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Richard “Alex” Murdaugh has been found guilty of the murders of wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, after a six-week televised trial that culminated with the defendant unexpectedly taking the stand to plead his innocence.
The jury returned with the verdict after three hours of deliberation. Murdaugh was judged guilty on two counts of murder and two weapons-related charges.
“He may be taken away,” the judge, Clifton Newman, said as Murdaugh was led out. He will be returned to court on Friday for sentencing. Newman has discretion to pass a sentence of 30 years to life without parole for each of the murder convictions.
“The circumstantial evidence, direct evidence, all of the evidence, only pointed to one conclusion – the conclusion that you all reached,” he said before dismissing the jury.
Prosecutors said Murdaugh sought to distract from his financial crimes. The 54-year-old had been held in jail in South Carolina since October 2021 on felony counts of fraud, after millions of dollars went missing from a settlement involving the death of a housekeeper.
Unprecedented snowfall on US west coast is ‘once-in-a-generation’ event
The west coast of the US, from Oregon to the mountains of California and the golf courses of Phoenix, has received nearly unprecedented levels of snowfall this week in what officials are calling a “once-in-a-generation” event.
The mountainous regions of California have received so much snowfall – more than 40ft of snow since the start of the season – that entire towns have shut down as they are virtually cut off from the rest of the state. The governor has declared a state of emergency in 13 counties due to the unusual snowfall.
Portland, Oregon’s largest city, had its second-snowiest day in history with almost a foot of snow, while farther south in Arizona the suburbs of Phoenix received a dusting of snow. “This rain and snow bucked the trend, and it’s highly unexpected,” said Ryan Maue, a meteorologist and former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief scientist. “It’s like once in a generation.”
Every cloud has a silver lining. Although the storms have overwhelmed the state, they have helped ease California’s devastating drought. All of the state was experiencing a drought three months ago but now, according to the US Drought Monitor, more than half the state is out of drought.
US rail workers told to skip inspections as questions mount over Ohio crash
In leaked audio heard by the Guardian, a manager for one of the US’s largest rail companies can be heard explaining to a former carman that they should stop tagging railcars for broken bearings. The manager says doing so delays other cargo.
The disclosure comes as federal agencies investigate the derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. A wheel-bearing failure was cited as the cause of the crash in a preliminary report released by the National Transportation Safety Board.
In late 2016, Stephanie Griffin, a former Union Pacific carman, went to her manager with concerns that she was getting pushback for tagging – or reporting for repair – railcars. Her manager told her it was OK to skip inspections.
Griffin said: “He refused to bad-order [mark for repair] cars for bad wheel bearings. My boss took issue with it because it increased our dwell time. When that happened, corporate offices would start berating management to release the cars.”
Dwell time. The phrase refers to the time a train spends at a scheduled stop without moving. “It’s very obvious that management is not concerned with public safety, and only concerned with making their numbers look good,” Griffin said.
In other news …
The question of how the whale got its voice has been solved by scientists, who have discovered how the creatures use “phonic lips” in their nose to produce the loudest sounds in the animal kingdom. The research also reveals that toothed whales use three vocal registers equivalent to vocal fry, a normal speaking voice and falsetto.
Gunmen have left a threatening message for Lionel Messi and opened fire at a supermarket owned by his in-laws in his home town of Rosario, police said. Nobody was injured in the early morning attack, and it was unclear why assailants would target the Argentina star or the supermarket.
The Kremlin has claimed Russia has been attacked by “terrorists” after conflicting reports of fighting emerged in Russia near the Ukraine border, which Russian media blamed on Ukrainian “sabotage groups” and Ukrainian sources called a “provocation”.
Stat of the day: More than half of humans on track to be overweight or obese by 2035 – report
More than half of the world’s population will be overweight or obese by 2035 unless governments take decisive action to curb the growing epidemic of excess weight, a report has warned. About 2.6 billion people globally – 38% of the world population – are already overweight or obese. But on current trends that is expected to rise to more than 4 billion people (51%) in 12 years’ time, according to research by the World Obesity Federation.
Without widespread use of tactics such as taxes and limits on the promotion of unhealthy food, the number of people who are clinically obese will increase from one in seven today to one in four by 2035. If that happens, almost 2 billion people worldwide would be living with obesity. Evidence shows that obesity increases someone’s risk of cancer, heart disease and other diseases.
Don’t miss this: The anarchic Philippines prison where anything can be bought
New Bilibid prison, one of the largest jails in the world, is infamously under-resourced and overcrowded. It is home to 29,000 inmates, despite having a capacity of only 6,000, says Raymund Narag, a criminology and criminal justice professor in Southern Illinois University “That’s where all the problems of the Philippine corrections emanate,” he says. “In a cell good for, say, 10 people, there will be 100 inmates, and there will be only one prison officer.”
To prevent disorder from breaking out, prison officers and inmates develop their own structures to manage day-to-day life. An inmate hierarchy exists across the prison, with prisoners taking on various roles and positions. “They are the ones headcounting the inmates, they are the ones maintaining the cleanliness of the cell,” says Narag, who spent more than six years in prison before a court found he had been wrongly accused. He has since become an expert on prison reform.
Climate check: Yosemite national park shut indefinitely after breaking 54-year daily snow record
Yosemite national park has closed indefinitely, according to officials, as the park grapples with extensive snowfall that broke a 54-year-old daily record. Nearly unprecedented snowfall across the US west has buried the park in snow up to 15ft deep in some areas.
Yosemite has been closed for the past five days due to the extreme weather and was previously scheduled to reopen on Thursday.
Last Thing: I went to Disneyland every day for eight years
I already had a great love for Disney, says Jeff Reitz. Tron is by far my favourite film. Growing up, my family would take me there for special occasions, such as birthdays or Easter, and my aunt was even a cast member at Walt Disney World in Florida for a while. I’ve also collected more than 3,000 Disney-themed badges along the way.
And so each day throughout 2012, I visited the park. It’s open every day of the year – in fact, before Covid, Disneyland California had only two full-day unscheduled closures since opening in 1955, bar unexpected weather closures. After that first year I kept going, because I had so much fun. It felt like a regular part of my life.
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