National

Dozens rescued in Alaska after remnants of Typhoon Halong batter region

The remains of a home that collapsed due to erosion from a glacial outburst flood into the Mendenhall River in Juneau, Alaska, Aug. 8, 2023. Christopher S. Miller/The Washington Post via Getty Images

(ALASKA) — First responders in Alaska have conducted dozens of rescues after the remnants of Typhoon Halong fueled a powerful storm that battered the region and washed away several homes.

The remnants of Halong — which originated in the northern Philippine Sea on October 5 — intensified the widespread significant weather impacts and massive flooding to the western regions of Alaska Saturday night into Sunday.

Powerful wind gusts and significant coastal flooding were the main impacts from the storm as it swept up across Alaska’s west coast into early Monday morning. Numerous locations across western Alaska reported wind gusts of 40 mph to 60 mph, with isolated gusts topping 70 mph.

Major, and in some cases destructive, coastal flooding hit some communities along the coast as water levels were more than 6 feet above normal high tide levels at times.

Multiple homes were swept away in low-lying coastal towns along the Bering Sea and in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region, Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan said in a statement.

At least eight homes in the town of Kipnuk were pushed off their foundations, and at least four homes in the town of Kwigillingok were inundated by the flooding, according to Alaska State Troopers.

“Both communities experienced strong winds and heavy flooding overnight, which caused significant damage,” state troopers said in a statement.

In Kipnuk, 172 people stayed at a community shelter overnight Saturday after water levels reached 6.6 feet above the highest tides, according to a press release from the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Water levels reached 6.3 feet above the highest tides in Kwigillingok, where 100 people were sheltered overnight, state officials said.

Several communities elsewhere were impacted by high winds and coastal sea surge, which damaged power and communication systems as well as roads, boardwalks and homes, according to state officials.

In the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, intense winds and high water were reported in Bethel, Napaskiak, Napakiak and other communities, officials said.

At least 51 people — mostly from Kwigillingok and Kipnuk — were rescued from the floodwaters, according to Alaska State Troopers. At least three people were still missing as of Monday morning, police said.

No fatalities have been reported.

Lingering coastal flooding impacts were expected through Monday, even though the storm has passed. The storm also brought heavy mountain snow to northwestern Alaska before exiting.

Communities across the state have been in peril from floodwaters in recent years.

In 2023, a glacier lake outburst on the Mendenhall Glacier — located about 12 miles north of Juneau, Alaska, destroyed homes situated along the Mendenhall River.

The river surpassed record flood stages in 2024 and this past August, prompting evacuations and damaging hundreds of homes.

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued an emergency declaration on Thursday, expanding it to include additional regions on Sunday, including Yupiit, Pribilof Island and the Lower Kuskokwim Regional Educational Attendance Areas.

“Every effort will be made to help those hit by this storm,” Dunleavy said in a statement. “Help is on the way.”

Sullivan has been in contact with acting FEMA Director David Richardson, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and local, tribal and state officials since Saturday, in anticipation of the storm, he said.

The U.S. Coast Guard and Alaska Air National Guard have also deployed choppers to the region to provide medical support, search-and-rescue operations and to deliver supplies, Sullivan said. The impacted regions are among the most remote in the country.

“We are all praying for the safety of everyone in Western Alaska,” Sullivan said.

ABC News’ Daniel Peck contributed to this report.

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National

Alleged child sexual assault fugitive captured after 4 years on the run: Police

U.S. Marshals Service Denver

(DENVER) — An alleged child sexual assault fugitive has been taken into custody after more than four years on the run and a five-day manhunt in Colorado, according to officials.

Paul Sandoval, 62, was arrested just before 10:30 a.m. local time Sunday on Blanca Peak in Southeastern Colorado, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. Sandoval was apprehended in a multi-agency manhunt comprised of more than 70 people from multiple federal, state and municipal agencies in Colorado and led by the U.S. Marshals Service Colorado Violent Offender Task Force and the Alamosa County Sheriff’s Office, the U.S. Marshals Service statement said.

Sandoval is wanted for felony sexual assault of a child and other charges, according to the statement.

“We want to express our gratitude and thanks to the U.S. Marshals Service and all of the other agencies involved that came to assist in this manhunt. We couldn’t have done it without their help,” Alamosa County Sheriff Robert Jackson said in the statement.

In March 2021, Sandoval allegedly bound and sexually assaulted an 8-year-old girl in a shed on his property, according to the U.S. Marshals Service, and fled into the mountains after the Alamosa County Sheriff’s Office issued a warrant for his arrest that same month.

Sandoval was spotted in late August after allegedly breaking into a home and vehicle in Alamosa County, the statement said. He was spotted on surveillance devices placed in the area by law enforcement and was “confirmed to be armed with a rifle,” according to the statement.

Some 13 state and federal agencies participated in the ensuing manhunt for Sandoval, in addition to the U.S. Marshals Service, including local and state law enforcement, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, the statement said.

Sandoval is being held at the Alamosa County Jail and is scheduled to be arraigned early Monday afternoon, according to the Colorado Courts and Probation website.

A spokesperson for the Alamosa County Jail declined to comment about Sandoval when contacted by ABC News, saying they were not authorized to do so.

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National

Impacts of government shutdown continue, next vote scheduled for Tuesday night

Vice President JD Vance speaks with ABC News while appearing on This Week, Oct. 12, 2025. ABC News

(WASHINGTON) — As the government shutdown continues and the impacts become more widespread, the Senate will not vote again on the clean funding bill until Tuesday night.

It is expected to fail for an eighth time.

Meanwhile, over the weekend, President Donald Trump announced that he ordered the Pentagon to use “all available funds” to pay some 2 million service members on Oct. 15 to avoid missing a paycheck as the shutdown drags on.

“The Department of War has identified approximately $8 billion of unobligated research development testing and evaluation funds (RDTE) from the prior fiscal year that will be used to issue mid month paychecks to service members in the event the funding lapse continues past October 15th. We will provide more information as it becomes available,” the Department of War said in a statement on Sunday.

It remains unclear what would happen to future paychecks if the government shutdown were to continue for an extended period of time.

 Vice President JD Vance said on Fox News that “a lot” of that pay would come from income tax revenue, with some additional revenue from tariffs. 

 “Some of it will come from tightening the belts in other areas but, Maria, this is exactly right. A lot of this will come from incoming revenues to the Internal Revenue Service,” Vance said on Sunday. “Tariff revenue, but also income tax revenue that is going to make it possible for us to pay our troops.”

Trump’s tariffs are being challenged in court.

The Supreme Court will decide whether Trump’s sweeping global reciprocal tariffs are an illegal use of emergency authority granted by Congress – and whether tens of billions of dollars collected so far must be refunded.

 Vance touted Trump’s maneuvers to pay the military, saying the White House is confident in the legality of their actions.  

 “We’re doing some pretty non-conventional things, as President Trump often does, to ensure that our troops are able to get paid. We are confident we’ve identified the legal pathways in order to do this, but it’s really important for the president of the United States even though (Senate Minority Leader Chuck) Schumer has shut down the government, he doesn’t want our troops to suffer because of it, of course,” Vance said.

Last week, the White House followed through on its threat to lay off federal employees. Vance warned that “deeper” and “painful” cuts would happen the longer the shutdown goes.

Mass firings have hit the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hard.

The nation’s special education services have been significantly impacted after Friday’s mass layoffs within the Department of Education and it could have an immediate impact on children with disabilities, education department sources told ABC News.

 “Do people realize that this is happening to this population of vulnerable students?” one education department leader told ABC News.

Vance said on Sunday that the job cuts are legal.

“Of course, we always follow the law, and we always follow court cases, and we think that we have the authority to do what we need to do. I’m sure that some people will sue, and that will get figured out in court,” Vance told Fox News.

Trump said at Thursday’s Cabinet meeting that he’s going to be cutting “only” Democratic programs as a result of the shutdown. 

“And we’ll be making cuts that will be permanent, and we’re only going to cut Democrat programs. I hate to tell you, I guess that makes sense, but we’re only cutting Democrat programs, but we’re going to start that,” Trump said

Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought announced $8 billion in green energy projects had been canceled. The projects were in 16 states that voted for Democrats in the last election.

The impacts of the shutdown are also hitting popular attractions in Washington, D.C. Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo were closed temporarily starting on Sunday.

ABC News’ Jay O’Brien spoke to one employee who may have to find another job and get by for now on the minimal savings he has.

“I need to support my family. I need to do anything to bring the money in the house…to pay the bills. You know, because bills, they can’t wait. Rent can’t wait. The mortgage can’t wait,” the worker told ABC News.

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National

Powerful nor’easter batters East Coast with heavy rain, strong winds: What you need to know about the forecast

ABC News

A coastal storm moving along the East Coast on Monday will continue to bring the threat of significant coastal flooding, strong to damaging winds and moderate to locally heavy rainfall.

Rain and wind will be dying down Monday morning in the Southeast, while the Northeast will see the worst impacts of the storm through midday.

Rain will become more scattered in the Northeast on Monday afternoon (with locally heavy rain possible at times), before it starts to move out overnight with only a few areas of sprinkles and light rain left for Tuesday morning.

Coastal flood warnings are in effect from North Carolina to Rhode Island, where moderate to locally major flood stages are possible Monday and may persist through Tuesday in some areas.

The worst of the flooding will be around high tide on Monday afternoon (mostly between noon and 3 p.m.), when strong onshore winds will bring water levels 1 to 3 feet above normal levels, leading to flooding and possible dune breaching.

Eight- to 15-foot breaking waves could lead to beach and coastal erosion in areas with coastal flood alerts.

Winds gusted up to 60 mph at Surf City, New Jersey, on Sunday night.

Wind alerts for coastal areas from New Jersey through New York, Connecticut and Cape Cod, Massachusetts, remain in effect Monday due to possible gusts up to 50 to 60 mph.

Rainfall on Monday will mostly be less than 1 inch for New Jersey and New York City, but Long Island, as well as the Hudson Valley up through Albany, could see 1 to 2 inches.

Rhode Island and eastern Massachusetts are also expecting 1 to 2 inches of rain, but some areas of 2 to 3 inches are possible.

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National

5 hospitalized after helicopter crashes in Huntington Beach, California

Michael Heiman/Getty Images

(LOS ANGELES) – Five people were injured and rushed to hospitals after a helicopter crashed in Huntington Beach, California, on Saturday.

The helicopter came down around 2 p.m. local time in a beach parking lot between Twin Dolphins Drive and Beach Boulevard, according to city officials.

Videos taken by bystanders showed the wreckage lodged in palm trees near a hotel.

Two people were pulled from the helicopter wreckage and three others on the ground were hurt, a city of Huntington Beach spokesperson said in a statement.

The victims were all taken to area hospitals in unknown conditions, the spokesperson said.

The city said in a news release the helicopter was associated with a “Cars and Copters” event scheduled for Sunday.

There’s no word yet on a cause of the crash.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have been notified, the city said.

Timothy Bartlett said he was filming a TikTok video of helicopters landing when he captured the moment of the crash.

“I was stunned,” Bartlett said. “As soon as I saw it spinning, I knew it was going to crash because it just didn’t look right, and I knew something was wrong.” 

People ran to the site of the crash and police started moving everyone back, Bartlett told ABC News. From what he witnessed, he said it appeared a tail rotor broke off from the helicopter.

Bartlett said that while the helicopter did not burst into flames, he saw what appeared to be helicopter fuel leak out.

“I just was hoping, praying that everyone was OK,” Bartlett said. 

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National

Search for suspects in shooting that left 6 dead, 10 wounded amid rash of gunfire across Mississippi

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(LELAND, Miss.) — Two more people have died from injuries they suffered in a shooting that erupted Friday night in Leland, Mississippi, bringing the death toll to six, authorities said on Sunday morning.

At least 10 other people were injured in the mass shooting in the small town’s downtown area, officials said.

Leland Mayor John Lee, speaking at a Saturday evening news conference, said the city was experiencing a “great loss” and asked for prayers.

On Friday, state Sen. Derrick Simmons told Jackson ABC affiliate WAPT the people were at a gathering following the Leland High School homecoming football game when the shooting happened. 

Aside from providing the number of dead and wounded, the mayor did not provide many other details about the shooting. 

“Everything else is under investigation,” he said during Saturday’s news conference. “We don’t have any information as far as who did the shooting or any of that. But we are here to get to the bottom of this.”

The Washington County Coroner’s Office said it received notifications on Saturday that two additional victims had died from their injuries. The coroner’s office identified those deceased victims as 18-year-old Amos Brantley Jr. and 34-year-old JaMichael Jones.

The other victims who were pronounced dead at the scene of the shooting were identified by the coroner’s office as 18-year-old Kaslyn Johnson, 19-year-old Calvin Plant, 41-year-old Oreshama Johnson and 25-year-old Shelbyona Powell.

Robert Eickhoff, special agent in charge of the Jackson, Mississippi, FBI Field Office, did not provide specifics but said multiple times that authorities were searching for “subjects” in connection with the shooting.

“People who were enjoying themselves last found themselves faced with violence that no community should be faced with,” Eickhoff said, urging members of the public to come forward with any information they may have. 

“You may have seen something,” he said. “You may have heard something or know someone who did.” 

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is also assisting in the investigation, providing DNA analysis and also working to potentially match shell casings to other firearms using a national automated system.

“This could have easily been in another city just like it was here in Leland, Mississippi,” Lee, the mayor, said.

The city of about 3,600 people is located about 115 miles north of Jackson.

String of other shootings in Mississippi 
The update on Friday night’s shooting came amid a string of shootings throughout the state this weekend. 

On Saturday, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said it was investigating a shooting at Alcorn State University in Lorman, Mississippi, that left one person dead and two others wounded.

The shooting led to a shelter-in place order being issued for the campus.

Authorities said the shooting occurred at about 6:30 p.m. local time near the campus’ Industrial Technology Building. No arrest had been made.

About a half hour later, authorities in Jackson said a child was shot in the abdomen near a tailgate section at Jackson State University stadium. The child was taken to the hospital. There is no update on their condition.

On Friday evening, two people were killed in a shooting in Heidelberg, Mississippi, on the grounds of a high school, according to ABC affiliate WDAM. 

The Jasper County Sheriff’s Office later said it had taken an 18-year-old man into custody for questioning in connection with the shooting. 

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National

At least 4 killed, 20 hurt in bar shooting in St. Helena Island, South Carolina: Sheriff

Douglas Sacha/Getty Images

(NEW YORK) — At least four people were killed and 20 injured early Sunday in a shooting at a bar in St. Helena Island, South Carolina, according to the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.

The shooting unfolded around 1 a.m. at Willie’s Bar and Grill, 7 Dr. Martin Luther Drive on St. Helena Island, located about an hour north of Savannah, Ga., according to the sheriff’s office.

When deputies arrived at the scene, there was a large crowd at the bar with several people suffering from gunshot wounds, according to the sheriff’s office.

Four people were pronounced dead at the scene, the sheriff’s office said.

“It was learned that hundreds of people were at the location when the shooting occurred. Multiple victims and witnesses ran to the nearby businesses and properties seeking shelter from the gun shots,” according to the statement from the sheriff’s office.

Of the 20 victims being treated at hospitals, four were in critical condition, the sheriff’s office said.

Several victims were taken to hospitals by ambulance, but other people injured in the shooting showed up at emergency rooms on their own, the sheriff’s office said.

No arrests have been announced in the incident, though the sheriff’s office said it was investigating a “person of interest.”

The names of the victims killed in the shooting are being withheld pending notification of their relatives, officials said.

“This is a tragic and difficult incident for everyone,” the sheriff’s office said in its statement. “We ask for your patience as we continue to investigate this incident.

Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., who represents Beaufort County, said in a social media post that she is “COMPLETELY HEARTBROKEN to learn about the devastating shooting in Beaufort County.

“Our prayers are with the victims, their families, and everyone impacted by this horrific act of violence,” Mace said.

Mace asked that anyone with information about the mass shooting contact the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office “as soon as humanly possible.

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National

Luigi Mangione’s attorneys say death-eligible charge must be dismissed

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

(NEW YORK) — The federal charge that makes accused killer Luigi Mangione eligible for the death penalty must be dismissed because it does not meet the legal threshold, his defense attorneys argued in a new court filing.

Mangione has pleaded not guilty to federal charges that accuse him of shooting and killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December of 2024.

Federal prosecutors allege Mangione stalked Thompson in Manhattan, where the executive was due to attend an investor conference at the New York Hilton Midtown. Mangione allegedly waited for Thompson to pass by and then shot him at close range.

“It is clear that, in its generic form, this crime can be committed without the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another,” the defense said in the filing.

The defense also argued that evidence recovered from the backpack Mangione was carrying when he was arrested at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s should be suppressed.

“Altoona law enforcement failed to follow fundamental Fourth Amendment case law (and basic police procedure) by failing to obtain a search warrant before searching through Mr. Mangione’s backpack and the closed containers within the backpack,” the defense said.

Prosecutors have previously defended the police handling of the arrest and search, which resulted in the recovery of the alleged murder weapon and writings that investigators said helped explain a motive.  

Mangione is accused of shooting and killing Thompson with a 9mm handgun equipped with a silencer on a Midtown Manhattan street on Dec. 4, 2024.

After a several-day manhunt, Mangione was captured in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where police found a backpack that investigators said contained the alleged murder weapon, a fake ID and a red notebook he used as a diary.

“I finally feel confident about what I will do,” one entry said, according to authorities. “The target is insurance. It checks every box.”

A federal grand jury charged Mangione in April with two counts of stalking, firearms offense and murder through the use of a firearm, a charge that makes him eligible for the death penalty, if convicted.

Mangione has pleaded not guilty to state charges in New York and Pennsylvania as well as the federal charges. The simultaneous prosecutions put him in what his attorneys have called an “untenable situation” and they’ve asked Judge Gregory Carro to dismiss the state case, or at least put it on hold.

Mangione is also being ordered to appear in a Pennsylvania courtroom regarding those state charges. While he is currently being held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, the Blair County District Attorney’s Office in Pennsylvania wants the accused killer to appear in court for a pretrial motion hearing scheduled for Nov. 7.

In Pennsylvania, Mangione has pleaded not guilty to charges of forgery, possession of an instrument of a crime and giving a false ID to an officer.

In September, a New York judge dismissed two murder charges related to acts of terrorism, including the most severe charge, first-degree murder. The judge said the evidence presented to the grand jury was insufficient to support the terrorism charge.

Mangione is due back in federal court in December. 

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National

SpaceX tries for 2 successful Starship missions in a row with Monday’s launch

Manuel Mazzanti/NurPhoto via Getty Images

(NEW YORK) — Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, has called “rapidly reusable, reliable rockets” the key to humans becoming a multiplanetary society. And when it comes to his company’s Falcon 9, SpaceX has shown that a rocket can do all those things.

The Falcon 9 has now completed 542 missions, 497 landings and 464 reflights, according to the SpaceX website.

But to reach the Moon and Mars and establish settlements on both, SpaceX will need its larger, more complex and significantly more powerful Starship and its Super Heavy booster to reach Falcon 9’s level of reliability and reusability.

Soon, SpaceX will have the chance to show that Starship’s successful August flight, the first to complete all its primary mission goals, was no fluke.

Barring a delay due to bad weather or mechanical issues, the stainless steel Starship and Super Heavy booster will conduct its 11th flight test on Monday, Oct. 13, at 7:15 p.m. ET, from the company’s Starbase in South Texas. A mission the company hopes will build on the much-needed success of its previous test. SpaceX will be operating Starship autonomously and there will be no astronauts aboard during the flight.

In late August, Starship and its Super Heavy booster successfully reached space on a suborbital trajectory at a near-orbital velocity, deploying a series of Starlink simulators before returning to Earth with such navigational precision that the reentry was captured on a camera attached to a remote buoy in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

“I would give [flight test 10] an A-plus. That was an A-plus performance. The only thing that was a little bit off was that there was some damage in the aft skirt compartment of Starship during the flight, but most of the mission objectives were achieved,” said Olivier de Weck, the Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics and Engineering Systems at MIT and editor-in-chief of the “Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets.” “I don’t think this could have gone much better,” he added.

But now, de Weck says SpaceX needs to demonstrate that it can build on its August success and move the program forward with new mission objectives.

“I think the next step is to actually land the Starship, still not go into orbit and stay over multiple orbits, but actually land and recover the actual Starship,” said de Weck. “Recovery of the Starship, an upright landing, with retro propulsion on a fixed platform, that’s the next step.”

SpaceX is not planning an upright, fixed platform landing for the upcoming 11th flight test. Like the previous mission, the Starship will splash down in the Indian Ocean. The Super Heavy first stage booster, with its 24 Raptor engines, which SpaceX said was previously used during flight test eight, is also scheduled to splash down in the ocean. In several previous missions, it returned to the launch site and was caught by the tower’s mechanical “chopstick” arms.

The development of Starship hasn’t come easily for SpaceX, with several high-profile setbacks along the way. However, despite an explosion on the launch pad during a pre-flight engine test and several explosions and mechanical failures during previous test flights, Musk has long maintained that learning from failures is an integral part of SpaceX’s engineering process.

“I’m not surprised where the program is. It’s moving forward through the usual SpaceX iterative development model, and not surprisingly, it’s behind SpaceX’s ambitious schedule projections,” said Greg Autry, associate provost for space commercialization and strategy at the University of Central Florida. “But that wouldn’t make it any different than almost everything else that they’ve done in the past, other than that the scale of this is so large,” he added.

Autry is President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the chief financial officer of NASA.

Autry says he’s confident that SpaceX is headed in the right direction and said that Elon Musk and his companies tend to prove their critics wrong in the long run, delivering results even if it takes longer than anticipated.

“About ten years ago, Elon Musk promised me I was going to have a self-driving car shortly, and a lot of people said that was completely crazy. It wasn’t shortly, but I now have a self-driving car. I literally get in my car, push the button, and fifty miles later, I arrive at work. It is amazing. He delivers eventually,” Autry said.

Experts say that making the next generation of U.S.-designed and built rockets and spacecraft work is critical to achieving NASA’s goals of not only returning to the Moon but building a permanent lunar settlement and doing it before the Chinese.

During a late September ceremony at the Johnson Space Center announcing the new class of NASA astronauts, Acting NASA Administrator and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy spoke about the competition for space dominance.

“Now some are challenging our leadership in space, say, like the Chinese, and I’ll just tell you this, I’ll be damned if the Chinese beat NASA or beat America back to the Moon,” said Duffy. “We are going to win. We love challenges. We love competition, and we are going to win the second space race back to the Moon,” he added.

Autry, who first wrote about a new space race with China back in 2010, says China is determined to reach the Moon and dominate low-Earth orbit, but he believes the global competition will push American efforts forward.

“There are very credible people saying that they’re about to eclipse us in the next five years. I think that’s great for the prospect of competition that spurs us to work harder and take our role more seriously, and frankly to put funding into programs that we badly, badly need to fund,” said Autry.

Autry says that today’s space race should be compared to the “Age of Exploration” in the 15th and 16th centuries. He points out that while China had “an ambitious sailing-exploration program” in the early 1400s, European countries overtook the Chinese when the Europeans accelerated their global exploration efforts later in the century, at a time when China was pulling back.

“We are at that same moment in time right now. The countries that aggressively pursue going to the Moon and using the assets of space will dominate human history for the next several hundred years,” Autry said.

Autry believes that the billions of dollars being spent by companies like SpaceX and the federal government to support space exploration, return to the Moon and potentially get to Mars is money well spent.

“The countries that choose to take advantage of space resources will be wealthy, prosperous and happier than the countries that don’t. We have plenty of history to show that,” Autry said.

Autry says you just have to look at the first space program to see the benefits of this kind of investment.

“We would not have the computing environment, AI, the internet, solar power, fuel cells, and a variety of technologies at the level they are now if we had not made those investments that drove so much effort into engineering development and STEM education. It created the boom we’ve experienced since the second half of the 20th century,” he added.

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National

Multiple people dead, 19 unaccounted for in ‘devastating blast’ at explosives manufacturer in Tennessee: Sheriff

(MCEWEN, Tenn.) — 
 

Multiple people are dead following a “devastating blast” at an explosives manufacturing plant in Tennessee on Friday, according to authorities.

The explosion occurred Friday morning at Accurate Energetic Systems in McEwen, located about 50 miles west of Nashville.

Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis confirmed there are “some” fatalities, though he did not provide a specific number. Nineteen people are unaccounted for in the blast, he said.

“It’s probably been one of the most devastating situations that I’ve been on in my career,” Davis said during a press update Friday afternoon, getting emotional.

“I always wish for the best. Is there a possibility that somebody might be injured somewhere, or somebody that we don’t know about? Yes,” he later said regarding the missing individuals.

Four to five people were brought to hospitals, according to the sheriff, who did not detail their injuries.

Asked to describe the building where the explosion occurred, he said, “There’s nothing to describe. It’s gone.”

Davis said during an earlier briefing that this is a “very big investigation.”

“This is not going to be something that we’re going to be like a car wreck or something like that, that we’re just going to clean up the debris and leave. We’re going to probably be here for a few days,” he said.

“We’re trying to take as much time as is needed right now. We’re prioritizing people that are involved, their families and trying to be very compassionate toward them,” he continued.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Homeland Security and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation are among the agencies that have responded to the scene, Davis said.

The cause of the explosion remains under investigation.

Accurate Energetic Systems is “cooperating with us in any way, in every way possible,” Davis said. 

“They’re wanting to figure out this just as much as we are,” he added.

Accurate Energetic Systems manufactures explosives and energetic devices for the military, aerospace, demolition and mining industries, according to its website.

Its customers include the Defense Department and Homeland Security, according to the Association of the United States Army.

The explosion occurred at 7:48 a.m. local time and destroyed one of the facility’s buildings, officials said.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said he is monitoring the “tragic incident.”

Video from a Nest camera at a home in Lobelville, about 11 miles from the plant, captured shaking as an explosion can be heard. 

A McEwen resident who lives several miles from the plant said she felt her whole house shake.

“It felt like our house had some kind of explosion,” Lauren Roark told ABC News. “I jumped out of bed, asked my husband, ‘What was that?'”

Roark found what she believes to be debris from the explosion in her yard — “big chunks of insulation-looking stuff” — which she reported to authorities.

Kadi Arnold, who also lives in McEwan, told ABC News she would sometimes hear explosions from the plant, which is about 4 miles from her home, but “knew this one wasn’t normal.”

“The explosion was so loud and shook my home, I literally thought the back of my house had exploded,” she said.

“Once I realized it wasn’t my home, I immediately knew something terrible had happened at AES,” she said, adding the community is in “shock.”

“We’re a pretty tight-knit community and we’re all just devastated and heartbroken,” she said.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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