Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is trying to obstruct his sex trafficking case, prosecutors say
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(NEW YORK) — Sean Combs’ new application for bail should be denied because the music mogul “poses serious risks of danger and obstruction” to his criminal sex trafficking case, federal prosecutors argued in an overnight court filing.
Prosecutors took aim at Combs’ activities from behind bars where, they alleged, “the defendant has, among other things, orchestrated social media campaigns that are, in his own words, aimed at tainting the jury pool; made efforts to publicly leak materials he views as helpful to his case; and contacted witnesses through third parties.”
Prosecutors cited notes from the Combs’ cell that were found during a sweep of the jail. The contents of the notes are redacted but the prosecutors said there is a “strong inference” that Combs paid off an unnamed witness who had posted a statement to Instagram.
The government filing also accused Combs of using the telephone accounts of at least eight other inmates at MDC-Brooklyn “seemingly to avoid law enforcement monitoring” and to make phone calls to people who are not on his approved contact list.
“To obtain or maintain access to other inmates’ [phone access code] numbers, the defendant directs others to pay the inmates, including through payment processing apps and BOP commissary account deposits,” the filing said.
Defense attorneys said new evidence “undermines” the government’s case against Combs but prosecutors said “the defendant offers nothing new and material justifying a third bail hearing” and “rehashes the same arguments” rejected by two other judges.
The “near-total restrictions” Combs offered as part of an enhanced bail package are “woefully insufficient” in keeping him from tainting his upcoming trial, prosecutors said.
“The defendant is a violent, serial abuser who uses his vast wealth and position in the entertainment industry to conceal his illegal conduct and prevent victims of, and witnesses to, his abuse from coming forward,” prosecutors said.
The judge has scheduled a hearing for Friday afternoon. Combs has pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and prostitution charges that accused him of using violence, threats and coercion to force women to engage in sex acts with male prostitutes, sometimes lasting days and often recorded. Combs allegedly called the activity “freak offs.”
In arguing for release, Combs argued the video of him attacking his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura actually revealed “a loving, at-times toxic, long-term relationship between two adults who decided mutually to break up.”
(NEW JERSEY) — Bear hunting season has begun in New Jersey – a controversial decision that state officials say is intended to curb the population of black bears interacting with humans.
Segment A of bear hunting season began on Monday and will last through Oct. 19, with the first three days open for bowhunters only. The final three days, from Oct. 17-19, will be open for bowhunters and muzzleloader rifles, according to the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife (NJFW).
For Segment B of black bear season, lasting Dec. 9-14, bear hunting will be permitted in New Jersey for shotgun and muzzleloader rifles only, according to the NJFW. Hunting hours during both segments begin 30 minutes before sunrise and end 30 minutes after sunset.
Hunters are limited to one bear over 75 pounds – or 50 pounds dressed – per segment, regardless of the number of permits the hunter holds, according to the Division of Fish and Wildlife. Hunters are not permitted to harvest black bears weighing less than 75 pounds live or 50 pounds dressed, nor can they hunt any adult bears in the presence of cubs.
The NJFW also said they may close the season early or extend it, depending on the number of bears harvested.
If the cumulative harvest rate reaches 30% of bears tagged in 2024, the season will be closed, according to the division. If the harvest rate doesn’t reach 20% for the period, the hunt will be extended to Dec. 18-Dec. 21.
This year marks the third opening of bear hunting season in New Jersey since 2022, when the NJFW’s Fish and Game Council voted unanimously to reinstate the state’s annual bear hunt, citing a significant increase in bear sightings around the state.
Animal conservationists criticized the decision at the time, telling ABC News that the measure wouldn’t lead to a decrease in human and bear interactions.
“New Jersey’s reactive bear management approach is ineffective, as it focuses on managing the bears, not managing the source of the problem,” Anjuli Ramos-Busot, New Jersey director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement in December 2023, after the bear hunting season was extended.
The black bear population in New Jersey has been increasing and expanding its range since the 1980s, with sightings in all 21 counties in the state, according to the NJFW.
In 2020, there were more than 3,150 black bears in the region north of Interstate 78 and west of Interstate 287 alone, a roughly 30% increase from the 2019 estimated population of 2,208 for the same region, according to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), which further notes that the population is expected to grow to 4,000 bears by 2027.
Dense populations of black bears can also lead to inadequate natural sources of food for the animals and territory for young males, causing wider dispersion of bears into areas where they are even more likely to come into conflict with people as they seek to feed from human trash, pet food left outside, seed from bird feeders, and agricultural crops, poultry and livestock, according to the NJFW.
Bear-involved incidents reported to the NJDEP from January 2022 through October 2022 increased by 237% compared to the same period in 2021, according to state data. The incidents included 62 aggressive encounters with humans, one attack on a human, 12 attacks on dogs, 12 home entries, 15 attempted home entries, 84 instances of property damage exceeding $1,000, and 52 attacks on protected livestock, according to the data.
The number of incidents decreased by more than 37% between 2022 and 2023, after bear hunting was reinstated, according to state data.
“Analysis of data from New Jersey reveals no correlation between the number of bears killed and human safety,” Wendy Keefover, senior strategist for native carnivore protection for the Humane Society of the United States, told ABC News via email. “Instead, researchers know that the most effective way for reducing conflicts with bears is to reduce access to human-food attractants.”
It is especially important during this time of year for residents to remove unsecured garbage cans and bird feeders, as bears preparing to go into hibernation typically eat about 20,000 calories per day, Keefover said.
“Hunting bears will never stop negative interactions with bears, but taking commonsense precautions like using bear-resistant trash cans and taking down bird feeders will,” Keefover said.
A total of 11,000 black bear hunting permits are available to properly licensed hunters and farmer hunters every year, according to the state. Firearm black bear hunters are required to wear a hat of solid fluorescent hunter orange or an outer garment containing at least 200 square inches of fluorescent orange material visible from all sides at all times while bear hunting, regulations state.
The 2022 reinstatement of bear hunting in New Jersey came four years Gov. Phil Murphy enforced a ban on the sport months after taking office in 2018. Murphy had run on a campaign promise that the bear hunts would not exist while he was in office.
“While I committed to ending the bear hunt, the data demands that we act now to prevent tragic bear and human interactions,” Murphy told reporters in a news conference in November 2022.
(NEW YORK) — Important bodies of water that supply water to populated regions in the Northeast have dried up due to drought conditions in recent months, according to experts.
Water levels at reservoirs in the region have decreased to the point of concern for water supply managers, hydrologists told ABC News.
Over the past three months, there has been a significant lack of precipitation all over the Northeast, Elizabeth Carter, an assistant professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Syracuse University, told ABC News.
Data from the U.S. Geological Survey shows rivers and channels throughout the Northeast region are at extremely low levels. Fall is the time of year when rivers and streams are typically near full capacity, refilling from the summer months when usage is at the all-time high, said Brian Rahm, director of the New York State Water Resources Institute at Cornell University.
“This would be a low level that we would expect to see less than once every 100 years,” Carter said.
The heavy rain soaking the Northeast on Thursday will help ease the drought but will not be enough to refill the reservoirs to normal levels, experts say.
Current water data from the USGS show extremely low streamflow conditions, which indicate that the groundwater table has dropped in tandem to the lack of precipitation — as the groundwater continues to flow out of perennial streams without any replenishment, Carter said.
Water levels in the Wanaque Reservoir in New Jersey, the second-largest in the state with a capacity of 29 billion gallons, is currently at just 44% capacity, according to the USGS. Before-and-after satellite images show how much the body of water has shrunk since November 2023. Surface levels are currently at 16 feet below where it was at this time last year.
In New York City, the water system was at 63% capacity as of Monday, according to the city.
But the Northeast is home to many small towns that manage their own water. Water levels in smaller reservoirs have likely decreased at much more dramatic rates than the larger ones, Anita Milman, a professor in the Department of Environmental Conservation at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told ABC News. Smaller reservoirs are more severely impacted by the drought, Gardner Bent, information specialist at the USGS New England Water Science Center, told ABC News.
The Cambridge Reservoir in Massachusetts, which has a capacity of 1.5 billion gallons, is below 50% capacity, Bent said.
“Those are the places that I would be the most concerned about, because they have a limited amount of water and storage, and they need that water,” she said.
Reservoirs all over the U.S. are experiencing declines, according to a paper published in August in Geophysical Research Letters. Major reservoirs — including the Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the largest in the U.S. — are experiencing longer, more severe and more variable periods of low storage than several decades ago, the study, led by the USGS, found.
The Northeast has been in a rain deficit since September. Since last week, drought conditions have continued to worsen across New Jersey, with 100% of the state now in a severe drought, and extreme drought conditions expanding across parts of South Jersey, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
The state of New Jersey issued a drought warning for the first time since 2016. This is also the first time a drought warning has been issued for New York City since 2002, according to officials.
Will the Northeast receive more rain in the coming weeks?
Looking ahead, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center says that odds favor above average precipitation for a large swath of the nation through the end of November, including much of the Plains, the Midwest, and East Coast.
In the Northeast, a much-needed stretch of wet weather began impacting the region on Wednesday night and is expected to continue through Friday.
A large swath of the region, including northern New Jersey, New York City, and New York’s Hudson Valley, is expected to receive more than 2 inches of rain over that time.
The soaking rain will effectively end the elevated wildfire danger that has been plaguing much of the region in recent weeks.
For cities like New York and Newark, New Jersey, more than 2 inches of rain would completely erase the rainfall deficit for November and cut the current fall season deficit by around 25%.
However, even after this drenching rainfall, much of the Northeast, including the I-95 corridor, would still need to receive several inches of rain in the coming weeks to significantly improve drought conditions. More than a half-foot of rain would need to fall to completely wipe out the current rainfall deficit that many large cities have been experiencing since September.
Recent rounds of significant precipitation have been alleviating drought conditions across portions of the Plains, Midwest and South over the past seven days. For the contiguous U.S., overall drought coverage decreased from 49.84% to 45.48% week over week, according to an update released on Thursday by the U.S. Drought Monitor. The soaking rain currently sweeping across the Northeast will not be factored into the drought monitor until next week’s update.
But it will take months for dry conditions to recuperate, the experts said.
“We’re really looking for sustained seasonal precipitation to slowly bring these systems back to, you know, to where we expect them to be,” Rahm said.
The current drought situation took months to evolve, and it will likely take several more rounds of significant rainfall over the span of weeks or even months to completely eliminate the widespread drought in the region, Bent said.
What will happen if drought conditions don’t improve?
Every state in the U.S. has a drought contingency plan in the event that water levels dwindle to alarming levels, which include steps to deal with increasingly restricted supply availability, the experts said. Once drought conditions worsen to a “warning,” water managers begin to implement actions that wouldn’t necessarily be triggered by a “watch,” Rahm said.
If dry conditions persist in the Northeast, the first step will be voluntary restrictions, Milman said. Then, legal mandates would be issued to reduce water use, she added.
One saving grace for the extremely dry conditions in the Northeast is that the fall is not the time of year when water usage is at its highest, the experts said. During the summer, people are often expending a lot of water for their lawns and gardens, but those plants will soon go into dormant mode, Milman said.
Conversely, it means that drought protection measures that are intended to be implemented during the summer, when all levels are low, may not make as much of a difference, Milman said. Outdoor water and the times people are permitted to water their lawns — when sunlight isn’t at its highest — are typically targeted first.
“We recognize that indoor water use is essential for most human needs,” Milman said.
The Northeast is typically considered a “water rich” region, and the infrastructure is set up based on expectations of average seasonal precipitation, Rahm said.
“The infrastructure that we have established to use that water is reliant — in some ways — on our expectations of how that water will fall,” he said.
In other countries with arid climates, cutbacks can involve rationing, such as differing segments of a town getting a certain amount of water pressure during certain times a week, which has proved successful, Milman said.
“I’ve never seen this in the eastern United States,” she said. “… But this is what other countries do all the time when they don’t have enough supply.”
(NEW YORK CITY) — As people across a large section of the U.S. mainland were breaking out T-shirts and shorts Wednesday amid record-breaking high temperatures, several inches of snow blanketed the mountaintops of Hawaii and residents across the Great Plains were bracing for possible tornadoes.
The U.S. forecast for Wednesday offered a smorgasbord from balmy to severe weather heading into the Halloween weekend.
As firefighters in Colorado battled wildfires and meteorologists issued red-flag fire danger warnings, high elevations of Hawaii’s Big Island resembled the Rocky Mountains in winter.
Several inches of snow blanketed the summits of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, the tallest peaks in Hawaii and part of the state’s Volcanoes National Park.
“Due to winter weather conditions, the summit is currently closed for both day and overnight use, and permits for Mauna Loa Summit Cabin are temporarily on hold,” the Volcanoes National Park said in a statement on its Facebook page.
Meanwhile, in the actual Rockies, a major storm system moving in is expected to bring up to a foot of fresh October snow. But elsewhere in Colorado, firefighters were dealing with what investigators suspect is a “human-caused” wildfire that spread to 166 acres near the town of Divide and was 60% contained on Wednesday.
The wintry weather expected for the Rockies was countered by record-breaking temperatures across a large part of the nation from Detroit, where it’s forecast to get up to 80 degrees on Wednesday. In Laredo, Texas, the temperature is expected to hit 94, which would set a new daily record.
On Tuesday, daily temperature records were broken in Austin, Texas, where it hit 90 degrees; Chicago, where the temperature soared to 82, tying a record; and Cleveland, Ohio, which reached 78 and also tied a record.
Detroit on Tuesday reached a record-breaking 79 degrees. Green Bay, Wisconsin, reached 82 degrees Tuesday, surpassing a record for the day set in 1937.
Parts of the Northeast could see the warmest Halloween on record, officials said.
In the Heartland, which has also been experiencing high temperatures this week, severe weather moving in could spawn a few strong tornadoes Wednesday afternoon and into the evening from Texas to Iowa.
The National Weather Service is also warning of an enhanced risk of severe thunderstorms Wednesday for portions of eastern Kansas, northeast Oklahoma and northwest Missouri.
“Severe thunderstorms capable of producing large hail, damaging wind gusts, and a few tornadoes, are expected today into tonight across the middle Missouri Valley and central/southern Plains, including parts of eastern Kansas and Oklahoma into Missouri,” the NWS said in a detailed outlook it issued Wednesday.
