [an] absolutely new thing.”
German, a 59-year-old Kyiv resident, said there is a new clarity about what it means to be an independent country on the eve of the anniversary.
“Until February 24, 2022, there was no clearly formed understanding of independence,” he told ABC News. “After the start of the war, the vision was as follows: independence is free people hardened into a nation that moves its state forward.”
For some of the displaced, being forced to flee from the east has uprooted their sense of local identity and connection to home, even if they believe in Ukraine’s ultimate victory.
“Maybe now I will sound in a stupid way, but I don’t want to adapt, to adjust,” Yana, a 32-year-old who left the city of Kharkiv in March to the comparatively safe western city of Lviv, told ABC News. “No, not because I’m somehow abnormal, just because I don’t have a sense of home anywhere… Lviv is a wonderful city, and Vinnytsia, and Poltava, and Kremenchuk, and all other cities, but my home is not there.”
“What has changed now, every minute of our existence, we need to prove and fight for our independence,” she said. “Which until February 24 was a common thing and understandable to everyone.”
For many Ukrainians, the war has changed not just their understanding of independence, but their entire lives, forever.
“Adaptation is very simple,” German said. “It will never be the same again, as it was before. So I do what I can for the victory.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Pennsylvania Senate race took a heated — and personal — turn on Tuesday as an aide to Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee and former cardiothoracic surgeon who for years offered medical advice as a popular TV host, was quoted derisively blaming Democratic opponent John Fetterman for his own stroke.
“If John Fetterman had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke and wouldn’t be in the position of having to lie about it constantly,” Oz communications adviser Rachel Tripp said in a statement, first reported by Insider, responding to Fetterman’s attacks on Oz as elitist and out of touch.
The Oz campaign comment drew immediate reaction on social media, including from Fetterman, who tweeted, “I know politics can be nasty, but even then, I could *never* imagine ridiculing someone for their health challenges.”
“I had a stroke. I survived it. I’m truly so grateful to still be here today,” he added.
Fetterman — who told a local outlet in 2018, when he was mayor of a small Pittsburgh suburb, that he had lost nearly 150 pounds by adopting a diet that included more vegetables — acknowledged in the days after the stroke in May that he “should have taken my health more seriously.”
But the tone of Tripp’s statement was deemed inappropriate by a group of pro-Fetterman physicians who earlier spoke out against Oz at an event organized by Fetterman’s campaign.
“No real doctor, or any decent human being, to be honest, would ever mock a stroke victim who is recovering from that stroke in the way that Dr. Oz is mocking John Fetterman,” Dr. Valerie Arkoosh, the Democratic chair of the board of commissioners in Montgomery County, said in a statement provided on Tuesday by a Fetterman spokeswoman.
The Oz campaign doubled down, however, telling ABC News in a statement late Tuesday: “Nice try. Dr. Oz has been urging people to eat more veggies for years. That’s not ridicule. It’s good health advice. We’re only trying to help.”
The latest salvo — in a race in a battleground state that could tip control of Congress — represents a departure from Oz’s other lines of attack since Fetterman’s stroke, which have involved largely dancing around it by jeering at Fetterman for his absence from the trail without referencing what sidelined him.
Oz had struck an even more sympathetic tone immediately after Fetterman announced his stroke. He tweeted then: “I am thankful that you received care so quickly. My whole family is praying for your speedy recovery.”
“I think he just had it,” Stacy Garrity, the state treasurer and a co-chair of Oz’s campaign, told ABC News on Tuesday night. “I think he just got tired. He’s probably tired of hearing about veggies,” she said, referring to the Fetterman team’s repeated swipes over a video showing Oz shopping for vegetables to make crudités and criticizing Democrats for grocery prices.
The volley of statements threatened to overshadow Fetterman’s separate appearance on Tuesday afternoon in Pittsburgh to tout a key labor endorsement — only his second public campaign stop since his stroke. With many eyes still on his health, he spoke for roughly four-and-a-half minutes and exhibited patterns similar to those he showed at a rally in Erie earlier this month, speaking often in choppy sentences. (He told a newspaper last month that he was working with a speech therapist as he recovered.)
Amid now-routine jokes about the “crudités” video and Oz’s residential history outside of Pennsylvania, Fetterman also pledged to “stand with the union way of life” before exiting the venue without answering a group of reporters who flanked him as he walked.
Among those ignored questions was whether Fetterman would agree to debate Oz this fall, an issue Oz has hammered in recent days as Fetterman has remained largely mum about his plans to share a stage with his opponent.
“We’ve said we’re open to debating Oz,” Joe Calvello, a spokesman, said in response to a question that a reporter posed to Fetterman.
Oz’s campaign says he has agreed to five debates, including one on Sep. 6. Fetterman’s campaign says it refuses to set a schedule on Oz’s terms.
But according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report, the campaign has yet to respond to an invitation emailed nearly a month ago to both campaigns by a politics editor at KDKA, a TV station in Pittsburgh planning the Sep. 6 debate.
Oz has accepted the invitation, the station’s news director told the Post-Gazette.
Asked by ABC News to respond to that report, a Fetterman spokesperson sent a statement from Rebecca Katz, a senior adviser to the campaign, who called Oz’s focus on debates “an obvious attempt to change the subject during yet another bad week for Dr. Oz.”
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. military said it carried out airstrikes on Tuesday targeting areas of eastern Syria controlled by Iran-backed militias.
The “precision strikes” in the oil-rich Deir ez-Zor province, near Syria’s border with Iraq, “targeted infrastructure facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” according to Col. Joe Buccino, spokesman for the U.S. Central Command.
“Today’s strikes were necessary to protect and defend U.S. personnel,” Buccino said in a statement. “The United States took proportionate, deliberate action intended to limit the risk of escalation and minimize the risk of casualties.”
Buccino did not offer any casualty numbers from the strikes.
Neither Syria nor Iran immediately acknowledged the attack.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitoring group, said the U.S. strikes targeted the Ayash Camp run by the Fatemiyoun Brigade, a militia made up of Afghan Shiite refugees sent by Iran to fight in the ongoing Syrian Civil War alongside Syrian government troops. At least six Syrian and foreign militants were reportedly killed in the strikes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
According to Buccino, the strikes came at the orders of U.S. President Joe Biden in response to an attack on Aug. 15, when Iran-backed militias allegedly launched drones targeting the al-Tanf Garrison used by U.S. forces in the energy-rich Homs province in central Syria. At that time, U.S. Central Command described the attack as causing “zero casualties and no damage.”
“The United States does not seek conflict, but will continue to take necessary measures to protect and defend our people,” Buccino added. “U.S. forces remain in Syria to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS.”
The strikes came as Biden seeks to revive a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that his predecessor abandoned.
Since 2014, the U.S. has led a coalition of countries conducting strikes targeting the Islamic State group in Syria. U.S. ground forces entered Syria in 2015. In more recent years, the American-led coalition has also launched strikes targeting the Syrian government’s forces and allies, mainly in defense of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias that was formed as part of the campaign against ISIS.
What started as a local protest movement in Syria’s southern city of Dara’a expanded into a full-fledged civil war by 2012. ISIS, which grew out of al-Qaeda in Iraq, took root in northern and eastern Syria in 2013 after seizing swaths of territory in neighboring Iraq. The jihadist group is fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and establish a caliphate.
The Syrian Civil War has pulled in the United States, Russia, Iran and almost all of Syria’s neighbors. It has become the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II, according to the United Nations.
(WASHINGTON) — As another deadline nears on the restart of payments for America’s $1.7 trillion in federal student loans, President Joe Biden is poised to decide whether to cancel debt for a subset of Americans and continue to keep a pandemic-era pause on the repayments — a sweeping move he has openly weighed in some form or another since his time as a candidate.
Without action, numerous Americans will — for the first time in two years — have to start paying their student loans on Sept. 1.
But multiple people familiar with White House policy discussions told ABC News that the loan pause, first put in place under President Donald Trump during the disruptions of COVID-19’s onset, is expected to be extended. Talks about debt cancellation, which were still underway Tuesday, have so far coalesced around forgiving approximately $10,000 for people who make less than $125,000 a year — though details are still being worked out.
An announcement on the federal student loans could come as early as Wednesday, sources familiar with the plan said.
In an interview on Tuesday afternoon, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona told ABC News that the much-anticipated decision on loan forgiveness would come “soon” but was vague on details.
“We recognize it’s an important issue for many families. And we want to make sure that they get the information directly from the president,” Cardona said.
The White House did not confirm any further details, saying only that the president would have more to say on this before Aug. 31.
“As a reminder, no one with a federally-held loan has had to pay a single dime in student loans since President Biden took office, and this Administration has already canceled about $32 billion in debt for more than 1.6 million Americans — more than any Administration in history,” White House spokesman Abdullah Hasan said, referring to debt relief for people who went to fraudulent universities and a restructured program to forgive debt for people who work in public service for 10 years.
But more specific details on how much money will be forgiven and for who are in high demand for the more than 45 million Americans who still have federal student loan debt.
One-third of federal loan borrowers have less than $10,000, meaning they could see their debts completely wiped out should this policy come to fruition. Another 20% of borrowers, around nine million people, would have their debt at least slashed in half.
Such a major cancelation may seem like a big step for Biden to take without Congress, but legal and policy experts say it’s clearer: The move would be well within the president’s authority — it just hasn’t been wielded before because of the political implications.
“The president has some pretty broad authority under the Higher Education Act,” said John Brooks, a law professor at Fordham University who focuses on federal fiscal policy.
“A lot depends on the size of the cancellation. The smaller the amount of cancellation, the easier the question is,” Brooks said. “Wiping out all student debt with a single stroke might be tougher, but the president through the secretary of education does have the power to adjust the amount of loan principle that any borrower has.”
Still, Biden could get taken to court — possibly by loan servicing agencies who would lose revenue or by members of Congress who may believe Biden is spending money in a way that hasn’t been appropriated by legislators.
Outside experts also wonder how long the processes would take to cancel student loans once a policy is announced — and how complicated it would be for borrowers to work their way through it, which are details that have yet to be released.
Some fear that people might fall through the cracks if applications to cancel debt become too labor-intensive because of the prospective income cap.
“The White House is about to ask the Education Department to do something that is extraordinarily difficult, and that is going to have the effect of denying debt relief to low-income folks, economically vulnerable folks, who have the hardest time navigating these complicated paperwork processes,” Mike Pierce, executive director and co-founder of the Student Borrower Protection Center, a think-tank that advocates for universal debt cancellation, told ABC News in an interview.
Pierce and other supporters for more progressive debt cancellation, including the NAACP, said the smoothest path would include full and universal cancellation for everyone.
“If the rumors are true, we’ve got a problem. And tragically, we’ve experienced this so many times before,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement Tuesday, reacting to the details of the potential policy announcement.
“President Biden’s decision on student debt cannot become the latest example of a policy that has left Black people – especially Black women – behind. This is not how you treat Black voters who turned out in record numbers and provided 90% of their vote to once again save democracy in 2020,” Johnson said.
But for many borrowers and advocates for canceling student debt — particularly the nearly half of people with federal student loans who would see their debt extinguished or cut significantly — Biden’s policy would still be cause for major celebration and be seen as a start to reforming the college and university system, where rising costs have become a major area of focus.
For Michigan teacher Nick Fuller, a possible Biden announcement on student loans could come just before the financial crunch of winter, when his heating bills skyrocket.
Though Fuller worked hard his first few years out of school to pay down his school debt, and then had his loan frozen for much of the pandemic, he’s concerned that restarting payments on top of monthly living costs could put him over the edge.
“I think things will get really tight in the winter because my utility bills are higher,” Fuller told ABC News. “I mean for January and February — the highs are zero and the lows are -20 [degrees] for almost two months.”
The frozen temperatures might sting a little bit less if Biden forgives $10,000 of Fuller’s remaining student loan bills, he said.
“It’s about two-thirds of the debt that I have left,” he said.
That would make payments “a lot more affordable and a lot more manageable in my situation,” he said.
Easing the student debt crisis — which is also how Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos described the issue in 2018 — could also aid a crippling teacher shortage that has caused thousands of staff vacancies at the start of the latest school year, something Fuller has seen himself.
Pinched salaries and rising inflation have had many teachers on edge with the loan forgiveness deadline approaching.
And because Black students are among the fastest growing group of people taking on debt, advocates argue that canceling some student loans could also begin to address racial inequities.
Shareefah Mason, the dean of Educator Certification at Dallas College, feels this impact firsthand as a Black woman with student debt. She leads the apprenticeship component of a program that pairs students with residency partners to ensure they earn while they learn, effectively reducing education debt for aspiring teachers.
“I bear the weight of $70,000 in student loans,” Mason told ABC News. “The data shows that student loan debt exponentially impacts and disproportionately impacts Black women.”
The average amount of student debt accrued by Black women is more than any other group at $38,800, according to Education Trust, a nonprofit focused on education reform.
But Mason’s program, the very first full-time paid teacher apprenticeship in the state of Texas, allows students to earn one of the cheapest bachelor’s degrees in the state, Mason said.
The goal, she said, is to aid future educators in breaking the generational barriers that she has faced as a Black woman.
Mason said “they will not have to worry about student loan debt,” which could open more doors for minority communities that have historically lacked the means to access higher education.
“My students will be able to earn, as a first year teacher in the city of Dallas, upwards of $60,000,” Mason said.
For the nation’s most impacted borrowers, Mason said, “there needs to be a space created for them to make enough money to pay their student loans without having to sacrifice their ability to create generational wealth for their families.”
(UVALDE, Texas) — Uvalde school board officials will consider Wednesday whether to fire Pete Arredondo, the school district’s police chief, exactly three months after the school shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers.
School board members agreed in an Aug. 15 meeting to hire outside attorneys ahead of the hearing.
Arredondo has been the target of criticism for the delayed response to the May 24 tragedy.
School officials have continued to face pressure to hold officers accountable for the 77 minutes it took before law enforcement breached a classroom door and killed the 18-year-old gunman.
The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District recommended that Arredondo be fired. The Uvalde school board canceled its July 23 special session to consider the district’s recommendation “in conformity with due process requirements, and at the request of his attorney.”
Parents and community members have called on officials to fire Arredondo immediately, with some calling for the firing of other members of Uvalde’s school district police force who were present during the shooting.
According to an investigative report by the Texas House of Representatives into the events of May 24, the school district’s written active shooter plan assigned Arredondo “to assume command and control” during an active shooter incident.
“But as events unfolded, he failed to perform or to transfer to another person the role of incident commander,” the report from the state House read. “This was an essential duty he had assigned to himself in the plan mentioned above, yet it was not effectively performed by anyone.”
The report goes on to describe the general consensus from witnesses that officers on the scene either “assumed that Chief Arredondo was in charge, or that they could not tell that anybody was in charge of a scene described by several witnesses as ‘chaos’ or a ‘cluster.'”
In an interview with The Texas Tribune, Arredondo said he did not consider himself the commanding officer on the scene. He has said he was not made aware of the 911 calls coming from the children in the attacked classrooms.
Arredondo has defended the police response to the incident.
“We responded to the information that we had and had to adjust to whatever we faced,” Arredondo said. “Our objective was to save as many lives as we could, and the extraction of the students from the classrooms by all that were involved saved over 500 of our Uvalde students and teachers before we gained access to the shooter and eliminated the threat.”
Arredondo resigned from his city council post and is currently on leave from his position as UCISD police chief.
Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — A civic organization plans to sue New York City’s largest utility company over the alleged illegal dumping of heated, toxic wastewater into a Hudson River estuary sanctuary.
The City Club of New York, along with Tom Fox, a representative of the club who serves on the Hudson River Park Advisory Council, plan to sue Con Edison for alleged “ongoing violations” of the federal Clean Water Act, according to a notice sent to the energy company earlier this month and obtained by ABC News.
Based on a review of public documents, the petitioners allege that Con Ed dumps water used to cool a power station off of Hudson River Park’s Pier 98 at “dangerously high temperatures” for aquatic life into the river. They also allege that Con Ed dumps wastewater containing “toxic pollutants,” such as chloroform, into the estuary sanctuary in violation of its state permit.
This matter was first reported by The New York Times.
Through their attorneys, the City Club of New York and Fox sent a notice to Con Ed on Aug. 10 of their intent to sue within 60 days.
Fox, who was involved in the effort to create Hudson River Park, said he wasn’t aware of the alleged dumping, which has purportedly occurred for decades, until recently.
“Nobody knew about this. I didn’t know about this, and I’ve been involved with the park for 40 years, since the beginning,” he told ABC News. “I think that for whatever reason, it wasn’t publicly acknowledged. Now that it is, we have a chance to correct the situation.”
The notice of intent claims Con Ed has violated state rules for estuaries by discharging water into the river that exceeds 90 degrees on more than a dozen occasions since 2006, according to state records. It claims a permit modification Con Ed requested in 2006 to allow for a higher discharge temperature was improperly approved by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation because the state agency did not hold a public hearing on the application, per state and federal law. It also claims that Con Ed has been discharging pollutants into the Hudson River without a valid permit for more than a year.
In a statement to ABC News, a Con Ed spokesperson said the company is “in compliance with our permit for both water temperature and discharge of chemicals at Pier 98.”
“We are reviewing the letter in detail and have noted numerous inaccuracies,” the spokesperson, Allan Drury, said. “For instance, our permit has not expired and we have not exceeded our permitted temperature limits. We will address these and other issues with the appropriate parties.”
The City Club of New York and Fox plan to seek an injunction requiring Con Ed to halt all discharges into the river, among other relief.
The notice of intent to sue was also sent to the DEC and the Hudson River Park Trust, which operates Hudson River Park and is Con Ed’s lessor. The petitioners allege that the DEC and trust have known about Clean Water Act violations at the Con Ed plant but have failed to act.
“Con Ed’s continuing thermal and industrial discharge into the sanctuary — facilitated by the disregard of applicable federal and state laws by DEC and the Trust — represents a threat to the preservation and protection of those resources,” the notice stated.
In a statement to ABC News, the DEC said it has identified more than two dozen minor “discrepancies” at the plant since 2010 and has not taken any enforcement action at the facility since that year.
“Since 2010, of the 4,400 sampling records at the Con Edison plant, DEC identified 27 reported exceedances and non-reporting of operational parameters unrelated to the outfall at the facility,” it said. “These discrepancies were considered minor and quickly resolved.”
ABC News did not immediately receive a response from the Hudson River Park Trust seeking comment.
(WASHINGTON) — The murder of James “Whitey” Bulger was planned “as soon as” the notorious mobster had arrived at the prison in West Virginia where he was found beaten to death, a Justice Department prosecutor said.
The plot started with a phone call to the mother of Sean McKinnon, one of the men accused in the killing, the night before the high-profile inmate’s arrival, Assistant U.S. Attorney Hannah Nowalk told a federal magistrate judge in Florida at a court hearing for McKinnon.
“Yeah, we’re getting ready to get a — getting ready to get another higher profile person here tonight,” McKinnon allegedly told his mother the day before the 89-year-old Bulger arrived at U.S. Penitentiary Hazleton in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia.
A recording of that phone call was played in federal court on Monday by Nowalk, a transcript of which was obtained by ABC News.
Nowalk said that “as soon as they saw Bulger come into the unit, they planned to kill him.”
Sean McKinnon, 36, was charged by the DOJ last week in connection with the killing of Bulger on Oct. 30, 2018. Nowalk said McKinnon acted as the lookout while the two other men, Fotios “Freddy” Geas, 55, and Paul DeCologero, 48, went into Bulger’s cell and allegedly killed him.
Prosecutors have not yet offered a motive for the killing or said how the defendants knew of Bulger’s arrival.
“No, I mean, you should know the name,” McKinnon told his mother, according to the transcript of the phone call. “Every heard the name Whitey Bulger?”
McKinnon’s mother warned him to stay away from Bulger because she was worried hanging around Bulger would get him “in trouble,” the transcript shows.
Bulger, the leader of Boston’s Winter Hill gang, was on the run for 16 years before being caught by federal authorities in 2011, and later tried and convicted. Before being moved to a West Virginia penitentiary, Bulger was housed in federal prison in Florida.
Prosecutors allege that a mere 12 hours after Bulger arrived at USP Hazelton, he was found dead in his cell. The killing, Nowalk said, took all of seven minutes.
Nowalk said that on the day of the murder, at around 6:07 a.m., the three men gathered outside of Bulger’s cell, then went in and stayed there for seven minutes, allegedly killing Bulger. By 8:07 a.m., Bulger was found dead by prison guards.
McKinnon allegedly told his mother that the cell doors at the prison open at 6 a.m. and they do not lock, prompting the men to enter easily, Norwalk alleged.
“The admissions were, from Pauly, that he and Freddy used a belt with a lock attached to it and beat Mr. Bulger to death,” Nowalk told the judge in arguing for McKinnon’s pre-trial detention. “There were also admissions from Pauly and from Mr. McKinnon himself that they collectively were the guys that killed Bulger and that…Mr. McKinnon stood as lookout as Freddy and Pauly went into Mr. Bulger’s cell and bludgeoned him to death in those seven minutes that are recorded on the surveillance footage.”
Federal Magistrate Judge Philip R. Lammen ultimately ended up ordering McKinnon to be held pending trial.
Lawyers for McKinnon told Lammen that he lived near his mother and was not a flight risk, but the judge did not agree.
Nowalk said there are three witnesses whom the men told they killed Bulger.
At the time of the indictment, Geas was still incarcerated at USP Hazelton, according to prison records, and was serving a life sentence for a separate crime. DeCologero was no longer being held at USP Hazelton but was housed in the federal prison system and McKinnon was on federal supervised release and was arrested last week in Florida.
Attorneys for the three defendants did not immediately respond to ABC News’ requests for comment.
(NEW YORK) — A Marion County deputy and a Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper were killed Tuesday when their helicopter hit a power line and crashed in a wooded area, authorities said.
“A Bell 206 helicopter struck a power line and crashed in a wooded area on Aetna Mountain near Whiteside, Tenn., around 4 p.m. local time today. Two people were on board,” the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. “The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate. The NTSB will be in charge of the investigation and will provide additional updates.”
Tennessee Highway Patrol Capt. Travis Plotzer said during a press conference that an aircraft went down and it was “a tough day for us.”
“What I would ask, … please give the family their privacy as we go forward,” he said. “Today is a very tragic day for law enforcement. We appreciate all your support and your patience going forward.”
The investigation is in its “infant stages,” Plotzer added. He did not take any questions.
(NEW YORK) — A man is dead after slipping and falling off of a ledge on a mountain while he was hiking with two friends over the weekend.
The incident occurred on Saturday at approximately 12:50 p.m. when a group of three people made the decision to ride the tram to the top of Cannon Mountain, a peak in New Hampshire located in the White Mountain National Forest in the northern part of the state.
The three people had planned to tour the summit of the mountain before returning back to base by taking the tram down again, according to a statement released by New Hampshire Fish and Game on Monday. The group, however, reportedly changed their mind and decided that they would hike down the mountain instead.
“Unfortunately, they were not following an established hiking trail, starting down what they thought was a ski trail,” New Hampshire Fish and Game said in their statement. “The group encountered a location that was rocky, wet, and steep with a waterfall. As the group tried to maneuver their way down, one of the hikers slipped causing him to fall off a ledge.”
Authorities say the other two members who witnessed the fall immediately called 911 for help and first responders were able to hike to the coordinates provided by the witnesses in an attempt to locate the missing man. But when authorities arrived, they located a deceased male at the bottom of the waterfall.
“Conservation Officers and members of the Pemigewasset Valley Search and Rescue Team brought him to the tram parking lot, arriving at approximately 3:35 p.m.,” said New Hampshire Fish and Game.
The victim was subsequently transported by Ross Funeral Home to Littleton, New Hampshire.
The man’s identity has not yet been disclosed and he will remain unnamed until his family have been notified of his death.
