FBI announces $15,000 reward to help find missing 14-year-old girl
Maine State Police
(NEW SWEDEN, Maine) — Authorities are pleading with the public to help them find a Maine teenager who has been missing for months.
The FBI is offering a reward up to $15,000 for information leading to Stefanie Damron’s safe return, or the arrest and prosecution of anyone involved in her disappearance, FBI Boston’s Assistant Special Agent in Charge Kimberly Milka said at a news conference Monday.
“Any detail, no matter how small, could be helpful,” she said.
Stefanie was last seen walking out of her house and into the woods behind her home on Sept. 23, 2024, according to Maine State Police. She was reported missing the next day.
Stefanie was 13 at the time she disappeared; she’s now 14.
Her family is desperately looking for answers, Milka said. They live in New Sweden in northern Maine, about 20 miles from the Canadian border.
Stefanie had a history of running away, police noted.
“This behavior has not been uncommon for Stefanie, which is why I think the family waited a little bit of time” before calling police, Maine State Police Maj. Scott Gosselin said at the news conference.
But “since she hasn’t turned up, we slowly ratcheted up all the investigative resources,” he said.
Police have spent hundreds of hours investigating, including a neighborhood canvas and video search, but there have been no credible sightings, Gosselin said.
Stefanie, who was homeschooled, didn’t take any electronic devices with her and she has no apparent history of mental health concerns, police said.
Anyone with information is urged to call the Maine State Police at 1-800-824-2261 or 207-532-5400, or the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI.
A cluster of broken pieces of wood from destroyed houses rest along a damaged bridge in Lake Lure, North Carolina, Oct. 2, 2024, after the passage of Hurricane Helene. (Allison Joyce/AFP via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — At least 1,000 National Guard troops are heading into the most hard-hit areas in western North Carolina on Thursday in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene as the death toll from the storm approaches 200 with hundreds of people still unaccounted for.
“The nation has your back. We’re not leaving ‘til you’re back on your feet completely,” President Joe Biden said on Wednesday after surveying the mass destruction from the storm in North and South Carolina.
Helene is now the deadliest mainland hurricane to strike the United States since Katrina in 2005 which claimed the lives of nearly 1,400 people.
More than a million people still don’t have power and a nearly completely dark strip marks the path of Helene through the Southeast as the crisis over getting access to drinkable water is growing.
Vice President Kamala Harris met with local authorities and grieving families in Augusta, Georgia, on Wednesday.
“It is particularly devastating in terms of the loss of life that this community has experienced, the loss of normalcy,” Harris said.
Elsewhere, new video captured the moment a landslide hit a house in Newland, North Carolina, as Helene trampled the Southeast.
In Fairview, Connecticut, Philip Morgan showed ABC News the system of ropes he has had to create to rappel the terrain since the bridge to his neighborhood was wiped out.
Morgan’s brother is on a ventilator and in dire need of supplies as Philip Morgan says it is only a matter of time before his brother will need to be moved.
“[My biggest fear is] something happening to him and not being able to get out of here fast enough,” Morgan told ABC News.
Meanwhile, nearby at Mission Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, 400 nurses arrived in buses from across the country — even as far as Alaska — all to lend a helping hand in the aftermath of the sheer destruction of the storm.
“They showed up with a smile on their face. Eager to help, eager just to give us a little bit of reprieve,” said Matt Alligood, a resident nurse at Mission Hospital. “So, it’s … it’s been amazing.”
(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.
(BURLINGTON, Vt.) Residents of parts of upstate New York and Vermont awoke to winter-like weather Thursday morning, including the earliest a foot of snow has fallen in the higher elevations of the Green Mountain state in 14 years.
The overnight snowfall brought 12 inches to Mount Mansfield, the highest peak in Vermont, and 15 inches to the summit of Whiteface Mountain in New York’s Adirondack Mountains.
The snowy weather ties 2010 as the earliest date that the snow depth at Mount Mansfield has reached a foot, according to the National Weather Service in Burlington, Vermont.
Winter storm watches and warnings were also issued in the West from Oregon to Colorado, where one to more than two feet of October snow is forecast through Saturday for the Rocky Mountains.
Millions of people from Oklahoma to Maine were feeling their coldest air of the season Thursday morning. Frost and freeze alerts were issued in 20 eastern states or about half of the country.
Frost alerts were also issued for Little Rock, Arkansas, Birmingham, Alabama and Atlanta. Asheville, North Carolina, which is still recovering from devastating floods caused by Hurricane Helene last month, was under a frost alert Thursday.
The weather was also chilly in Tampa Bay, Florida, where temperatures dipped to the 50s Thursday morning.
The cold spell is expected to be short-lived. A warm-up is on the way for much of the eastern half of the United States. Temperatures are forecast to jump to the 70s in the Northeast and the 80s across the South over the weekend.
The high forecast for New York City on Sunday is 73 degrees, while Tampa could reach 83 on Sunday.
The first major winter storm of the season is moving through the Pacific Northwest on Thursday. Ahead of this storm, gusty winds and dry conditions are sparking fire weather alerts across the West Coast.
Red flag warnings signaling elevated fire danger have been issued for the San Francisco Bay Area and much of Northern California. Red flag warnings were also in place Thursday for parts of Colorado and Minnesota, and extreme fire danger is forecast for Nebraska, where warm, dry and gusty winds could spread fires quickly.
