TV News LIES

Drenching rain swamped southern Texas Friday morning, leading to dangerous flash flooding throughout the region, including in the Houston metro area. The flooding forced people from their homes near the San Jacinto River Thursday night.

Rain gauges in the northern part of the metro area reported between 10 and 12 inches of rain in 24 hours, AccuWeather said.

The heavy rain was part of a sprawling weather system that also brought severe thunderstorms and tornadoes to portions of the state on Thursday.

Multiple tornadoes had battered Texas on Thursday near Abilene, including one in Hawley that damaged several homes. The National Weather Service said two people were injured when their home suffered storm damage in nearby Hodges, Texas, FoxWeather reported.

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The fossil fuel industry spent decades sowing doubt about the dangers of burning oil and gas, experts and Democratic lawmakers testified on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

The Senate budget committee held a hearing to review a report published on Tuesday with the House oversight and accountability committee that they said demonstrates the sector’s shift from explicit climate denial to a more sophisticated strategy of “deception, disinformation and doublespeak”.

“Big oil had to evolve from denial to duplicity,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, the Rhode Island Democrat, who chairs the Senate committee.

The revelations, based on hundreds of newly subpoenaed documents, illustrate how oil companies worked to greenwash their image while fighting climate policy behind the scenes.

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At least four people, including a baby, were killed after a series of tornadoes struck Oklahoma on Saturday, amid a weekend of extreme weather that left dozens injured and a trail of destruction across the midwest.

Local authorities confirmed that a four-month-old infant was among the two people dead in Holdenville – one of the hardest hit towns in Oklahoma, located 80 miles south-east of Oklahoma City – where about 20 tornadoes hit late Saturday, leveling buildings and ripping off roofs. The victims have not been named, but at least four others were injured as the tornado left a path of devastation through the town of around 6,000 people.

A third death occurred near Marietta on Interstate 35 (I-35) which was closed on Sunday at the border with Texas “due to overturned vehicles and power lines across the highway”, according to the Oklahoma office of emergency management. The body of a woman, the fourth known victim, was recovered from the debris near a bar in downtown Sulphur, said governor Kevin Stitt, who has issued a state of emergency for 12 Oklahoma counties.

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A tornado plowed through suburban Omaha, Nebraska, on Friday afternoon, damaging hundreds of homes and other structures as the twister tore for miles along farmland and into subdivisions. Injuries were reported but it wasn't yet clear if anyone was killed in the storm.

Multiple tornadoes were reported in Nebraska but the most destructive storm moved from a largely rural area into suburbs northwest of Omaha, a city of 485,000 people.

Photos on social media showed heavily damaged homes and shredded trees. Video showed homes with roofs stripped of shingles, in a rural area near Omaha. Law enforcement were blocking off roads in the area.

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Remember the watery eyes, inflamed lungs and the apocalyptic orange skies of last summer?

The smoke that descended over swaths of the U.S. was primarily caused by distant wildfires in Canada – and those fires are back. So will the U.S. have a repeat of the smoky, unhealthy skies?

Top Canadian fire experts offered mixed answers for 2024: "It is extremely unlikely that the 2024 fire season will be as extreme as 2023, as 2023 was a record-smashing year," Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fire at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, told USA TODAY.

However, he said there is an existing drought across Canada and forecasts call for a warmer-than-normal summer, so "these factors suggest the potential for an active fire season."

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Joe Biden marked Monday’s Earth Day by announcing a $7bn investment in solar energy projects nationwide, focusing on disadvantaged communities, and unveiling a week-long series of what the White House say will be “historic climate actions”.

The president was speaking at Prince William Forest Park, in Triangle, Virginia, touting his environmental record and unveiling measures to tackle the climate crisis and increase access to, and lower costs of, clean energy.

The centerpiece was the announcement of $7bn in grants through the Environmental Protection Agency’s “solar for all” program, funded by last year’s $369bn Inflation Reduction Act, and which Biden said will benefit hundreds of thousands of mostly low-income families who currently spend up to 30% of their income on energy.

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Authorities in Indonesia have issued a tsunami alert after a volcano erupted several times in the province of North Sulawesi, spewing a column of smoke more than a mile into the sky and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of people from their homes.

Mount Ruang, a stratovolcano, first erupted at 9.45pm local time on Tuesday and then four times on Wednesday, Indonesia’s volcanology agency said.

Officials worry that part of the volcano could collapse into the sea and cause a tsunami, as happened in 1871. Tagulandang island to the volcano’s north-east is again at risk, and its residents are among those being told to evacuate.

The alert level for the volcano, which has a peak of 725 metres above sea level, was raised on Wednesday evening from three to four, the highest level in the four-tiered system.

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Massive coral bleaching across the world's oceans during the past year's extremely warm water temperatures was labeled a “global coral bleaching event” by federal officials on Monday.

It’s the fourth global coral bleaching overall and the second in the last 10 years, with extensive bleaching and heat stress across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

"From February 2023 to April 2024, significant coral bleaching has been documented in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres of each major ocean basin," said Derek Manzello, coordinator of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch. Reef Watch monitors heat stress based on sea surface temperatures measured by satellite.

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