Delphi murder suspect’s alleged jail confessions revealed in court

(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department on Monday charged two California individuals who were alleged leaders of a white supremacist group that wanted to ignite a race war in the United States and allegedly plotted to kill “high value” targets and incite its followers to carry out terror attacks around the globe.

Dallas Humber and Matthew Allison allegedly became leaders of a group that deemed itself “Terrorgram” and was formed on the encrypted social media site.

The two were charged with a host of federal crimes including solicitation of the killing of a federal official, doxing federal officials and making interstate threats.

“The defendant’s goal, the indictment charges, was to ignite a race war, accelerate the collapse of what they viewed as an irreparably corrupt government and bring about a white ethno state. As the indictment lays out, defendants use the internet platform Telegram to post messages promoting their white supremacist accelerationism,” Kristen Clarke, the DOJ’s head of its Civil Rights Division, said during a press conference Monday.

The indictment alleges that the group “solicited terrorist attacks” including on alleged “enemies,” on government infrastructure, and on “high value” targets such as politicians and government figures.

“The List,” according to the indictment, includes U.S. senators, federal judges, U.S. attorneys and local officials.

When disseminating the so-called list, Allision allegedly included comments like “take action now” and “do your part.”

In at least three separate instances detailed by prosecutors in the indictment, users of the group have allegedly moved forward in carrying out violent attacks inspired by the group chat.

One user was a 19-year-old from Slovakia who killed two people at an LGBT bar in Bratislava before killing himself, according to the DOJ. The indictment alleges that the attacker sent a manifesto directly to Humber, which Humber later purportedly narrated and turned into an audiobook.

Both Humber and Allison later allegedly took credit for the attack and celebrated the attacker as the group’s “first Saint,” according to the indictment.

A separate case highlighted in the indictment involved the arrest in July of 18-year-old Andrew Taskhistov of New Jersey who was allegedly incited to plot an attack on an energy facility through his membership in the group. A third case highlighted in the indictment involved an 18-year-old from Turkey who allegedly livestreamed himself stabbing five people outside a mosque and later shared multiple publications from the group.

Part of the group’s alleged strategy was to target critical infrastructure, according to the DOJ.

Humber and Allison also allegedly created a documentary that celebrated racist incidents around the country from 1968 on, according to the indictment.

The pair also allegedly stressed the need to be covert about their operations and, according to the indictment.

No attorney information for Humber or Allison was immediately available.

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(NEW YORK) — NATO troops, vessels and aircraft took to the frigid North Atlantic Ocean last month to sharpen their skills for a potential future war at sea, whether in the tumultuous Atlantic or in waters closer to their hypothetical Russian adversaries.

The drills — led by U.S. Naval Forces Europe and the U.S. Navy’s 6th Fleet — “focused on the strategic waterways and airspace surrounding Iceland,” a NATO press release said, an area it described as “a vital hub in the North Atlantic.” NATO forces practiced tracking enemy naval forces — including submarines — and responding to mass casualty events.

But one part of the exercise was designed with a different region, though the same hypothetical enemy, in mind.

With U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon aircraft acting as their eyes, Polish Naval Strike Missile (NSM) units used their time in Iceland to simulate strikes on enemy ships out at sea.

Lt. Bartlomiej Gryglewski, a liaison officer for the Polish navy’s naval missile unit, told ABC News that his contingent performed every step up until the actual firing of the munitions. “We ‘performed’ a lot of strikes,” Gryglewski said, describing the Norwegian-made NSM as a “pretty awesome” weapon.

The combination of the “precise missile” and the information gathered by the American aircraft above gives a “a high percentage chance — almost 100% — that the target will be hit,” Gryglewski added.

The North Atlantic, though, is not the expected hunting ground.

“We almost always perform our exercises in the Baltic region,” Gryglewski said, “protecting the Baltic Sea region from the enemy” as part of Poland’s coastal defense system.

NATO’s ‘lake’

There, Russia is “facing a real imbalance” with its NATO rivals, Sidharth Kaushal of the U.K.’s Royal United Services Institute think tank told ABC News.

NATO’s inclusion of Finland and Sweden — a direct consequence of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — has prompted some officials to jokingly refer to the Baltic Sea as the “NATO Lake.”

The trope “is a bit of an exaggeration, but only a bit,” Kaushal said. “The maritime imbalance is significantly in NATO’s favor, and that’s a huge problem for Russia.”

The Baltic Sea remains a key oil export route for Russian ships departing terminals in St. Petersburg. Commercial and military vessels alike must transit the sea to reach the Atlantic Ocean, passing through the Gulf of Finland and the narrow Danish straits with NATO eyes on all sides.

Russia’s strategic Kaliningrad exclave is surrounded by NATO nations, its approaches in sight of the Latvian, Polish and Swedish coasts.

In the event of war, NATO aircraft and vessels could launch attacks on Russian territory from within the Baltic region that would “give Russian air defenses very limited warning times,” Kashual noted.

“There’s a whole range of conundrums that the alliance’s preponderance in the Baltic Sea faces the Russians with,” Kaushal said. “Reminding Russia of that fact is probably an important goal for the Americans, and for the wider alliance.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry and the Kremlin have routinely criticized NATO military drills — particularly those close to its border. In July, for example, Moscow hit out at NATO drills in Finland as “an integral part of NATO’s comprehensive provocative efforts to contain Russia.”

Control of the Baltic Sea is not a given for the Western allies. Russia’s naval cruise missile bombardment of Ukraine from the Black Sea since 2022 has proved devastating, and proved that Moscow can “pose a real threat at depth across Europe,” Kashual said.

“Sinking them early and demonstrating the ability to do so would be a real priority for regional countries like Poland, even if the aggregate balance of forces is now heavily skewed in NATO’s direction in the Baltic,” he added.

“There’s a temporal question; can the Baltic Fleet be sunk in a manner that’s both timely and cost effective before it’s done an unacceptable level of damage across Europe with its cruise missiles?”

Polish NSMs, Kashual added, could prove to be “a big part” of NATO’s answer to that question.

Poland’s government has said as much. “Due to the reinforcement of the coastal missile units, manned and unmanned reconnaissance platforms, modern mine warfare and submarines, we will greatly increase our capabilities to protect our coastline,” the Defense Ministry wrote in its 2032 plan.

Still, Western militaries may have to grapple with the same industrial strains that have so hamstrung Ukraine in its fight against Russia.

Advanced technology like the NSM may work well, but restocking munitions might prove a challenge. Last fall, the Polish Defense Ministry inked a deal with NSM producer Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace for “several hundred” more missiles.

Naval missile troops have plenty of active case studies to turn to. In the Black Sea, Ukraine has been able to hold back the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and even sink the Moskva flagship.

In the Middle East, the Houthis in Yemen have hit dozens of commercial ships and attacked Western warships in nearby waters. The group has even claimed to have fired on vessels in the Mediterranean Sea.

“I think that everybody at this time is getting some experience from those,” Gryglewski said of the two ongoing conflicts. “But that’s all I can say about this for the moment.”

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(NEW YORK) — As the Earth’s temperature continues to rise, lives could be at stake. A new study found deaths related to extreme temperatures may triple by the middle of the century, hitting minority communities the hardest.

University of Pennsylvania researchers looked at the relationship between average temperatures and number of deaths across counties in the United States between 2008 and 2019, according to the study published in JAMA Network Open on Friday. Currently, there are just over 8,000 annual temperature-related deaths in the country.

But just a single additional day of extreme heat in a month could increase these numbers.

“For years, we have been chronically underestimating the number of heat-related deaths … because they are so complicated,” Gaurab Basu, MD, director of education and policy at the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told ABC News. “The methodologies they’re using, and the outcomes of this paper are more in line with what we believe is actually the impact of heat on mortality.”

To arrive at their estimates, the team used established climate models to predict future deaths from the heat or cold between 2036 and 2065. They ran these predictions through two potential scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions.

“The lower emissions scenario represents what we think might happen to the greenhouse gas emission trajectory if currently proposed climate policies are enacted,” Sameed Khatana, MD, the study’s lead author and assistant professor of medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine, said. “The higher emissions scenario represents business as usual––what would happen if the economy continued to be very dependent on fuels.”

By 2065, the researchers predict that deaths from extreme temperatures could reach 19,300 in the lower greenhouse gas emissions scenario, and 26,500 with higher emissions––a 134% and 222% increase, respectively.

Hispanic and Black communities would fare the worst, the study suggested. Hispanic adults could see a 527% rise in temperature-related deaths and non-Hispanic Black adults could see a 278% increase.

“It’s critical to understand that a warming planet is dangerous to all of us. But climate change and heat-related impacts on health are very disproportionate and very inequitably distributed,” Basu said.

Khatana noted that part of the disproportionate burden on minority communities stems from projected population shifts. Minority and non-White populations are expected to grow faster than white populations.

However, even after accounting for this, significant differences in temperature-related deaths remain for a variety of reasons.

Minority populations often work longer hours in the heat, live in areas with less green space and more pollution, and lack adequate home cooling.

Researchers urge targeted solutions to address these disparities.

“We have to analyze the ways in which communities of color are vulnerable to exposures, to heat, because of a lack of resources and because of the kind of occupations and disempowered positions they are in,” Basu said. “We need to start there.”

Khatana emphasized the importance of staying hopeful when considering the future of climate change.

“We should think about the steps we can take to lower our carbon footprint,” he said. “We found that, even though in both [greenhouse gas] scenarios, there is an increase in extreme temperature-associated deaths, the increase is lower when the trajectory of emission increases is lower as well.”

“But no one should pretend that there’s a simple solution. Climate change is a very complex issue that requires a concerted effort at multiple levels.”

Anokhi Saklecha, M.D., is an internal medicine resident at Yale New Haven Health and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.

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