Facebook to remove imposter accounts tied to immigration scams, DA’s office says
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks at a press conference joined by members of his prosecution team as he comments on the outcome in the retrial of former film producer Harvey Weinstein on June 12, 2025, in New York City. (Photo by Yuki Iwamura-Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Meta, the parent company of Facebook and WhatsApp, has pledged to remove imposter accounts tied to scams that were recently flagged by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, following a phone call between the two parties this week, the DA’s office told ABC News Friday.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg last week accused Meta of failing to remove imposter accounts that Bragg said pose as organizations like Catholic Charities to offer fake immigration services that scam money from unsuspecting victims.
“These imposter accounts have led to tens of thousands of dollars of fraudulent transfers,” Bragg said in a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding the company take action after requests to remove false profiles were declined.
“Scammers frequently target immigrant populations because they are perceived to be, and often are, more vulnerable to fraud and in need of a specific type of legal assistance,” Bragg wrote.
In some instances, scammers create public Facebook accounts that mirror real accounts belonging to pro bono legal services organizations, Bragg said. In others, they create WhatsApp profiles posing as immigration lawyers associated with those same organizations, frequently using the names and logos of legitimate organizations to give the appearance of credibility.
“Your company has made representations about the importance of the safety and security of your platform for its users,” Bragg’s letter to Zuckerberg said. “If you sincerely wish to protect the safety of your users from fraud, we urge you to take necessary, proactive steps.”
In a statement issued in response to Bragg’s letter, a Meta spokesperson said, “Account impersonation violates our policies, and we take action against people and groups that attempt to misuse our platforms. We’re committed to engaging constructively with all levels of government, law enforcement and cross-sector partners to tackle this industry-wide challenge.”
Bragg is the latest prosecutor to go public with criticism of Meta for failing to protect the public from criminals lurking on its social media platforms. New Mexico recently won a $375 million civil case that held Meta liable for failing to police its sites for child predators, and a jury in Los Angeles found Meta, along with Google, liable for a 20-year-old woman’s social media addiction.
Artemis II: the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft at Launch Pad 39B, on Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(MERRITT ISLAND, Fla.) — Weather conditions have again delayed operations leading to the launch of the Artemis II rocket mission to the moon.
The rollback of the Artemis II rocket and spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida was originally scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. Due to high winds in the area, NASA said its plans to move the rocket and Orion spacecraft for Artemis II off the launch pad and back to the vehicle assembly building were pushed to Wednesday morning.
The 4-mile trek is expected to take 12 hours, the space agency said.
The move was deemed necessary after crews detected an interrupted flow of helium to the Artemis II rocket’s upper stage on Saturday. Helium did not flow properly during normal operations and reconfigurations that followed the wet dress rehearsal that concluded on Thursday.
The upper stage uses helium to maintain the proper environmental conditions for its engine and to pressurize liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellant tanks, according to NASA. Essentially, helium is a critical element that ensures the proper flow of fuel into the rocket.
Once back in the vehicle assembly building, teams will install platforms to access the helium flow issue, NASA said. Teams will review potential causes of the issue as well as data from the 2022 Artemis I mission, in which teams had to troubleshoot helium-related pressurization of the upper stage before launch.
The Artemis II mission is a test flight that will send four astronauts on a more than 600,000-mile journey around the moon to test critical spacecraft systems, according to NASA. The crew will fly over the far side of the moon — passing between 4,000 and 6,000 miles above it — and spend a day observing and photographing the region.
After the lunar flyby, the astronauts will circle the moon for a return to Earth, in which the Earth-moon gravity field will help pull the spacecraft back to Earth over the course of its three-day return trip.
The Orion will then splashdown off the coast of San Diego after re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, and the U.S. Navy will recover the astronauts from the Pacific Ocean.
The journey is expected to take 10 days total.
The mission sets the stage for the future Artemis III, which aims to someday land astronauts near the moon’s South Pole. The region has never been explored by humans before.
Artemis II will mark the first time humans have traveled beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.
In January, NASA delayed the Artemis moonshot due to near-freezing temperatures at the launch site.
Heaters were deployed to keep the Orion capsule on top of the rocket warm, while rocket-purging systems were adapted to the cold.
The rollback of Artemis II means it will not launch during the March launch window, NASA said.
The quick preparations will potentially preserve the April launch window, pending the outcome of data findings and repair efforts, according to the agency.
ABC News’ Briana Alvarado and Matthew Glasser contributed to this report.
The wooden entrance sign to Yellowstone National Park, USA. (Jon G. Fuller/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
(MYSTIC FALLS, Wyo.) — Two hikers were injured in a bear attack at Yellowstone National Park, prompting some areas of the park to close, the National Park Service said.
The incident occurred Monday afternoon on the Mystic Falls Trail near Old Faithful in Wyoming, the park service said.
The two hikers “sustained injuries by one or more bears,” the park service said in a press release on Tuesday.
National Park Service emergency services personnel responded, and the incident remains under investigation, the park service said.
No additional details were released, including the condition of the hikers or the type of bear suspected in the attack.
Some areas of the national park are temporarily closed due to the ongoing investigation.
The last bear attack in Yellowstone was in September 2025, when a 29-year-old man was injured by a grizzly bear while hiking alone near Turbid Lake.
The last deadly bear attack occurred in 2015, in the Lake Village area of Yellowstone, the park service said.
Boats descend lower into a desert canyon at Antelope Point Marina, requiring construction of alternative boat ramps, as Lake Powell continues to shrink on September 3, 2022, near Page, Arizona. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — It has been a tale of two winters on the opposing U.S. coasts this season.
While the East has been slammed with frigid temperatures and punishing winter storms, the West is experiencing a snow drought amid warmer-than-normal temperatures.
Prolonged drought across much of the West has been worsened this winter by below‑average snowfall and persistent warmth, fueling a widespread and intensifying snow drought. With sharply reduced mountain snowpack, the region’s water supplies and winter tourism are facing mounting challenges, experts told ABC News.
“This winter, we’ve just had an extreme lack of storm activity, and the storms that we have had have either brought very small amounts of snowfall or have brought rain,” Jon Meyer, assistant Utah state climatologist, told ABC News.
Warm temperatures have prevented snow from accumulating
Much of the western United States entered winter already grappling with a lack of rain. Widespread moderate to severe drought conditions stretched from New Mexico to Washington, including much of the Colorado River Basin, leaving soil moisture low and reservoir levels depleted heading into the season.
More than one-third of the West is currently facing some form of drought condition, with much of Utah, Colorado and New Mexico experiencing a moderate drought or worse, according to the U.S. Drought Mitigation Center’s U.S. Drought Monitor.
Utah is facing the worst drought conditions among western states, with more than 94% of the state experiencing what the USDM categorizes as a Moderate Drought and more than 40% of the state experiencing Severe Drought.
Salt Lake City has only received a tenth of an inch of snow so far this season – the lowest to date since records began in 1874, according to the National Weather Service. Their lowest seasonal snowfall was 14.3 inches during the winter of 1933-34. By comparison, parts of the Southeast, which typically don’t see much snowfall, have seen more snow than Salt Lake City this season.
“Just totally uncharted territory for the amount of low-elevation and mid-elevation snowfall Utah has seen, and that’s a pattern that’s played out across much of the Western U.S.,” Meyer said.
While many western states received average or above-average precipitation in the fall and early winter, warmer temperatures caused much of it to fall as rain rather than snow, leading to unusually low snowpack and a rapidly developing snow drought.
“If you look at most of the West, it’s at or above average, with regards to precipitation to date,” Eric Sproles, an associate professor of earth sciences at Montana State University, told ABC News. “But if you look at the the amount of water that’s stored in the snow pack is, it’s pretty bleak.”
Meteorological winter, which begins in the U.S. on December 1, kicked off with record warmth across much of the West. December 2025 was the warmest December on record for cities including Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona; Las Vegas, Nevada; Salt Lake City, Utah; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Portland, Oregon and Boise, Idaho, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Nine western states – Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming – recorded their warmest December on record. For the winter season to date, Colorado is currently experiencing its warmest winter since 1934, while Utah is experiencing its warmest winter on record, according to NOAA.
The snow drought is threatening water supplies
Drought on its own already stresses water supplies, agriculture and ecosystems. But when winter fails to deliver significant mountain snow, the resulting snow drought – a period of abnormally little snowpack for the time of year – can intensify those impacts, according to NOAA.
The snowpack typically acts as a natural water reservoir. However, without an adequate snowpack to slowly release water through the spring and summer snow melt, rivers run lower, soils dry out earlier, and drought conditions can deepen and linger.
Melting snow provides a slow release of the water into reservoirs and dams but also recharges ground water as well, Sproles said: “That slow, steady release is important. The snowpack is kind of like a savings account.”
In Utah, the snow water equivalent – meaning how much water is in the snowpack – is currently at only 55% of its median, which is the lowest snow water equivalent to date. Moreover, only a quarter of the state has seen a ground snow cover depth of at least 1 inch.
Colorado and Oregon are also reporting their lowest snow water equivalents to date, with Montana approaching its lowest snow water equivalent to date.
In much of the West, snowmelt provides a large percentage of the water used by communities, agriculture, and ecosystems; in some states, up to about 75 percent of the water supply can come from melting snow, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. As such, the snow water equivalent is a vital measure of the region’s water resources.
According to NOAA, a persistent snow drought can trigger a cascade of hydrologic changes. Low snowpack and early snowmelt can affect vegetation, reduce surface and subsurface water storage and alter streamflow, all of which directly impact water management and planning across the West.
While soil moisture in not currently a concern, it could dry out over the next couple of months, according to Meyer.
“We’ve become critically reliant on soil moisture observations for drought monitoring and predictions,” Meyer said.
The reservoirs along the Colorado River are especially threatened, the experts said. Major reservoirs in the Colorado River Basin remain well below average, according to latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR). As of early February, Lake Powell, in southern Utah and northern Arizona, was about 26 % full, while Lake Mead – the nation’s largest reservoir by volume, located in Arizona and Nevada – was about 34% full.
Total storage in the Colorado River system, which provides water for more than 40 million people and fuels hydropower resources in seven western states, was roughly 37% of capacity, down from about 42% at the same time last year, according to the USBR, which has flagged 13 reservoirs, the majority located in the West, for having the lowest observed water storage levels for the current time period.
The Colorado River system also serves as a vital resource for 30 tribal nations, sustaining 5.5 million acres of farmland and agricultural communities throughout the West, while also supporting critical ecosystems and protecting endangered species, the USBR said.
Winter sports have been impacted by lack of snow
The snow drought is also impacting local economies that rely on winter sports, an industry that contributes $20 billion annually to the U.S. economy, according to The Climate Reality Project.
“The resort winter tourism is a huge economic backbone for many of these mountain resort communities,” Marcene Mitchell, senior vice president for climate change for the World Wildlife Fund, told ABC News. “And so as they lose their snowfall, they also lose these revenue.”
Vail Resorts, a Colorado-based company that owns and operates some of the largest ski resorts in North America, reported in January that skier visits to its North American resorts were down about 20% through Jan. 4, compared to the same period last year. The company issued the update as a mid-season report on skier visits and revenue, citing a lack of early-season snowfall as a major factor in the decline.
Season-to-date total lift revenue, including an allocated portion of season pass revenue, was down 1.8% from the same period last year, said the tourism company, which operates dozens of resorts across North America, including Vail Mountain and Breckenridge in Colorado and Park City Mountain in Utah.
“We experienced one of the worst early season snowfalls in the western U.S. in over 30 years, which limited our ability to open terrain and negatively impacted visitation and ancillary spending for both local and destination guests during the period,” Chief Executive Officer Rob Katz said in a statement.
Vail’s Tahoe-area resorts in California also had a slow start through mid-December, but holiday-period snowstorms allowed the company to open more terrain, Katz said.
February and March typically can bring significant amounts of snow to the region, and odds favor above-average precipitation for much of the region over the next few weeks, according to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, with persistent unusually warm conditions less likely. However, NOAA notes, snowfall in the coming months may not be able to make up for existing deficits.
Forecasters further caution that this pattern may not last for the rest of the month, with overall warmer and drier-than-average conditions still favored for the month as a whole.
