FAA bans US flights to Haiti for 30 days after planes struck by gunfire
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(WASHINGTON) — The Federal Aviation Administration has banned U.S. flights to Haiti for 30 days in the wake of Monday’s gunfire incidents, according to a Notice to Air Mission issued Tuesday.
“U.S. civil aviation operations in the territory and airspace of Haiti below 10,000 feet” will be prohibited, according to the FAA.
The move comes after a Spirit Airlines plane flying from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Haiti was diverted after it was struck by gunfire while attempting to land in Port-au-Prince, according to the the Haitian National Office of Civil Aviation.
The plane was struck by gunfire four times while attempting to land at Touissant Louverture Airport in the capital city of Port-au-Prince, OFNAC said.
The Spirit Airlines plane “diverted and landed safely in Santiago, Dominican Republic,” Spirit Airlines said in a statement Monday, adding that no passengers reported injuries and one flight attendant onboard the plane reported unspecified “minor injuries” and was undergoing medical evaluation.
The plane came within 550 feet of the runway before aborting its landing and diverting to the Dominican Republic, according to data on FlightRadar24.
The FAA on Monday had confirmed in a statement that the Spirit Airlines flight landed safely in the Dominican Republic “after the plane was reportedly damaged by gunfire while trying to land” at the Port-au-Prince airport.
On Monday, a JetBlue flight from Haiti to New York City was also hit by a bullet, the airline said in a statement to ABC News. JetBlue said it would suspend all flights to and from Haiti through Dec. 2 due to the civil unrest in the country.
ABC News’ Aicha El Hammar Castano contributed to this report.
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(NEW YORK) — The Mega Millions jackpot has soared to an estimated $1 billion ahead of its Christmas Eve drawing.
The estimated jackpot would make it the seventh-largest in the game’s history and its seventh billion-dollar prize.
It would also be the largest ever won in December, if a ticket matches all six numbers drawn.
The cash value of the jackpot is estimated to be $448.8 million.
The last time the jackpot was won was at $810 million in Texas on Sept. 10. No one has won the grand prize in the last 29 drawings, as the jackpot has ballooned.
The Mega Millions jackpot has only been won on Christmas Eve once before, according to the game. A $68 million jackpot was won in New York on Dec. 24, 2002, though it was never claimed.
The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350, according to Mega Millions.
Mega Millions is played in 45 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Tickets are $2 for one play. Tuesday’s drawing is at 11 p.m. ET.
(GREEN LAKE, Wis.) — Ryan Borgwardt, the husband and father who authorities said faked his own death at a lake and fled the country, has returned to the U.S. willingly and is now in custody in Wisconsin, the Green Lake County Sheriff’s Office announced on Wednesday.
Borgwardt — who is accused of intentionally misleading authorities to believe he drowned this summer — notified officials he was returning and he landed in the U.S. on Tuesday, Sheriff Mark Podoll said at a news conference, but the sheriff did not reveal from where he flew.
Podoll said authorities are still putting together where Borgwardt was and who he was with since he vanished in August, but said he’s “cooperated” with law enforcement.
Borgwardt “researched other individuals that had successfully disappeared recently,” including lake deaths and “how deep a body has to be without resurfacing,” according to the criminal complaint.
When he was abroad and trying to stay under the radar, Borgwardt said he checked the news but usually avoided clicking on articles, the complaint said. The criminal complaint mentions Borgwardt having been in the country of Georgia.
Borgwardt said when he did click on a news article, “he would use a VPN and sometimes make it look like he was in Russia or somewhere else other than Georgia,” the complaint said. “Ryan stated that he knew that Georgia would have to extradite him and he wanted to be informed and prepared.”
Asked what compelled Borgwardt to come back, Podoll said, “His family, I guess.”
Podoll did not say if Borgwardt has had contact with his wife and children.
Borgwardt, who is charged with obstructing an officer, made his first court appearance on Wednesday. He faces up to a $10,000 fine and nine months in prison for alleged obstruction of an officer.
A signature bond was set at $500, since he “voluntarily turned himself in” from “halfway around the world,” the judge said. When the judge asked if he could afford any bail, Borgwardt replied, “I have $20 in my wallet.”
The case began on Aug. 11, when Borgwardt texted his wife that he was turning his kayak around on Green Lake and heading to shore soon, Podoll said.
But the dad of three never came home.
Responders found Borgwardt’s overturned kayak and life jacket in the lake and believed he drowned, officials said.
Crews scoured the lake for weeks using divers, drones, sonar and cadaver K-9s, but never found him, officials said.
In October, investigators discovered Borgwardt’s name had been checked by law enforcement in Canada two days after he vanished on the lake, the sheriff said.
Authorities also learned Borgwardt had been communicating with a woman from Uzbekistan, the sheriff said.
Borgwardt’s other suspicious behavior included: clearing his browsers the day he disappeared, inquiring about moving funds to foreign banks, obtaining a new passport and getting a new life insurance policy, the sheriff said.
Authorities determined Borgwardt was alive and likely in Eastern Europe or western Asia, but they didn’t know exactly where he was located. Authorities made contact with a woman who speaks Russian, and in November, they reached Borgwardt through that woman, authorities said.
Borgwardt said when he got the email from authorities, his “heart hit the floor,” the complaint said.
Borgwardt told police he was safe but didn’t reveal his location, the sheriff said.
Borgwardt did reveal to authorities how he faked his death.
“He stashed an e-bike near the boat launch. He paddled his kayak in a child-sized floating boat out into the lake. He overturned the kayak and dumped his phone in the lake,” the sheriff said at a news conference in November. “He paddled the inflatable boat to shore and got on his e-bike and rode through the night to Madison, [Wisconsin]. In Madison, he boarded a bus and went to Detroit, and then the Canadian border.”
Borgwardt said the Canadian Border Patrol was “suspicious” that he didn’t have a driver’s license or flight itinerary with him, but “ultimately, they allowed him to continue,” according to the complaint.
At the airport in Toronto, Borgwardt said he bought a flight to Paris.
On the plane, Borgwardt said he searched for news in Green Lake and saw “something about the missing kayaker and believes that his plan had worked,” according to the complaint.
After he landed in Paris he flew to a country in Asia, the complaint said.
An unidentified woman picked him up and they went to a hotel where they stayed for a couple of days, the complaint said.
Borgwardt was later in an apartment, according to a video he made for law enforcement.
No one else is facing charges, the sheriff said.
Asked if Borgwardt will be required to reimburse the county for the money spent on the search, Podoll told reporters, “That’s part of the restitution that we present to the court.”
(LOS ANGELES) — The fires blazing through Los Angeles County are the latest unprecedented natural disaster likely amplified by our changing climate. In the weeks and months to come, climate attribution science will determine by just how much.
However, we do know that heavy rains, followed by drought and mixed with winds and low humidity created a perfect storm of conditions — just weeks after Hurricane Helene ripped through North Carolina’s Buncombe County, with fatal floods and landslides 400 miles from where the storm made landfall.
Experts say that extreme weather events worsened by climate change are knocking on the doors of people across the country, and local officials must proactively prepare their regions before their residents become the next victims of tragedy.
“One of the things that every local government, every city government, should be doing right now, and the cost is well worth it, is investing in very comprehensive climate risk assessments,” Albany Law School’s climate policy expert Cinnamon Carlarne told ABC News.
These risk assessments look at the potential harms facing a community, their exposure level and vulnerability to disaster — properly setting regions up to plan for and minimize the destruction a disaster can cause.
If lawmakers don’t take action, the toll — both in human life as well as economic damages — will only compound, according to Thomas Culhane, a professor of global sustainability at the University of South Florida.
“I’m frustrated that my now cousin’s home may be lost, and her family was in jeopardy, and my family is in jeopardy because there hasn’t been enough good dialogue about all the incredible solutions that we’ve had for thousands of years, for hundreds of years, for decades, some brand new,” Culhane told ABC News. “We’re not getting together and discussing and then implementing so people can see with their own eyes.”
Los Angeles County is no stranger to extreme weather events. But according to California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, seven of the 10 largest wildfires in California history have occurred since 2017.
A recent assessment of LA County’s risk and vulnerability found that it was likely that wildfire conditions such as drought, high winds and extreme heat would compound.
The report found that areas between “urbanized land and undeveloped wildland vegetation” often sit within high or very high fire hazard severity zone. Notably, these hazard zones include the regions where the Palisades and Eaton Fires are burning.
It said that 19% of residents live in “Very High Fire Severity Zones” and developers continue to build in these areas despite concerns. The report noted that builders of new housing or infrastructure in such areas must follow requirements that “limit the impacts of wildfire on these properties,” including fire-resistant roofing, improved attic ventilation, tempered glass for exterior windows and maintaining 100 feet of “defensible space” between their structure and nearby landscaping or wildlands.
According to an October 2024 draft Climate Vulnerability Assessment from the office of LA City Planning, officials and researchers took the risk assessment back to communities to garner feedback about the best ways to implement mitigation strategies and create resilient infrastructure that stands strong in the face of climate disasters.
The draft assessment highlighted potential solutions to prevent against wildfire damage.
This included enforcing zoning restrictions to prevent new development in regions with high wildfire risk; requiring building codes in high hazard areas to include the use of fire resistant materials; ensuring reliable water sources and road access for emergency vehicles; and the installation of backup power in strategic locations to maintain essential services during outages.
Additionally, the draft also noted plans to “strengthen power lines, utility poles, and communication networks in wildfire-prone areas to withstand fire impacts” and “create and maintain fire defensible space around structures and infrastructure.”
The draft also encourages the use of indigenous fire risk reduction practices, such as intentional burns. It also suggests that community members can take part by clearing potential wildfire fuel such as dry underbrush, as well as restoring native habitat and plants.
The LA County Office of Sustainability and the LA City Planning office has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment about the climate assessments.
“When you look into indigenous practices or local practices, you see people dealt with these extremes by developing systems and then we ignored them,” Culhane said. “We set up systems that were bound to fail.”
He continued, “If you took seriously the catastrophic potential … put the money in because then we don’t have to pay later. The recovery costs are huge.”
This doesn’t take into account the cost of human life — at least 24 people have been recorded to have died thus far, according to officials.
If cities around the country can uncover and address targeted and individualized potential climate resilience techniques, they can save lives, according to Cinnamon Carlarne.
“We’re committed to a certain level of warming going forward, simply because greenhouse gasses are accumulating in the atmosphere, and we are not reducing our greenhouse gas emissions,” Carlarne said.
However, she argues, it’s vital to continue to do the work to ensure the climate does not worsen further and cause more damage.
“So you are starting to see, because the frequency and intensity of disasters is mounting, and the human and economic cost disasters are mounting, that more and more city and local governments are actually starting to engage in planning, to assess infrastructure and to create ways where they can learn from one another,” Carlarne said. “But we have more and more cities and local governments that are actually recognizing this is one of real, serious challenges for their government systems.”
