New York counties declare state of emergency as they brace for massive snowstorm
Gabriel Mello/Getty Images/STOCK
(NEW YORK) — Officials in upstate New York counties have declared a state of emergency as they prepare for a major snowstorm that has already dumped over two feet of snow in the Midwest and is forecast to accumulate more this weekend.
Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Saturday morning that 11 counties, including Erie County which includes Buffalo, are in a state of emergency and many neighborhoods have already seen a large amount of snowfall.
Lake effect snow will continue through Monday with the heaviest snowfall occurring through early Sunday morning, and an additional period of heavy snow late Sunday night into Monday morning, according to the governor’s office. The highest snow totals this weekend are expected around Watertown, New York, where 3 to 5 feet of snow is in the forecast.
“My administration is working around the clock with our state agencies and over 100 National Guard members on the ground to support local communities,” Hochul said.
Travel advisories were issued for Jefferson and Lewis counties, and portions of Erie County.
The state’s Department of Transportation banned empty and tandem commercial vehicles on I-86 from the Pennsylvania state line to I-390 and on State Route 219 from the Pennsylvania state line to I-90.
In addition to the National Guard members, Hochul said extra personnel has been deployed to help with possible power and road emergencies.
Lake effect snow is common this time of year as colder air moves over the relatively warm water of the lakes, leading to extremely localized bands of heavy snowfall for an extended period of time.
Counties in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania have recorded huge snowfall totals since Friday.
Gaylord, Michigan, picked up 24.8 inches of snow Friday marking their single snowiest calendar day on record and shattering their previous record of 17 inches on March 9, 1942.
(WESTFORD, Mass.) — A Democratic member of Congress has become the latest victim of increased threats against federal lawmakers in the last two weeks.
Rep. Lori Trahan of Massachusetts said Saturday that her family and home received a bomb threat. No one was harmed and the Westford Police Department, U.S. Capitol Police and the Massachusetts State Police are all investigating the threat, she said.
“It’s a good time to say the obvious: threats of violence and intimidation have no place in our country,” Trahan said in a statement.
The threat against Trahan came a week after several Democratic members received similar threats against their families.
Reps. Joe Courtney, Jahana Hayes, Jim Himes and John Larson, who all represent districts in Connecticut, said their homes were targeted on Thanksgiving. Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Seth Magaziner, also of Rhode Island, said they were targets of bomb threats last week
No bombs were found and none of the elected officials nor their families were hurt, authorities said.
The investigations into the threats are ongoing.
Some of President-elect Trump’s cabinet selections were also targeted with threats last week.
Investigators are looking into bomb threats sent to Rep. Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; Brooke Rollins, Trump’s pick for agriculture secretary; Lee Zeldin, the former congressman Trump has tapped to lead the EPA; and Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and President Joe Biden condemned last week’s threats.
“House Democrats will not be deterred or intimidated from serving the people by violent threats,” Jeffries said in a statement last week.
(WASHINGTON) — A piece of the Titan’s carbon-fiber hull recovered after the submersible’s deadly catastrophic implosion showed “anomalies,” a National Transportation Safety Board engineer said Wednesday during a weekslong hearing on the incident.
Don Kramer, the acting chief of the NTSB’s materials laboratory, testified during the U.S. Coast Guard’s hearing into the June 2023 implosion of the OceanGate submersible while on a deep-sea dive to the Titanic shipwreck.
Kramer said his team examined material from the manufacturing of the hull and found “several anomalies within the composite and the adhesive joints, including waviness, wrinkles, porosity and voids.”
They also examined a piece of the hull recovered from the ocean floor and found similar anomalies, including “waviness and wrinkles within the hull layers” and voids within the adhesive that joined the layers, he said. The recovered hull also showed “features consistent with rubbing damage at one of those adhesive joints.”
Kramer said the Titan debris on the ocean floor showed that the hull “encountered a significant amount of delamination” — or separating into layers — most of which was within or adjacent to co-bonded adhesive interfaces.
Asked by OceanGate’s counsel whether any of the delaminations, voids or rubbing damage could have been present before the implosion, as opposed to being caused by the implosion, Kramer said he is not offering analysis as to when they occurred.
Further asked by OceanGate’s counsel whether any of the issues he observed could have caused the implosion, Kramer said that is “still subject to our own internal analysis at this point.”
Strain response after loud bang on dive 80
Kramer also discussed the loud bang passengers heard as the Titan ascended during a dive that occurred a year before the implosion, on July 15, 2022 — referred to as dive 80 — which has been referenced throughout the two-week hearing. The bang was also detected by the Titan’s real-time monitoring system, which had sensors to detect acoustic events, as well as multiple strain gages to monitor mechanical strain, he said.
Kramer said his team determined that the hull’s strain response changed after this loud bang incident in subsequent dives in 2022. He said the strain gage data showed a change in the strain in the hull for four of the eight gages.
“Those changes persisted from dive to dive,” he said.
There was no difference when comparing the strain response to a dive prior to dive 80, Kramer said.
No strain data is available for dives conducted in 2023, according to Kramer.
Phil Brooks, OceanGate’s former engineering director, testified on Monday that following the loud bang on dive 80, the strain gage data showed a minor “shift,” though they did not see “any further shifts in strain data” on subsequent dives in 2022. Nothing “really seemed out of the ordinary,” and OceanGate co-founder and CEO Stockton Rush made the decision to continue dives, Brooks said.
Asked how his team arrived at its determination on the change in strain response based on the graphs of the available data, Kramer said, “I guess it’s a matter of opinion as to whether one can discern the changes in strain output.”
Brooks said Rush theorized that the loud bang was caused by the frame “readjusting back to its original shape” as it returned to the surface.
Kramer noted that the NTSB’s investigation is still ongoing, and the scope of his presentation was therefore limited.
Marine Technology Society draft letter to Rush
William Kohnen, the CEO and founder of submersible maker Hydrospace Group, said during his testimony on Wednesday that he would not have made a carbon-fiber hull. He said it would cost “too much money” and “is really, really difficult.”
The investigators asked Kohnen about a draft Marine Technology Society letter he wrote in March 2018 to Rush based on public safety concerns raised during a conference.
“This was considered an issue of where we as consensus, as professionals in this industry, had significant concerns — not on one particular thing, but the overall approach of neglecting the years of experience and tradition and diligence that we applied,” he said.
Kohnen said the letter was signed by around 40 members and went through other drafts, though the Marine Technology Society board never approved sending it to Rush on behalf of the society. Rush still managed to get a copy of the original draft letter, which Kohnen said they discussed over the phone.
During the call, Kohnen said he told Rush he found the language on OceanGate’s website confusing for the general public not familiar with submersibles and that they were “highly inferring” the experimental sub was classed, when that wasn’t the case. He said the website was subsequently updated.
Kohnen stressed the importance of classification and regulations to build safe submersibles.
“We have a record of 50 years without a single fatality until Titan,” he said. “It does indicate the power of our regulation.”
OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations after the deadly implosion, which killed five people, including Rush.
The hearing on the incident is scheduled to run through Friday.
The main purpose of the hearing is to uncover the facts related to the implosion and to make recommendations, the Coast Guard said.
(NEW YORK) — When Cory Martin wanted to know how to cover up a grisly crime and dispose of a murder victim’s dismembered body, he turned to television, watching “The First 48” and “Dexter” for tips, according to federal prosecutors.
“The defendant directed Witness-1 to watch the television show Dexter with him in preparation for the murder. In Dexter, a serial killer murders and dismembers his victims, concealing forensic evidence by covering his ‘kill room’ from floor to ceiling with plastic,” prosecutors said.
Martin is set to be sentenced in Brooklyn federal court for murdering a sex worker, Brandy Odom, as part of a life insurance scam and then cutting up her body for disposal.
His sentencing, which was originally scheduled for Thursday, has since been rescheduled for Nov. 6.
He faces a mandatory life sentence.
“It is fitting that that Martin faces a mandatory sentence to spend the rest of his life in prison for this ghastly, cold-blooded crime that was motivated by greed and executed after extensive planning,” United States Attorney Breon Peace said after Martin’s conviction. “Martin saw the victim as a moneymaker, trafficking her for commercial sex, then after killing her with his bare hands, tossing out her slaughtered body parts like trash so he could profit from her death.”
Odom’s mother is expected to address the court prior to sentencing.
Odom’s dismembered body was found in a Canarsie park in 2018, according to authorities. The 26-year-old’s head and naked torso were found among leaves and twigs. Her arms and legs were discovered nearby, officials said.
He was not arrested until November 2020.
Martin, 36, was convicted in March of murder-for-hire and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire resulting in the death of Odom, as well as wire fraud conspiracy, aggravated identity theft and fraudulent use of identification.
“During the time Odom lived with the defendant, he acted as her pimp and controlled every aspect of her life, using the income from her commercial sex work to pay his bills and finance his lifestyle. The defendant then plotted to profit further off Odom by taking out life insurance policies in her name and murdering her to collect the proceeds,” prosecutors said.
Police said Anderson read several articles about the murder in the months after the killing, including one titled “Search area expands after dismembered body found in Canarsie Park in Brooklyn.”
Adelle Anderson, 32, who was also arrested as part of the crime, already pleaded guilty to murder-for-hire, identity theft and wire fraud. She has yet to be sentenced, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.
