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  • Thailand jails five poachers for killing tiger and her cub | CNN

    Thailand jails five poachers for killing tiger and her cub | CNN

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    Bangkok, Thailand
    CNN
     — 

    A court in western Thailand on Monday sentenced five poachers to prison terms of five years each for killing a female tiger and her cub in a national park last year.

    The provincial court ruled the five men broke conservation laws by killing the protected animals in Thong Pha Phum National Park, Kanchanaburi province, before skinning their carcasses and smoking their bones to prepare them for sale on the illicit market.

    Park rangers made the discovery in January last year and seized the tiger parts. Images distributed by officials and taken in the jungle showed the skins of two flayed tigers. Bones and carcass parts were also seen in pictures taken nearby.

    The court rejected the men’s argument that they had killed the tigers in revenge for attacks on livestock, ruling they “should have felt protective of nature” given that they lived in a community near the forest.

    Tigers are an endangered species with only about 4,500 remaining in the wild, according to the the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Though their numbers have increased in recent years, WWF says fewer than 200 of the big cats remain in national parks and wildlife sanctuaries across Thailand.

    Poaching, one of the biggest threats to tigers’ survival, is driven largely by demand in China and Vietnam for their bones, skins and other body parts used in traditional medicine.

    The safety and effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine is still heavily debated in China, where it has both adherents and skeptics.

    Though many of the remedies in TCM have been in use for hundreds of years, critics argue that there is often little verifiable scientific evidence or peer reviewed studies to support their supposed benefits.

    Thong Pha Phum National Park Chief Charoen Jaichon welcomed the court ruling.

    “I’m happy that justice has been delivered,” he told CNN on Tuesday. “This is a strong warning to any illegal hunters in Thailand’s national parks.”

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  • 5 people shot near a gun buyback event at a Los Angeles beach | CNN

    5 people shot near a gun buyback event at a Los Angeles beach | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Five people were injured in a shooting at a Los Angeles beach Saturday – a few miles from where city officials had hosted a gun buyback event earlier in the day, according to the Los Angeles Police Department and City Councilmember Tim McOsker.

    The LAPD’s Harbor Division responded to a radio call of a shooting at Royal Palms Beach around 5:45 p.m. Saturday.

    “Five male Hispanic victims were at a barbeque, at the beach, with a group of approximately 10-20 people,” Los Angeles police said in a written statement Sunday.

    Two suspect approached the group and got into a physical altercation. “The suspects then produced a handgun and fired multiple rounds, striking the victims,” police said. “The suspects then fled the location in a vehicle.”

    Five victims were struck by gunfire. “Last information we received was two victims are in critical condition, two victims are in serious condition and one victim is in stable condition,” the police statement said.

    Previously, police said one victim was in critical condition, and four were in stable condition.

    “We’re outraged and saddened by the shooting at Royal Palms Beach in San Pedro that has left 5 people injured,” said a joint statement by McOsker and Janice Hahn, chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

    “It’s tragically ironic that today we hosted a gun buy-back event just a few miles away from this location. Gun violence is wreaking havoc on our community.”

    Royal Palms Beach will be closed Sunday and will close earlier on weekends as city officials work on plans “to ensure safety and peaceful community use,” the joint statement said.

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  • Fact check: Republicans at CPAC make false claims about Biden, Zelensky, the FBI and children | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Republicans at CPAC make false claims about Biden, Zelensky, the FBI and children | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Conservative Political Action Conference is underway in Maryland. And the members of Congress, former government officials and conservative personalities who spoke at the conference on Thursday and Friday made false claims about a variety of topics.

    Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio uttered two false claims about President Joe Biden. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia repeated a debunked claim about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama used two inaccurate statistics as he lamented the state of the country. Former Trump White House official Steve Bannon repeated his regular lie about the 2020 election having been stolen from Trump, this time baselesly blaming Fox for Trump’s defeat.

    Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida incorrectly said a former Obama administration official had encouraged people to harass Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina inaccurately claimed Biden had laughed at a grieving mother and inaccurately insinuated that the FBI tipped off the media to its search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence. Two other speakers, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and former Trump administration official Sebastian Gorka, inflated the number of deaths from fentanyl.

    And that’s not all. Here is a fact check of 13 false claims from the conference, which continues on Saturday.

    Marjorie Taylor Greene said the Republican Party has a duty to protect children. Listing supposed threats to children, she said, “Now whether it’s like Zelensky saying he wants our sons and daughters to go die in Ukraine…” Later in her speech, she said, “I will look at a camera and directly tell Zelensky: you’d better leave your hands off of our sons and daughters, because they’re not dying over there.”

    Facts First: Greene’s claim is false. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t say he wants American sons and daughters to fight or die for Ukraine. The false claim, which was debunked by CNN and others earlier in the week, is based on a viral video that clipped Zelensky’s comments out of context.

    19-second video of Zelensky goes viral. See what was edited out

    In reality, Zelensky predicted at a press conference in late February that if Ukraine loses the war against Russia because it does not receive sufficient support from elsewhere, Russia will proceed to enter North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries in the Baltics (a region made up of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) that the US will be obligated to send troops to defend. Under the treaty that governs NATO, an attack on one member is considered an attack on all. Ukraine is not a NATO member, and Zelensky didn’t say Americans should fight there.

    Greene is one of the people who shared the out-of-context video on Twitter this week. You can read a full fact-check, with Zelensky’s complete quote, here.

    Right-wing commentator and former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon criticized right-wing cable channel Fox at length for, he argued, being insufficiently supportive of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Among other things, Bannon claimed that, on the night of the election in November 2020, “Fox News illegitimately called it for the opposition and not Donald J. Trump, of which our nation has never recovered.” Later, he said Trump is running again after “having it stolen, in broad daylight, of which they [Fox] participate in.”

    Facts First: This is nonsense. On election night in 2020, Fox accurately projected that Biden had won the state of Arizona. This projection did not change the outcome of the election; all of the votes are counted regardless of what media outlets have projected, and the counting showed that Biden won Arizona, and the election, fair and square. The 2020 election was not “stolen” from Trump.

    NATIONAL HARBOR, MARYLAND - MARCH 03: Former White House chief strategist for the Trump Administration Steve Bannon speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on March 03, 2023 in National Harbor, Maryland. The annual conservative conference entered its second day of speakers including congressional members, media personalities and members of former President Donald Trump's administration. President Donald Trump will address the event on Saturday. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    Bannon has a harsh message for Fox News at CPAC

    Fox, like other major media outlets, did not project that Biden had won the presidency until four days later. Fox personalities went on to repeatedly promote lies that the election was stolen from Trump – even as they privately dismissed and mocked these false claims, according to court filings from a voting technology company that is suing Fox for defamation.

    Rep. Jim Jordan claimed that Biden, “on day one,” made “three key changes” to immigration policy. Jordan said one of those changes was this: “We’re not going to deport anyone who come.” He proceeded to argue that people knowing “we’re not going to get deported” was a reason they decided to migrate to the US under Biden.

    Facts First: Jordan inaccurately described the 100-day deportation pause that Biden attempted to impose immediately after he took office on January 20, 2021. The policy did not say the US wouldn’t deport “anyone who comes.” It explicitly did not apply to anyone who arrived in the country after the end of October 2020, meaning people who arrived under the Biden administration or in the last months of the Trump administration could still be deported.

    Biden did say during the 2020 Democratic primary that “no one, no one will be deported at all” in his first 100 days as president. But Jordan claimed that this was the policy Biden actually implemented on his first day in office; Biden’s actual first-day policy was considerably narrower.

    Biden’s attempted 100-day pause also did not apply to people who engaged in or were suspected of terrorism or espionage, were seen to pose a national security risk, had waived their right to remain in the US, or whom the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement determined the law required to be removed.

    The pause was supposed to be in effect while the Department of Homeland Security conducted a review of immigration enforcement practices, but it was blocked by a federal judge shortly after it was announced.

    Rep. Ralph Norman strongly suggested the FBI had tipped off the media to its August search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and resort in Florida for government documents in the former president’s possession – while concealing its subsequent document searches of properties connected to Biden.

    Norman said: “When I saw the raid at Mar-a-Lago – you know, the cameras, the FBI – and compare that to when they found Biden’s, all of the documents he had, where was the media, where was the FBI? They kept it quiet early on, didn’t let it out. The job of the next president is going to be getting rid of the insiders that are undermining this government, and you’ve gotta clean house.”

    Facts First: Norman’s narrative is false. The FBI did not tip off the media to its search of Mar-a-Lago; CNN reported the next day that the search “happened so quietly, so secretly, that it wasn’t caught on camera at all.” Rather, media outlets belatedly sent cameras to Mar-a-Lago because Peter Schorsch, publisher of the website Florida Politics, learned of the search from non-FBI sources and tweeted about it either after it was over or as it was just concluding, and because Trump himself made a public statement less than 20 minutes later confirming that a search had occurred. Schorsch told CNN on Thursday: “I can, unequivocally, state that the FBI was not one of my two sources which alerted me to the raid.”

    Brian Stelter, then CNN’s chief media correspondent, wrote in his article the day after the search: “By the time local TV news cameras showed up outside the club, there was almost nothing to see. Websites used file photos of the Florida resort since there were no dramatic shots of the search.”

    It’s true that the public didn’t find out until late January about the FBI’s November search of Biden’s former think tank office in Washington, which was conducted with the consent of Biden’s legal team. But the belated presence of journalists at Mar-a-Lago on the day of the Trump search in August is not evidence of a double standard.

    And it’s worth noting that media cameras were on the scene when Biden’s beach home in Delaware was searched by the FBI in February. News outlets had set up a media “pool” to make sure any search there was recorded.

    Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a former college and high school football coach, said, “Going into thousands of kids’ homes and talking to parents every year recruiting, half the kids in this country – I’m not talking about race, I’m just talking about – half the kids in this country have one or no parent. And it’s because of the attack on faith. People are losing faith because, for some reason, because the attack [on] God.”

    Facts First: Tuberville’s claim that half of American children don’t have two parents is incorrect. Official figures from the Census Bureau show that, in 2021, about 70% of US children under the age of 18 lived with two parents and about 65% lived with two married parents.

    About 22% of children lived with only a mother, about 5% with only a father, and about 3% with no parent. But the Census Bureau has explained that even children who are listed as living with only one parent may have a second parent; children are listed as living with only one parent if, for example, one parent is deployed overseas with the military or if their divorced parents share custody of them.

    It is true that the percentage of US children living in households with two parents has been declining for decades. Still, Tuberville’s statistic significantly exaggerated the current situation. His spokesperson told CNN on Thursday that the senator was speaking “anecdotally” from his personal experience meeting with families as a football coach.

    Tuberville claimed that today’s children are being “indoctrinated” in schools by “woke” ideology and critical race theory. He then said, “We don’t teach reading, writing and arithmetic anymore. You know, half the kids in this country, when they graduate – think about this: half the kids in this country, when they graduate, can’t read their diploma.”

    Facts First: This is false. While many Americans do struggle with reading, there is no basis for the claim that “half” of high school graduates can’t read a basic document like a diploma. “Mr. Tuberville does not know what he’s talking about at all,” said Patricia Edwards, a Michigan State University professor of language and literacy who is a past president of the International Literacy Association and the Literacy Research Association. Edwards said there is “no evidence” to support Tuberville’s claim. She also said that people who can’t read at all are highly unlikely to finish high school and that “sometimes politicians embellish information.”

    Tuberville could have accurately said that a significant number of American teenagers and adults have reading trouble, though there is no apparent basis for connecting these struggles with supposed “woke” indoctrination. The organization ProLiteracy pointed CNN to 2017 data that found 23% of Americans age 16 to 65 have “low” literacy skills in English. That’s not “half,” as ProLiteracy pointed out, and it includes people who didn’t graduate from high school and people who are able to read basic text but struggle with more complex literacy tasks.

    The Tuberville spokesperson said the senator was speaking informally after having been briefed on other statistics about Americans’ struggles with reading, like a report that half of adults can’t read a book written at an eighth-grade level.

    Rep. Jim Jordan claimed of Biden: “The president of the United States stood in front of Independence Hall, called half the country fascists.”

    Facts First: This is not true. Biden did not denounce even close to “half the country” in this 2022 speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. He made clear that he was speaking about a minority of Republicans.

    In the speech, in which he never used the word “fascists,” Biden warned that “MAGA Republicans” like Trump are “extreme,” “do not respect the Constitution” and “do not believe in the rule of law.” But he also emphasized that “not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans.” In other words, he made clear that he was talking about far less than half of Americans.

    Trump earned fewer than 75 million votes in 2020 in a country of more than 258 million adults, so even a hypothetical criticism of every single Trump voter would not amount to criticism of “half the country.”

    Rep. Scott Perry claimed that “average citizens need to just at some point be willing to acknowledge and accept that every single facet of the federal government is weaponized against every single one of us.” Perry said moments later, “The government doesn’t have the right to tell you that you can’t buy a gas stove but that you must buy an electric vehicle.”

    Facts First: This is nonsense. The federal government has not told people that they can’t buy a gas stove or must buy an electric vehicle.

    The Biden administration has tried to encourage and incentivize the adoption of electric vehicles, but it has not tried to forbid the manufacture or purchase of traditional vehicles with internal combustion engines. Biden has set a goal of electric vehicles making up half of all new vehicles sold in the US by 2030.

    There was a January controversy about a Biden appointee to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, Richard Trumka Jr., saying that gas stoves pose a “hidden hazard,” as they emit air pollutants, and that “any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” But the commission as a whole has not shown support for a ban, and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a January press briefing: “The president does not support banning gas stoves. And the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is independent, is not banning gas stoves.”

    Rep. Ralph Norman claimed that Biden had just laughed at a mother who lost two sons to fentanyl.

    “I don’t know whether y’all saw, I just saw it this morning: Biden laughing at the mother who had two sons – to die, and he’s basically laughing and saying the fentanyl came from the previous administration. Who cares where it came from? The fact is it’s here,” Norman said.

    Facts First: Norman’s claim is false. Biden did not laugh at the mother who lost her sons to fentanyl, the anti-abortion activist Rebecca Kiessling; in a somber tone, he called her “a poor mother who lost two kids to fentanyl.” Rather, he proceeded to laugh about how Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had baselessly blamed the Biden administration for the young men’s deaths even though the tragedy happened in mid-2020, during the Trump administration. You can watch the video of Biden’s remarks here.

    Kiessling has demanded an apology from Biden. She is entitled to her criticism of Biden’s remarks and his chuckle – but the video clearly shows Norman was wrong when he claimed Biden was “laughing at the mother.”

    Rep. Kat Cammack told a story about the first hearing of the new Republican-led House select subcommittee on the supposed “weaponization” of the federal government. Cammack claimed she had asked a Democratic witness at this February hearing about his “incredibly vitriolic” Twitter feed in which, she claimed, he not only repeatedly criticized Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh but even went “so far as to encourage people to harass this Supreme Court justice.”

    Facts First: This story is false. The witness Cammack questioned in this February exchange at the subcommittee, former Obama administration deputy assistant attorney general Elliot Williams, did not encourage people to harass Kavanaugh. In fact, it’s not even true that Cammack accused him at the February hearing of having encouraged people to harass Kavanaugh. Rather, at the hearing, she merely claimed that Williams had tweeted numerous critical tweets about Kavanaugh but had been “unusually quiet” on Twitter after an alleged assassination attempt against the justice. Clearly, not tweeting about the incident is not the same thing as encouraging harassment.

    Williams, now a CNN legal analyst (he appeared at the subcommittee hearing in his personal capacity), said in a Thursday email that he had “no idea” what Cammack was looking at on his innocuous Twitter feed. He said: “I used to prosecute violent crimes, and clerked for two federal judges. Any suggestion that I’ve ever encouraged harassment of anyone – and particularly any official of the United States – is insulting and not based in reality.”

    Cammack’s spokesperson responded helpfully on Thursday to CNN’s initial queries about the story Cammack told at CPAC, explaining that she was referring to her February exchange with Williams. But the spokesperson stopped responding after CNN asked if Cammack was accurately describing this exchange with Williams and if they had any evidence of Williams actually having encouraged the harassment of Kavanaugh.

    Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana boasted about the state of the country “when Republicans were in charge.” Among other claims about Trump’s tenure, he said that “in four years,” Republicans “delivered 3.5% unemployment” and “created 8 million new jobs.”

    Facts First: This is inaccurate in two ways. First, the economic numbers for the full “four years” of Trump’s tenure are much worse than these numbers Kennedy cited; Kennedy was actually referring to Trump’s first three years while ignoring the fourth, which was marred by the Covid-19 pandemic. Second, there weren’t “8 million new jobs” created even in Trump’s first three years.

    Kennedy could have correctly said there was a 3.5% unemployment rate after three years of the Trump administration, but not after four. The unemployment rate skyrocketed early in Trump’s fourth year, on account of the pandemic, before coming down again, and it was 6.3% when Trump left office in early 2021. (It fell to 3.4% this January under Biden, better than in any month under Trump.)

    And while the economy added about 6.7 million jobs under Trump before the pandemic-related crash of March and April 2020, that’s not the “8 million jobs” Kennedy claimed – and the economy ended up shedding millions of jobs in Trump’s fourth year. Over the full four years of Trump’s tenure, the economy netted a loss of about 2.7 million jobs.

    Lara Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and an adviser to his 2020 campaign, claimed that the last time a CPAC crowd was gathered at this venue in Maryland, in February 2020, “We had the lowest unemployment in American history.” After making other boasts about Donald Trump’s presidency, she said, “But how quickly it all changed.” She added, “Under Joe Biden, America is crumbling.”

    Facts First: Lara Trump’s claim about February 2020 having “the lowest unemployment in American history” is false. The unemployment rate was 3.5% at the time – tied for the lowest since 1969, but not the all-time lowest on record, which was 2.5% in 1953. And while Lara Trump didn’t make an explicit claim about unemployment under Biden, it’s not true that things are worse today on this measure; again, the most recent unemployment rate, 3.4% for January 2023, is better than the rate at the time of CPAC’s 2020 conference or at any other time during Donald Trump’s presidency.

    Multiple speakers at CPAC decried the high number of fentanyl overdose deaths. But some of the speakers inflated that number while attacking Biden’s immigration policy.

    Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump administration official, claimed that “in the last 12 months in America, deaths by fentanyl poisoning totaled 110,000 Americans.” He blamed “Biden’s open border” for these deaths.

    Rep. Scott Perry claimed: “Meanwhile over on this side of the border, where there isn’t anybody, they’re running this fentanyl in; it’s killing 100,000 Americans – over 100,000 Americans – a year.”

    Facts First: It’s not true that there are more than 100,000 fentanyl deaths per year. That is the total number of deaths from all drug overdoses in the US; there were 106,699 such deaths in 2021. But the number of overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone, primarily fentanyl, is smaller – 70,601 in 2021.

    Fentanyl-related overdoses are clearly a major problem for the country and by far the biggest single contributor to the broader overdose problem. Nonetheless, claims of “110,000” and “over 100,000” fentanyl deaths per year are significant exaggerations. And while the number of overdose deaths and fentanyl-related deaths increased under Biden in 2021, it was also troubling under Trump in 2020 – 91,799 total overdose deaths and 56,516 for synthetic opioids other than methadone.

    It’s also worth noting that fentanyl is largely smuggled in by US citizens through legal ports of entry rather than by migrants sneaking past other parts of the border. Contrary to frequent Republican claims, the border is not “open”; border officers have seized thousands of pounds of fentanyl under Biden.

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  • Feral cows in New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness will be shot from air, US Forest Service says | CNN

    Feral cows in New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness will be shot from air, US Forest Service says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The US Forest Service will move forward with killing feral cattle in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest, officials say.

    The agency issued its decision in a news release on Thursday, stating the feral cattle “pose a significant threat to public safety and natural resources.”

    Aerial shooting of the cattle will take place from February 23 to February 26, according to the news release. The service told CNN via email that they would “lethally dispatch as many feral cattle as we are able to during this operation” and that “it is likely that additional operations, using lethal and non-lethal methods, will be necessary to eliminate the feral cattle population.”

    There are an estimated 150 feral cows living in the Gila Wilderness, a protected wilderness area in southwest New Mexico and part of the Gila National Forest.

    The feral cattle have created problems in the Gila National Forest since the 1970s, when a rancher abandoned cattle on the Redstone Allotment within the Gila Wilderness, according to a memo from the Forest Service. The memo defined feral cattle as cattle that don’t have brands, ear tags, or other signs of ownership.

    “These cattle have not been husbanded, cared for by private owners, or kept or raised on a ranch for several generations, and are thus not domesticated,” the service said in the memo.


    The difficult terrain of the forest as well as the “wild, uncooperative nature of the animals” makes capturing the cattle alive challenging and dangerous for both the animals and humans involved, according to the memo.

    According to the service, the problem posed by the untamed cattle is twofold. First, the cattle are aggressive towards humans. In the memo, the service said hikers in the Gila Wilderness have been charged by feral bulls.

    Second, the herbivores’ intensive grazing habits have damaged the environment and harmed native species’ natural habitats, according to the memo. The cattle’s trampling and eroding stream banks have also damaged the water quality.

    “This has been a difficult decision, but the lethal removal of feral cattle from the Gila Wilderness is necessary to protect public safety, threatened and endangered species habitats, water quality, and the natural character of the Gila Wilderness,” Gila National Forest Supervisor Camille Howes said in the news release.

    “The feral cattle in the Gila Wilderness have been aggressive towards wilderness visitors, graze year-round, and trample stream banks and springs, causing erosion and sedimentation,” Howes continued. “This action will help restore the wilderness character of the Gila Wilderness enjoyed by visitors from across the country.”

    Some cattle ranchers are concerned some of their branded cattle could have strayed into the Gila Wilderness over the past few years, according to the news release. The service said it is “committed to continued efforts toward collaborative solutions” and that it would work with ranchers to locate and remove their branded cattle.

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  • National Archives agrees to give personal tours to activists who say staff asked them to hide anti-abortion attire | CNN Politics

    National Archives agrees to give personal tours to activists who say staff asked them to hide anti-abortion attire | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The National Archives will give “personal tours” to two activists who sued the federal records agency, resolving a days-old lawsuit the pair brought after staff at the museum told them cover up anti-abortion attire during a recent visit.

    A federal lawsuit filed last Wednesday said that the activists were visiting the Washington, DC, museum the same day as the national March for Life in January and “were subject to a pattern of ongoing misconduct by federal government officials, specifically National Archives security officers … who targeted plaintiffs and intentionally chilled their religious speech and expression by requiring plaintiffs to remove or cover their attire because of their pro-life messages.”

    The National Archives quickly issued a statement last week clarifying that its policy allows visitor clothing to “display protest language, including religious and political speech,” and said it would investigate the incident.

    In court papers filed Tuesday by both sides, the museum promised to work with each plaintiff to arrange a “personal tour” of the museum. Under the deal, staff with the National Archives and Records Administration will also extend “a personal apology on that tour regarding the events” that unfolded last month.

    “NARA shall further reiterate to all NARA security officers, as well as all other NARA personnel who interact with the public … that NARA policy expressly allows all visitors to wear t-shirts, hats, buttons, and other similar items, that display protest language, including religious and political speech,” the agreement reads.

    A judge must still approve the agreement.

    Last month’s March for Life event saw scores of anti-abortion activists travel from all over the US to attend the march, which was the first such event held since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year – the primary goal of the annual protest.

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  • ‘Don’t let another sister suffer’: Alleged gang rape in Pakistan’s ‘Central Park’ sparks protests | CNN

    ‘Don’t let another sister suffer’: Alleged gang rape in Pakistan’s ‘Central Park’ sparks protests | CNN

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    Islamabad, Pakistan
    CNN
     — 

    The alleged gang rape of a woman in a park in Pakistan has enraged women’s rights activists who are protesting against what they see as “increasing sexual barbarism” in the country.

    The woman, 24, was with a male colleague in the capital Islamabad’s Fatima Jinnah park – known locally as F9 park and the largest in the city – last Thursday when they were allegedly attacked by two armed men, according to a statement she filed with the police, seen by CNN.

    The woman alleged the men forced the pair toward a “jungle area” of the park where they ripped off her clothes and raped her.

    She said the men told her she should not have been in the park at night and asked about her connection to her colleague.

    “When I responded, I was slapped. My hair was pulled and I was thrown on the floor,” the woman said in her police statement.

    The incident has sparked outrage in the country of 220 million, which is highly patriarchal and where violent attacks against women and girls frequently make headlines.

    Scores of protesters have tied their dupattas – scarves worn by South Asian women – to the railings of the park, alongside messages imploring change.

    “Please don’t let another sister suffer,” one note read. “Save the women and kids of Pakistan,” read another.

    The rights group, Aurat Azadi March (Women’s Freedom March), said in a statement, “There is an increasing sexual barbarism in Pakistan, and criminal silence on it by the state and society is unacceptable.”

    “We are enraged. We are in pain. And we will not let this be forgotten.”

    A spokesperson for Islamabad police told CNN no arrests had been made in the case so far.

    Fatima Jinnah park is a sprawling oasis spread across the center of Islamabad in an affluent part of the city, and has a high security presence. It is often likened to New York’s Central Park as families often gather for festivals and children play at the park throughout the day.

    The government on Sunday ordered domestic television channels not to report on the alleged assault, citing the need to protect the woman’s identity.

    In a statement, Pakistan’s Electronic Media Regulatory Authority said any broadcast of news reports was “prohibited with immediate effect.”

    More than 5,200 women reported being raped in the country in 2021, according to Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission, but experts believe the actual number is much higher as many women are afraid to come forward due to social stigma and victim blaming.

    Fewer than 3% of sexual assault or rape cases result in a conviction in Pakistan, Reuters reported in December 2020, citing Karachi-based non-profit War Against Rape.

    In December 2020, Pakistan toughened its rape laws to create special courts to try cases within four months and provide medical examinations to women within six hours of a complaint being made. But activists say Pakistan continues to fail its women and does not have a nationwide law criminalizing domestic violence, leaving many vulnerable to assault.

    In 2021, the beheading of Noor Mukadam, a Pakistani ambassador’s daughter, sent shockwaves through the country with protesters calling on the government to do more to protect women.

    Her killer, Zahir Jaffer, the 30-year-old son of an influential family and a dual Pakistan-US national who knew Mukadam, was sentenced to death by an Islamabad judge last February.

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  • Second Trump attorney met with Mar-A-Lago probe grand jury in recent weeks | CNN Politics

    Second Trump attorney met with Mar-A-Lago probe grand jury in recent weeks | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Trump attorney Christina Bobb appeared before a federal grand jury in Washington, DC, in recent weeks in connection with the investigation into former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents, two sources have told CNN.

    Bobb’s appearance marks the second Trump lawyer involved with Trump’s handling of government documents to meet with the grand jury recently. CNN reported that Trump attorney Evan Corcoran appeared before the grand jury last month.

    The Wall Street Journal first reported Bobb’s appearance.

    The disclosure of the testimony by the Trump lawyers comes amid a steady drip of recent moves by special counsel Jack Smith to obtain grand jury testimony from very close contacts of the former president, in many cases about what Trump was told and what he said at the end of his presidency and afterward.

    It also comes amid an escalation of activity in Smith’s other Trump probe, looking into the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and efforts to impede the transfer of power following the 2020 election.

    Smith issued a subpoena in that investigation to former Vice President Mike Pence in recent days, seeking documents and testimony. Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien also received a subpoena, as CNN first reported.

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  • A gibbon who lived alone in her cage had a baby. Japanese zookeepers finally know how | CNN

    A gibbon who lived alone in her cage had a baby. Japanese zookeepers finally know how | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Japanese zookeepers believe they have solved the mystery of how a gibbon became pregnant despite living alone in her cage.

    Momo, a 12-year-old white-handed gibbon, shocked her keepers at the Kujukushima Zoo and Botanical Garden in Nagasaki in February 2021 when she gave birth despite having no known male companionship.

    Now two years later, following a DNA test on her baby, the zoo has worked out who the father is – and even has a theory about how the gibbons mated.

    The test showed the father to be Itō, a 34-year-old agile gibbon, who was in an adjacent enclosure to Momo around the time she became pregnant.

    The zoo told CNN on Friday it believed that Momo and Itō had managed to mate through a small hole in a steel plate between their enclosures. The hole measured about 9 millimeters (0.3 inch) in diameter.

    The baby ape – who is yet to be named – now weighs around 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) and is “growing healthily” under Momo’s loving attention, the zoo said.

    “It is a precious life born into the world, we will continue to take good care of him and hope that he will live a healthy long life,” said Hideki Hisano, deputy director of the zoo.

    Gibbons are among the smallest apes, but they have loud singing voices that have developed into an elaborate language, and can swing from branch to branch at speeds of up to 35 miles per hour.

    There are dozens of gibbon species that are native to parts of Asia, ranging from northeastern India to China and all the way to the Borneo archipelago.

    The population of agile gibbons in the wild has been decreasing and they have been listed as an endangered species in the International Union for Conservation of Nature, because their habitat is threatened by human activities such as deforestation, mining and road construction.

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  • Suspect in Dallas Zoo animal thefts allegedly admitted to the crime and says he would do it again, affidavits claim | CNN

    Suspect in Dallas Zoo animal thefts allegedly admitted to the crime and says he would do it again, affidavits claim | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The man who faces charges stemming from a string of suspicious activities at the Dallas Zoo allegedly admitted to stealing two tamarin monkeys and trying to steal the clouded snow leopard last month, according to arrest warrant affidavits.

    Davion Irvin also told police that he wants to return to the zoo and take more animals if he gets out of jail, the affidavits claim.

    Irvin, 24, is currently charged with six counts of animal cruelty and two counts of burglary to a building after Dallas police arrested him last week. He is being held at the Dallas County Jail on $25,000 bond, according to inmate search records. CNN has been unable to determine if Irvin has retained an attorney at this time.

    His arrest warrant documents reveal new details about a peculiar case that has gripped the nation’s attention in recent weeks and triggered some concern among zoo staffers.

    Although the monkeys were eventually found at an unoccupied home in the Dallas area, their disappearance followed a series of suspicious incidents at the zoo involving a leopard, langur monkeys and a vulture’s death, leading to a hike in security, including more cameras, patrols and overnight staff.

    On January 13 during the early morning hours, Irvin allegedly entered the Dallas Zoo when it was closed to the public and intentionally cut the fenced enclosure for the clouded snow leopard, according to the affidavits. Irvin then allegedly entered the habitat to take the leopard, which is valued at $3,500 to $20,000, the documents say.

    Irvin allegedly told investigators he petted the leopard, but the 25-pound animal jumped up into the top of its closure, and he wasn’t able to catch the animal. He left the exhibit with the cut still in place, and the leopard escaped, setting off an hours-long pursuit later that morning when zoo officials realized the animal was gone.

    After a frantic search and police involvement, the leopard was found on zoo property that afternoon on January 13.

    Roughly two weeks later, an unknown suspect cut the exterior fencing to the tamarin monkey exhibit and entered the exhibit through an unlocked door before cutting the cages and taking two monkeys, according to the affidavits. This offense, committed on January 30, was not captured on camera.

    In the days leading up to the theft of the monkeys, a person matching Irvin’s description asked zoo personnel specific and “obscure” questions about how to care for the tamarin monkeys and other animals, the affidavits say.

    The suspect was also seen entering nonpublic areas around the monkey exhibit that day, according to investigators, and he was captured on trail cameras eating a bag of chips near the exhibit, according to investigators.

    Another animal habitat near the leopard and monkey habitats was also found to be cut, according to the affidavits. Unreported thefts from early January were also brought to the attention of detectives – such as theft of feeder fish, water chemicals, and training supplies from a staff-only area at the otter exhibit.

    Before Irvin was identified and named as a suspect in the case, police had released surveillance footage and a photo of the suspect on January 31.

    On that same day, police received a tip from a man whose father is a pastor of a church that owns a vacant house in Lancaster. The tipster said Irvin frequently visited the house, and the pastor provided consent for police to search the premises.

    Upon searching, police found the two tamarin monkeys inside the home but no people. Multiple cats and pigeons were also in the home, according to the affidavits, as well as items that went missing from the otter exhibit.

    Detectives said the home’s interior was “in extreme poor condition” with dead animals, suspected cat feces, and mold and mildew.

    Lancaster is about 15 miles south of Dallas.

    While Irvin was not inside the home, police found a pair of Nike shoes that matched the shoes Irvin was wearing in the images captured by zoo cameras, according to the affidavits.

    On February 2, Irvin was spotted at the Dallas World Aquarium and asked employees about the monkeys at their location, according to the affidavits. Aquarium employees recognized Irvin from the photo released to the public, and authorities were contacted. Police followed Irvin onto a commuter train and arrested him.

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  • DeSantis appointees would oversee Disney’s theme parks under bill to revamp Reedy Creek | CNN Politics

    DeSantis appointees would oversee Disney’s theme parks under bill to revamp Reedy Creek | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Gov. Ron DeSantis may soon get to pick the people who govern Disney’s Orlando-area theme parks, a move that would give the Republican leader new authority over the state’s largest employer and a recent political foe.

    Republican lawmakers on Monday unveiled a bill to turn over control of Disney’s special taxing district, called the Reedy Creek Improvement District, to a five-member board chosen by DeSantis. The proposal also comes with a rebrand; Reedy Creek would become the “Central Florida Tourism Oversight District.”

    The move to take over Reedy Creek is the latest step in a yearlong spat between DeSantis and Disney over a bill to restrict certain classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity. DeSantis signed the bill into law over the objections of Disney’s then-CEO Bob Chapek.

    In an act opponents decried as political retribution, DeSantis then pushed lawmakers to dissolve the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which for 55 years effectively gave Disney control of the land around its Florida properties. Republicans, who control the seats of legislative power, complied, and the district was scheduled to be sunset on June 1.

    But the bill proposed Monday breathed new life into the taxing district and kept many of its special powers. Indeed, the final page of the 189-page bill states clearly: “The Reedy Creek Improvement District is not dissolved as of June 1, 2023, but continues in full force and effect under its new name.”

    In a statement to CNN, Jeff Vahle, the president of Walt Disney World Resort, said the company is “monitoring the progression of the draft legislation, which is complex given the long history of the Reedy Creek Improvement District.”

    “Disney works under a number of different models and jurisdictions around the world, and regardless of the outcome, we remain committed to providing the highest quality experience for the millions of guests who visit each year,” Vahle said.

    The bill, introduced by state Rep. Fred Hawkins, also seeks to limit the damage that could be done to Disney, one of the state’s most vital tourism engines, and to taxpayers. It makes clear that the changes to Reedy Creek should not affect the district’s existing debt, previously estimated at about $1 billion, or any other contracts. Local governments last year expressed concern that dissolving Reedy Creek could lead to a debt bomb on the residents of Orange and Osceola counties. Reedy Creek, in a statement to bondholders last year, said the state couldn’t dissolve it without paying off its debt, or it would violate a 1967 state law.

    The legislation would also remove some powers from the board, like the ability to build an airport or a nuclear power plant.

    Democrats criticized the legislation, which was introduced in a special session called in part to address Reedy Creek’s future, while stopping short of endorsing Disney’s unique arrangement in Central Florida. State Sen. Jason Pizzo, a Miami Democrat, said Disney was “not a sympathetic victim in my book,” citing the company’s recent labor fight with unionized workers at Disney World. But he said that “the market should dictate these situations” and likened DeSantis moving in on a private company to “socialism.”

    State Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat, said of the bill: “Disney still gets perks but they’re now a political prisoner of the governor.”

    DeSantis is supportive of the changes, which are likely to pass the Republican-controlled legislature within the next couple weeks.

    “These actions ensure a state-controlled district accountable to the people instead of a corporate-controlled kingdom,” DeSantis spokesman Jeremy Redfern said.

    Under existing law, the board for Reedy Creek has been made up of landowners with close ties to Disney. The bill introduced Monday makes clear that none of the appointees chosen by the governor can be recent Disney employees or their relatives, nor that of a competitor. The state Senate, where Republicans currently hold a super majority, would have final approval of the appointees.

    In addition to addressing Reedy Creek, this week’s special session will also address two other contentious DeSantis priorities. Lawmakers have proposed allowing the DeSantis administration to transport migrants from anywhere in the United States, a significant expansion of a program that gained national attention last year after Florida paid for two flights that carried migrants from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.

    The state House and Senate will also consider giving DeSantis’ controversial new Office of Elections Crimes and Security the jurisdiction to prosecute crimes involving elections. The proposal comes after DeSantis initiated a crackdown on voter fraud that resulted in the arrest of 20 individuals but hit a legal snag when a judge dismissed a case against a Miami defendant on the grounds that state prosecutors had acted beyond their authority.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Developments in Trump documents probe foretell a 2024 campaign clouded by legal tangles | CNN Politics

    Developments in Trump documents probe foretell a 2024 campaign clouded by legal tangles | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    There’s never been a presidential campaign like it.

    Donald Trump is taking every step of his bid for a third consecutive Republican nomination amid a darkening storm of legal uncertainty.

    The twice-impeached former president, who tried to steal an election and is accused of fomenting an insurrection, launched his first two-state campaign swing on Saturday as he seeks a stunning political comeback.

    Then on Monday, Trump’s potential exposure – in two of his multiple strands of legal peril – appeared to grow, foreshadowing a campaign likely to be repeatedly punctuated by distractions from criminal investigations.

    In a new twist to his classified material saga, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Katelyn Polantz reported that two people who found two classified documents in a Trump storage facility in Florida testified before a federal grand jury. Federal prosecutors are also pushing to look at files on a laptop of at least one staff member around Trump at Mar-a-Lago, CNN reported. The former president has not been charged with a crime, but these developments are the latest sign of an aggressive approach by special counsel Jack Smith in probing the matter. And it shows how a regular drumbeat of legal problems could detract from the former president’s attempts to inject energy into a so-far tepid campaign – especially given the multiple criminal threats he may face.

    On another front, The New York Times reported that a district attorney in Manhattan is presenting evidence to another grand jury probing Trump’s alleged role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Last week, a district attorney in Georgia said decisions are imminent on charges related to Trump’s effort to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state. It is not known whether the ex-president is directly targeted by the investigation. This all comes as Smith is also probing Trump’s role in the US Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021.

    The unique and extraordinary legal tangle surrounding Trump means that a third straight US election will be tainted by controversies that will drag the FBI and the Justice Department further into a political morass. (President Joe Biden is also facing a special counsel investigation over his handling of documents from his time as vice president, and former Vice President Mike Pence, who’s eying a 2024 bid, is under DOJ review for similar issues.) This follows the Hillary Clinton email flap in 2016 and investigations into the Trump campaign’s links with Russia during that White House bid, as well as Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in 2020.

    The fact that Trump is seeking the presidency again, under an extraordinary legal cloud, could have significant consequences for the wider 2024 campaign. Some of his potential Republican rivals, wary of trying to take him down, might hope that his legal troubles will do the job for them. Perceptions that Trump is caught in a web of criminal investigation might also further tarnish his personal political brand, which has already contributed to some Republican loses in national elections in 2018, 2020 and 2022.

    Still, Trump is a master of leveraging attempts to call him to account, legally and politically. He’s already built a central foundation of his new presidential quest around the idea that he’s being political persecuted by Justice Department investigations and what he claims are rogue Democratic prosecutors.

    “We’re going to stop the appalling weaponization of our justice system. There’s never been a justice system like this. It’s all investigation, investigation,” the ex-president said on the trail over the weekend.

    This is a message that may be attractive to some of Trump’s base voters who themselves feel alienated from the federal government and previously bought into his claims about a “deep state” conspiracy against him. It’s also a technique, in which a strongman leader argues that he is taking the heat so his followers don’t have to, that is a familiar page in the authority playbooks of demagogues throughout history.

    As is normal, it is not known what the people who found the classified documents at the Florida storage facility may have said to the grand jury. But the ex-president is being investigated not just for possible violations of the Espionage Act, but also for potential obstruction of justice related to the documents.

    The two individuals, who were hired to search four of Trump’s properties last fall months after the FBI executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago resort over the summer, were each interviewed for about three hours in separate appearances last week. The extent of information they offered the grand jury remains unclear, though they didn’t decline to answer any questions, one of the sources familiar with the investigation said.

    Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel at the Department of Defense, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday that the latest development was a sign of an advanced special counsel investigation and could indicate that Smith was leaning toward indictments.

    “It sounds like he is trying to lock in their testimony, to understand how they would testify at trial, whether it is incriminating evidence against Trump or exculpatory evidence that the prosecutors would then have that and have it solidified.”

    The simple, politically charged act of investigating an ex-president was always bound to create a political furor. The fact that Trump is running for the White House again multiplies the stakes and means profound decisions are ahead for Attorney General Merrick Garland if evidence suggests Trump should be charged.

    On a more granular level, the report about the grand jury underscores that for all the political noise, the investigation into Trump’s haul of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago is taking place inside its own legal bubble.

    This remains the case, despite the political gift handed to Trump with the discovery of classified documents at Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home and at a Washington office he once used that should have been handed back when he left the vice presidency. Some classified material was also found at Pence’s Indiana home.

    Those discoveries allowed Trump to claim that he was being unfairly singled out, even if the cases have significant differences. Any Trump attempt to argue that he, like Biden and Pence, inadvertently took documents to his home will be undermined by the fact that he claimed the material belonged to him, and not the government, and what appears to be repeated refusals to give it back.

    Fresh indications of the momentum in the Trump documents special counsel probe followed the latest sign of a lopsided approach to the controversy over classified material by House Republicans, who are hammering Biden over documents but giving Trump a free pass.

    House Oversight Chairman James Comer was, for example, asked by CNN’s Pamela Brown this weekend why he had no interest in the more than 325 documents found at Trump’s home but was fixated upon the approximately 20 classified documents uncovered in Biden’s premises by lawyers and an unknown number also found during an FBI search of the president’s home this month.

    “If someone can show me evidence that there was influence peddling with those classified documents that were in the possession of President Trump, then we would certainly expand it,” the Kentucky Republican said. He went on to accuse Biden and his family of being “very cozy” with people from the Chinese Communist party but offered no evidence of such links or that they had anything to do with classified documents. His remarks left the impression that his committee is seeking to find evidence to condemn Biden but is treating Trump differently – exactly the kind of double standard the GOP has claimed the DOJ is employing toward Trump.

    The two special counsel investigations probing Trump and Biden’s retention of secret documents are unfolding independently. In a legal sense, there is no overlap between them. But they will both be subject to the same political inferno if findings are made public.

    Were Trump, for instance, to be prosecuted – over what so far appears to be a larger haul of documents and conduct that may add up to obstruction – and Biden is not, the ex-president would incite a firestorm of protest among his supporters. Even though the sitting president enjoys protections from prosecution because of historic Justice Department guidance, it’s hard to see how the political ground for prosecuting just one of them could hold firm – especially if Biden and Trump are rival presidential candidates in 2024.

    From the outside, it appears as if Biden and Pence were far more cooperative with the DOJ and the FBI after some classified documents were found at their properties than Trump has been. It took a search warrant for FBI agents to get into Mar-a-Lago, and the ex-president claimed that presidential documents that belonged to the federal government when he left office belonged to him. But voters might find it hard to understand nuanced legal differences between the two cases – a factor the House Republican counter-attack based on Biden’s documents made more likely.

    As the political fallout from the classified documents furor deepened on Monday, the country got a reminder of the treatment that can await lower-ranking members of the federal workforce when secret material is taken home.

    CNN’s Holmes Lybrand reported that court documents show that a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, who stored files with classified information at his Florida home, will plead guilty in February to one count of unlawful retention of national defense information.

    Robert Birchum served in the Air Force for more than 30 years and previously held top secret clearance. According to his plea agreement, he stored hundreds of files that contained information marked as top secret, secret or confidential classified outside of authorized locations. A plea agreement stated that “the defendant’s residence was not a location authorized to store classified information, and the defendant knew as much.”

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  • San Antonio Zoo will let you name a cockroach after an ex and feed it to an animal | CNN

    San Antonio Zoo will let you name a cockroach after an ex and feed it to an animal | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The San Antonio Zoo is offering a special Valentine’s Day greeting for exes who just won’t bug off.

    For $10, the zoo will name a cockroach after your not-so-special someone and feed it to an animal – a cold, but direct message that you’re no longer interested.

    The annual “Cry Me a Cockroach” fundraiser will “support the zoo’s vision of securing a future for wildlife in Texas and around the world.” the San Antonio Zoo says on its website.

    Those not into bugs can choose a vegetable for $5 or a rodent for $25 instead.

    All donors will receive a digital Valentine’s Day Card showing their support for the zoo. They can also opt to send their ex-boo a digital Valentine’s Day Card informing them that a cockroach, rodent, or veggie was named after them and fed to an animal.

    Those with an especially stubborn ex can pay for a $150 upgrade, which includes a personalized video message to the recipient showing their cockroach, rodent or vegetable being devoured by an animal.

    The annual event is a hit, Cyle Perez, the zoo’s director of public relations, told CNN. Last year, they received more than 8,000 donations from all 50 states and over 30 different countries.

    “Right now, we are on track to break last years record, with ‘Zach,’ ‘Ray’ and ‘Adam’ being the most submitted ex-names so far,” Perez said.

    To participate, you’ll need to submit your exes name online before Valentine’s Day.

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  • Union members are poised to reject Disney World contract offer | CNN Business

    Union members are poised to reject Disney World contract offer | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Jonathan Pulliam has been working at Disney World since 2018, dressing up as everything from beloved Disney cartoon characters to Star Wars villains. And while he loves his job, he says he can’t afford it any longer.

    “Me loving it, that’s not enough to pay the bills,” he said about his $15.85-an-hour salary that usually earns him about $550 a week. With rent for a typical apartment in the Orlando area costing about $1,800 per month according to Realtor.com, he says he couldn’t get by if he wasn’t living with his sister.

    “I’d probably be living in my car. I know several who are living in cars because they can’t afford to pay rent,” said the Kansas native, who remembers annual childhood trips to Disney World with his family. “It’s a tourist area. Everything’s expensive.”

    On Thursday and Friday, about 32,000 Disney employees will be voting on a contract offer from management. These workers do everything from performing as characters to working in restaurants and shops, driving buses, trams and monorails as well as working at front desks and performing housekeeping duties at hotels.

    Those working under this contract, all of them full-time employees, represent more than 40% of all workers at Disney World. Currently, the park has 75,000 cast members, as the company refers to its employees, including full-time and part-time, hourly and salaried staff. It is comparable to Disney World’s pre-pandemic employment levels.

    The company’s five-year offer would raise salaries for cast members by a minimum of $1 an hour per year, taking most workers to at least $20 an hour by 2026. That would be $5 an hour more than the Florida minimum wage, which is in the process of being increased from the current $11 an hour to $15 an hour by 2026. The company said 46% of cast members will get more than a $1-an-hour raise in the contract’s first year.

    This is a “very strong offer” with guaranteed raises each year of the five-year agreement, said Andrea Finger, a Disney spokesperson. She said the majority of employees will see raises totaling 33% to 46% during the life of the contract.

    The company’s offer would pay housekeepers and bus drivers at least $20 an hour immediately and culinary staff would start at $20 to $25 per hour, depending on their role.

    There will also be retroactive pay increases dating back to October 1, when the previous contract expired, providing lump-sum pre-tax payments of about $700 to full-time workers.

    But union leadership is urging members to vote no. The unions say Disney presented this as its best offer and that is why it’s going to membership for a vote – not because there is a tentative agreement, which is the point at which an offer normally goes to rank-and-file union members for a vote.

    And this time around, all indications are that the company’s offer will be rejected.

    The six union locals working under the current contract want an immediate $3 an hour raise, or a 20% raise, for what it says is 75% of the members currently making $15 an hour, plus an additional $1 an hour raise every year after that.

    “The unions have been clear from our very first bargaining session that a dollar in the first year is not enough,” said Matt Hollis, president of the Service Trades Council Union, the collection of six union locals that are negotiating with Disney management. “A dollar does not afford Disney workers with the ability to keep up with the skyrocketing rent increases. And a dollar does not afford Disney workers with the ability to continue to purchase basic necessities, such as food, gas and utilities.”

    Pulliam, the character performer who says he can’t afford a dollar-an-hour raise, lives about an hour’s drive from the theme park, and says he’ll be voting no because he can’t get by with the wages being offered.

    “I’m filling my car three times a week,” he said. “I would love to ask these execs if they could get by on $1 an hour more. It’s disheartening. They don’t have to decide [whether]...to eat or get gas.”

    Pulliam said he’s angered by recent news reports about fired former Disney executives who left the company with huge pay packages, such as ex-Disney CEO Bob Chapek, who received a $20 million severance package when he was fired by the board in November, or Geoff Morrell, who received $10.3 million for his three months overseeing corporate and public affairs, or more than $100,000 a day.

    Negotiations on a new union contract have been ongoing since August. Despite widespread expectations that unions’ rank-and-file will reject this offer, no strike deadline or strike authorization vote has been scheduled.

    Union leadership said they hope that Disney will return to the table with a better offer once union members reject this one. Disney doesn’t rule out further negotiations, saying that after no votes on contracts there typically are additional rounds of talks.

    “While Disney insists at the bargaining table that this is the best offer, we know Disney can do better, and Disney knows they must do better,” said Hollis. He said the workers who would get more than a $1 an hour pay increase are in jobs where Disney is having trouble filling openings and retaining workers.

    Unions have represented workers at Disney World since soon after the park’s 1971 opening, but employees have never gone on strike. Disney reported that its parks, experiences and products unit, which includes Disney World and other park locations worldwide, had revenue of $7.4 billion and operating income of $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2022, which ran through October 1. (The first six months of that fiscal year were affected by surging Covid cases.)

    Revenue was up 36% and profits more than doubled from the previous fiscal year. And both revenue and operating profits are above what the company posted in fiscal year 2019, before the pandemic, with a 12% rise in revenue and a 10% gain in earnings.

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  • Grand Canyon’s Havasu Falls to reopen to visitors after 3-year closure | CNN

    Grand Canyon’s Havasu Falls to reopen to visitors after 3-year closure | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Havasu Falls, one of the most intriguing features of the Grand Canyon system, will be reopening to visitors after a three-year closure caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. But it’s with a catch.

    The reopening is scheduled for February 1; however, access will be limited initially to a certain, small group.

    People whose previous reservations were suspended will get first crack at rescheduling a visit to the falls and the enchanting aquamarine pool at its base.

    Havasu Falls is on the lands of the Havasupai Indian Reservation and is controlled by the tribe. The reservation is adjacent to but not part of Grand Canyon National Park. The tribe controls all access to the falls.

    No new 2023 reservations are being offered, but if you’re really itchin’ to go this year, there’s a potential loophole if you’re lucky and able to be flexible.

    If people whose visits were suspended aren’t able to reschedule their visit, their spots will become open via an online list.

    On its official Facebook page, the tribe says that “the only way to get a reservation for 2023 is to purchase off the official transfer list. Open an account at www.havasupaireservations.com to see what is available.”

    The response time for people to reschedule is tight, and the tribe warned that “this is a new check-in process and there may be some delays as we work through the system.”

    On Thursday, January 26, the tribe sent detailed, instructional emails to trip leaders who had arrival dates of February 1-28, 2023, according to its latest Facebook post.

    Some hopeful visitors posted they were having a hard time making new arrangements that quickly and working with check-in times to begin the trek.

    One person posted: “I appreciate the update but I really wish this would have been more timely. This really changes my travel plans, therefore my childcare arrangements. You are providing a 1 week notice. My reservation is for 2/3.”

    Havasu Falls is just one part of the broader Havasupai Reservation. The unique health-care problems faced by Native American tribes contributed to the lengthy closure, the tribe noted.

    “We closed our Reservation in March 2020,” the tribe wrote on its website. “With limited access to meaningful healthcare, closing the reservation was the best way to keep our community safe and healthy. We have remained closed to tourists since that time.”

    Then in October 2022, severe flooding damaged trails and bridges used not only by tourists but also by members of the tribe in Supai Village, where about 200 people live, according to VisitArizona.com.

    Finally, the tribe said it had problems with its third-party tourism operator.

    But with debris cleaned up and a new tourism operator on board, the Havasupai set the February 1 reopening.

    It’s no easy feat to get to the site – or to leave it.

    First of all, this is not a day-trip hike, according to the US National Park Service’s information page on the adjacent area. This is an overnight affair. You must arrange to stay at a campground or at the Havasupia Lodge.

    It’s a long hike from the canyon rim – eight miles (13 kilometers) to the village of Supai and another two miles (3.2 kilometers) to the falls. And then you have to hike back up and out.

    Rock climbing and night hiking are not permitted, according the tribe’s instructional page. No one is allowed to bring in drones, alcohol or weapons.

    Visitors should be physically fit, able to carry at least a gallon of water (there are no water sources on the trail) and be ready for a hard desert hike, NPS said.

    During summer, temperatures can reach up to 115 degrees Fahrenheit (46 Celsius). Trails are closed when the temperature goes over that number.

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  • Some of California’s beloved, storm-struck parks and forests remain closed | CNN

    Some of California’s beloved, storm-struck parks and forests remain closed | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    One of California’s biggest draws is the exquisite scenery in its state parks, national forests and other related natural sites. But because of the waves of storms that have dumped a year’s worth of water on drought-plagued lands in a matter of weeks in some spots, various outdoor recreational areas remain closed.

    Especially hard hit was Los Padres National Forest, which is almost 60 miles (97 kilometers) away from Santa Barbara by car.

    Damage there was so bad that a 60-day closure was ordered for four ranger districts (Monterey, Santa Lucia, Santa Barbara and Ojai). The Mt. Pinos District was not in the order.h

    The order was issued on January 13 because of “extreme winter weather events in early January that caused flooding, debris flows, bridge, road and trail failures.”

    On Tuesday, a tweet posted by Los Padres showed some of the damage that was still being assessed.

    It’s possible there will be a reprieve on the 60 day decision.

    The closure order said that it would be “superseded or terminated when conditions and recreational access improves.” Los Padres got more 100% of its annual rainfall along with high-wind damage earlier this month, the forest’s website said.

    On top of that, stretches of the roads to get to the national forest are compromised.

    California’s state park system also took a big hit from the deluges, and some of its sites are closed.

    Twenty one state parks, beaches, reserves and related sites were fully closed as of 6:45 p.m. PT January 24, and another 40 places were partially closed.

    The damage and the closures have been widespread.

    Some of the closures included El Capitán State Beach in Santa Barbara County and Limekiln State Park in Monterey County, some 165 miles (265 kilometers) away on a partially closed highway.

    Click here for the most current updates from the California Department of Parks and Recreation.

    It’s not just the recent wicked winter rainstorms that have closed down natural areas. Others are closed for more normal seasonal weather, previous weather events or both.

    At Death Valley National Park, an access road to a trail head is partially closed because of snow. And “many other roads remain closed due to damage and debris from major flooding this summer,” according to park management.

    Meanwhile, Devils Postpile National Monument, near Yosemite National Park in the heart of the Sierra Nevada range, is closed for the long winter season and is only open during summer months.

    Speaking of Yosemite, you’ll need a reservation to drive into the park on February 10-12, February 17-19 or February 24-26 because of the popular “Firefall” event at Horsetail Fall.

    With so many partial and full closures, you should check the status of any state or national park before committing to travel plans.

    Top image: Big Basin Redwoods State Park in California. Photo via Adobe Stock.

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  • CNN Poll: Broad majority of Americans approve of appointment of special counsel to investigate Biden documents | CNN Politics

    CNN Poll: Broad majority of Americans approve of appointment of special counsel to investigate Biden documents | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    More than 8 in 10 Americans approve of the appointment of a special counsel to investigate classified documents found at President Joe Biden’s Delaware residence and an office he used after serving as vice president, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS.

    The poll finds broad approval across party lines for the appointment, with 88% of Republicans, 84% of independents and 80% of Democrats saying they approve of it.

    About two-thirds of Americans consider the discovery of classified documents in a Washington, DC, office used by Biden as well as at his residence in Wilmington to be a serious problem (67% consider it very or somewhat serious), and nearly 6 in 10 (57%) say they disapprove of the way the Biden White House has handled the situation.

    There are broad partisan gaps on both of those questions. Democrats (74%) largely approve of how Biden’s administration has handled the discovery of classified documents, while most Republicans (85%) and independents (62%) disapprove. And Republicans are more likely to call the unearthing of the documents a serious problem – 89% say so, including 56% who consider it a “very serious” problem, compared with just 46% of Democrats who say it is serious, including just 10% who call it very serious.

    Only about 1 in 6 Americans (18%) consider Biden to be blameless in the situation involving these classified documents, with 81% saying he has at least done something unethical. But fewer say he acted illegally (37%) than say that he acted unethically but not illegally (44%). That isn’t the case in perceptions of former President Donald Trump’s actions around classified material found at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. The poll finds a majority of Americans believe Trump did something illegal in that situation.

    Most Democrats say Biden’s actions were unethical but not illegal (55%), while most Republicans say he’s acted illegally (64%). Independents tilt toward saying it was unethical rather than illegal (47% unethical, 39% illegal, 14% nothing wrong).

    But the poll also suggests that news about the discovery of the documents has had little impact thus far on baseline views of the president. Biden’s approval rating in the new survey stands at 45% approve to 55% disapprove, little changed from CNN’s December poll, in which 46% approved of his handling of the presidency.

    And overall views of Biden personally also haven’t shifted much. The new poll pegs his favorability rating at 40% favorable to 54% unfavorable, about the same as the 42% favorable to 52% unfavorable read in December.

    The survey was conducted largely before it was revealed Saturday evening that the FBI searched Biden’s Wilmington home on Friday and found additional classified materials. It was fully completed before CNN first reported Tuesday that lawyers for former Vice President Mike Pence had discovered classified documents at his home in Indiana.

    About half of Americans overall (51%) are following news about the classified documents found at Biden’s office and residence at least somewhat closely, with Republicans far more likely to say they are tuned in to news about this story than are Democrats or independents. Among Democrats (46%) and independents (45%), less than half say they are following closely. Among Republicans, though, 62% are following closely, including 20% who say they are following very closely.

    Among both Republicans and independents who say they are following at least somewhat closely, impressions that Biden has done something illegal are more widespread than among those paying less attention, while there is little difference among Democrats in views on Biden’s behavior relative to how closely they are following the story. About three-quarters of Republicans following at least somewhat closely say Biden has done something illegal (75%) compared with about half of those who say they are not as closely following the story (47%). Likewise, more independents who are closely attuned to the news about the Biden documents say they feel the president has done something illegal (50%) than do those independents who are less closely following it (31%). Among Democrats, 10% of those following at least somewhat closely say Biden has acted illegally, not significantly different from the 6% of Democrats following less closely who feel the same way.

    More Americans overall say that Trump acted illegally in the situation involving classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago than say the same of Biden. All told, 52% say Trump has done something illegal, 32% that he acted unethically but not illegally and 15% that he did nothing wrong. The FBI obtained a search warrant to search his Florida resort in August because federal investigators believed Trump had not turned over all classified material despite a subpoena and were concerned records at Mar-a-Lago were being moved around.

    The 84% overall who believe Trump engaged in at least unethical behavior suggests a broader consensus about his actions than existed in the immediate aftermath of the FBI search of his property last year, when an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that only about 6 in 10 Americans believed Trump had acted unethically or illegally. That poll did not specify that any of the documents found were classified.

    A broad 82% overall in CNN’s latest poll approve of the decision to appoint a special counsel to investigate the documents found at Trump’s resort. There is a wider partisan divide over approval of the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the former president than there is over the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Biden – 95% of Democrats approve of the special counsel investigating Trump, compared with 68% of Republicans, with independents squarely in between partisans at 82% approval.

    The CNN Poll was conducted by SSRS from January 19 through 22 among a random national sample of 1,004 adults drawn from a probability-based panel. Surveys were either conducted online or by telephone with a live interviewer. Results among the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.0 points; it is larger for subgroups.

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  • Fact check: McCarthy’s false, misleading and evidence-free claims since becoming House speaker | CNN Politics

    Fact check: McCarthy’s false, misleading and evidence-free claims since becoming House speaker | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Since winning a difficult battle to become speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Kevin McCarthy has made public claims that are misleading, lacking any evidence or plain wrong.

    Here is a fact check of recent McCarthy comments about the debt ceiling, funding for the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s resort and residence in Florida, President Joe Biden’s stance on stoves and Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff.

    McCarthy’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

    McCarthy has cited the example of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, his Democratic predecessor as House speaker, while defending conservative Republicans’ insistence that any agreement to lift the federal debt ceiling must be paired with cuts to government spending – a trade-off McCarthy agreed to when he was trying to persuade conservatives to support his bid for speaker. Specifically, McCarthy has claimed that even Pelosi agreed to a spending cap as part of a deal to lift the debt ceiling under Trump.

    “When Nancy Pelosi was speaker, that’s what transpired. To get a debt ceiling, they also got a cap on spending for the next two years,” McCarthy told reporters at a press conference on January 12. When Fox host Maria Bartiromo told McCarthy in a January 15 interview that “they” would not agree to a spending cap, he responded, “Well Maria, I don’t believe that’s the case, because when Donald Trump was president and when Nancy Pelosi was speaker, that’s exactly what happened for them to get a debt ceiling lifted last time. They agreed to a spending cap.”

    Facts First: McCarthy’s claims are highly misleading. The deal Pelosi agreed to with the Trump administration in 2019 actually loosened spending caps that were already in place at the time because of a 2011 law. In other words, while congressional conservatives today want to use a debt ceiling deal to reduce government spending, the Pelosi deal allowed for billions in additional government spending above the pre-existing maximum. The two situations are nothing alike.

    Shai Akabas, director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank, said when asked about the accuracy of McCarthy’s claims: “I’m going to steer clear of characterizing the Speaker’s remarks, but as an objective matter, the deal reached in 2019 increased the spending caps set by the Budget Control Act of 2011.”

    The 2019 deal, which was criticized by many congressional conservatives, also ensured that Budget Control Act’s caps on discretionary spending – which were created as a result of a 2011 debt ceiling deal between a Democratic president and a Republican speaker of the House – would not be extended past 2021. Spending caps vanishing is the opposite of McCarthy’s suggestion that the deal “got” a spending cap.

    Pelosi spokesperson Aaron Bennett said in an email that McCarthy is “trying to rewrite history.” Bennett said, “As Republicans in Congress and in the Administration noted at the time, in 2019, Speaker Pelosi and Democrats were eager to reach bipartisan agreement to raise the debt limit and, as part of the agreement, avert damaging funding cuts for defense and domestic programs.”

    In various statements since becoming speaker, McCarthy has boasted of how the first bill passed by the new Republican majority in the House “repealed 87,000 IRS agents” or “repealed funding for 87,000 new IRS agents.”

    Facts First: McCarthy’s claims are false. House Republicans did pass a bill that seeks to eliminate about $71 billion of the approximately $80 billion in additional Internal Revenue Service funding that Biden signed into law in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act – but that funding is not going to hire 87,000 “agents.” In addition, Biden has already made clear he would veto this new Republican bill even if the bill somehow made it through the Democratic-controlled Senate, so no funding has actually been “repealed.” It would be accurate for McCarthy to say House Republicans “voted to repeal” the funding, but the boast that they actually “repealed” something is inaccurate.

    CNN’s Katie Lobosco explains in detail here why the claim about “87,000 new IRS agents” is an exaggeration. The claim, which has become a common Republican talking point, has been fact-checked by numerous media outlets over more than five months, including The Washington Post in response to McCarthy remarks earlier this January.

    Here’s a summary. While Inflation Reduction Act funding may well allow for the hiring of tens of thousands of IRS employees, far from all of these employees will be IRS agents conducting audits and investigations. Many other employees will be hired for the non-agent roles, from customer service to information technology, that make up the vast majority of the IRS workforce. And a significant number of the hires are expected to fill the vacant posts left by retirements and other attrition, not take newly created positions.

    The IRS has not yet released a detailed breakdown of how it plans to use the funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, so it’s impossible to say precisely how many new “agents” will be hired. But it is already clear that the total won’t approach 87,000.

    In his interview with Fox’s Bartiromo on January 15, McCarthy criticized federal law enforcement for executing a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and residence in Florida, which the FBI says resulted in the recovery of more than 100 government documents marked as classified and hundreds of other government documents. Echoing a claim Trump has made, McCarthy said of the documents: “They knew it was there. They could have come and taken it any time they wanted.”

    Facts First: It is clearly not true that the authorities could somehow have come to Mar-a-Lago at any time, without conducting a formal search, and taken all of the presidential records they were seeking from Trump. By the time of the search, the federal government – first the National Archives and Records Administration and then the Justice Department – had been asking Trump for more than a year to return government records. Even when the Justice Department went beyond asking in May and served Trump’s team with a subpoena for the return of all documents with classification markings, Trump’s team returned only some of these documents. In June, a Trump lawyer signed a document certifying on behalf of Trump’s office that all of the documents had been returned, though that was not true.

    When FBI agents and a Justice Department attorney visited Mar-a-Lago without a search warrant on that June day to accept documents the Trump team was returning in response to the subpoena, a Trump lawyer “explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room,” the department said in a court filing after the August search. In other words, according to the department, the government was not even allowed to poke around to see if there were government records still at Mar-a-Lago, let alone take those records.

    In the August court filing, the department pointedly called into question the extent to which the Trump team had cooperated: “That the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the ‘diligent search’ that the former President’s counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter.”

    McCarthy wrote in a New York Post article published on January 12: “While President Joe Biden wants to control the kind of stove Americans can cook on, House Republicans are certainly cooking with gas.” He repeated the claim on Twitter the next morning.

    Facts First: There is no evidence for this claim; Biden has not expressed a desire to control the kind of stove Americans can cook on. McCarthy was baselessly attributing the comments of a single Biden appointee to Biden himself.

    It is true that a Biden appointee on the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, Richard Trumka Jr., told Bloomberg earlier this month that gas stoves pose a “hidden hazard,” as they emit air pollutants, and said, “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” But the day before McCarthy’s article was published by the New York Post, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a press briefing: “The president does not support banning gas stoves. And the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is independent, is not banning gas stoves.”

    To date, even the commission itself has not shown support for a ban on gas stoves or for any particular new regulations on gas stoves. Commission Chairman Alexander Hoehn-Saric said in a statement the day before McCarthy’s article was published: “I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so.” Rather, he said, the commission is researching gas emissions in stoves, “exploring new ways to address health risks,” and strengthening voluntary safety standards – and will this spring ask the public “to provide us with information about gas stove emissions and potential solutions for reducing any associated risks.”

    Trumka told CNN’s Matt Egan that while every option remains on the table, any ban would apply only to new gas stoves, not the gas stoves already in people’s homes. And he noted that the Inflation Reduction Act makes people eligible for a rebate of up to $840 to voluntarily switch to an electric stove.

    Defending his plan to bar Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff from sitting on the House Intelligence Committee, a committee Schiff chaired during the Democratic majority from early 2019 to the beginning of this year, McCarthy criticized Schiff on January 12 over his handling of the first impeachment of Trump. Among other things, McCarthy said: “Adam Schiff openly lied to the American public. He told you he had proof. He told you he didn’t know the whistleblower.”

    Facts First: There is no evidence for McCarthy’s insinuation that Schiff lied when he said he didn’t know the anonymous whistleblower who came forward in 2019 with allegations – which were subsequently corroborated – about how Trump had attempted to use the power of his office to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden, his looming rival in the 2020 election.

    Schiff said last week in a statement to CNN: “Kevin McCarthy continues to falsely assert I know the Ukraine whistleblower. Let me be clear – I have never met the whistleblower and the only thing I know about their identity is what I have read in press. McCarthy’s real objection is we proved the whistleblower’s claim to be true and impeached Donald Trump for withholding millions from Ukraine to extort its help with his campaign.” Schiff also made this comment to The Washington Post, which fact-checked the McCarthy claim last week, and has consistently said the same since late 2019.

    The New York Times reported in 2019 that, according to an unnamed official, a House Intelligence Committee aide who had been contacted by the whistleblower before the whistleblower filed a formal complaint did not inform Schiff of the person’s identity when conveying to Schiff “some” information about what the person had said. And Reuters reported in 2019 that a person familiar with the whistleblower’s contacts said the whistleblower hadn’t met or spoken with Schiff.

    McCarthy could have fairly repeated Republican criticism of a claim Schiff made in a 2019 television appearance about the committee’s communication with the whistleblower; Schiff said at the time “we have not spoken directly with the whistleblower” even though it soon emerged that the whistleblower had contacted the committee aide before filing the complaint. (A committee spokesperson said at the time that Schiff had been merely trying to say that the committee hadn’t heard actual testimony from the whistleblower, but that Schiff acknowledged his words “should have been more carefully phrased to make that distinction clear.”)

    Regardless, McCarthy didn’t argue here that Schiff had been misleading about the committee’s dealings with the whistleblower; he strongly suggested that Schiff lied in saying he didn’t know the whistleblower. That’s baseless. There has never been any indication that Schiff had a relationship with the whistleblower when he said he didn’t, nor that Schiff knew the whistleblower’s identity when he said he didn’t.

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  • Winter is more than halfway over, and many Northeast cities still await their first snow day | CNN

    Winter is more than halfway over, and many Northeast cities still await their first snow day | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: A version of this article originally appeared in the weekly weather newsletter, the CNN Weather Brief, which is released every Monday. You can sign up here to receive them every week and during significant storms.



    CNN
     — 

    While the western US has been piling up snowfall over the past several weeks, it has been the complete opposite across the Northeast and New England.

    We are more than halfway through meteorological winter, which runs from December through February, and cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC have yet to see measurable snow, defined as at least 0.1 inches.

    And it’s not just the coastal cities. Many locations across interior New England and the Northeast are seeing significantly below normal snowfall to date.

    “With the exception of some areas downwind of Lakes Erie and Ontario, and very small areas of interior New England, the East is certainly in a snow drought with some locations that normally have snow, down by as much as one to more than three feet,” the Weather Prediction Center Branch Chief Greg Carbin told CNN.

    Buffalo, New York was inundated with several feet of heavy snowfall earlier this winter.

    Carbin went on to explain there are two types of snow drought:

    • The first type is when there is an overall lack of winter precipitation, rain or snow, which contributes to drought conditions.
    • The second type is when overall precipitation amounts are near normal but instead of falling as snow, it falls mostly as rain.

    “Along the I-95 corridor from DC to Boston, the latter type of snow drought has been measured so far this winter,” Carbin said. “Precipitation amounts have been normal to slightly above normal, but it’s generally been too warm for precipitation to fall in the form of snow.”

    The period between snow events is likely to increase as the climate warms, and it may be especially true for coastal Northeastern cities. As the Northeast temperatures warm, the rain-snow line shifts farther north, leading to more rainy winter day along the coast and less snow, according to the US National Climate Assessment.

    And it’s not just the Northeast, winter (December, January, February) is also the fastest-warming season for 75% of 238 US locations, according to Climate Central’s data analysis.

    319

    Central Park in New York City has gone 319 days without measurable snow through Sunday, which currently ties for their third-longest streak. Central Park would have to be snowless through February 5, 2023, to break the record streak of 332 days set back in 2020.

    316

    Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC have all gone 316 days without measurable snow through Sunday, which rank 6th, 12th, and 19th respectively.

    1973

    Central Park is also approaching the latest date in the season for their first measurable snowfall since record keeping began in 1869.

    “The current record is Jan. 29, 1973, which went on to become the least-snowy winter in NYC history, with just 2.8 inches total snow accumulation,” Carbin said.

    “The pattern has been fairly consistent with the typical La Nina pattern across the Northeastern US so far this winter,” meaning the track of the storms and cold air have remained to the north and west of the Northeast, meteorologists at the National Weather Service office in New York City told CNN.

    Watch: Meteorologist Jennifer Gray explains the effects of La Niña

    La Niña, the counterpart of El Niño, is characterized by below-normal sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean near the equator, a result of shifting wind patterns in the atmosphere, which has a direct effect on weather seen across the US in the winter.

    “There are of course variations in this pattern due to short term factors that are not predictable more than one to two weeks in advance, such as the arctic outbreak during Christmas,” the weather service office in New York City said. “But these variations have been brief.”

    The most active weather and heaviest snowfall in recent weeks have been focused across the West and California, where more than 15 feet of snow have fallen across portions of the Sierras from December 26, 2022, through January 17, 2023.

    “While the jet stream meanders and can occasionally quickly change to support snowstorms just about anywhere during the winter, this winter has been quite active across the West, with a weak but broad area of high pressure (and warmer than average temperatures) over the eastern 2/3rds of the contiguous United States,” Carbin said.

    There is a chance Central Park could see some light accumulating snow Wednesday but there is still some uncertainty in the forecast, the weather service office in New York City said.

    If the city does not see snow this week, their streak will stay alive. After Wednesday, the weather service is currently forecasting dry conditions through January 29.

    “We need to make up the whole seasonal snowfall since none has accumulated, which is 29.8 inches,” the weather service office in New York City said. “The record storm total snowfall is 27.5 inches on January 22 to 24, 2016, so that is very close to our seasonal snowfall. All it may take is one storm to get us back on track.”

    While this scenario is certainly possible, it is not very likely. There have only been seven storms on record to dump 20 inches of snow or more across Central Park in recorded history, according to the weather service.

    “February and March are months in which big snows have fallen in the cities of the Northeast, so there remains some hope for snow lovers,” Carbin said. “Although, the later in the season you get started, the more likely you are to finish the season with lackluster snowfall.”

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  • Police are investigating a vulture’s death at the Dallas Zoo as ‘suspicious’ | CNN

    Police are investigating a vulture’s death at the Dallas Zoo as ‘suspicious’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Police are investigating the death of an endangered vulture at the Dallas Zoo as “suspicious,” authorities said.

    Staff found the bird dead in its enclosure Saturday – about a week after the same zoo made headlines for a clouded leopard that escaped after fencing around its enclosure was cut in what police called “an intentional act.”

    The zoo said that “given the recent incidents,” staff alerted the Dallas Police Department about the vulture’s death.

    While the vulture’s cause of death has not been determined, “circumstances of the death are unusual, and the death does not appear to be from natural causes,” the Dallas Zoo said in a statement Saturday.

    A necropsy will be conducted on the bird, the Dallas Police Department said in a news release.

    “The animal care team is heartbroken over this tremendous loss,” the zoo’s statement read.

    In the past week, the Dallas Zoo said it has added additional cameras throughout the property and increased on-site security patrols during the overnight hours.

    “We will continue to implement and expand our safety and security measures to whatever level necessary to keep our animals and staff safe,” the zoo added.

    The clouded leopard’s disappearance last Friday prompted the zoo to close as workers and police searched for the missing feline. The animal was later found safe near the original habitat on zoo grounds.

    But it wasn’t the only apparent tampering at the zoo that day, police said.

    Zoo staff found a similar cut at a habitat for a breed of monkey known as Langurs. However, none of the langurs escaped.

    Dallas Police at the time said the cutting of both enclosures will be investigated, though it was unknown if the two incidents were related.

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  • An elderly Florida couple’s murder-suicide agreement ended with a shooting and hostage situation at a Daytona Beach hospital | CNN

    An elderly Florida couple’s murder-suicide agreement ended with a shooting and hostage situation at a Daytona Beach hospital | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A 76-year-old woman is in custody after fatally shooting her terminally ill husband in the head in what police say was an intended murder-suicide at a hospital in Daytona Beach, Florida, on Saturday.

    The terminally ill man, 77, was hospitalized at the Advent Health Hospital and made a plan with his wife three weeks ago to “end it” should his health get worse, Daytona Beach Police Chief Jakari E. Young said in a news conference. Police did not specify the man’s illness.

    The man intended to turn the gun on himself but was physically too weak to do so, police said. His wife, who indented to take her own life after, said she “couldn’t go through with it,” according to Young.

    The woman then barricaded herself in the hospital room.

    Officers responded to the hospital shortly after 11:30 a.m. and hostage negotiators made contact with the woman, whose identity hasn’t been released. She was taken into police custody at approximately 3 p.m., Young said.

    Keeping other patients on the 11th floor, where the hostage situation took place, was a “logistical nightmare” as many patients were on ventilators and could not be easily evacuated, he added.

    The woman is in custody and could be awaiting a first-degree murder charge, according to Young.

    “She’s very sad, it’s a tough situation,” Young said.

    It’s unclear how the woman entered the hospital with a gun and if the hospital had a metal detection security system. The exact gun used in the shooting also remains unclear.

    CNN reached out to AdventHealth for comment.

    There is no longer a police presence at the hospital, according to Young.

    Dr. Joshua Horenstein, a cardiologist at Advent Health Hospital, was working in the emergency department when he learned of the shooting incident.

    “Someone came in screaming in the emergency department that this was not a drill and to shelter in place,” Horenstein told CNN while hiding in a supply room with a nurse.

    Horenstein said he was finally able to leave the supply room after roughly 90 minutes.

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