Polaris Dawn astronauts begin historic first commercial spacewalk
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon Resilience capsule sits on Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center ahead of the Polaris Dawn Mission in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on September 9, 2024. (CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission crew began the first-ever commercial space walk early Thursday.
Two crew members — commander Jared Isaacman and mission specialist Sarah Gillis — were expected to exit the Dragon spacecraft on the “extravehicular activity,” as SpaceX described it. Pilot Scott Poteet and mission specialist Anna Menon planned to stay inside the capsule to support the operation.
All crew members are now considered “spacewalkers” as the capsule was depressurized for the outing, thus exposing all four crew to the vacuum of space.
The mission plan said Isaacman and Gillis would both leave the capsule for 10 minutes each. The astronauts will hold a handrail system — called Skywalker and are on 8-foot tethers — significantly shorter than NASA spacewalkers have traditionally used.
Isaacman and Gillis plan to “perform a series of mobility tests in the newly-designed SpaceX EVA suit” during the spacewalk, SpaceX said on its website, where the operation was live streamed.
The entire spacewalk is expected to take around two hours, SpaceX said.
(MEMPHIS) — Opening statements began on Wednesday in the federal trial of three former Memphis police officers charged in connection with the January 2023 beating death of Tyre Nichols.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Rogers presented the prosecution’s case, explaining to jurors what evidence they can expect to see and warned them that they will watch and hear “horrifying” body camera video and audio over the course of the trial, according to WATN, the ABC affiliate in Memphis covering the case in the courtroom.
“They stood by his dying body and laughed,” Rogers said, describing what happened after the officers were finished beating Nichols, according to WATN. “These will not be easy days.”
Defense attorneys for the former officers — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith — also began presenting opening statements.
John Perry, Bean’s defense attorney, told jurors that they can expect to see that the evidence will show the officers did their job, according to WATN.
“It will take you 5 minutes to deliberate,” Perry said, according to WATN.
Michael Stengel, Haley’s attorney, said that Nichols did not stop for 2 miles after officers turned on their police lights, according to WATN. Stengel claimed that there is no evidence that the officer knew who was driving at the time and there was no personal vendetta concerning rumors of a woman.
“When they got the wallet [of Nichols] after the stop, that’s when they learned who it was,” Stengel said, according to WATN.
Bean, Haley and Smith, along with two other officers involved in the incident, were charged on Sept. 12, 2023, with violating Nichols’ civil rights through excessive use of force, unlawful assault, failing to intervene in the assault and failing to render medical aid – charges that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The 4-count indictment also charged all five officers with conspiring to engage in misleading conduct by attempting to falsify or intentionally withholding details of the arrest in statements and to a supervisor – charges that carry up to 20 years in prison, per the DOJ.
Bean, Haley and Smith have pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Desmond Mills Jr. and Emmitt Martin III, the two additional officers who were also charged in this case, have pleaded guilty to some of the federal charges.
Martin pleaded guilty to excessive force and failure to intervene, as well as conspiracy to witness tamper, according to court records. The other two charges will be dropped at sentencing, which has been scheduled for Dec. 5, according to the court records.
Mills pleaded guilty to two of the four counts in the indictment — excessive force and failing to intervene, as well as conspiring to cover up his use of unlawful force, according to the DOJ. The government said it will recommend a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, based on the terms of Mills’s plea agreement.
Tyre Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, who attended opening statements, told reporters on Wednesday that she hopes the jury will return a guilty verdict.
“Our hope is that they’re found guilty and to show the world that my son was a good person and he wasn’t the criminal that they’re trying to make him out to be,” she said.
ABC News reached out to the attorneys representing the officers but requests for comment were not immediately returned.
Nichols, 29, died on Jan. 10, 2023 – three days after a traffic stop captured in body camera footage and surveillance footage, which allegedly shows officers violently striking Nichols repeatedly and walking around, talking to each other as Nichols was injured and sitting on the ground. He was also pepper-sprayed and tased during the incident. The beating triggered protests and calls for police reform.
Police said Nichols was pulled over for reckless driving, though Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis said she has been unable to substantiate that.
Body camera footage shows Nichols getting away from the officers after the initial stop, but he was apprehended minutes later by the officers. He then sustained multiple punches, kicks and hits from a baton from the officers.
Nichols was transferred to the hospital in critical condition where he later died. The medical examiner’s official autopsy report for Nichols showed he “died of brain injuries from blunt force trauma,” the district attorney’s office told Nichols’ family in May 2023.
While Nichols’ mother has said that first responders told her he was drunk and high, the autopsy report shows that his blood alcohol level was .049, the DA’s office said. The district attorney’s office told the family that was “well less than the legal limit to drive.”
The five former officers charged in this case were all members of the Memphis Police Department SCORPION unit – a crime suppression unit that has since been disbanded after Nichols’ death.
Rogers told the jury on Wednesday that the SCORPION unit followed an alleged rule that they called the “run tax,” according to WATN, where it was understood that the first person to reach a running suspect would beat them.
Perry claimed that his client, Bean, was not present at the initial stop and only arrived at the second scene after hearing a call on dispatch radio, according to WATN.
The five officers charged in connection to Nichols’ death were all fired for violating the policies of the Memphis Police Department.
All five former officers also face state felony charges, including second-degree murder, aggravated assault and aggravated kidnapping, in connection with Nichols’ death. They pleaded not guilty.
ABC News’ Sabina Ghebremedhin contributed to this report.
Former film producer Harvey Weinstein appears in Manhattan Criminal Court for a pretrial hearing, following his overturned sex crimes conviction, in New York City, July 19, 2024. (KENA BETANCUR/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new indictment charging him with criminal sex act in the first degree.
He was wheeled into a Manhattan courtroom wearing a black suit, white shirt and tie.
The former movie mogul is charged in the new indictment based on the allegations of a woman who said he sexually assaulted her on one occasion in 2006 at a Manhattan hotel.
He is also charged in a previous New York State Supreme Court indictment with criminal sexual act in the first degree and rape in the third degree, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said.
“Thanks to this survivor who bravely came forward, Harvey Weinstein now stands indicted for an additional alleged violent sexual assault,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement.
Weinstein, 72, missed his last court date after being rushed to the hospital for emergency heart surgery.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office presented to the grand jury allegations of three separate women who said Weinstein sexually assaulted them. Their allegations were not part of the initial trial of Weinstein that ended in a conviction, which was later overturned on appeal.
“We will do everything in our power to retry this case, and remain steadfast in our commitment to survivors of sexual assault,” a spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement earlier this year, when the conviction was overturned.
Weinstein has denied all claims of sexual misconduct, saying his encounters were consensual.
The new indictment comes months after the New York Court of Appeals overturned his 2020 sex crimes conviction. He had been found guilty of criminal sexual assault and third-degree rape and sentenced to 23 years in prison.
In a scathing 4-3 opinion in April, the court found the trial judge “erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes.”
Photography by Keith Getter (all rights reserved)/Getty Images
Meteorology may have come a long way since its inception, but it is not possible for anyone — whether it be the government, scientists or billionaires — to control the weather, according to experts.
The desert region of Dubai received a record-breaking amount of rain — two year’s worth in 24 hours — in April. Ever since, every time a flash flooding event occurs, ABC New Chief Meteorologist and Managing Editor of the ABC News Climate Unit Ginger Zee has been receiving messages on social media from people who claim the sharp increase in precipitation is not the result of nature.
“They are making it rain” is the overall theme of the conspiracy theories Zee keeps hearing about.
The commenters are often referring to cloud seeding, a weather modification technique currently used in the United Arab Emirates and several places in the U.S., mostly in the Western U.S., a region notorious for its pervasive droughts. The geoengineering technology involves injecting microscopic particles — sometimes silver iodide — into the atmosphere to encourage rain and snowfall.
The particles then act like magnets for water droplets and bind together until they are heavy enough to fall as rain or snow, amplifying the amount of precipitation. But the water droplets can’t be made out of nothing — it has to be already raining or snowing for cloud seeding to take effect.
For the last several decades, there have been investments in small-scale cloud seeding operations in pockets in the West, both ground-based and in the air, Brad Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University, told ABC News.
Despite feats in geoengineering, humans have no capability whatsoever to control the weather, Andrew Dessler, director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies, told ABC News.
“Until recently, we weren’t even sure it worked,” Udall said. “But there’s some new science that suggests, yes, you can slightly increase the precipitation out of storms due to these, usually ground-based, but sometimes air-based efforts.”
A 10-year cloud seeding experiment in the Snowy Range and Sierra Madre Range in Wyoming resulted in 5% to 15% increases in snow pack from winter storms, according to a 2015 report from the Wyoming Water Development Office. In the region around Reno, Nevada, cloud seeding is estimated to add enough water to supply about 400,000 households annually, according to the DRI.
While humans can enhance existing weather, it is not possible to control it, Dessler said.
“We humans are not powerless,” Udall said. “But, unfortunately, in the weather realm, our ability to affect things is pretty minor.”
Cloud seeding can’t make it rain. It can’t even make a cloud, according to Zee. And it certainly is not being used to create storms with enough precipitation to cause flash flooding.
If humans could control the weather, then the megadrought in the West would probably never had persisted at the level that it did for decades, Udall said.
In late September and early October, Google searches for cloud seeding ramped up again as Hurricanes Helene and Milton caused severe destruction far beyond the storm’s direct impact, including flash flooding in the mountain region near Asheville, North Carolina, previously considered a climate haven.
While there is some evidence that cloud seeding can enhance precipitation, it’s impossible for humans to create or steer a hurricane, Dessler said.
“It’s amazing we’re even having this discussion because, of course, humans can’t control the weather in ways to create a hurricane,” Udall said.
However, there has been a larger-scale climate modification that has been ongoing for the past two centuries, Zee said.
“We’re doing that right now with green with enormous greenhouse gas emissions on a scale that humanity has never, ever done before,” Udall said.
Since the Industrial Revolution began in the late 1800s, the greenhouse gases emitted from the extraction and burning of fossil fuels have been causing global temperatures to rise at unprecedented rates, according to climate scientists.
The amplification of Earth’s natural warming has actually increased hourly rainfall rates — a key factor in flash flooding — across much of the U.S. by 10% to 40%, according to Climate Central.
“We have all contributed to making it rain more and heavier as we warm the planet,” Zee said.
Dessler likened global warming to “steroids” for extreme weather events.
“Steroids don’t hit a home run, but if you give steroids to a baseball player, he’s gonna hit more home runs,” Dessler said. “And that’s essentially, you know, the way to think about humans and the weather.”
The experts urged people to not believe rumors on the possibility that the weather can be controlled, chalking up the conspiracy theories as machinations of intrigue but nothing more.
“It’s yet one more example, right, of unbridled social media doing irreparable social harm,” Udall said.
ABC News’ Daniel Manzo contributed to this report.
