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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Trump administration officials barred experts from warning legislators that they were about to write a major environmental loophole into law, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) staffers alleged in newly revealed internal communications.

The loophole,  arising from a clause in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), enabled many companies to avoid disclosing releases of toxic “forever chemicals” to the EPA.

Internal EPA correspondence obtained by The Hill shows that career staff members attempted to make Congress aware of the issue, but they believe their efforts were rebuffed by political appointees.

Thousands of homes and businesses were without power Tuesday as severe weather roared through several states, causing at least one death and spawning possible tornadoes.

Parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia and Georgia were under tornado watches into Tuesday night, while Wisconsin was experiencing a spring snowstorm.

Storms in Northeastern Oklahoma unleashed three suspected tornadoes and dumped heavy rain that was blamed for the death of a 46-year-old homeless woman in Tulsa who was sheltering inside a drainage pipe.

The woman's boyfriend told authorities the two had gone to sleep at the entrance of the drainage pipe and were awakened by floodwaters, Tulsa Fire Department spokesperson Andy Little said. Up to 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) of rain fell in Tulsa in about an hour, National Weather Service meteorologist Robert Darby said.

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Canada's 2023 wildfire season was the most destructive ever recorded, with 6,551 fires scorching nearly 71,000 square miles of land from the West Coast to the Atlantic provinces, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center. It wasn't just remarkable for its destruction, however, but also for the fact that it never really seemed to end.

It's the middle of the winter, and there are still 149 active wildfires burning across Canada, including 92 in British Columbia, 56 in the western province of Alberta, and one in New Brunswick, according to the CIFFC, which classifies two of the blazes as out of control.

"Zombie fires," also called overwintering fires, burn slowly below the surface during the cold months. Experts say zombie fires have become more common as climate change warms the atmosphere, and they are currently smoldering at an alarming rate in both British Columbia and Alberta.

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A 4.1-magnitude earthquake shook central Oklahoma early Saturday morning following a slightly stronger earthquake the night before and amid a series of smaller quakes.

The earthquake occurred just after 5:30 a.m. local time about 19 miles north of Oklahoma City, near the Northeast Edmond Gas and Oil Field. The quake, which had a depth of about 4.1 miles, was part of a series of several earthquakes clustered together Friday and Saturday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

On Saturday morning, the Oklahoma Geological Survey said in a statement that there have been reports of strong shaking in the immediate area and across Oklahoma City.

State seismologist Jake Walter told USA TODAY the area has recorded about 18 earthquakes in a 12-hour span. Connecting the dots, Walter added, the quakes follow a fault identified by researchers.

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It's a moment scientists have warned about for months: Earth has just ended its warmest year since people began keeping records, and scientists say it may have been the warmest in 125,000 years.

Even though the December data isn't yet official, the results were already "locked in" by mid-December, Gavin Schmidt, a scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, told USA TODAY.

Given the six consecutive months of extremely warm temperatures, it was virtually impossible for December to be cold enough to alter the final results.

"We are already beyond the point that any normal process would be able to keep 2023 from being the hottest year," Robert Rohde of Berkeley Earth, said in mid-December.