World’s most active volcano begins 5th eruptive episode
Kīlauea volcano erupts in in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park on Jan. 22, 2025. Image via USGS.
(KILAEUA, Hawaii,) — The world’s most active volcano, located in Kilauea, Hawaii, resumed its latest eruption on Wednesday.
Volcanic activity was noted just before 3 p.m. local time in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
The activity marked the fifth episode from the Kilauea volcano since it started to erupt on Dec. 23, 2024.
“Weak, intermittent spatter” was observed earlier in the day, but it was not until 2:57 p.m. that “small spatter fountains” of lava could be seen, marking the beginning of a new phase of the eruption, according to the United States Geological Survey, which assesses the risk of volcanic hazards in the U.S.
Such activity can be monitored through the agency’s volcano livestream on YouTube.
“Small lava dome fountains in the north vent are feeding short lava flows in the southwest part of the caldera,” the USGS wrote in an Instagram post on Wednesday. “Volcanic gas emissions are elevated compared to during the eruptive pause.”
The USGS noted that observable lava flow began at 2:59 p.m. and “seismic tremor” increased at 3:00 p.m.
In an advisory notice posted Wednesday, the agency wrote that “significant hazards” of the eruption include “wall instability, ground cracking, and rockfalls.” It noted that these hazards could be enhanced by earthquakes, which would endanger members of the public that ventured too close to the volcano within the national park.
“This underscores the extremely hazardous nature of Kilauea’s caldera rim surrounding Halemaʻumaʻu crater, an area that has been closed to the public since late 2007,” the USGS wrote.
It also said that it “continues to closely monitor Kilauea and will issue an eruption update tomorrow morning unless there are significant changes before then.”
The fourth and most recent eruption episode began on Jan. 15, but it had paused over the weekend on Jan. 18.
“Each episode of lava fountaining since December 23, 2024, has continued for 14 hours to 8 days and episodes have been separated by pauses in eruptive activity lasting less than 24 hours to 12 days,” the USGS advisory said.
There are about 170 potentially active volcanoes in the U.S., according to the USGS.
ABC News’ Marilyn Heck and Jennifer Watts contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — While Election Day is finally here, more than 83 million people have already cast their ballots.
Election Day was trending on the busy side, with roughly half of the 161.42 million registered voters still heading to the polls.
In Georgia, one of seven key swing states, long lines were forming outside polling stations, officials said, despite more than 4 million people in the Peach State having already voted.
In Fulton County, Georgia’s most populous county, which includes the city of Atlanta, nearly 30,000 people had cast their in-person ballots by 9:40 a.m. Tuesday, a little more than three-and-a-half hours after the polls opened at 7 a.m., said Nadine Williams, the Fulton County director of registration.
“All polling sites are secure with an active security presence,” said Williams, adding that the county had received five “non-credible” bomb threats Tuesday morning, two of which prompted the evacuation of voting locations for about 30 minutes each.
“Outside of these brief interruptions, Election Day has been quiet, with minimal issues reported and we remain prepared to address any misinformation or additional disruption to ensure a smooth experience for all voters today,” Williams said.
Of the 83 million voters nationwide who have already cast ballots, 45 million did so in person while 38 million mailed in ballots, according to the University of Florida Election Lab. About 37.7% of the early votes were cast by registered Democrats while 35.9% of Republicans voted early, according to the lab.
In the 2020 presidential election, 66% of eligible voters cast ballots, the highest of any national election. President Joe Biden beat Trump 51.31% to 46.85%, according to the Federal Election Commission.
This election is expected to be even closer than 2020.
An ABC News/Ipsos poll released Saturday showed Harris with an overall three-point advantage over Trump among likely voters nationwide, 49% to 46%.
Both Harris and Trump have spent the last week of the campaign barnstorming in battleground states, fighting tooth and nail for every last undecided vote. On Monday, the candidates engaged in a sprint to the finish line, holding multiple rallies in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
In a sampling of nine states, including the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, 54% of the early voters were women and 43.8% were men, according to the lab. The largest block of early voters, 39.4%, were 41- to-65-year-olds, while voters over 65 represented 34.5% of the early vote.
Younger voters — 26 to 40 years old — made up 17.5% of the early vote, while 8.7% of voters 18 to 25 cast early ballots, according to the lab.
Some states like North Carolina, another key swing state, have shattered records for early voting.
More than 4.4 million voters have cast early ballots in North Carolina, 4.2 million of them in person, according to the lab. The North Carolina Board of Elections said the number of early voters broke a record, surpassing the 3.6 million early votes cast in the 2020 election, officials said.
In the swing state of Pennsylvania, at least 1.8 million people voted early via mail-in ballots, according to the Florida Election Lab, which reported that 55.7% of the earlier voters were women and 32.8% were men.
Early voting in Georgia began on Oct. 15, and more than 3.7 million people voted in person, while another 265,648 cast mail-in ballots, according to the lab. A breakdown of the early voters showed 55.7% were women and 43.5% were men, according to the lab.
In other battleground states, Michigan saw 3.2 million voters casting mail-in ballots, 55% women and 44.9% men; 2.3 million cast early mail-in ballots in Arizona, 40.8% of whom are registered Republicans and 32% Democrats, according to the lab.
In Nevada, another swing state, a little over 1 million voters cast early ballots, including 543,271 who voted in person and 556,062 who sent in mail-in ballots, the lab reported. Of those who voted early in Nevada, 37.5% were Republican and 33.7% were Democrat, according to the lab.
And in the battleground state of Wisconsin, 1.5 million people voted early, including 949,157 who cast in-person ballots and 561,616 who cast mail-in ballots, the lab reported.
ABC News’ Olivia Rubin contributed to this report.
An ABC News graphic shows the weather forecast on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — The first ever blizzard warning has been issued for parts of the Texas and Louisiana coast as a historic snowstorm hits the South.
Debilitating travel conditions and power outages are possible across the region.
Houston’s airports are closed and nearly 2,000 flights are canceled across the U.S.
The snow is underway Tuesday morning from Austin to Houston to Louisiana to Mississippi to Alabama.
By midday, the snow will leave the Houston area and push east, continuing across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and into Georgia and the Carolinas.
By the evening, the snow will be ending in Alabama and still hitting Tallahassee, Florida; Atlanta; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Charleston, South Carolina.
Houston may see 1 to 3 inches of snow and New Orleans may see 3 to 5 inches of snow.
New Orleans has only recorded snowfall on eight days since National Weather Service records began in 1948.
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said a storm of this magnitude has not been documented since 1963.
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, may get 3 to 6 inches of snow and the Florida Panhandle may see 2 to 4 inches.
Schools are closed from Houston to New Orleans to Savannah.
“Our reality is this, we can do hurricanes and tropical storms, alright? We don’t do cold and we don’t do ice well,” Savannah Mayor Van Johnson said Monday. “If you don’t have to go outside, don’t. Stay home. Watch Netflix, get make some soup, enjoy your family.”
The snow will be done by sunrise Wednesday but rain will continue in the Florida Peninsula.
Moses Stewart and Diane Hawkins grieve over the slaying of their son Yusuf Hawkins; Nicole Bengiveno/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images
(BROOKLYN, N.Y.) — When Yusuf Hawkins, a Black 16-year-old, was shot and killed in Brooklyn in 1989 as he went to purchase a car, the crime set off months of angry protests.
Now, the man convicted in Hawkins’ murder, who has been behind bars for nearly 35 years, will get a chance Thursday to prove his innocence with what his defense attorney says is new evidence.
Joseph Fama, who was 18 at the time of the murder, was part of a white mob that chased down Hawkins and three other unarmed Black youths in August 1989 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, according to court documents.
Fama, who is white, was convicted in May 1990 of second-degree murder, first-degree riot, third-degree criminal possession of a weapon, first-degree unlawful imprisonment, menacing and discrimination. All counts were ordered to run concurrently, giving Fama 25 years to life in prison, according to court documents.
“Unfortunately, terribly, Yusuf Hawkins, innocent, innocent man, was killed — let’s just start with that — because he’s Black,” Justin Bonus, Fama’s attorney, told ABC News in a phone interview last week. “My client was not involved with this whole group of kids sitting there waiting for Black guys to come.”
The murder sparked protests against racial violence around New York City at a time when tensions were high. Months earlier, the Central Park Five, a group of Black and Hispanic teenagers, were wrongfully convicted of rape and assault of a white female jogger.
Five witnesses testified that they saw Fama shoot Hawkins, and four more witnesses placed Fama at the scene the night that the teenager was shot three times, according to court documents. Two jailhouse informants testified that Fama admitted to them that he shot Hawkins because he was Black, according to court documents.
“First of all, jailhouse informants, are we going to go by that?” Bonus said to ABC News.
The judge in Fama’s original trial did not allow the father of one of the informants to testify that he believed his son was lying about his claim that Fama confessed that he killed Hawkins. The courts made that decision because the defense failed to lay a foundation for the admission of the evidence during cross-examination of the informant, according to court documents.
According to a motion by Fama’s defense, two of the witnesses, who previously said that they saw Fama kill Hawkins, recanted their testimonies and claimed that they were coerced by investigators to pin the shooting on the defendant.
During the original trial, the court denied the defense’s request to call Frankie Tighe, one of the witnesses who recanted his testimony, to the stand because defense attorneys had already rested their case four days before their request, according to court documents.
Keith Mondello, one of the alleged leaders of the mob that chased Hawkins and who was convicted, provided new evidence that also claimed Fama was not the killer, according to court documents.
Five additional witnesses originally claimed that, after the shooting, Tighe ran around the corner to their location and they heard him say, “Joe Fama just shot a Black kid,” according to court documents.
The defense says they have new evidence that one of those witnesses later recanted their testimony and stated that detectives spoke to him many times and pressured him to accuse Fama, according to the defense’s motion.
On Aug. 23, 1989, at about 9:00 p.m. Hawkins and three of his peers took a subway train from their Brooklyn neighborhood in East New York to Bensonhurst to look at a used car for sale, according to court documents.
The four peers became lost in Bensonhurst and, as they searched for the address of where the used car would be, they came across a group of 20 to 40 white individuals who, coincidentally, were expecting Black and Hispanic men to attend a birthday party in the neighborhood that night, according to court documents.
The party was hosted by an 18-year-old white woman who the men in the neighborhood believed invited Black and Hispanic men to the birthday celebration, according to Bonus. The men gathered in the vicinity of her home, allegedly voiced racist threats and armed themselves with bats, golf clubs and handguns as they allegedly waited for the men of color to come to the party, according to court documents.
The group of men chased Hawkins and his peers when they saw them, according to court documents. The confrontation ended with Hawkins shot. He died a short time later. Fama was sentenced for 25 years to life in prison on June 11, 1990.
The defense claims to have twelve new affidavits from witnesses that allege that Fama did not shoot Hawkins. Some of those witnesses say police pressured them to accuse Fama.
The defense motion focuses on one investigator, former Detective Louis Scarcella, claiming he was “significantly involved with the investigation and procuring witnesses.”
A complaint against Scarcella alleges that nearly 20 homicide convictions associated with the former detective have been vacated and in at least nine of those convictions, Scarcella coerced false confessions or fabricated written confessions from innocent individuals, according to court records.
Joel Cohen, Scarcella’s attorney, told ABC News over the phone that some judges found that Scarcella was involved in improper tactics which led to the convictions of several individuals, but the court only found innocence in one of the overturned cases.
Scarcella didn’t file a response to any of the complaints, according to his attorney.
“Joseph Fama’s motion to vacate his conviction for the racially motivated murder of Yusef Hawkings 32 years ago is flatly contradicted by the overwhelming evidence of his guilt,” Cohen told ABC News in part through a statement. “His lawyer’s claims that the that the “…”murder investigation was led by Detective Louis Scarcella ,” and that Scarcella was “all over the investigation” are reckless and provably false and based in part by the lawyer’s “surmise.”
The DA’s office told ABC News that Scarcella only played a minor role in the investigation and was one of more than 65 investigators working on the case. The defense believes Scarcella was “significantly involved in” the investigation, according to court documents.
The NYPD did not reply to ABC News’ request for a statement.
The DA’s office claims witnesses testified that they saw Fama receive a gun from the individual who Bonus alleges was the actual shooter just before Hawkins’ death.
In Tighe’s recanted statement, he claimed that Fama used a silver handgun in the shooting, but Claude Stanford, one of Hawkins’ peers who was with him the night he was shot, said that the shooter used a black gun and was about 6 feet tall, according to the defense’s motion. Fama was about 5 feet, 8 inches tall at the time, according to court documents.
Fama has already tried twice to appeal his conviction and was denied by the court both times, according to legal documents. This is his third attempt to vacate his conviction.
Fama’s court conference hearing is set for Nov. 21, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.
