Arrest made in alleged murder of female soldier on Army base
U.S. Army Fort Leonard Wood/Facebook
(WASHINGTON) — An Army specialist has been charged with the murder of a fellow soldier whose body was found on an Army base last week.
Spc. Wooster Rancy, 21, is accused in the murder of Sarah Roque, a 23-year-old sergeant, officials said Thursday.
Last week, Roque was found dead in a dumpster at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.
Rancy also faces obstruction of justice charges, officials said. He is currently in pretrial confinement ahead of a preliminary hearing.
A combat engineer, Rancy is originally from Miami and joined the Army in 2022, officials said.
It is not yet clear what led to Rancy’s arrest or the motive in the killing.
Roque, of Ligonier, Indiana, was reported missing after she failed to report for duty last week.
In a press conference after her body was found, Maj. Gen. Christopher Beck said her death was being investigated as a homicide.
“As a commander and a leader, this is a tragedy,” Beck said. “This is something that we never want to happen, we never want for the family to have to endure, or for the unit to have to endure.”
Roque served as a mine dog handler, officials said. Since she enlisted in 2020, she was awarded the Army Commendation Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Good Conduct Medal and the Army Service Ribbon.
“Sarah not only served our country bravely and honorably as a soldier, she was also a daughter, a sister and a friend to many,” Beck said.
(NEW YORK) — Federal prosecutors on Tuesday announced criminal charges against an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps general in connection with an alleged failed attempt to assassinate a New York-based Iranian journalist.
Ruhollah Bazghandi, who is based in Iran and beyond the reach of law enforcement, allegedly orchestrated the alleged 2022 plot to kill the journalist, prosecutors said.
The charges name Bazghandi and six other Iranian operatives who federal prosecutors said plotted to kill Masih Alinejad, a prolific journalist and human rights activist who has been critical of the Iranian government.
Since at least July 2022, the Bazghandi network sought to assassinate Alinejad, as directed by individuals in Iran, according to the indictment.
The indictment details how the network of operatives surveilled Alinejad and quotes them talking about her in July 2022.
“I’m close to the place now brother I’m getting even closer,” the indictment quotes one operative as saying.
In response, another said, according to the indictment, “OK my brother dear don’t let her out of your sight. Let’s not delay it my brother dear.”
The operative — Khalid Mehdiyev — was disrupted when he was arrested near the victim’s home on July 28, 2022, while in possession of the assault rifle, along with 66 rounds of ammunition, approximately $1,100 in cash, and a black ski mask, according to the indictment.
Alinejad reacted to the federal charges in a statement on social media Tuesday, saying, “I will not be deterred.”
“Thanks to law enforcement, I am alive to witness the Islamic Republic’s humiliation,” she said. “I am determined to echo the voices of millions of Iranians, especially women, who are facing the same killers within the country.”
She said the alleged assassination plot is a “stark reminder of the brutal lengths to which the Islamic regime will go to silence dissidents, even those far beyond Iran’s borders.”
Alinejad said she has moved 21 times between safe houses in the past three years, following an alleged Iranian plot to lure and kidnap her in 2021.
The FBI released a wanted poster for Bazghandi, who is being sought on charges including murder-for-hire and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire.
“Today’s indictment exposes the full extent of Iran’s plot to silence an American journalist for criticizing the Iranian regime,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement on Tuesday. “The FBI’s investigation led to the disruption of this plot as one of the conspirators was allegedly on their way to murder the victim in New York. As these charges show, the FBI will work with our partners here and abroad to hold accountable those who target Americans.”
Photography by Keith Getter (all rights reserved)/Getty Images
Meteorology may have come a long way since its inception, but it is not possible for anyone — whether it be the government, scientists or billionaires — to control the weather, according to experts.
The desert region of Dubai received a record-breaking amount of rain — two year’s worth in 24 hours — in April. Ever since, every time a flash flooding event occurs, ABC New Chief Meteorologist and Managing Editor of the ABC News Climate Unit Ginger Zee has been receiving messages on social media from people who claim the sharp increase in precipitation is not the result of nature.
“They are making it rain” is the overall theme of the conspiracy theories Zee keeps hearing about.
The commenters are often referring to cloud seeding, a weather modification technique currently used in the United Arab Emirates and several places in the U.S., mostly in the Western U.S., a region notorious for its pervasive droughts. The geoengineering technology involves injecting microscopic particles — sometimes silver iodide — into the atmosphere to encourage rain and snowfall.
The particles then act like magnets for water droplets and bind together until they are heavy enough to fall as rain or snow, amplifying the amount of precipitation. But the water droplets can’t be made out of nothing — it has to be already raining or snowing for cloud seeding to take effect.
For the last several decades, there have been investments in small-scale cloud seeding operations in pockets in the West, both ground-based and in the air, Brad Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University, told ABC News.
Despite feats in geoengineering, humans have no capability whatsoever to control the weather, Andrew Dessler, director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies, told ABC News.
“Until recently, we weren’t even sure it worked,” Udall said. “But there’s some new science that suggests, yes, you can slightly increase the precipitation out of storms due to these, usually ground-based, but sometimes air-based efforts.”
A 10-year cloud seeding experiment in the Snowy Range and Sierra Madre Range in Wyoming resulted in 5% to 15% increases in snow pack from winter storms, according to a 2015 report from the Wyoming Water Development Office. In the region around Reno, Nevada, cloud seeding is estimated to add enough water to supply about 400,000 households annually, according to the DRI.
While humans can enhance existing weather, it is not possible to control it, Dessler said.
“We humans are not powerless,” Udall said. “But, unfortunately, in the weather realm, our ability to affect things is pretty minor.”
Cloud seeding can’t make it rain. It can’t even make a cloud, according to Zee. And it certainly is not being used to create storms with enough precipitation to cause flash flooding.
If humans could control the weather, then the megadrought in the West would probably never had persisted at the level that it did for decades, Udall said.
In late September and early October, Google searches for cloud seeding ramped up again as Hurricanes Helene and Milton caused severe destruction far beyond the storm’s direct impact, including flash flooding in the mountain region near Asheville, North Carolina, previously considered a climate haven.
While there is some evidence that cloud seeding can enhance precipitation, it’s impossible for humans to create or steer a hurricane, Dessler said.
“It’s amazing we’re even having this discussion because, of course, humans can’t control the weather in ways to create a hurricane,” Udall said.
However, there has been a larger-scale climate modification that has been ongoing for the past two centuries, Zee said.
“We’re doing that right now with green with enormous greenhouse gas emissions on a scale that humanity has never, ever done before,” Udall said.
Since the Industrial Revolution began in the late 1800s, the greenhouse gases emitted from the extraction and burning of fossil fuels have been causing global temperatures to rise at unprecedented rates, according to climate scientists.
The amplification of Earth’s natural warming has actually increased hourly rainfall rates — a key factor in flash flooding — across much of the U.S. by 10% to 40%, according to Climate Central.
“We have all contributed to making it rain more and heavier as we warm the planet,” Zee said.
Dessler likened global warming to “steroids” for extreme weather events.
“Steroids don’t hit a home run, but if you give steroids to a baseball player, he’s gonna hit more home runs,” Dessler said. “And that’s essentially, you know, the way to think about humans and the weather.”
The experts urged people to not believe rumors on the possibility that the weather can be controlled, chalking up the conspiracy theories as machinations of intrigue but nothing more.
“It’s yet one more example, right, of unbridled social media doing irreparable social harm,” Udall said.
ABC News’ Daniel Manzo contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Even as the South continues its recovery from the devastation of Hurricane Helene, another storm system is showing the potential for development in the Gulf of Mexico.
Early October is still not far from last month’s peak of the hurricane season.
Most of the tropical systems in the Atlantic will stay away from the U.S., including Tropical Storm Kirk, but one system in the Caribbean could move into the Gulf by the end of the week.
At this time, it is still too early to say how much it will develop and where it will hit. But some of our most trusted computer models bring this system to Florida by early next week with heavy rain.
Right now, it has a 40% chance of development by the end of the week.
If the system is named, it could be called Leslie or Milton, depends on whether something forms in the Atlantic first.
