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) — President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order Wednesday banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports, senior administration officials told ABC News, fulfilling a promise that was at the center of his 2024 campaign.
The order will establish sweeping mandates on sex and sports policy and will direct federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, to interpret federal Title IX rules as prohibiting the participation of transgender girls and women in female sports categories, according to a White House document on the upcoming executive order obtained by ABC News.
The order, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” sources said, will mandate immediate enforcement, including against schools and athletic associations that “deny women single-sex sports and single-sex locker rooms,” according to the document, and will direct State attorneys general to identify best practices for enforcing the mandate.
The White House expects sports bodies like the NCAA to change their rules in accordance with the order once it is signed, according to a senior administration official.
“We’re a national governing body and we follow federal law,” NCAA President Charlie Baker told Republican senators at a hearing in December. “Clarity on this issue at the federal level would be very helpful.”
Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Wednesday afternoon at a signing ceremony featuring athletes, coaches and advocates who have campaigned against transgender participation in women’s sports, sources said. More than 60 attendees, including former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, will join the ceremony.
“We want to take actions to affirmatively protect women’s sports,” deputy assistant to the president and senior policy strategist May Mailman told ABC News, who said that the executive order is designed to further overturn Biden-era policies that required schools and athletic organizations to treat gender identity and sex as equivalent. She noted that a court ruling determined such requirements were not necessary, and that the president’s executive order would explicitly ban them.
Trump’s executive order will lead to increased discrimination and harassment, Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said in a statement on Tuesday.
“This order could expose young people to harassment and discrimination, emboldening people to question the gender of kids who don’t fit a narrow view of how they’re supposed to dress or look,” Robinson said. “Participating in sports is about learning the values of teamwork, dedication, and perseverance. And for so many students, sports are about finding somewhere to belong. We should want that for all kids – not partisan policies that make life harder for them.”
Mailman said the executive order’s goal was “not to make sure that everybody conforms to their sex stereotype as they’re playing sports” but to “protect women’s sports,” adding that options like co-ed categories would still be available.
If universities don’t comply, the White House warned they could not only lose federal funding but also face legal action.
“If schools don’t comply, it’s not just that they’re at risk of DOJ-based actions,” Mailman said. “Title Nine has a private right of action component behind it, so if schools are violating the law, they’re at risk of lawsuits from their female students, that is going to actually be more than just taking away federal funding. These are multi-million dollar lawsuits.”
The executive order also directs the Secretary of State to push for changes within the International Olympic Committee to maintain single-sex competition and the Department of Homeland Security to review visa policies to prevent transgender women from identifying as female, which would allow them to compete in women’s sports, according to the document detailing the order.
The order is the most aggressive move yet by Trump to fulfill one of his central campaign promises regarding transgender athletes in women’s sports.
Trump signed an executive order last week seeking to restrict gender-affirming care for people under the age of 19.
The order would move to restrict medical institutions that receive federal funding from providing such care — including puberty blockers, hormone therapies, and surgeries — calling on the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to “take all appropriate actions to end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.”
(WASHINGTON) — As Democrats attempt to rebound from an underwhelming showing in the 2024 election, California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna is not only taking stock of the stinging defeat last fall, but also taking shots at his own political party.
After watching Democrats swap nominees and struggle to deliver a cohesive message to voters in the last campaign cycle, Khanna told ABC News in an exclusive interview that he believes a political reform agenda focused on combating corruption “is what we should run on in 2026” and laments the political costs that came as Democrats campaigned on other priorities in 2024.
“It was a mistake,” Khanna said, adding he “didn’t hear any political reform agenda” from President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris during their respective presidential campaigns. “Trump became the outsider. It was a mistake we didn’t run on the theme of reform. Getting money and lobbyists out of politics — that should be our mantle.”
Now, Khanna is introducing the Drain The Swamp Act, which would permanently prohibit White House officials from accepting gifts from lobbyists — reinstating a Biden-era mandate that established ethics and lobbying rules for appointees in the administration.
“Anti-corruption has to be core to rebuilding the Democratic brand,” Khanna, serving in his fifth term, said. “Democrats need to be seen as owning the mantle of reform.”
Khanna said he finds it striking that one of President Donald Trump’s first acts of his second term was to sign an executive order to overturn Biden’s order — creating the impetus to craft an agenda that takes aim at Washington’s revolving door between lobbyists and lawmakers.
“It’s part of a broader sense that Democrats have to run on anti-corruption,” Khanna said, complaining that the Democratic Party enabled Trump to “co-opt” the “drain the swamp” theme of anti-corruption. Khanna said it has cost his party not only two presidential elections in 2016 and 2024, but also majority control of Congress.
“We need to be zealous,” Khanna said — explaining his vision for a five-point anti-corruption agenda.
Khanna wants to ban former members of Congress from ever lobbying Congress, and he wants to impose 12-year term limits for members and 18-year term limits on Supreme Court justices. Khanna says he believes timed-out justices should return to serve on lower courts after they leave a post on the high court. Khanna also advocates for a “binding code of ethics” for Supreme Court justices amid ethics pressure on the court.
“If Democrats want to rebuild, start with anti-political corruption,” Khanna stressed, adding he has received a positive reception from a range of people such as billionaire Mark Cuban and even Republican voters who are supportive of his pledge to “drain the swamp.”
Khanna also calls for a ban on members of Congress and their families from holding and trading individual stocks during the member’s tenure in office, as well as a ban on members of Congress and candidates running for House or Senate seats from accepting contributions from political action committees.
As for his own future political interest — whether reelection, the California governor’s mansion or even the White House in 2028 — Khanna is keeping his cards close, but his options open.
“Ro believes that anti-corruption and economic patriotism need to be the driving themes of the Democratic Party for 2026 and 2028, regardless of who gets into the fray or leads the party,” Sarah Drory, a Khanna spokeswoman, told ABC when asked about the congressman’s political prospects.
Nevertheless, Khanna’s profile continues to grow as he faces voters and weighs his future options — sometimes even before Republican audiences on Fox News or in GOP-held districts.
After Trump delivered a joint address to Congress last week, Khanna went on “Fox News Sunday” and admitted that it “was not a good look” as Democrats protested not only the president, but also rejected the invited guests in the First Lady’s box.
“We should have stood for the boy with cancer. You stand for the president of the United States, out of respect for the American people,” Khanna said on the program. “I mean, you stand for the widow of the firefighter.”
“The story should have been on President Trump,” Khanna continued. “We should have been talking about the Medicaid cuts. Instead, we’re talking about our own behavior. And that’s a distraction from us getting out our economic message.”
Khanna will also hold three in-person town hall meetings during a “Benefits Over Billionaires” tour on March 23 in GOP-held districts, where his anti-corruption agenda will take stage alongside his progressive bona fides.
“It’s smart to have a clear message,” Khanna told ABC News. “We’re the party that’s going to save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.”
(NEW YORK) — Trevell Coleman, known professionally in the rap music world as G. Dep, is best known for his hit songs ‘Special Delivery’ and ‘Let’s Get It’. But his success was overshadowed by the overwhelming guilt he felt for shooting a man in 1993 and he decided one day in 2010 that he could no longer bear that burden.
Coleman, who joined P. Diddy’s Bad Boy Records in 1998, was only 18 years old when he shot a stranger, in the chest with a .40-caliber handgun near the James Weldon Johnson Houses, located on Park Avenue and E. 114th Street in Harlem.
The case remained cold for 17 years until Coleman made the shocking decision to confess to his crime.
“I think I was just at a point, you know, where it was like enough is enough,” Coleman told ABC News’ Deborah Roberts from prison in 2013.
Coleman said he ambushed the man during an attempted robbery and then fled the scene. He wondered for years whether the man had survived the shooting. After a weeklong trial in 2012, a jury convicted him of second-degree murder. He was subsequently sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
At the end of 2023, after serving more than 13 years, G. Dep was shown mercy. With the original prosecutor’s and judge’s support, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul granted him clemency.
He walked free in April 2024.
“It’s still things that I have to,” Coleman said. “You know, I would like to give back to the society.”
Coleman, at 50, is searching for a new beginning. He earned an associate’s degree in prison and has the support of his wife, Laticia, and his adult children.
Coleman now works in music production at SCAN-Harbor, a nonprofit organization serving at-risk children and families in Harlem and the South Bronx.
He speaks to young people and shares his story to motivate them to avoid a life of crime, emphasizing the importance of staying out of prison.
“You take somebody’s life like, what do you do to make up for that,” Coleman told SCAN-HARBOR youth. “But, you know, all you can do is make steps toward it, you know, making it better.”
While he now tries to help guide vulnerable kids down the right path, Coleman understands the harsh reality that many end up in prison — some even for life.
“Yeah, he did something wrong,” Lew Zuchman, Scan-Harbor executive director, said. “But… that his conscience, which moved him to turn himself in, is very special to me. And I’m hoping that he can… really share this and explain this to our young people.”
Federal and state officials have debated suitable sentences for youth offenders who have committed violent crimes, as has the Supreme Court in a series of rulings.
In 2012, Miller v. Alabama found that mandatory life without parole for juvenile homicide offenders was unconstitutional. Four years later, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Montgomery v. Louisiana that the 2012 Miller v. Alabama decision should apply retroactively to juvenile offenders sentenced to life without parole.
Since the rulings, more than 1,000 juvenile lifers have been released. As of today, 28 states and Washington, D.C., have banned such sentences.
“I was a follower in a way,” Coleman said. “Like, I learned that, you know, I wasn’t really thinking and I wasn’t really being an individual.”
While Coleman and others were given a second chance, youth in other states have more challenges. Pennsylvania is one of the states where regulations for young offenders remain among the strictest, making advocacy even more imperative.
Pennsylvania had the highest number of so-called “juvenile lifers” of any state at the time of Miller v. Alabama, with the majority coming from Philadelphia.
In Pennsylvania, children as young as 10 can be charged, prosecuted, and convicted as adults. This is something that John Pace, a senior reentry coordinator at the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project, highlights.
At the age of 17, Pace was sentenced to life in prison for second-degree homicide. He served 31 years and earned a college degree while incarcerated.
“The ’80s was a time period in which the war on drugs was very prevalent,” Pace said. “It made it easy for legislators to create laws that would make it easy to prosecute young people as adults.”
Pace now helps mentor incarcerated youth through the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project. One of those youths is 26-year-old Raequan Deal, born and raised in Philadelphia. In 2016, when he was 17, Deal was convicted of two felonies and served a total of twenty-two months in an adult county jail.
While incarcerated, Deal found support from the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project, an organization dedicated to preventing children like him from being placed in adult jails and prisons and advocating for the release of “juvenile lifers.”
“Being in jail was no fun place, it can make or break you. Luckily it made me, you know,” Deal said. “So I kind of see though I went to prison, I came out as a better person.”
