Developing storm Rafael could hit the Gulf Coast this week: Latest forecast
ABC News
A tropical system churning in the Caribbean is forecast to strengthen into Tropical Storm Rafael on Monday as it takes aim at Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and the Gulf Coast.
A tropical storm warning has been issued for Jamaica, where Rafael is forecast to bring heavy rain and mudslides Monday night into Tuesday morning. A hurricane warning has been issued for the Cayman Islands.
Rafael could strengthen to a hurricane by Tuesday night into Wednesday morning as it makes landfall in Cuba with heavy rain, strong winds, flash flooding and storm surge.
Rafael is expected to move into the Gulf of Mexico as a tropical storm by the end of the week.
By Saturday, Rafael could reach the U.S. Gulf Coast.
It’s too early to tell which parts of the Gulf Coast will see the worst conditions. Everyone from Texas to Florida should monitor the storm’s path.
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump has all but exhausted his efforts to eliminate the limited gag order in his criminal hush money case, after New York’s highest court on Thursday declined to consider his request to lift the order.
“Appeal dismissed without costs, by the Court sua sponte, upon the ground that no substantial constitutional question is directly involved,” New York’s Court of Appeals said in a brief order.
The former president had been seeking the freedom to publicly criticize anyone associated with the case.
In April, Judge Juan Merchan barred Trump from making public statements about jurors, court staff, and relatives of those involved in the case, after Trump repeatedly targeted Merchan’s daughter on social media.
Trump was found guilty in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election. He has said he will appeal the decision.
Once the trial concluded, Judge Merchan relaxed the part of the gag order that prevented Trump from targeting members of the jury and witnesses in the case.
Sentencing in the case currently scheduled for Nov. 26, after Mercand last week agreed to Trump’s request to delay sentencing until after the presidential election.
(NEW YORK) — Rick Singer, the man convicted of orchestrating the so-called “Varsity Blues” college admissions scandal, has continued to advise prospective undergraduates on their college applications while serving his sentence in federal prison in Florida, and now from a California halfway house.
Singer, 64, a one-time college admissions consultant who pleaded guilty in 2019 to facilitating bribes between wealthy parents and elite universities in exchange for their children’s enrollment, told ABC News that he began to counsel students — pro bono — after he was sentenced last year.
Then, this past admissions season, while he was at a federal prison camp in Pensacola, Florida, Singer said, “The coolest thing ever happened.”
“I had a young man send me an email saying, ‘Could you help me with my applications and tell me if I could get into these schools?'” Singer told ABC News during a sit-down interview.
The applicant sent Singer his high school transcript and a list of his credentials. Singer, whose advice was once sought by higher-powered executives and Hollywood actors, wrote back, offering a few pointers. The student was accepted to his top school in March, Singer said.
This summer, Singer launched a new venture called ID Future Stars, a consulting business that boasts an 80% to 96% acceptance rate into first-choice schools. According to the site, “Our success speaks for itself.”
But his return to the college admissions world could be a challenge. Singer’s reputation unraveled after he pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy, money laundering and obstruction of justice charges in the decades-long scheme that federal investigators dubbed “Operation Varsity Blues.”
Federal prosecutors in Boston said Singer facilitated $25 million changing hands from families to college administrators and athletic coaches, who would dole out spots on their rosters to fulfill their fundraising goals. Singer transferred, spent or otherwise used more than $15 million for his own benefit, they said.
“Everything that the U.S. attorney said, and the FBI said, and everybody else said that I did do, I did it,” Singer told ABC.
Yet even four years later, Singer said the conspiracy amounted to a “victimless crime.”
News of the admissions scandal broke in 2019, when Andrew Lelling, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, announced the charges against Singer and over 50 others, including college coaches, testing administrators and actors Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman.
The charges led to about 50 convictions and became the subject of at least four books, a Lifetime movie and a Netflix documentary.
In January 2023, a judge sentenced Singer to 42 months in federal prison. This August, he was released to a halfway house near Los Angeles.
For years, Singer said, he had operated a lucrative and legitimate college consulting business. But that changed around 2011, when he realized he could not push some clients through what he called the “front door.” He had become close with the students and their families, and wanted to do whatever he could to help them, so he developed a new admissions scheme: the “side door.”
While Singer said that a majority of his consulting has always been legitimate, he explained that the new scheme began with one student and soon expanded.
“There was a young man who was super talented, worked his tail off,” Singer said. But the student would always perform poorly on practice SAT or ACT exams.
So he found a way to get the student’s application to the top of the pile: He began to bribe standardized testing proctors to turn a blind eye to permit cheating on the exams, prosecutors said.
I knew “it was wrong, and I did it anyways,” Singer said. “What’s 10, 12, 13 kids who are good students, quality people, and this one score may screw them out of an opportunity to go to a decent school? I rationalized that to myself.”
Soon after, the stakes grew. Singer was well-known in the world of higher education, and he said presidents of several prestigious universities had contacted him, hoping his clients would donate millions of dollars to their schools.
He said that he began to set up meetings between the presidents and parents to discuss their children enrolling in the university. “The negotiations would go from whether the school was a good fit for the student to, ‘What does the president need? What does the family need? Would there be a chit involved?'” he said, referring to a monetary favor.
Singer, a former basketball coach, said he was sympathetic to coaches and the pressure they faced to fundraise ahead of their sports seasons. So he said that he began to set up similar meetings between them and his clients. At times, he faked the students’ athletic credentials to push their applications through.
“First I went to three, four coaches. Then the word got out to all the coaches, and coaches started calling me every year,” Singer said.
“If they needed to raise $250,000 or $500,000 for the program, they would call me and say, ‘Hey, I have a spot. Do you have a family that would like to come here?'” he said.
When asked if he thought his scheme may have prevented legitimate recruits from earning their way on a collegiate team, Singer said: “All I’m doing is being the facilitator and providing the coach this choice.”
On March 12, 2019, the day he was charged, Singer said he left John Joseph Moakley Courthouse in Boston and looked down at his phone.
He said he had received 93 text messages in less than an hour. Most, Singer said, were from clients looking for above-board advice and wondering whether he would still be able to meet with them for a consultation.
(NEW YORK) — An OceanGate whistleblower testified during a United States Coast Guard hearing into the deadly 2023 implosion of the Titan that he had “no confidence” in the way the experimental submersible was being built.
David Lochridge, the former director of marine operations for OceanGate, said he was known as a “troublemaker” in the tourism and expeditions company because he was so outspoken about his safety concerns — voiced years before five people were killed when the Titan catastrophically imploded during a deep-sea voyage to the Titanic wreckage in June 2023.
Lochridge said Tuesday during an ongoing Coast Guard hearing into the deadly implosion that he was hired in 2015 to in part work on the operations for the Titan but was ultimately not involved in its development. Lochridge said he was “phased out” after butting heads with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush — one of the five people who died in the implosion.
When asked by the Marine Board of Investigation for the U.S. Coast Guard if he had confidence in the way the Titan was being built in 2017, Lochridge said, “No confidence whatsoever, and I was very vocal about that, and still am.”
Lochridge submitted a report in January 2018 outlining his concerns about the submersible’s carbon-fiber hull, including imperfections, after he said Rush asked him to inspect it.
“At the end of the day, safety comes first,” Lochridge said. “Yes, you’re taking a risk going down in a submersible, but don’t take risks that are unnecessary with faulty, and I mean faulty, deficient equipment.”
Lochridge testified Rush “liked to do things on the cheap.” Asked why the company resorted to cost-cutting measures, Lochridge said, “The desire to get to the Titanic as quickly as we could to start making profit.”
He said he did not know about the financial side of the company, but that “there was a big push to get this done.”
“A lot of steps along the way were missed,” he said.
Lochridge testified that Rush wanted to do manned testing of the first Titan prototype, though Lochridge recommended doing unmanned testing due to his concerns.
“I knew that hull would fail,” he said. “It’s an absolute mess.”
Lochridge was fired from OceanGate in 2018, days after submitting his report and attending an hourslong meeting with OceanGate executives, including Rush, ABC News previously reported. Documents reviewed by ABC News stated that it was clear Lochridge and Rush were “at an impasse” regarding the Titan hull, and “the only option was the termination of your employment.”
Lochridge testified Tuesday he was terminated because he was “anti-project.”
“I didn’t want to lose my job,” Lochridge said. “I wanted to go to Titanic. It was on my bucket list. I wanted to dive this, but dive it safely.”
Following his termination, Lochridge said he reached out to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in February 2018 with his concerns about public safety and was placed under the agency’s Whistleblower Protection Program. Recent Stories from ABC News
“I wouldn’t want to see anybody dying for the sake of going in a sub,” Lochridge said Tuesday. “It’s a magical place. I love it. I’m very passionate about what I do. If there’s risk like that, don’t do it.”
A defect was discovered in the first prototype of the carbon-fiber hull in 2019, and it was not used on Titanic missions, the Coast Guard said.
A second carbon-fiber hull was subsequently made that was used on Titanic missions, including the doomed dive on June 18, 2023.
OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations after the implosion.
The Coast Guard’s hearing into the implosion is scheduled to last two weeks. Lochridge is the only witness scheduled to testify on Tuesday.
During his testimony, Lochridge said he started being phased out of his duties after he inadvertently “embarrassed” Rush during a 2016 dive to the Andrea Doria shipwreck on OceanGate’s Cyclops 1 submersible.
Lochridge, a veteran submersible pilot, said he was meant to take several paying clients down to the wreck to take a 3-D model, but Rush wanted to pilot the dive instead. Lochridge said he objected, noting that the wreck is “dangerous” and that over a dozen people died during dives to the site at the time — and eventually persuaded Rush to let him go along.
He said Rush ended up getting the vessel stuck in the wreck and refused to relinquish control of the submersible to Lochridge until one of the crew members yelled at Rush to give Lochridge the PlayStation controller that piloted the vessel.
Lochridge said Rush threw the controller at his head and one of the buttons came off, though he testified that he was able to repair it and get them back to the surface.
After that, Lochridge said Rush stopped talking to him.
Lochridge testified he raised objections after OceanGate phased out its relationship with the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory in 2016. He said Rush decided to do all engineering for the Titan in-house.
Asked by the board why that was the case, Lochridge said, “Arrogance.”
He also testified the company only cared about making money and it wasn’t interested in scientific research.
“The whole idea behind the company was to make money, that’s it,” Lochridge said. “There was very little in the way of science.”
OceanGate sued Lochridge following his termination, alleging, among other things, breach of contract, fraud and misappropriation of trade secrets. Lochridge alleged in a counterclaim lawsuit that he was fired for raising concerns about quality control.
During the hearing on Tuesday, Lochridge said he dropped his OSHA case and walked away from the lawsuits in late 2018 because he didn’t want to “put my family through any more of this,” financially and emotionally.
“It was going nowhere,” he said. “It was too much for us as a family.”
Lochridge and OceanGate settled the dispute out of court in November 2018. Lochridge said OSHA closed the case in December 2018 following the settlement agreement.
“I never paid a penny to OceanGate, I’m going to state that clearly,” Lochridge said Tuesday. “I gave them nothing, they gave me nothing.”
In his final remarks, Lochridge said he hopes the investigation will shed light on “why OSHA did not actively address my concerns.”
“I believe that if OSHA had attempted to investigate the seriousness of the concerns I raised on multiple occasions, this tragedy may have been prevented,” he said. “As a seafarer, I feel deeply let down and disappointed by the system that is meant to protect not only seafarers but the general public as well.”
ABC News has reached out to OSHA for comment. OSHA had previously declined to comment to ABC News on the case.
The Coast Guard hearing is scheduled to resume on Thursday, with testimony from the company’s former scientific director and a crew member who was on board OceanGate’s 2016 dive to the Andrea Doria shipwreck.
