(LOS ANGELES) — Dry lightning is posing the threat for new fires to spark in a region already plagued by dozens of largely uncontained wildfires.
The thunderstorms could generate after moisture as the deadly monsoons in the Southwest U.S. push north to areas such as southern Oregon, where the Bootleg Fire rages on, and northern California and Nevada. Officials are concerned that the lightning strikes could generate new fires as firefighters are struggling to contain the existing blazes.
There are currently at least 89 large wildfires burning in the U.S., most of them in the West.
The Dixie Fire near the Feather River Canyon in Northern California had grown to nearly 193,000 acres by Monday morning and was 21% contained. Over the weekend, the Dixie Fire surpassed the Beckwourth Complex Fire in Doyle, California, as the state’s largest wildfire.
More than 8,300 people in Northern California are currently under evacuation orders, according to the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.
The Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon, currently the largest in the country and the third-largest in state history, had burned through nearly 410,000 acres and was 53% contained by Monday.
The Tamarack Fire near Gardnerville, Nevada, had scorched more than 67,000 acres by Monday and was 45% contained.
The monsoon strikes expected to generate dry lightning began over the weekend, killing at least seven in Utah after a sandstorm triggered by the monsoons caused a series of car crashes.
In Arizona, a 16-year-old is missing as a result of flash flooding. The teen had called 911 to ask for help after her car was stranded in floodwater, but as first responders attempted to rescue her, she was swept from her car and washed away, officials said. Phoenix is having its wettest month on more than two years as a result of the storms
Flash flooding is expected Monday in Southern California and parts of Nevada as the monsoon storms continue.
ABC News’ Sarah Hermina and Daniel Manzo contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — The chair of former President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee, Tom Barrack, pleaded not guilty Monday to charges he used his connection to Trump to illegally lobby for the United Arab Emirates.
Barrack flew across the country from California, where he was arrested last week, for his arraignment in Brooklyn federal court.
Barrack was released on a $250 million bond, secured by $5 million in cash. The judge ordered that his travel be limited to New York, California and Colorado, where he will live pending trial.
He was also ordered to take only commercial flights, with no private jets, and is prohibited from making any foreign financial transactions or from making domestic transactions above $50 thousand.
The bail package was requested by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan Reilly, who asked for a bail package “substantially similar” to what was imposed on Barrack in California.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Issa Rae is officially off the market. In a sarcastic Instagram post on Monday, the Insecure creator and star revealed she had married her longtime boyfriend Louis Diame over the weekend.
“A) Impromptu photo shoot in a custom @verawanggang dress. B) My girls came to help me, but they all coincidentally had on the same dress! They were sooooo embarrassed. C) Then I took a few flicks with Somebody’s Husband,” Issa joked in the caption of her post, which included a series photos from her destination wedding in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, a commune in the South of France.
“Big thanks to @whiteedenweddings for being so gracious and accommodating and making this feel so real and special,” she added.
Rae’s marriage to Diame may come as a surprise to some of her fans. The couple has been known to keep their relationship out of the spotlight, though the Senegalese businessman has occasionally joined the actress on several red carpets over the years.
Rumors of their engagement first surfaced when Rae was spotted wearing a diamond ring in the cover photo of Essencemagazine’s April 2019 issue. It was later confirmed by her Insecure costars Jay Ellisand Yvonne Orji that Issa and Louis were indeed together and planning to wed.
“We’re very excited for her,” Orji told Entertainment Tonight at the time, with Ellis adding, “We all found out in different ways because we’re all on different text chains. We talk at different times, so we all found out at different times in different ways.”
Billie Eilish once again has the most pre-added album in Apple Music history, with Happier than Ever.
The “bad guy” star previously set the record with her 2019 debut album, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?, which was then broken by The Weeknd‘s 2020 effort, After Hours. Now, Eilish has taken back the number-one spot with her much-anticipated sophomore effort.
According to Apple Music, Happier than Ever has tallied over 1,028,000 pre-adds. Speaking to Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 about the record, Eilish says, “That’s nuts. Wow, that’s nuts.”
“I hope it doesn’t disappoint,” she adds of the album. Billie also said she hopes fans will understand that she’s still “theirs.”
“I think that the hard thing is that we haven’t done shows. I haven’t had a way to actually prove to them that I’m still theirs. And I think that that’s tough and I think that it’s made them go crazy, and I totally understand it. And I feel the same. It’s made me go crazy too,” she explains to Lowe.
Happier than Ever, which features the singles “Therefore I Am,” “Your Power” and “NDA,” arrives this Friday, July 30.
Last week, Eilish announced Happier than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles, a concert film premiering September 3 on Disney+. She launches a tour in support of the album February 2022.
(TOKYO) — Three of the four members of Team USA have advanced to the quarterfinals of surfing’s debut at the Tokyo Olympics with Caroline Marks and Kolohe Andino emerging from the waters off Japan’s Shidashita Beach with the highest scores in the opening heats.
For Andino, 27, of San Clemente, California, who holds seven USA Surfing Champion titles, victory was bittersweet because he knocked teammate John John Florence, 28, of Oahu, Hawaii, out of the competition during a head-to-head faceoff on Monday.
Andino earned the highest score in the first two days of competition with an 8.5 out of a possible 10 from the judges on a ride he described as “really rad and one for the history books.”
With waves churned up to 7 feet by a developing typhoon far north of Shidashita Beach, Andino nailed what an announcer described as a “slob frontside air reverse” in which he caught air off the lip of a wave, grabbed onto his surfboard with one hand and landed on the face of the wave in a reverse position before spinning forward.
On the women’s side, Team USA’s 19-year-old Caroline Marks and Carissa Moore, 28, of Honolulu, the world’s No. 1 ranked surfer, both moved on to the quarterfinals.
Moore, who holds four World Surfing League titles, narrowly defeated Peru’s Sofia Mulanovich, 38, in a one-on-one competition on Monday.
Marks, the sixth-ranked female surfer in the world, enters the quarterfinals after achieving the highest overall score of any woman or man in the third round of the inaugural surfing event. In her two best heats she scored an 8 and 7.33 for a combined total of 15.33.
Organizers of the first-time event have scheduled an eight-day waiting period — July 25 to Aug. 1 — to squeeze in up to four days of competition based on daily conditions — wave heights, direction, wind strength.
Kurt Korte, the international surf forecaster for the Olympic surfing event, told ABC News that conditions off the Pacific Coast of Japan are looking good for the remainder of the week. In his latest forecast for Surfline.com, Korte said surfers can expect smaller waves for the quarterfinals on Tuesday, with “peaky swell mix in the head-high range with well overhead sets.”
Korte said Tropical Cyclone Nepartak well off Japan’s Pacific Coast was easing up and not producing the bigger more challenging waves competitors saw over the weekend.
16 to surf it out in quarterfinals
Sixteen of the 40 surfers from 17 countries who qualified for the Olympics move onto the quarterfinals. But big stars in the surfing world like Florence and Australia’s Stephanie Gilmore, a seven-time world champion, were eliminated in the earlier rounds.
“It wasn’t my best performance but sometimes you’ve just got to take those heat wins and roll with it,” Moore, now the heavy favorite to win gold, said after squeaking into the quarterfinals. “It was crazy to see some top seeds bow out earlier this morning. It just goes to show that these conditions are very tricky.”
How the competition will work
The surfers qualified for the Olympics based primarily on how well they did at previous major competitions, including the 2019 World Surfing League Championship Tour, where Florence and Moore each came out on top.
The Olympic Games are exclusively a shortboard affair, meaning surfboards are less than 7 feet long, with pointy noses and usually three small fins on the underside.
A five-judge panel bases scores on a scale of 1 to 10 that can include decimal points. Competitors are judged on speed, power, snap turns and how seamlessly they flow on a wave. Judges also look for difficulty, risk and innovation of maneuvers performed, such as a barrel, or riding through the tube a curling wave makes, and aerials in which surfers ride up the face a wave and catch air at the lip.
In April, Moore wowed spectators at the Rip Curl Newcastle Cup, the second leg of the World Surf League’s Championship Tour, by nailing an aerial where she landed a reverse on the face of a wave before spinning another 180 degrees forward. The judges gave her a near-perfect score of 9.9.
Surfing fans are watching to see if Moore will perform the maneuver again on the world’s biggest stage.
In each heat, surfers are given a 30-minute window to catch as many waves as possible but must go one at a time, with the surfer closest to the peak of a wave given preference to catch it. Participants can be docked points for violating surfing etiquette by cutting in line.
The best two scores from each surfer will decide who moves on to the semifinals round and, eventually, the medal round.
Following her first day of competition on Sunday, in which Moore won a tough battle with Teresa Bonvalot of Portugal, Moore admitted to having Olympic jitters.
“I actually had a little mini-meltdown because of all the nerves and the anxiety and stuff that had built up,” Moore said during a press conference.
Since then she said she has felt a “sense of calm” with each round of surfing.
“Whatever happens, I’ve done everything I could, and now it’s time to have fun,” Moore said.
(NEW YORK) — As American gymnasts prepare to dazzle on the Olympic stage in Tokyo this month, the sport is still struggling to shake off the specter of the Larry Nassar sex abuse scandal.
It’s been five years since the first women came forward publicly in 2016 to accuse the former USA Gymnastics national team doctor of sexual abuse under the guise of medical treatment.
Since then, hundreds of young women and girls have come forward. In 2017, Nassar pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 60 years behind bars for child pornography and other charges. One year later, he again pleaded guilty and was sentenced to an additional 40 to 175 years for multiple counts of sexual assault of minors.
While Nassar, 57, remains behind bars, the scars of his abuse linger on.
In wake of the crisis, USA Gymnastics, the national governing body for U.S. gymnastics, and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committees have scrambled to repair their reputations and the trust of athletes, all while juggling multiple lawsuits. USAG also faces a threat from the USOC to decertify it as the organization overseeing the sport.
Despite touting reforms, athletes like Simone Biles and Aly Raisman have actively called out the organizations and distanced themselves from them for letting Nassar carry out his years of abuse.
This year, Biles, the most decorated gymnast of all time, will headline her own post-Olympic tour, which USAG usually runs, along with other elite female gymnasts.
At the U.S. Championships in 2019, she called out the organization in front of reporters while standing next to a USAG spokesperson.
“It’s hard coming here for an organization, having had them fail us so many times,” Biles said, tears welling in her eyes.
So, what has changed since then?
Reforms in the gymnastics world
Since the Nassar scandal, USAG has overhauled its leadership and went through four new presidents and CEOs in 23 months.
Current President Li Li Leung said USAG has gone in a new direction since 2016, and is focused on “creating a safe, inclusive and positive culture.”
“We recognize how deeply we have broken the trust of our athletes and community, and are working hard to build that trust back,” Leung said in a statement to ABC News. “We know that this kind of meaningful and lasting culture change does not happen overnight.”
Following a damning 2017 independent investigative report that found USAG had “significant gaps regarding the prevention and reporting of child sexual abuse,” the organization said it would adopt 70 recommendations, such as improving the screening of coaches, training to combat sexual abuse and the process for filing misconduct reports. USAG told ABC News “a vast majority” have been implemented already.
Since the Nassar scandal, USAG now requires 33% athlete representation on all boards and committees and created an Athlete Bill of Rights that focuses on protecting athletes from all forms of abuse.
The organization also created platforms for athletes to express their views and report concerns anonymously, without fear of retribution. Furthermore, a bill was passed in Congress in 2017 naming Safesport as an independent organization to respond to reports of sexual misconduct.
Vince Finaldi, an attorney representing about 300 Nassar survivors in a pending lawsuit against USAG and USOC, told ABC News that none of these efforts “really matter.”
“They had policies and procedures before; they didn’t follow them. They tightened up the policies and procedures, but unless they’re followed, kids are going to be vulnerable and kids are going to get abused,” Finaldi told ABC News.
Even with reforms, the relationship between USAG and its athletes is “forever damaged,” Finaldi said.
Calls for ‘the truth’
USAG told ABC News that it has participated in “at least six independent investigations” led by several congressional committees; the Indiana attorney general; Walker County, Texas; and the independent law firm of Ropes & Gray to look into the abuse of athletes, but some gymnasts say those probes were not truly independent.
Aly Raisman, who was captain of the 2012 and 2016 U.S. women’s Olympic gymnastics teams and is now retired, has repeatedly said those probes aren’t enough.
“I don’t know why USAG is saying they’re cooperating. I’ve spoken to many members of law enforcement who have said they’ve been extremely difficult, they’re not handing over all their documents and data,” she told CNN in a March interview. “Until we understand everything that happened — we have access to every single email, phone calls, data, every single thing you can imagine, we can’t believe in a future that’s safe for the sport.”
The saga continued last week with the release of the bombshell Department of Justice’s Inspector General report, which pointed to widespread failures within the FBI in investigating Nassar allegations. The report was released just before the 2021 U.S. Olympic gymnastic teams jetted to Tokyo for the games.
Complaints were first made against the doctor in 2015, but it took months for FBI agents to act on it, according to the report. In that time, “approximately 70 or more young athletes were allegedly sexually abused by Nassar” between July 2015, when USA Gymnastics first reported allegations about Nassar to the Indianapolis Field Office, and September 2016, according to the report.
Legal challenges drag on
For many Nassar survivors, there has been no closure as lawsuits against USAG and the USOC drag on in court.
Michigan State University, where Nassar was employed, agreed to a $500 million settlement with 332 Nassar survivors in 2018. However, a lawsuit is still pending in the case against USAG and USOC, which has about 550 claimants who claim they were abused by Nassar, due to USAG’s bankruptcy declaration also in 2018.
Leung said in June that the COVID-19 pandemic has prolonged the mediation process, but she’s hopeful it’ll be settled soon.
“Obviously, we would love to be out of bankruptcy [so] that we can be able to more freely move forward with all of the things that we have been working on and to not have this be a part of the narrative,” Leung told The Associated Press.
In 2020, USAG offered a $215 million settlement, but an agreement has yet to be reached. Even that proposal was ripped as a “cover up” by athletes like Raisman as the deal would release several people and groups from liability, including former USAG President and CEO Steve Penny, who was in power at the time of the Nassar scandal.
John Manly, an attorney who works with Finaldi to represent Nassar survivors, including Biles, said when it comes to USAG “largely the rhetoric has changed,” but there has been little other meaningful movement.
“The changes that matter to the athletes honestly are because Simone insisted on it. The fact that the Karolyi Ranch closed, USA Gymnastics didn’t do that voluntarily,” Manly told ABC News, citing the national team training camp site in Texas where Nassar worked.
“I continue to believe that this is an organization that is incapable of putting athletes first. Its set up and its senior staff is focused on two things: money and medals,” Manly said. “Until you begin to focus on athletes’ well-being as your primary goal, and until we have a full accounting of what happened, there’s no moving forward.”
Sarah Klein, a former competitive gymnast and survivor of Nassar’s abuse, told ABC News that U.S. gymnastics hasn’t turned over a new leaf.
“No athlete that I know has anything but disdain for USAG and USOPC. How could you believe in organizations who have the blood of little girls on their hands?” she said. “My heart goes out to the athletes competing at these Olympics who deserved — and deserve — more. Nothing has changed for the better. As the lies and cover-up continue to be unpacked and exposed, it is fair to say that things are far worse.”
Heading into the 2021 Games while moving past the abuse and USAG turmoil isn’t easy.
The “Fierce Five” team — Raisman, Gabby Douglas, McKayla Maroney, Kyla Ross and Jordyn Wieber — that won gold at the 2012 London Olympics, as well as some members of the 2016 Games’ “Final Five,” including Biles, achieved top honors in the sport despite the abuse they suffered.
“They all won gold, despite having to endure what [Nassar] did to them,” Manly said. “You think about that, in the context of Simone Biles and what she’s been able to achieve despite that, [it] is nothing less than heroic.”
Earlier this month, Biles opened up about the depression she suffered after she was abused by Nassar in an episode of her Facebook Watch show, “Simone vs. Herself.”
“With gymnasts, if you get injured … your ‘heal time’ is four to six weeks. But then with something so traumatic that happens like this, there’s no four to six weeks,” she said. “There’s like actually no time limit or healing time for it.”
John Mayer‘s new album of retro-inspired music, Sob Rock, has debuted at number two on the Billboard album chart.
It’s John’s 10th top-10 album. Every studio album he’s released, dating all the way back to his major-label debut, 2003’s Room for Squares, has reached the top 10, and so did his 2008 live album, Where the Light Is.
John launched Sob Rock with a ’70s/’80s inspired ad campaign, which stated, “John Mayer…had an idea: Why not make a record that feels like those unforgettable albums we grew up loving? It’s not easy to do. You’d basically have to be John Mayer to pull it off. But he is. And he did.”
John will hit the road on his Sob Rock tour next year, beginning February 17 in Albany, NY. He wrote on Instagram, “Can’t wait to play these new songs. Hope to see you out there.” That caption accompanied another retro-style ad, featuring a list of tour dates and a photo of John with the headline, “The one tall guy you won’t mind standing in front of you at a concert.”
If you want to see John before that, he’s touring this summer as part of the Grateful Dead spinoff band Dead & Company starting August 16.
Less than three months after his Army of the Dead had a hit debut on Netflix, director Zack Snyder has dropped a teaser for a prequel to the action film, called Army of Thieves.
The film centers on the pre-zombie fighting days of Matthias Schweighöfer‘s safe cracker and scene-stealer Ludwig Dieter, who in this adventure is recruited by Fast & Furious veteran Nathalie Emmanuel for an epic heist.
Teased with pulling off a big job in Europe while world is distracted by the nascent undead outbreak, Emmanuel’s Gwendoline tempts Dieter with “one last chance to be a legend.”
Schweighöfer himself is in the director’s chair this time, with Snyder producing. The snippet certainly feels like its own stand-alone adventure: set to Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” the clip that debuted as part of this past weekend’s Comic-Con@Home features gunplay, car stunts and, of course, the sight of massive money vaults clicking open.
Army of Thieves debuts on Netflix later this year, but Snyder also has both a sequel to Army of the Dead and an animated spin-off called Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas also coming to the streaming giant.
John Hutchinson, right, with David Bowie and The Buzz in 1966; Don Paulsen/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Guitarist John “Hutch” Hutchinson, who collaborated frequently with David Bowie during the late rock legend’s early music career, died Saturday, according to a post on Bowie’s official website.
“Our thoughts are with the family and friends of John Hutchinson who passed in hospital yesterday after a long illness,” reads the message, which was posted Sunday.
Hutchinson was played in three of Bowie’s bands, starting in 1966 when David hired him to play guitar his backing group, The Buzz. Then, in 1968, Hutch and Bowie teamed up with David’s then-girlfriend, vocalist Hermione Fatheringale, in the short-lived acoustic trio Feathers.
In 1968 and early ’69, Bowie recorded a series of demos with Hutchinson that included the first version of David’s classic song “Space Oddity.” These recordings were officially released in 2019 as part of a series of special box sets.
In 1973, Hutchinson served as a touring member of Bowie’s backing band The Spiders from Mars during what turned out to be that group’s farewell trek.
According to Hutchinson’s official website, he continued to play music in various projects after Bowie broke of The Spiders, but “spent much of his time since 1980 ‘working for a living’ in the oil industry.”
In 2014, Hutchinson published a memoir focusing on his experiences with Bowie called Bowie & Hutch.
A 2019 video interview with Hutchinson in which he reminisces about recording “Space Oddity” with Bowie and shares other recollections about collaborating with him has been posted on David’s official YouTube channel.
Ours thoughts are with the family and friends of John Hutchinson who passed in hospital yesterday after a long illness. John was described as “a semi-retired and little-known jazz guitarist and a veteran of three important David Bowie bands for seven years between 1966 and 1973.“ pic.twitter.com/hTwgPSidcv
— David Bowie Official (@DavidBowieReal) July 25, 2021
(NEW YORK) —The probability of record-shattering heat waves is increasing due to climate change, according to scientists who are measuring temperature predictions in a new way.
Researchers that looked into rate of warming, rather than how much warming has occurred, found that record-shattering heat waves occur in spurts during periods of accelerated climate warming, according to a study published Monday in Nature Climate Change.
Similar events as the back-to-back heat waves that have been occurring in the Western U.S., including triple-digit temperatures in the typically cool and wet Pacific Northwest, will become the norm if climate changes continue as business as usual, Erich Fischer, a climate scientist at ETH Zurich and the author of the study, told ABC News.
Under a high-emissions scenario, record-shattering heat extremes are two to seven times more probable from 2021 to 2050 and three to 21 times more probable between 2051 and 2080, according to the scientists.
Even if human-induced global warming was stabilized by aggressive mitigation, the frequency and intensity of heat waves would still be higher, but the probability of record-shattering events would be “notably reduced,” scientists said.
The models initially found climate records decreasing until temperatures began ramping up in the 1980s with a much higher rate of warming, Fischer said. It was then that scientists began seeing a sudden number of heat records as well as a “very high speed of pace” of records shattering temperature ceilings.
“Without climate change, we should expect these records to become rarer and rarer,” Fischer said, comparing the current climate to “an athlete on steroids,” adding, “If the world record would be broken by that by the high margin, that would be very suspicious.”
While the impact of climate change on heat waves is typically quantified by historical context — or how much a current or future event compares to itself in a world with less or no climate change — the changes can be marginal when measured in such a manner, the researchers said. Any given heat wave today would be hotter and more frequent than it would have been in the past.
Instead, looking at how heat extremes surpass or “shatter” the previous heat wave record could provide better insight into the driving mechanisms behind heat extremes — and offer a crucial factor for officials to consider when planning strategies on how to deal with the new normal, the researchers said.
“The take-home message of our study is that it really is no longer enough to just look at past records or past measurements of weather…” Fischer said. “We need to prepare for something different.”
