(NEW YORK) — A new storm — which will strengthen into Hurricane Helene — is taking aim at Florida, where it’s forecast to make landfall along the Big Bend area as a hurricane on Thursday.
Here’s how the news is developing:
State of emergency declared in 61 Florida counties
Helene is forecast to be a major hurricane by the time it makes landfall Thursday night, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned Monday.
A state of emergency has been declared in 61 of Florida’s 67 counties, DeSantis said.
“The Big Bend and Panhandle should be especially prepared for a direct impact,” the governor said, and he urged residents to know their evacuation zone.
“You have time to be able to put this place into place,” DeSantis said, noting Helene’s impacts could begin Wednesday.
Latest forecast
Helene will strengthen to a hurricane Tuesday night, and rain is expected to begin in Florida Wednesday afternoon into Thursday morning.
On Thursday evening, Helene will make landfall along Florida’s Big Bend area, located between Tallahassee and Gainesville.
Storm surge could reach up to 15 feet in the Big Bend area.
Heavy rain and strong winds are also major threats.
A hurricane watch is in effect for Florida’s Gulf Coast and a tropical storm watch was issued from Orlando to the Florida Keys.
By Thursday night into Friday, the storm will quickly push into Georgia with very heavy rain, gusty winds and possible flash flooding.
This weekend, the storm will stall over the Mid-South, bringing heavy rain and possible flooding to the Tennessee, Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys.
A flood watch has been issued in Florida from Fort Myers to Tampa to Tallahassee, as well as in southern Georgia and Alabama.
Caroline Ellison, former chief executive officer of Alameda Research LLC, exits court in New York, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023. (Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Caroline Ellison, a key witness in the FTX case, is set to be sentenced on Tuesday for her role in one of the largest financial frauds in history.
Ellison, 29, a former crypto executive, had pleaded guilty to multiple charges in connection with the federal fraud and conspiracy case involving the crypto trading platform. She cooperated with prosecutors and was a key witness during the trial last year of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, her former boyfriend.
Ellison — who was the co-chief executive of Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried’s companion hedge fund — testified over three days during the trial, telling the court that she committed fraud with her former on-again-off-again boyfriend and at his direction.
Bankman-Fried was ultimately found guilty on all counts for defrauding FTX customers out of $8 billion.
Ahead of her sentencing in New York Tuesday afternoon, Ellison’s attorneys urged Judge Lewis Kaplan to be lenient, arguing Ellison “unflinchingly acknowledged her own wrongdoing, without minimization, blame shifting or self-pity.”
“She time and again proved herself an enormously credible and important cooperating witness” against Bankman-Fried, they added.
Federal prosecutors agreed Ellison provided “extraordinary cooperation that was crucial to the Government’s successful prosecution” of Bankman-Fried.
“Although she did not blow the whistle on any misconduct before FTX’s collapse, she came clean prior to FTX’s declaring bankruptcy to her employees on November 9, 2022,” prosecutor Danielle Sassoon wrote in a letter to the judge. “Ellison approached her cooperation with remarkable candor, remorse, and seriousness.”
Ellison faces 110 years in prison, according to court filings.
Prosecutors declined to make a specific sentencing recommendation. Defense attorneys suggested a sentence in line with a recommendation from probation officials of time served plus three years supervised release.
“Caroline poses no risk of recidivism and presents no threat to public safety. It would therefore promote respect for the law to grant leniency in recognition of Caroline’s early disclosure of the crimes, her unmitigated acceptance of responsibility for them, and—most importantly—her extensive cooperation with the government,” defense attorney Anjan Sahni wrote in a letter to the judge.
Sahni outlined Ellison’s “complex” relationship with Bankman-Fried that began when the two met at Jane Street Capital in 2015 when she was an intern and he was a junior trader. He said their “on-again-off-again, sometimes-secret relationship” had “warped” her moral compass and led her to take actions “that she knew to be wrong, helping him steal billions.”
Bankman-Fried was sentenced in March to 25 years in prison. Judge Kaplan also ordered that he forfeit $11 billion that the government can use to compensate victims.
The former crypto billionaire has filed an appeal to overturn his conviction.
Two former FTX executives who also pleaded guilty in the case — former director of engineering Nishad Singh and co-founder Gary Wang — are set to be sentenced in October and November, respectively.
(WASHINGTON) — Four Russian military aircraft passed through the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone on Monday, the North American Aerospace Defense Command said.
All four aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter either American or Canadian sovereign airspace, NORAD said in a press release. There was no intercept, it added.
“This Russian activity in the Alaska ADIZ occurs regularly and is not seen as a threat,” NORAD said.
Monday’s detection is the fifth such incident in September so far, according to NORAD’s public statements noting detections. NORAD did not specify what type of Russian aircraft were involved. The command identified Russian IL-38 maritime patrol aircraft inside the Alaska ADIZ earlier this month.
The ADIZ begin at the limit of national airspace — in this case that of the U.S. and Canada. Such zones require “the ready identification of all aircraft in the interest of national security,” NORAD said.
The command “employs a layered defense network of satellites, ground-based and airborne radars and fighter aircraft to track aircraft and inform appropriate actions,” it said in its press release.
“NORAD remains ready to employ a number of response options in defense of North America,” it added.
(NEW YORK) — The co-founder and former CEO of OceanGate said the company originally never planned to build its own submersibles while testifying during a hearing on the deadly implosion of its Titan sub.
Guillermo Sohnlein co-founded OceanGate in 2009 with Stockton Rush, who was one of the five people killed in a catastrophic implosion while on a deep-sea voyage to see the Titanic wreckage in June 2023. He left the company in 2013, years before OceanGate began conducting dives to the Titanic with the Titan, an experimental, unclassified vessel.
While testifying on Monday during the U.S. Coast Guard’s two-week hearing on the implosion, Sohnlein said when they founded the company, “developing our own subs was not in the original plans.”
He said their vision was to acquire a fleet of deep-diving submersibles that could carry five people up to 6,000 meters that would be available for charter. They didn’t want the subs to require a dedicated mothership or support ship so that they could easily go anywhere in the world and operate off any ship.
He said most active commercial submersibles dive relatively shallow — less than 1,000 meters — limiting how much of the ocean can be explored.
“We wanted to change that,” Sohnlein said. “We wanted to give humanity greater access to the ocean — and specifically the deep ocean, anything deeper than 1,000 meters.”
OceanGate pivots to building own submersible using carbon fiber
Sohnlein said they eventually realized they would need to build their own submersible to achieve that business model.
“If you think about our business requirements of being able to carry five people 6,000 meters without a dedicated mothership deployable anywhere in the world — none of the sub builders could really do that,” he said. “Then, if you did factor in the cost, yeah, it was going to be ridiculously expensive.”
Sohnlein said Rush “convinced ourselves that it’d be possible to build a sub that would meet all of our business requirements.”
Sohnlein said they started looking at carbon fiber as a potential alternative for a pressure hull.
“That’s not a novel idea,” he said. “It wasn’t innovative, it was just something that we started looking at while I was still there.”
Roy Thomas — an engineer with the American Bureau of Shipping, which classifies submersibles — testified during the hearing on Monday that under ABS underwater rules, carbon fiber pressure hulls are “not acceptable materials for submersibles.”
“They have very low resistance to impact loads, and the hull is susceptible to deformation under applied external loading,” he said.
Rush became CEO of OceanGate in 2013, as the company shifted to developing its own submersibles.
“We were transitioning from an operations phase to an engineering phase, and that was really his strength and not mine,” Sohnlein said of Rush. “It made sense for him to take the reins of the company.”
Sohnlein said he made the “difficult decision” to leave the company at that point because there wasn’t going to be much for him to do in terms of operations.
Sohnlein said he still retains approximately 500,000 common shares in OceanGate but has “basically resigned myself to the fact that I’m probably never going to see anything out of that equity stake.”
OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations after the deadly implosion.
OceanGate co-founder never went on Titan
Sohnlein said he was offered “many times” to go on dives on the Titan, though he never did.
“As a shareholder, I didn’t want to take up room in the sub. I wanted to make that available for the people that the dive was intended for,” he said, people for whom seeing the Titanic was their “life dream.”
He also said he just wasn’t interested in going to the Titanic.
“Neither Stockton nor I were ever driven by tourism,” he said. “We were never motivated by going somewhere that people had already been before. The reason we got into this was because we both wanted to explore. We wanted to not only explore ourselves, but create the technologies that would allow us to explore the ocean.”
“So going to see a shipwreck that had already been well-documented, and that a bunch of people had already gone to, that didn’t excite me. It didn’t excite Stockton,” he continued.
Sohnlein reflected on a conversation when Rush told him he did want to conduct the first test dive of Titan down to 4,000 meters solo. He said Rush told him, “I don’t want anybody else in the sub. If anything happens, I want it to only impact me. It’s my design. I believe in it. I trust it. I don’t want to risk anybody else, and I’m going to go by myself.”
In addition to Rush, those killed in the Titan implosion included French explorer Paul Henri Nargeolet, British businessman Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman.
The hearing into the implosion is scheduled to run through Friday.
In his closing remarks, Sohnlein said he doesn’t know what happened but he hopes they find “valuable lessons learned.”
“This was not supposed to happen,” he said. “This shouldn’t have happened, five people should not have lost their lives.”
He also said he hopes others are inspired by his and Rush’s mission.
“This can’t be the end of deep ocean exploration. This can’t be the end of deep-diving submersibles, and I don’t believe that it will be,” he said. “But I hope that someday, in the near future, we’ll look back on this time as a major turning point in human history — when the global, general public finally took an active interest in all of our efforts, everything that all of us do to explore the deep oceans, to study them and to preserve them.”
(NEW YORK) — The attorney for two Black men whose racially motivated torture led to the conviction of six white former Mississippi law enforcement officers called for justice amid a new U.S. Department of Justice announced civil rights probe into the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department (RCSD), where five of the former sheriff’s deputies worked.
Malik Shabazz, the lead attorney representing Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker, said during a video press conference Monday from his office in Greenbelt, Maryland, that the two men and their legal team “welcome this federal investigation into Rankin County and into Sheriff Bryan Bailey. It is long overdue.”
The investigation into the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department “will seek to determine whether RCSD engages in patterns or practices that violate the Constitution and federal law,” according to the DOJ announcement.
The probe is separate from the initial investigation launched by the DOJ last year into the Jan. 24, 2023 torture of Jenkins and Parker, which led to the conviction of five former sheriff’s deputies, as well as a former Richland, Mississippi police officer who was also involved in the incident, on both federal and state charges. The sheriff’s deputies were part of a self-described “Goon Squad” of “officers who were known for using excessive force and not reporting it,” according to the DOJ.
“Those officers have since been convicted and sentenced, but we are launching this civil pattern or practice investigation to examine serious allegations that the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department systematically violates people’s constitutional rights through excessive use of force; unlawful stops, searches, and arrests; and discriminatory policing,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in the statement announcing the probe.
Garland added that the allegations against the Rankin County Sheriff’s office include overusing tasers, entering homes unlawfully, using racial slurs, and utilizing “cruel tactics to assault people in their custody.”
In response to a request for comment, an attorney representing Sheriff Bryan Bailey and the RCSD referred ABC News to a statement posted on the RCSD’s Facebook page in response to the DOJ probe announcement.
“We have increased our agency’s transparency by placing our policies and procedures, in addition to our compliments and complaints portal on the Sheriff’s Department website,” the statement says. “We will continue this transparency and will fully cooperate with all aspects of this investigation, while also welcoming DOJ’s input into our updated policies and practices.”
Attorneys Shabazz and Trent Walker, who represent Parker and Jenkins, told ABC News in a joint statement that the DOJ probe into the RCSD is “a first, critical step in cleaning up the Sheriff’s Department and holding Rankin County legally accountable for the years of constitutional violations against its citizenry.”
“The torture and abuse of so many took place because, despite innumerable warnings, Rankin County and Sheriff Bailey belligerently refused to properly monitor and supervise this rogue and violent department,” Shabazz and Walker claimed in the statement.
U.S. Attorney Todd W. Gee for the Southern District of Mississippi said in a statement responding to the DOJ probe announcement that the information the DOJ has gathered regarding the behavior of some members of the RCSD “calls back to some of the worst periods of Mississippi’s history.”
“We do not have to accept the old hatreds and abuse of the past,” Gee said. “And we do not have to accept the false claim that safety comes at the price of illegal force and abuse of power.”
The Mississippi NAACP said in a statement posted to Facebook that the DOJ probe into the sheriff’s office “marks a significant step in addressing concerns raised by the community and advocates regarding potential misconduct within the department,” and that the NAACP “looks forward to Rankin County being held accountable for alleged acts against its population.”
The DOJ civil rights probe comes nearly six months after the federal sentencing in March of former RCSO deputies Hunter Elward, Jeffrey Middleton, Christian Dedmon, Brett McAlpin and Daniel Opdyke, along with Joshua Hartfield, a former Richland, Mississippi police officer, to between 10 and 40 years in prison. The six men also pleaded guilty to state charges stemming from the incident and were sentenced in April to between 10 and 20 years in prison.
All six pleaded guilty to 16 felony charges related to the racially motivated torture and sexual assault of Jenkins and Parker, along with a third Rankin County man, in two unrelated incidents, according to a statement released by U.S. Department of Justice on Aug. 3, 2023. They also pleaded guilty to a subsequent plan to cover up their crimes.
News of the Jan. 24, 2023 incident and the subsequent convictions sparked a firestorm in Mississippi, including calls for Bailey’s resignation from numerous parties, including the Rankin County branch of the NAACP, which launched a petition calling for the sheriff to step down.
Following the sentencing of the former sheriff’s deputies in March, Bailey said in a statement obtained by ABC affiliate WAPT-TV in Jackson, Mississippi that “the safety and security of everyone in Rankin County is a primary concern for this department” and that his office cooperated with the initial DOJ probe into the torture of Jenkins and Parker.
“As the duly elected and acting Sheriff of Rankin County, I will remain committed to the betterment of this county and this sheriff’s department moving forward,” Bailey added.
Jenkins and Parker filed a $400 million federal lawsuit in July 2023 against the former law enforcement officers involved in this case. The lawsuit also names Sheriff Bailey, claiming he “failed to properly train, supervise, control, direct, monitor, and discipline Rankin County Sheriff’s Deputies.”
The former sheriff’s deputies and Bailey denied wrongdoing in an Oct. 2023 filing in response to the suit.
In July, Bailey asked U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III to dismiss him from the lawsuit, claiming he had “qualified immunity” — a doctrine that protects government officials, including law enforcement officers, from personal liability for alleged constitutional violations. But in a July 24 ruling, the judge denied Bailey’s request.
(NEW YORK) — More than 10,000 books were removed from school library shelves over the 2023-2024 school year, free expression advocacy group PEN America said in a new report released Monday at the start of national Banned Books Week. The tally marks a nearly triple-fold increase from the 3,362 bans in the previous school year.
The count includes books both temporarily and indefinitely removed from shelves.
About 8,000 of these book removals were recorded in just two states: Florida and Iowa. Both states have laws in place restricting content related to sex, gender and LGBTQ content.
The book bans have overwhelmingly featured stories that are by or about people of color and the LGBTQ community, according to PEN America.
The study also found that the book-banning efforts have increasingly restricted stories by and about women and girls, and include depictions of or topics concerning rape or sexual abuse.
The restrictions have impacted titles by well-known authors including James Baldwin, Agatha Christie, Alice Walker, Jodi Picoult, Toni Morrison and more.
PEN America predicts higher book removal totals are to come as more laws concerning content restriction are set to impact classrooms in the ongoing 2024-2025 year.
This includes laws like Utah’s H.B. 29, signed in March, which requires all schools to remove a book if school officials from at least three school districts or at least two school districts and five charter schools have determined that a book constitutes “objective sensitive material.”
Critics of these laws say they are akin to censorship, while supporters argue that these laws protect students from what they believe to be inappropriate content.
PEN America found that both legislation and political “parents rights” groups were two key factors in the spike in book removals.
“Our numbers are certainly an undercount, as stories of book bans often go unreported,” PEN America stated in the report. “These numbers also do not account for the many reports of soft censorship, including increased hesitancy in book selection, ideologically-driven restrictions of school book purchases, the removal of classroom collections, and the cancellations of author visits and book fairs.”
(NEW YORK) — A 21-year-old rock climber died after “sustaining major injuries” while climbing Devil’s Tower National Monument in Wyoming, authorities said.
The fall occurred on Sunday shortly before 8 p.m. when Devils Tower Law Enforcement was informed that a rock climber, Stewart Phillip Porter, a 21-year-old from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, was rappelling down the second pitch of El Cracko when he fell and sustained “major injuries” in a fall, according to a statement from the National Park Service released on Monday.
“Porter’s partner was stranded and later rescued from the wall of the Tower, with help from Devils Tower Lodge Climbing Guides and Buck Wild Climbing Guides,” officials said.
Over the 100 plus year climbing history at the Tower, there have only been seven climbing deaths, according to the National Park Service.
“While climbing fatalities at Devils Tower are infrequent, it is still inherently dangerous,” park officials said.
The National Park Service took the opportunity to remind the public of proper safety measures to take while climbing.
“Check the local weather forecast before climbing and observe changing weather conditions,” officials said. “Watch for animals (stinging insects, birds, rodents and reptiles all live on the Tower) … [and] Consult multiple sources for information on a route, as suggested gear varies between guidebooks.”
“The majority of climbing accidents and deaths on the Tower occur during the rappel. The National Park Service does not maintain anchors – inspect all anchors and back them up if necessary. Ensure you know the location of your rappel route before you begin,” officials said. “Start rappels over the nose of columns to prevent ropes from jamming in cracks. Avoid knocking loose rock onto climbers below. Many rappels require two ropes; know the distance of your planned rappel before beginning.”
Devils Tower expressed appreciation for Devils Tower Lodge, Buck Wild Climbing Guides, Hulett EMS and the Crook County Sheriff’s Office and monument staff who assisted in search and recovery efforts, and offer condolences to the family, park officials said.
(NEW YORK) — Schools in the U.S. remain deeply divided along racial, ethnic and economic lines, even as studies show that the K-12 public school population is becoming more diverse.
More than a third of students attend schools where 75% or more of those in attendance are of a single race or ethnicity, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s most recent investigation into K-12 education.
Saba Bireda and Ary Amerikaner co-founded Brown’s Promise, an initiative to combat racial segregation and honor the legacy of nine Arkansas students who suffered because of it.
In 1954, the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision ruled that public school segregation was unconstitutional. Three years later, the NAACP attempted to enroll nine black students at Little Rock Central High School. The ensuing chaos gripped the nation, with the media dubbing the students “Little Rock Nine.”
Then-Gov. Orval Faubus prevented the students from entering the racially segregated school, using his state’s National Guard for help. President Dwight D. Eisenhower intervened after weeks of failed attempts to get the students through a full day of classes safely.
Following the Brown v. Board of Education decision, students started getting bused into schools from different neighborhoods to promote integration. However, much of that has stopped in the decades since.
“Unfortunately, we have come away from our commitment to the spirit of Brown,” Bireda said. “Schools have been resegregating rapidly since the 1980s.”
At the start of that decade, expensive busing orders began to expire. With a history of housing discrimination leading many neighborhoods to be segregated by race, for millions of students, attending the public school closest to their home means it wouldn’t be racially diverse.
Despite the billions of dollars invested in desegregating public schools over the past few decades, school segregation has returned to the same level as it was in the 1960s.
New York high school student Ava Pittman begins her daily commute by taking the public bus, just like millions of other students. However, her journey through the city’s Queens borough starts long before first period — shortly after dawn breaks.
Every morning, Pittman makes the 14-mile, hour-and-a-half journey from the Far Rockaway neighborhood to Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School in Elmhurst. She travels that far because she doesn’t think the schools near her are up to par.
“Schools in certain places like Far Rockaway, the resources are minimal,” Pittman said. “It’s just the quality of education. It’s different.”
Pittman’s opportunities are unique to her location, but the commute takes up most of her day. To her, it’s worth it because of everything she gets to do in that school.
“I co-founded an affinity group called BAM, which is ‘Black at Mel’s.’ ” Pittman said. “I’m also part of a group called ‘The Education Student Advisory Council.’ My speech and debate team is the most diverse in our league, [which is] the Brooklyn Queens Forensic League.”
According to data collected by the Department of Education between 2022 and 2023, among 100,000 public schools across the country, about 83% of all Black public school students and 82% of all Latino students attended a majority non-white school. At the same time, 75% of all white public school students were enrolled in a majority-white school.
At a recent conference in Baltimore, Bireda and Amerikaner met with education leaders to discuss solutions.
“We talk a lot about the importance of full integration to the health of our democracy,” Bireda said. “Students who continually are growing up in segregated environments or not interacting with people from different backgrounds.”
Even at a young age, Pittman advocates for diversity and integration in public schools. She is a youth advocacy director at Integrate NYC, a youth-led organization dedicated to created equity in New York City schools.
According to the Civil Rights Project, New York is one of the most diverse states in the nation. Despite this, it is one of the most segregated.
In a lawsuit against the state, Integrate NYC alleges that the city’s sorting and admission process forces students of color into the most overcrowded and under-resourced schools.
“We agree with plaintiffs that achieving those educational goals is made harder by the complex system of biases and inequities deeply rooted in this country’s history, culture, and institutions — a system that we also want to change,” the New York City Department of Education said in a statement sent to ABC News. “But this lawsuit is not the answer. We are prepared to defend against these claims in court.”
Unless something is done to improve school integration, Pittman and thousands of other students across the country will have to keep fighting for their education and the opportunities that come with it.
(SAN FRANCISCO) — In a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and a coalition of environmental nonprofit groups are suing ExxonMobil for the company’s alleged role in the global plastics pollution crisis.
The state claims the oil and gas giant engaged in a “decades-long campaign of deception” to lie to consumers about the sustainability of plastic recycling, according to the lawsuit filed Monday in San Francisco County Superior Court.
The suit alleges the company perpetuated the myth that plastics, particularly single-use plastics, are sustainable and recyclable, knowing this was false and that 95% of plastics end up in landfills.
ExxonMobil is the leading producer of synthetic polymers, which are essentially the building blocks of single-use plastics such as bottles, wrappers and bags, according to the lawsuit.
“Plastics are everywhere, from the deepest parts of our oceans, the highest peaks on earth, and even in our bodies, causing irreversible damage — in ways known and unknown — to our environment and potentially our health,” Bonta said in a press release announcing the lawsuit.
The lawsuit claims ExxonMobil deliberately shifted the responsibility for plastic waste to consumers by promoting the idea that plastic recycling was their individual duty, while the company knew recycling was not a viable solution.
In response to the lawsuit, a spokesperson for ExxonMobil released a statement to ABC News saying, “For decades, California officials have known their recycling system isn’t effective. They failed to act, and now they seek to blame others. Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to fix the problem and keep plastic out of landfills.”
The filing follows a two-year investigation initiated in 2022, during which the attorney general says his office issued multiple subpoenas and obtained extensive materials to build the case.
“For decades, ExxonMobil has been deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the plastic waste and pollution crisis when they clearly knew this wasn’t possible,” Bonta said.
“We are focused on solutions and meritless allegations like these distract from the important collaborative work that is underway to enhance waste management and improve circularity,” a spokesperson for the company told Reuters in a written response after the AG opened the investigation in 2022.
Bonta claimed in the lawsuit that ExxonMobil promoted “advanced recycling,” which is portrayed as an innovative recycling solution but that the program is neither new nor effective.
ExxonMobil’s “advanced recycling” process cannot handle large amounts of post-consumer plastic waste such as potato chip bags without risking the safety and performance of its equipment, according to the suit.
The lawsuit claims the recycling program only accounts for “less than one percent of ExxonMobil’s total virgin plastic production capacity, which continues to grow.”
In the statement to ABC News, a spokesperson for ExxonMobil claimed, “To date, we’ve processed more than 60 million pounds of plastic waste into usable raw materials, keeping it out of landfills.”
As of September 2024, Exxon Mobil’s market cap was ranked at over $512 billion, making it the 18th most valuable company in the world.
“ExxonMobil lied to further its record-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health. Today’s lawsuit shows the fullest picture to date of ExxonMobil’s decades-long deception, and we are asking the court to hold ExxonMobil fully accountable for its role in actively creating and exacerbating the plastics pollution crisis through its campaign of deception,” Bonta said.
The California DOJ is seeking billions in civil damages, for environmental destruction, harm to public health, and to end the company’s “deceptive practices.”
More than 26 million pounds of trash has been collected from California beaches and waterways since 1985, according to the lawsuit, and approximately 81 percent of it was plastic.
The lawsuit alleges most of the plastic items collected on the annual California Coastal Cleanup Day can be traced to ExxonMobil’s polymer resins.
(NEW YORK) — A potential hurricane — which would be named Helene — is churning in the Caribbean and is forecast to make landfall in Florida on Thursday.
The system is forecast to become Tropical Storm Helene early Tuesday morning.
It will then move into the Gulf of Mexico and strengthen to a hurricane on Wednesday morning.
Hurricane watches were issued in Tulum, Mexico; Cancun, Mexico; and Cuba.
The storm is forecast to continue to strengthen to a Category 2 or Category 3 hurricane before making landfall along the Florida Panhandle or Florida’s Big Bend area on Thursday night.
Flash flooding, strong winds and storm surge are the biggest threats.
The Tampa, Florida, area and the Florida Panhandle are expected to get the worst of the storm surge.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he’s declared a state of emergency in 41 counties.
“Now is the time to make an emergency plan, know your evacuation zone, and be as prepared as possible for the storm,” he said on social media.
After landfall, Helene’s heavy rain and flash flooding may move inland to Tallahassee, Florida; Atlanta; and Nashville, Tennessee.
