Man dies after being caught in avalanche while snowmobiling
A Utah man was found dead after being caught in an avalanche Sunday afternoon in Lincoln County, Wyoming, authorities said. (Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office)
(LINCOLN COUNTY, Wyo) — A Utah man was found dead after being caught in an avalanche Sunday afternoon in Lincoln County, Wyoming, authorities said.
Nicholas Bringhurst, 31, was snowmobiling in the LaBarge Creek area when he was caught in an avalanche that buried him in snow, according to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office.
The sheriff’s office received a notification from a satellite device reporting an injured person, and Air Idaho was contacted and responded to the area.
“Bringhurst’s friend located and unburied him and initiated CPR,” authorities said. “However, Bringhurst died as a result of being caught in the avalanche.”
Lincoln County Coroner Dain Schwab said the coroner’s office will investigate and determine the cause of death.
“The Sheriff’s Office expresses our deepest sympathies to the Bringhurst family,” officials said.
ABC News’ Tristan Maglunog contributed to this report.
Luigi Mangione appears for a suppression of evidence hearing in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan Criminal Court on December 16, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Seth Wenig-Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A federal judge in New York on Wednesday pushed back Luigi Mangione’s federal trial from September to October, giving an additional month’s separation between his state and federal trials.
U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett said the federal trial jury selection will begin Oct. 5, with the presentation of evidence beginning Oct. 26.
“What is happening at 100 Centre [the state courthouse] inevitably affects how we structure things here so the defendant can get a fair trial,” Garnett said.
Garnett said she did not want to be “held hostage” by the state prosecution, but she said she had “some pause” about the “utility” of having potential jurors fill out questionnaires in the glare of the state trial.
“There’s really no way around taking into account the events in the state case involving the same defendant,” Garnett said.
Mangione, who was shackled at the ankles, wore a beige smock over a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He kept an arm casually propped on the back of his seat during the brief hearing.
The defense had asked for Mangione’s federal trial to be delayed to January 2027. Prosecutors objected to any rescheduling, arguing a delay prejudices the government.
Mangione is due back in federal court on June 5.
Mangione pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges after he was arrested for allegedly gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan in December 2024.
Mangione, 27, faces the possibility of life in prison if he’s convicted in either case. Garnett previously threw out the federal charges that carry the possibility of the death penalty and the judge overseeing the state prosecution, Gregory Carro, previously tossed out an enhancement to the state murder charges that said Mangione’s alleged conduct amounted to terrorism.
Carro has said he would rule on the defense motions to exclude evidence by May 18.
(NEW YORK) — Scientists have factored damage to the ocean into the social cost of carbon for the first time — finding it nearly doubles the economic impact from climate change.
Ocean damage from climate change — dubbed the “blue” social cost of carbon — causes the global cost of carbon dioxide emissions to society to nearly double, according to new findings by researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego.
The researchers calculated an additional $46.2 per ton of carbon dioxide — amounting to a total of $97.2 per ton of carbon dioxide, a 91% increase, according to the study, published Thursday in Nature Climate Change. Global carbon dioxide emissions were estimated to be 41.6 billion tons in 2024, according to the Global Carbon Budget, implying nearly $2 trillion in ocean-related damages in one year that are currently missing from standard climate cost estimates.
The ocean has never been accounted into the economic harm caused by greenhouse gas emissions before, the researchers said. The ocean was largely overlooked in the standard accounting of the social cost of carbon, despite widespread degradation to coral reef ecosystems, losses from fisheries and damage to coastal infrastructure — all of which are “well documented” and have impacted millions of people globally.
In addition, the distribution of impacts is “highly unequal” across the globe, according to the paper. Islands and small economies will be disproportionately affected, given the regions’ dependence on seafood and nutrition, according to the study.
Scripps researchers felt the need to put a price tag on the harm that climate change causes to the ocean in order to properly inform key decision-makers with a cost-benefit analysis, said environmental economist and assistant professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico Bernardo Bastien-Olvera, who led the study during a postdoctoral fellowship at Scripps Oceanography.
“The ocean was the big missing piece in these models that calculate the climate impacts on humans,” Bastien-Olvera told ABC News.
Human-amplified climate change damages oceans by warming temperatures and altering its chemistry, according to the Scripps researchers. The changes then alter the distribution of species and damages ecosystems such as reefs, mangroves, seagrass beds and kelp forests.
Coastal infrastructure, such as shipping ports, can also be damaged by increased flooding and stronger storms.
The social cost of carbon is an economic metric used in climate policy to estimate the damages that a ton of carbon dioxide causes to humans today, Bastien-Olvera said.
The researchers estimated the social cost of carbon by using integrated assessment models to run different future scenarios of how people and the economy might behave during the next century, also incorporating the potential climate impacts on systems such as coral reefs, mangroves, fisheries and seaports, Bastien-Olvera said.
The accounting was further developed by looking at straightforward market-use values, such as decreased fisheries revenue or diminished trade, as well as non-market values such as health impacts of reduced nutrition availability from impacted fisheries and recreational opportunities at the ocean, according to Scripps.
The research accounted for reduced availability of key nutrients in seafood, including calcium, omega-3 fatty acids, protein and iron — the loss of which can be linked to increases in disease risk and additional deaths.
The economic cost is caused by losses in the fishing industry, damage to coastal communities and impacts to systems that help fortify those communities, like mangroves and reefs.
The social cost of carbon is considered a more accurate accounting of harm from climate change than other calculations used as the basis of carbon credits or carbon offsets to travelers, according to Scripps.
The Kankakee County Sheriff’s Office released this image of a man in connection with a homicide, Feb. 2, 2026, in rural Momence near the Illinois/Indiana border. (Kankakee County Sheriff’s Office)
(KANKAKEE COUNTY, Ill.) — A man has been arrested in the death of a bar owner who was fatally shot Monday morning near the Illinois-Indiana state border.
Julius E. Burkes Jr., 47, was arrested Tuesday in Indiana as he was exiting his residence, according to the Kankakee County Sheriff’s Office.
Burkes is now being held in Indiana and is awaiting extradition to Illinois, where he will face charges, authorities said.
Burkes is accused of killing Courtney Drysdale, 30, while she was preparing to open the bar just before 11 a.m., when a suspect entered the bar, brandished a firearm and demanded money from the cash register, according to the sheriff’s office.
Despite Drysdale’s cooperation, the suspect allegedly shot her twice “execution style,” Kankakee County Sheriff Mike Downey said at a press conference Tuesday.
Before fleeing, the suspect attempted to remove what he believed was a digital recording device from a wall, but investigators were able to recover video evidence, Downey said.
“This type of violent behavior has no place in our society, and I am extremely appreciative of the overwhelming support we received from the public, the media as well as our partners in the criminal justice system near and far,” Downey said in a statement after the arrest.
“I want to praise, not only the extraordinary efforts of the men and women of the Sheriff’s Office, the Tri-County Auto Theft Task Force, the FBI, the US Marshals Service Great Lakes Regional Fugitive Task Force and the Hammond Police Department on this quick and peaceful apprehension, but I want to commend the community-at-large for coming together and providing quantities of tips and information that ultimately led to this swift arrest,” said Downey.
