Chris Francescani

Before the internet ushered in the digital age, most news in America was delivered in black ink on pulpy gray paper, and big city newspaper columnists like Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill and Murray Kempton roamed the streets of New York City like giants.

Veteran New York newsman Richard Esposito, who splits his time as a resident of both Hampton Bays and Manhattan, was a longtime Breslin colleague. He is the first to capture the legendary writer’s wild ride of a life in a new biography out this October, Jimmy Breslin: The Man Who Told the Truth (Penzler Publishing).

For 14 generations, members of the Bennett family have set sail from Montauk on an ancient chase for flounder, fluke, weakfish, mackerel, porgies, cod, mako sharks, black sea bass, long-finned albacore tuna, yellowfin tuna and giant bluefin tuna and, closer to shore, clams, scallops and lobsters.

The lead doctor on duty at Travis Scott's Astroworld Festival arrived at 10 a.m. on Nov. 5 at Houston's NRG Park. Almost immediately, she said, "I knew we were in for a shit show."

"I wasn't nervous," Dr. Danica Barron said later in an interview. "I've done shit shows. All I was thinking is, 'Ok, we're going to have a rough crowd.'"

In their first in-depth interviews since the tragedy, senior staffers on duty that night offered harrowing accounts of how the tragedy unfolded from their perspective.

For nearly three years, QAnon followers have been feverishly deciphering thousands of cryptic clues and predictions posted online by the shadowy persona of "Q" at the center of a metastasizing movement that experts say is the first far-right extremist conspiracy theory in the modern era to penetrate mainstream American culture and Washington politics.

Yet leading researchers and critics who study and debunk QAnon disinformation told ABC News that a key to identifying "Q" has been hiding in plain sight for years -- on a pig farm south of Manila in the Philippines -- at least until recently.

Facing an existential threat, hundreds of the most iconic independent rock clubs in America have banded together to do the unthinkable in an industry forged on pride, risk, ingenuity and imagination.

Last month, a coalition of club owners now numbering more than 1,600 -- the National Independent Venue Association -- hired top-shelf Capitol Hill lobbyists to petition Congress for financial assistance.

"We're in dark times," said Michael Swier of New York's Bowery Ballroom. "The unknowns are just staggering. It's hard to see the entrance to the tunnel, let alone the light at the end of it."

The novel coronavirus has already claimed the lives of more than 58,000 Americans. But experts fear that number could be far higher at this point in the outbreak -- perhaps by tens of thousands -- once the pandemic subsides enough for officials to go back and make a true reckoning of the dead.

The plot had the hallmarks of an international spy thriller: a desperate pathologist, a contact code-named “Strawberry,” a secret associate in China, tense waiting games, a six-figure payout, an 11th-hour international rescue mission – and then a gut-punch twist ending.

The haul was significant: 100,000 COVID-19 diagnostic tests airlifted from Shanghai to Seattle.

As the COVID-19 virus continues its relentless march across the nation, the looming crisis inside America’s jails and prisons appears to be deepening, as corrections officials dig in to prevent outbreaks in the nation's more than 6,000 prisons and jails.

So far this week, a total of 23 inmates have escaped correctional facilities in two states and judges from coast to coast have ordered thousands of inmates released — both those detained before trial and convicted inmates, but calls for release have have broadened to all medically-vulnerable inmates, as reports of shortages mount.

As much of the nation adjusts this week to sudden, indefinite home confinement, prison and jail wardens nationwide are scrambling to forestall nightmare scenario: an outbreak of COVID-19 inside a crowded U.S. correctional facility.

With the world's highest incarceration rate, the U.S. faces unique challenges among its roughly 2.3 million inmates as the coronavirus surges silently through America.

“People refer to cruise ships as petri dishes, but nobody has invented a more effective vector for transmitting disease than a city jail,” said former NYC corrections commissioner Martin Horn.

Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years on sex crime convictions in New York on Wednesday, following a landmark trial that spotlighted Hollywood power dynamics, predatory sexual violence and complex questions about the nature of consent and coercion.

The sentence includes 20 years for criminal sexual assault in the first degree, which stems from an accusation from former "Project Runway" production assistant Mimi Haley, and three years for rape in the third degree, which stems from an accusation from Jessica Mann,. The sentences are set to run consecutively.

Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced former Hollywood producer, was found guilty of criminal sexual assault and of rape in the third degree in a New York court Monday. He was found not guilty of the more serious charges of predatory sexual assault and of rape in the first degree.

The outcome is seen as a landmark moment in the #MeToo movement, which was spurred into mainstream awareness after allegations against Weinstein were first reported in October 2017 by The New York Times and The New Yorker.

The defense's first witness in the Harvey Weinstein rape trial took the stand late on Thursday to challenge actress Annabella Sciorra's account of being raped by the disgraced producer and stumbled memorably through a cross-examination when a series of texts he sent to Weinstein were read aloud in court to the witness' surprise.

"Listen," the agitated witness explained at one point. "I'm learning a lot now and I had no idea that my text messages would end up in a courtroom."

"Sopranos" actress Annabella Sciorra took the witness stand on Thursday at Harvey Weinstein's criminal trial and testified in wrenching detail about the night nearly 30 years ago that she said the disgraced Hollywood producer violently raped her at her apartment.

Sciorra's testimony is the first and among the most highly anticipated at a pivotal moment in the #MeToo movement as Weinstein faces rape and sexual assault charges in New York.

Experts in sexual assault and victims' advocates say that the use of so-called “prior bad acts” witnesses – women with credible sexual assault claims against a defendant which fall outside the statute of limitations for prosecution – are an increasingly vital tool for prosecutors at a time when the #MeToo movement is drawing forth long-delayed reports of sex abuse.

Yet critics contend these witnesses can serve to tilt the case unfairly against the defendant and subvert the spirit of the law.

Harvey Weinstein’s rape and sexual assault trial, which begins Monday in New York City, has already seen more backstage drama, intrigue, infighting and cast changes than the Hollywood legal thriller that it could very well become one day.