Andrew Tate and brother’s travel restrictions lifted, Romanian officials say
Andrew Tate (left) and his brother Tristan Tate are pictured inside The Court of Appeal in Bucharest, Romania, on December 10, 2024. (Photo by DANIEL MIHAILESCU/AFP v
(LONDON) — Romania’s organized crime agency issued a statement Thursday saying court restrictions prohibiting controversial influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate from leaving Romania while awaiting trial have now been lifted, clearing the way for them to fly.
Romanian media reports said the two had left the country aboard a private jet headed to the United States.
The charges against the Tates remain in force, and they will be expected to return to Romania for court appearances, said the statement from the agency, Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism, or DIICOT.
The brothers have been confined to Romania since late 2022 when they were arrested on human trafficking, sexual abuse, money laundering and forming an organized criminal group.
They were charged in 2023 and have denied the charges.
The Tates’ departure follows reports Trump administration officials had lobbied Romania to lift a travel ban on them while they are awaiting trial.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — The climate crisis is not a distant threat; it’s happening right now and affecting what matters most to us. Hurricanes intensified by a warming planet and drought-fueled wildfires are destroying our communities. Rising seas and flooding are swallowing our homes. And record-breaking heat waves are reshaping our way of life.
The good news is we know how to turn the tide and avoid the worst possible outcomes. However, understanding what needs to be done can be confusing due to a constant stream of climate updates, scientific findings, and critical decisions that are shaping our future.
That’s why the ABC News Climate and Weather Unit is cutting through the noise by curating what you need to know to keep the people and places you care about safe. We are dedicated to providing clarity amid the chaos, giving you the facts and insights necessary to navigate the climate realities of today — and tomorrow.
Millions of students are missing school because of extreme weather
A new analysis from UNICEF finds that nearly a quarter of a billion children worldwide had their education disrupted by extreme weather events in 2024 — exacerbating what the organization calls an “existing learning crisis.”
The report found that at least 242 million students across 85 countries experienced schooling disruptions last year because of extreme weather like heat waves, storms, floods, droughts and tropical cyclones.
“Children are more vulnerable to the impacts of weather-related crises, including stronger and more frequent heatwaves, storms, droughts and flooding,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said. “Last year, severe weather kept one in seven students out of class, threatening their health and safety, and impacting their long-term education.”
Heat waves were the most common weather disruptor for education. UNICEF found that over 118 million students were impacted by extreme heat in April alone, with South Asia seeing some of the most widespread impacts.
The report also found that September had the most frequent weather-related disruptions, with at least 16 countries suspending classes for a time due to extreme weather events like Typhoon Yagi in East Asia.
While the analysis found that almost three-quarters of the students impacted were in low and lower-middle income countries, UNICEF says no region was free from these effects.
“Education is one of the services most frequently disrupted due to climate hazards. Yet it is often overlooked in policy discussions, despite its role in preparing children for climate adaptation,” Russell said. “Children’s futures must be at the forefront of all climate related plans and actions.”
-ABC News climate unit’s Kelly Livingston
Climate funders say they will cover US climate obligations after Paris Agreement withdrawal
On Monday, President Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, the U.N.-backed international climate treaty. Bloomberg Philanthropies announced Thursday that they, along with a coalition of climate charities, would step up and ensure that the U.S. meets its obligations under the Paris Agreement, including any financial and reporting requirements.
“While government funding remains essential to our mission, contributions like this are vital in enabling the UN Climate Change secretariat to support countries in fulfilling their commitments under the Paris Agreement and a low-emission, resilient, and safer future for everyone,” said Simon Stiell, United Nations climate change executive secretary, in a press statement.
This is the second time Trump has withdrawn the country from the Paris Agreement. During his first term, Trump justified backing out of the treaty by claiming that participating in the agreement would result in the loss of jobs and cost the U.S. trillions of dollars. In reality, in 2023, clean energy jobs grew at more than twice the rate of the overall U.S. labor market and accounted for more than 8.35 million positions, according to a Department of Energy report. In terms of spending, the U.S. has committed several billion dollars to the effort, not trillions.
Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire businessman, founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies and a U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions, said he also plans to continue supporting a coalition of states, cities and businesses that are working to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 61-66% below 2005 levels by 2035.
“More and more Americans have had their lives torn apart by climate-fueled disasters, like the destructive fires raging in California. At the same time, the United States is experiencing the economic benefits of clean energy, as costs have fallen and jobs have grown in both red and blue states. The American people remain determined to continue the fight against the devastating effects of climate change,” Bloomberg said.
(LONDON) — A teenager has been sentenced to 52 years in prison for fatally stabbing three girls at a children’s Taylor Swift-themed event in the United Kingdom last year.
Axel Rudakubana, 18, pleaded guilty to all charges, including three counts of murder, earlier this week, avoiding a trial.
The horrific stabbing spree unfolded in July in Southport, a seaside town about 20 miles north of Liverpool. Merseyside police said the children were attending a Taylor Swift-themed event at a dance school.
Three girls — 6-year-old Bebe King, 7-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe and 9-year-old Alice Dasilva Aguiar — were killed. Ten people were also injured in the attack, police said.
Rudakubana, from Banks in Lancashire, was initially charged with three counts of murder, as well as 10 charges of attempted murder and one charge of possession of a knife in the incident. He subsequently faced a terror charge for possessing a jihadi training manual and was charged with producing ricin, a toxin.
He pleaded guilty to all 16 charges on Monday.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — The first flight carrying “high-threat” migrants to Guantanamo Bay arrived Tuesday evening, part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
The C-17 plane took off from El Paso, Texas, and landed landed at 7:20 p.m. Eastern time, according to U.S. Transportation Command.
The 10 people on the flight were suspected members of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
The migrants, however, will not be co-located with existing detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement will have the primary guard of them.
“These 10 high-threat individuals are currently being housed in vacant detention facilities,” the Defense Department said in a Wednesday statement, calling the detention of these migrants at Guantanamo Bay a “temporary measure.” “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is taking this measure to ensure the safe and secure detention of these individuals until they can be transported to their country of origin or other appropriate destination.”
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 29 directing the secretaries of the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security to “expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity” to house migrants without legal status living in the United States. The Migrant Operations Center is separate from the high-security prison facility that has been used to hold al Qaeda detainees.
“There’s a lot of space to accommodate a lot of people,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Tuesday. “So we’re going to use it.
“The migrants are rough, but we have some bad ones, too,” he added. “I’d like to get them out. It would be all subject to the laws of our land, and we’re looking at that to see if we can.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the flights carrying migrants to Guantanamo Bay were underway Tuesday morning, saying on Fox News, “Trump, Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem are already delivering on this promise to utilize that capacity at Gitmo for illegal criminals who have broken our nation’s immigration laws and then have further committed heinous crimes against lawful American citizens here at home.”
While Trump has said the United States will work to prepare the base to hold 30,000 migrants awaiting processing to return to their home countries, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that Guantanamo Bay’s high-security prison facility could house “the worst of the worst” criminals being deported.
“Where are you going to put Tren de Aragua before you send them all the way back?” Hegseth asked. “How about a maximum-security prison at Guantanamo Bay, where we have the space?”
He called the base “the perfect place to provide for migrants who are traveling out of our country,” including for “hardened criminals.”
“President @realdonaldtrump has been very clear: Guantanamo Bay will hold the worst of the worst. That starts today,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted on Tuesday. It is unclear what charges the migrants on the plane face.
“Due process will be followed, and having facilities at Guantánamo Bay will be an asset to us and the fact that we’ll have the capacity to continue to do there what we’ve always done. We’ve always had a presence of illegal immigrants there who have been detained — we’re just building out some capacity,” Noem told NBC News on Sunday. “We appreciate the partnership of the DoD in getting that up to the level that it needs to get to in order to facilitate this repatriation of people back to their countries.”
She added that it is “not the plan” to have migrants stay at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely.
As of Monday, there were about 300 service members supporting the immigrant holding operations at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, according to U.S. Southern Command. U.S. officials told ABC News that as many as 200 more Marines are expected to arrive in waves.
The Defense Department posted that the troops are at Guantanamo Bay “to prepare to expand the Migrant Operations Center” to house up to the 30,000 migrants temporarily, separate from the maximum-security prison.
“As we identify criminal illegals in our country, the military is leaning forward to help with moving them out to their home countries or someone else in the interim,” Hegseth said on Jan. 31. “Now if … they can’t go somewhere right away, they can go to Guantanamo Bay.”
Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law, told ABC News’ Phil Lipof on Jan. 29 that a “big challenge” of holding migrants at Guantanamo Bay is the large number Trump has suggested.
“I don’t know that they have the capacity for that,” said Greenberg, who noted that “in the old days and the ’90s, I think they held 21,000 at the most.”
She added that the base has long held refugees and migrants, including in the Biden administration, though in much smaller numbers, and has typically been used for those intercepted at sea rather than to hold migrants flown in from the continental U.S.
However, Greenberg noted that the reports from those who have spent time at Guantanamo Bay are “not good.”
“There was a report released in September by the International Refugee Assistance Project, which sort of detailed the conditions that migrants are held in currently at Guantanamo, which included unsanitary conditions, mistreatment, not to mention this sort of fuzzy legal status,” she said.
