Alaskans were left panicked after they were jolted awake overnight Tuesday by a powerful earthquake in the Gulf of Alaska – then by sirens that warned of a possible tsunami. A magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck at 12:32 a.m. off the Alaska coast. The quake itself was far enough away not to cause major damage but occurred in an area that triggered a potential tsunami.
Evacuation sirens blared “Attention, a tsunami warning has been issued for this area,” officials warned over loudspeakers. “The National Weather Service’s Tsunami Warning Center has advised that widespread hazardous tsunami waves are possible.” That warning covered not only most of coastal Alaska, but also the entire coast of British Columbia. Tsunami watches were posted from Washington state to California — and even Hawaii and as far away as American Samoa.
Within minutes, the roads in the seaside town of Kodiak, Alaska, were filled cars heading to higher ground. Residents of Kodiak were asked by police to move at least 100 feet above ground as a precaution. For two hours, many braced for the worst but by 4 a.m. — less than four hours after the quake hit — all warnings were lifted. The only tsunami was an 8-inch wave in Kodiak.
Around 4 a.m. local time, officials canceled tsunami warnings for coastal areas of South Alaska, the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands. Warnings were also called off for Hawaii and the Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and California coasts. Tsunami warnings were later canceled in other parts of South Alaska and the Alaska Peninsula, specifically the coastal areas from Hinchinbrook Island, about 90 miles east of Seward, to Chignik, Alaska.
The US Geological Survey (USGA) said the earthquake was located in an area south of where the Pacific tectonic plate converges with the North America plate and at a depth of about 12 miles. Research geophysicist for USGA Will Yeck said the quake occurred on a fault within the Pacific plate that had not been previously charted and the area that ruptured is approximately 140-by-30 miles. Yeck said there have been at least 30 aftershocks from the initial quake, the largest being a magnitude 5.3.
From Indonesia, to Japan, to Hawaii and Alaska, the entire region sits in what is known as the Pacific Ring of Fire – an extremely volatile chain of active volcanoes, tectonic plates and earthquake zones. Most of the world’s earthquakes happen in this region. That’s the same spot which saw the second largest earthquake ever recorded: A 9.2 magnitude in March 1964 that caused widespread destruction and death in Alaska. That earthquake occurred over an area measuring 155 miles wide by 500 miles long. The epicenter was about 12 miles north of Prince William Sound, and 75 miles from Anchorage, the state’s largest city.
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A school shooting in Kentucky at Marshall County High School on Tuesday morning, left 18 students injured and two dead. Prosecutors say the suspect, a 15 year old student at the school, opened fire in the common area. The victims are Bailey Nicole Holt and Preston Ryan Cope, both 15 years old. Another 14 victims were shot, while four others were injured as they tried to flee the chaotic scene. Five students are still hospitalized in critical condition. All of the victims were aged between 14 and 18.
The suspected shooter barged into the school’s common area around 8 a.m., unleashing a hail of bullets that killed Bailey Nicole Holt and Preston Ryan Cope. Secret Holt, who received a phone call from her daughter before she died, said, “All I could hear was voices and chaos in the background and she couldn’t say anything.” “I called her name over and over and she never responded, so we rushed to the high school.” After the shooting, buses took surviving students to another school, where parents waited. Secret and Jasen Holt waited for their daughter Bailey to walk off one of the buses but she never did. They were later told Bailey Holt died at the scene.
Brian Cope said he knew his son Preston was shot when he arrived at the school. He peered into an ambulance and saw the socks he laid out for his son the night before. Preston Cope, who was shot in the head and hand was airlifted to Nashville’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center, died during the flight en route to the hospital.
Gage Smock, Bailey’s boyfriend- was also shot in the head but is in stable condition. His father, Gary Wayne Smock, fought back tears as he told reporters that he’s been able to speak with his son but there’s no word from doctors on when the boy will be released from Vanderbilt University Medical Center. No other victims have been identified to the media so far.
The suspect appeared to fire his handgun at random, prosecutors said. Students tried to break down fences and gates to escape the building as shots rang out. Authorities have not identified the shooter because he is a juvenile but he has been identified as Gabe Parker, the son of an online newspaper editor. When Parker’s mother, Mary Garrison Minyard, heard gunfire had broken out at school, she rushed to the scene only to learn the suspected shooter was her own son. The suspect appeared in front of a judge at the Marshall County Judicial Center in Benton, less than five miles from the crime scene. He has been charged with two counts of murder and 12 counts of first-degree assault, according to Marshall County assistant attorney Jason Darnall, who is prosecuting the case. Darnall told reporters that his office would move to have the 15-year-old tried as an adult.
A joint visitation for Preston Ryan Cope, 15 and Bailey Nicole Holt, also 15, will be held 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday at the Reed Conder Memorial Gymnasium at Marshall County High School.
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A front view of four nuclear free-fall bombs on a bomb cart.
The Pentagon is quietly preparing for a potential war with North Korea, with The U.S. military is launching a series of war games and exercises across the US and a planned deployment of additional special operations troops to the Korean Peninsula during the Winter Olympics in South Korea next month. The ongoing tensions between the US and North Korea have spurred precautionary planning for a potential nuclear war.
News outlets have reported that there are also plans to develop two new sea-based nuclear weapons. The new Defense Department nuclear strategy review says the proposed new nuclear weapons would be to counter Russia and China. Widening the permissible use of nuclear weapons to include responding to cyberattacks and other non-nuclear attacks to U.S. infrastructure has also been proposed.
The Pentagon has already outlined this expanded nuclear strategy in a draft document sent to the president for approval. Current US policy requires a lawful order by the President to use nuclear weapons. A lawful order is generally understood by the US military to mean any counterattack would have to be proportional to the threat in terms of damage and casualties of that attack against the US.
US Defense officials have said that the final draft is expected to be unveiled just after Trump’s State of the Union address on January 30. They said it will likely focus on deterrence and reflect the greater threat from North Korea, which has stepped up its testing of missiles and nuclear devices over the last year.
The review is looking at current needs and capabilities across the US nuclear enterprise, including nuclear laboratories, stockpiles and manufacturing facilities. It is also studying future needs for modernizing aging nuclear weapons, including missiles, submarines and bomber aircraft. The review will require increased spending or the government will be unable to produce and maintain a stockpile for land, sea, and air-launched nuclear weapons. Operations, interim upgrades and full modernization could cost $1.2 trillion, according the Congressional Budget Office report.
Defense officials have said the president is not expected to call for increases or modernization of the nuclear arsenal that would take the US beyond current arms control agreements. Many worry that if the review recommends deployment of small nuclear bombs abroad closer to anticipated conflict or the development of lower-yield nuclear weapons-that could lead to it being easier for the president to use nuclear weapons.
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The #MeToo movement continues to expose Hollywood’s dirty secrets but one accusation that has been doubted for years is on topic again. Woody Allen’s adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, gave an interview saying she’s hurt and angry that her claims of childhood sexual assault by Allen have been disbelieved for years. Farrow says Allen molested her in 1992, when she was just 7 years old. Allen, who began an affair and eventually married Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn- has strongly denied the claims for years saying Farrow had manipulated Dylan into the claims for vindictive and self-serving motives.
Dylan Farrow gave an emotional interview to Gayle King, host of CBS This Morning where she spoke of the abuse and her frustration of not being believed for so many years. She said a few months after the affair was exposed, Allen had come to their house for visitation while her mother was out shopping. “I was taken to a small attic crawl space in my mother’s country house in Connecticut by my father. He instructed me to lay down on my stomach and play with my brother’s toy train that was set up. And he sat behind me in the doorway, and as I played with the toy train, I was sexually assaulted… As a 7-year-old I would say, I would have said he touched my private parts. Dylan also said that prior to the assault, he was always overly affectionate with her but not her other siblings and used to have her get in bed with him while both were in their underwear.
Woody Allen was never charged with a crime in this case. Both New York state child welfare investigators and a report by the Yale New Haven hospital found that the abuse did not happen. The Connecticut state prosecutor on the case, Frank Maco, said he found no evidence of coaching and questioned the report’s credibility saying there was probable cause to charge Allen but he thought Dylan was too fragile to face a celebrity trial. Dylan said she wished they had gone to trial because all these years of being ignored, disbelieved and tossed aside have been painful.
Woody Allen released at statement after the interview aired stating “When this claim was first made more than 25 years ago, it was thoroughly investigated by both the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of the Yale-New Haven Hospital and New York State Child Welfare. They both did so for many months and independently concluded that no molestation had ever taken place. Instead, they found it likely a vulnerable child had been coached to tell the story by her angry mother during a contentious breakup.”
“Dylan’s older brother Moses has said that he witnessed their mother doing exactly that – relentlessly coaching Dylan, trying to drum into her that her father was a dangerous sexual predator. It seems to have worked – and, sadly, I’m sure Dylan truly believes what she says.”
“But even though the Farrow family is cynically using the opportunity afforded by the Time’s Up movement to repeat this discredited allegation, that doesn’t make it any more true today than it was in the past. I never molested my daughter – as all investigations concluded a quarter of a century ago.”
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A middle school English teacher in Louisiana was arrested after asking a question at a Vermillion Parish school board meeting. Deyshia Hargrave was arrested in a now-viral video, after she stood up at a school board meeting and questioned why the superintendent was getting a $30,000 raise, when the teachers hadn’t gotten a raise in nearly a decade. During the meeting, Hargrave addressed the superintendent directly after the school board allowed the audience to comment on a vote to grant his raise.
Deyshia Hargrave: “Superintendent, how are you going to take a raise when there’s ELA—when I first started teaching ELA, there was like 20, 21 kids in a class, and now there’s 29 kids in a class that we are now having. And we have not gotten raises. How are you going to take that money? Because it’s basically taking out of the pockets of teachers.”
Anthony Fontana: “All right, stop. Stop right now. That’s not germane to what’s on the agenda tonight. Deyshia Hargrave: “Yes, it is!”
Woman: “Come on now!”
Deyshia Hargrave: “How are you going to take”—
Anthony Fontana: “What’s on the agenda is the superintendent’s contract.”
Crowd: “With a raise!”
She was ruled out of order by Board President Anthony Fontana for asking a question when board policy said only comments were allowed. After her questioning, the teacher voluntarily left the room after being asked to leave and was then forcibly arrested in the hallway by a marshal. Hargrave was charged with remaining after being forbidden and resisting an officer, but they were later dropped after the school board declined to press charges.
The school district says they do not plan to discipline her. Vermilion Parish superintendent Jerome Puyau, who now makes about $140,000 annually with his new raise said of the incident “I don’t support our people getting arrested. I do not. However, a person has to follow the rules.” Puyau said the pay bump boosts his salary to the level of what his counterparts make. He also pointed out that his school district ranks sixth in performance while his salary is 57th.
Puyau said that his family has been bombarded with death threats since the video of the incident went viral. “My sisters, my family — we’re all educators,” he said. “It is not fair to our families, anyone’s families, anyone in Vermilion Parish.”
Hargrave said she would like to receive an apology from both the superintendent and the marshal who arrested her. She also would like to see other people to speak out for what they believe. “I’m hoping for teachers, people outside of education, to have a voice,” she said. “Show up. You don’t have to say anything, just show up. Just do something.”
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The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has scheduled a briefing for January 16th, 2018 , to outline how the U.S. public should prepare for the event of a nuclear war. The scheduled briefing comes as tensions between the United States and North Korea continue to rise. A notice on the CDC’s website states “While a nuclear detonation is unlikely, it would have devastating results and there would be limited time to take critical protection steps. Despite the fear surrounding such an event, planning and preparation can lessen deaths and illness. For instance, most people don’t realize that sheltering in place for at least 24 hours is crucial to saving lives and reducing exposure to radiation. While federal, state, and local agencies will lead the immediate response efforts, public health will play a key role in responding.”
The session will include information on what public health programs are doing at the federal, state, and local level to prepare for a nuclear detonation, according to the announcement. Additional information will cover how planning for a nuclear detonation is similar to and different from other emergency responses. The website already has information on What to Do During a Radiation Emergency which lists a nuclear power plant accident, a nuclear explosion or a dirty bomb are examples of radiation emergencies.
While officials stress an attack remains unlikely, Hawaii’s emergency management authorities have released guidelines on what to do, while a monthly statewide siren test was resurrected on Dec. 1, 2017. Over the weekend, Hawaii residents were panicked for a short time from an emergency alert notification sent out on Saturday claiming a ballistic missile threat was inbound to Hawaii. The alert turned out to be a false alarm according to state leaders and emergency officials, who blamed it on an employee who “pushed the wrong button.”
“BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL,” the emergency alert read. The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency quickly updated the alert to: “THERE IS NO MISSILE THREAT OR DANGER TO THE STATE OF HAWAII. REPEAT. FALSE ALARM, “ but many residents didn’t get the update for 15 to 30 minutes as many factors such as cell tower and a person’s location came in to play.
Many are hopeful for a thawing of relations Kim Jong Un said in a New Year’s Day address that he wanted his country to compete in the Olympics. His statement was seen as an olive branch after a tense year of aggression. Recently, officials from North Korea and South Korea met in the Demilitarized Zone for the first high-level talks in more than two years. During the meeting, North Korea said it would send a delegation of athletes, officials and cheerleaders to the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in February. The two countries will also reinstate a military hotline that was suspended for nearly two years.
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Two men have been arrested in the grisly murders of a same-sex couple and two children in Troy, New York. James White, 38, and Justin Mann, 24 have been charged with one count of first-degree murder and four counts of second-degree murder. The victims were 36-year-old Shanta Myers, her partner 22-year-old Brandi Mell and Myers’ two children, Jeremiah, 11, and Shanise, five. Myers’ oldest son, 15-year-old Isaiah, was not home at the time of the murders.
Their bodies were discovered in their basement apartment around noon on Dec. 26th by the property manager while doing a well-being check. According to family members, the Myers family moved in with Brandi Mells following an eviction earlier this year but because of apartment’s small size, Isaiah stayed with a relative.
Mells’ cousin, Sharonda Bennett said she last spoke to Brandi on Dec. 19 to discussed holiday plans The couple were deciding between celebrating in Troy or in Paterson, New Jersey, where the Mells family lives, she said. She said that the couple became unreachable around 11 p.m. on Dec. 21st, after Mell’s mother couldn’t reach her by phone and no one answered at the apartment. Bennett said her calls to Brandi went straight to voicemail and she assumed maybe they had decided to spend Christmas in New Jersey.
Two days later, Isaiah stopped by to deliver Christmas presents to his siblings but no one answered the door, which was locked. He left for a basketball tournament, thinking they’d stepped out for a bit. After still not being able to reach them the day after Christmas, Mells’ mom called the property manager and asked the manager to see if her daughter was home. The manager found the bodies and immediately called cops.
The motives of these murders have not been revealed but Troy Police Chief James Tedesco said these victims were targeted and confirmed that the victims were killed late in the evening of Dec 21st. He called the slayings the worst “savagery” he’d ever seen in his 42-year career. Police did not detail how they caught the suspects, and a family member of one of the victims said that she had never heard of the men and knew no reason why the women and children would be targeted.
Police have said Justin Mann was “acquainted” with Brandi Mells. He said that both suspects have a criminal history and that Justin Mann was on parole. Department of Corrections records show Mann was released on parole in June 2017 after serving time for a first-degree robbery conviction in 2014. Both men, from nearby Schenectady, were apprehended without incident Friday night and arraigned Saturday. Both are being held without bail in the Rensselaer County Jail with a preliminary hearing scheduled for Jan. 4th.
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A fire at an underground electrical facility caused an 11 hour blackout that brought the world’s busiest airport to a standstill. The blackout at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport led to the cancellation of more than 1,500 flights and stranding tens of thousands of people in darkened terminals or on the tarmac, where some passengers sat for more than five hours on grounded planes.
The power outage began shortly after 1 p.m. leaving passengers in dim and overcrowded terminals as afternoon turned to evening. Frustrated travelers lighted their way through smoky corridors with cellphones. On Twitter, passengers reported waiting on the tarmac for more than five hours as the lack of power at the terminals made it hard to de-plane. Getting out of the terminals quickly became difficult as traffic snarled access roads and MARTA trains ran at capacity to downtown.
The train between terminals was shut down and elevators, escalators, automatic doors and baggage carousels stood still. Screens went black and the intercom for flight updates was silent. No one could get reliable phone or internet service to access texts, email, flight apps or social media. With a lack of information, travelers were too nervous to leave their spots, fearing the power might soon return at any moment and they’d lose their place in the line they were in.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed later said the fire was so intense that it damaged two substations serving the airport, including the airport’s back-up power system and prevented emergency crews from accessing the site for two to three hours. Paul Bowers, Georgia Power’s president and CEO said there was a failure in the switchgear that caused the fire and the fire was contained by 3:30pm. An estimated 30,000 people were affected by the power outage.
Delta bore the brunt of the impact, cancelling approximately 900 flights and diverting 48 more. The carrier said about 300 flights would also be cancelled on Monday, as the chaos spilled into one of the busiest air travel weeks of the year. The blackout led the Federal Aviation Administration to declare a ground stop at the airport, preventing Atlanta-bound flights in other airports from taking off and causing inbound flights to be diverted. The ground stop in Atlanta disrupted air travel across the United States.
Some power was restored just before midnight but stranded travelers were still sleeping on the floor the day after the outage. Long ticket and security lines were moving slowly as normalcy began returning to the airport Monday. Volunteers in shirts that said, “Ask Me,” tried to allay concerns and passed out doughnuts to those in line, many of whom shared horror stories about the night before.
Some travelers said airline and airport employees did their best to take care of stranded passengers, handing out blankets, beverages, even slices of pizza. Others reported a lack of communication, widespread rumors, the strong smell of fire near baggage claim and a taxi line that amounted to “pandemonium.” While some fortunate passengers were able to board the flights departing Atlanta the day after the outage, other passengers were being told they’d have to wait hours or days. One airline was telling passengers it would be five days before they could get a flight out.
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Utah Nurse Alex Wubbels has won a $500,000 settlement after being violently arrested by police at The Utah University Hospital for refusing a police officer’s demand that she draw a blood sample from an unconscious car crash patient. Police body cam video shows an officer grab Wubbels, dragging her out of the hospital and into an unmarked car. The incident happened on July 26 but the story went viral when bodycam footage was released weeks later.
In the video, Salt Lake City Detective Jeff Payne is seen arguing with Utah nurse Alex Wubbels, the charge nurse working the night shift on the burn unit at Utah University Hospital. Wubbels was following hospital protocol and the law when she calmly refused to allow a blood draw on an unconscious patient without consent or a warrant. She presented the officers with a printout of hospital policy on drawing blood and said their request did not meet the criteria. Hospital policy specified police needed either a judge’s order or the patient’s consent, or the patient needed to be under arrest, before obtaining a blood sample.
The dispute ended with Payne handcuffing Wubbels and dragging her outside while she screamed that she’d done nothing wrong. She was detained for 20 minutes and later released without charge. Salt Lake City police detective Jeff Payne insisted on drawing the blood, maintaining in his report that he wanted the sample to protect the man rather than prosecute him. He was supported by his supervisor, Lt. James Tracy, who said the nurse could be arrested if she didn’t agree.
After the footage surfaced, the hospital said police would no longer be permitted in patient care areas, such as the burn unit where Wubbels was working that day. Payne had 20 years on the force at the time. He and a second officer, Lt. James Tracy, were put on full paid administrative leave by Salt Lake City police during an investigation involving the FBI. On Oct. 11th, the Salt Lake City Police Department announced that Payne had been fired and Lt. James Tracy was demoted over the incident.
The patient in question, William Gray, was a reserve police officer with the Rigby, Idaho police department. He worked as a truck driver and had been severely burned following a fiery head-on crash caused by a man in a pickup truck who was fleeing the Utah State Highway Patrol. He spent two months in the University of Utah burn center before he passed away on September 25th.
Karra Porter, Wubbels’ attorney said her client has met the five goals she set when this incident occurred. She wanted changes to policy, accountability from those who were involved in the incident, to start a public discussion about the urgent need for body cameras, to be compensated and to help other people who have a need for evidence obtained on body cam videos when these types of situations happen to them. Wubbels said she plans to use a portion of the settlement toward a new initiative to help others pay for access to police body camera video clips. “We all deserve to know the truth and the truth comes when you see the actual raw footage and that’s what happened in my case,” Wubbels said. “Any person in the State of Utah who wishes to obtain body cam footage of an incident involving them will be able to do so, no charge to them. Our law firm, Christensen & Jensen, will provide any legal services necessary to accomplish that,” Porter said. “Thanks to Alex, there will be more transparency.”
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President Trump has declared the opioid crisis- which killed 64,000 Americans last year- a public health emergency. The order will last 90 days and can be renewed every 90 days until the President believes it is no longer needed. President Donald Trump said “Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of unintentional death in the United States by far. More people are dying from drug overdoses today than from gun homicides and motor vehicles combined.”
The administration will work with Congress to fund the Public Health Emergency fund and to increase federal funding in year-end budget deals currently being negotiated in Congress. Trump has directed agency and department heads to use all appropriate emergency authorities to reduce the number of deaths caused by the opioid crisis. The administration will also launch an ad campaign so that young people can see the devastation that drugs cause on people and their lives.
The administration’s opioid plan will allow expanded access to telemedicine services, giving doctors the ability to prescribe medications to treat addiction to those in remote locations. It also speeds the hiring process for medical professionals working on opioids and allows funds in programs for dislocated workers and people with HIV/AIDS to be used to treat their addictions. The designation gives the administration access to the Public Health Emergency Fund, but that fund is nearly empty.
In August, Trump said that he would declare the opioid epidemic a national emergency but later said the White House had determined that declaring a public health emergency was more appropriate than a national emergency. Many have criticized the decision to declare a public health emergency rather than a national emergency as not enough. A commission created by the administration and headed by Gov. Chris Christie called on the president to declare a national emergency under either the Public Health Service Act or the Stafford Act. Doing so, the commission said, could free up funds for treatment, ensure wider access to the anti-overdose drug naloxone and improve monitoring of opioid prescriptions to prevent abuse.
Congress is currently spending $500 million a year on addiction treatment programs, but that money runs out next year. The administration says it will work with Congress in the budgeting process to find new money to fund addiction treatment programs. A group of senators introduced a bill that would provide more than $45 billion for opioid abuse prevention, surveillance and treatment.
From 2000 to 2015, more than 500,000 people died of drug overdoses, and opioids account for the majority of those. Recently released numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that around 64,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2016. More than 140 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Roughly 80 percent of the world’s opioids are consumed in the US. A report published earlier this year found that 94 percent of heroin entering the United States came from Mexico. A large portion of the country’s fentanyl – a prescribed painkiller thought by many to be driving the opioid epidemic – derives from China and arrives in the States through US mail.
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