Summer scorcher: Dangerous heat moves to South after baking Northeast, Midwest

August 29, 2024

ABC News

(NEW YORK) — Life-threatening heat spread across the eastern half of the U.S. this week, first hitting the Midwest, then the Northeast and now the South.

Chicago hit 99 degrees on Tuesday, breaking the city’s daily record of 97 degrees. Some schools in the area closed early due to the weather.

On Wednesday, the heat moved east. Record highs were shattered in Washington, D,C., which reached 101 degrees, and Greenwood, Mississippi, which reached 103 degrees.

The final tennis major of the year, the U.S. Open, which is underway in New York City, operated under an “extreme weather policy,” with stadium roofs partially closed and extended breaks for players.

The heat has now left the Midwest and Northeast.

On Thursday, the South is in the bull’s-eye, with record highs possible in cities including Nashville, Tennessee; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Louisville, Kentucky.

The heat index — what temperature it feels like with humidity — is forecast to soar to 100 degrees in Washington, D.C., and Charleston, South Carolina; 102 degrees in Nashville; Richmond, Virginia; Birmingham, Alabama; and Charlotte, North Carolina; 103 in Raleigh and Charleston, West Virginia; and a scorching 105 in Jackson, Mississippi.

Friday will bring one more day of record heat. By the weekend, cooler air will move in.

There are hundreds of deaths each year in the U.S. due to excessive heat, according to CDC WONDER, an online database, and scientists caution that the actual number of heat-related deaths is likely higher.

Last year marked the most heat-related deaths in the U.S. on record, according to JAMA, a peer-reviewed medical journal published by the American Medical Association.

Generative AI is disrupting creative communities, here’s how they are fighting back

KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images

(NEW YORK) — Generative artificial intelligence companies capable of generating creative content are also said to be disrupting the livelihoods of creatives around the world, according to a group of creatives speaking out publicly about the issue.

“The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted, a ” statement signed by 11,500 actors, musicians, authors, photographers, and composers from across the world, read.

Julianne Moore, Kevin Bacon, Thom Yorke and Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus, are among the tens of thousands of creatives who have signed this open letter calling for these companies to stop indiscriminately training on content they say should be licensed.

“This is a major issue for many of the artists, musicians, actors, authors, and other creators whose work is being exploited by AI companies,” said Ed Newton-Rex, a former AI executive who released the statement.

As a former head of audio at Stability AI, Newton-Rex is well acquainted with the internal data training practices of generative AI companies. He resigned over the company’s belief that training their AI models on copyrighted content without licensing it constitutes “fair use.”

Generative AI models have generally scrapped as much content as they could from the internet, downloaded it and trained their model to be able to create new work that is in the style of the work it trained on, Newton-Rex told ABC News.

“None of this revenue is coming back to the original artists,” explained Overlai founder Luke Neumann in a blog post about his new mobile app which aims to protect photography in the age of AI.

Neumann, who also signed the letter, launched the free app Overlai with world-renowned photographers Paul Nicklen and Cristina Mittermeier, when they noticed text-to-image generators could easily replicate the unique styles of both photographers. And, Neumann stresses the amount of work that goes into conservationist photography – the cost of travel and spending weeks, sometimes months in a location documenting a delicate ecosystem.

“I think AI companies really need to think long and hard about like how long they’re going to need organic data and if they want to be messing with these fragile business models of the people out there capturing this stuff,” Neumann to ABC News.

Several lawsuits from creatives ranging from writers to musicians to comedians have piled up against some of the biggest generative AI companies for copyright infringement.

Biden to announce over 0M in Florida resiliency projects following hurricanes

Biden to announce over $600M in Florida resiliency projects following hurricanes

Tristan Wheelock/Bloomberg via Getty Images

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden will travel on Sunday to Florida areas ravaged by the back-to-back hurricanes, and announce federal funding for projects to strengthen the electrical grid, according to the White House.

Biden will be touring St. Petersburg, one of the hardest hit Florida cities from Hurricane Milton last week, and reveal $612 million for six Department of Energy projects in the southeast.

Two of the projects are focused in Florida and provide a combined $94M in federal funds, according to the White House.

Gainesville Regional Utilities will use the funding to help mitigate the effects of increasingly extreme weather in north central Florida, “through storm hardening, as well as faster restoration through deployment of self-healing devices and tools that will enable more efficient and precise dispatching of field teams during outages,” the White House said in a statement.

Switched Source, a private utility technology developer, will work with Florida Power and Light to deploy Phase-EQ, which “optimizes power flow in distribution circuits, will unlock over 200 MW of system capacity, and improve reliability on circuits serving communities that are most susceptible to prolonged outages,” according to the White House.

“These investments are part of the president’s commitment to making long-term investments that protect, enhance, and upgrade our nation’s electric grid, especially in the face of extreme weather events,” the White House said in a statement.

Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday evening. At least 16 people were killed in the storm and over a million remain without power.

Biden has spoken to numerous state and local officials, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who he said was “very cooperative.” When asked if he would meet with DeSantis on Sunday, Biden said yes so long as the governor was available.

‘Hold onto that hope’: Urgent search for missing after Helene continues

Destroyed houses and buildings along the Broad River in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on Oct. 1, 2024 in Bat Cave, North Carolina. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

(NEW YORK) — At least 6,300 National Guard troops are racing to get aid to those in need — along with an army of volunteers — in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene as the death toll jumped to more than 160 across six states on Wednesday morning, with hundreds of people still reported missing.

New images from storm-ravaged areas are continuing to emerge on Wednesday in places like Erwin, Tennessee, where ambulances could be seen being towed away near where dozens of people were rescued from a roof of a hospital with dump trucks filled with trees and debris located nearby.

Elsewhere, in North Carolina, dramatic dashcam footage captured the moment a couple narrowly missed being swept up in a landslide in the Blue Ridge Mountains, with those landslides and flooding washing roads and bridges away and making it all but impossible to get access to some of the hardest hit areas.

“We have one suitcase, really,” North Carolina resident and Hurricane Helene survivor, Aaron Smith, told ABC News. “And so trying to figure out four people and a dog out of one suitcase, it’s the most, it’s just surreal.”

Another family in Hendersonville, North Carolina, became completely surrounded by floodwater, waiting for help in chest-high water and unable to get to dry land.

The Mirandas have been forced to use creek water to wash their clothes and have even had to find ice to keep insulin cold in coolers.

Jessica Meidinger said that she knows a witness who saw a neighbor’s house floating away down a river with them still inside — Rod Ashby was rescued Tuesday night but his wife, Kim, is still missing.

“Losing your most loved one when you had her in your arms and now you don’t there’s I don’t imagine there’s much that can compare to that,” Meidinger said. “She’s strong, she’s a breast cancer survivor. It’s hard not to hold on to that hope.”