National Headlines
Boater allegedly involved in teen’s death had ‘no knowledge’ of accident: Lawyer
Alder Family(KEY BISCAYNE, Fla.) -- The boater accused of fatally striking a Florida teenager has released surveillance footage that he said shows he was unaware his boat had collided with the teen, according to his attorney.In the video, which was released by ABC affiliate WPLG, the boat operator appears to be calm after arriving back to the dock. The boat operator's attorney said this supports the claim that her client was unaware of the collision. Ella Adler, 15, was killed in the collision."This was an unthinkable tragedy and our hearts break for Ella and her family. We hope this video helps to shut down some of the awful and unfounded rumors going around about Bill, who is absolutely devastated," Lauren ... Read More
State Department issues travel alert for LGBTQ people, events abroad
Alexander Spatari/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- The U.S. State Department issued a "Worldwide Caution" alert on Friday, warning U.S. citizens overseas to exercise increased caution due to "the increased potential for foreign terrorist organization-inspired violence against LGBTQI+ persons and events."According to an administration official familiar with the matter, the alert is connected to the recent announcement from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security that foreign terrorist organizations might seek to exploit "LGBTQIA+-related events and venues," including events during 2024 Pride month, which begins in June.The alert comes on the same day the State Department is commemorating the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia, and Transphobia.Last year's Pride month was also marked by safety concerns after the Department of Homeland Security issued ... Read More
US Airman Roger Fortson, killed by deputy in his own home, honored at funeral
US Air Force(ATLANTA) -- Dozens of Air Force members came together at a suburban Atlanta church Friday with the family and friends of Senior Airman Roger Fortson to honor the serviceman, who was shot and killed in his Florida home by a sheriffâs deputy on May 3.Fortson, 23, was in his home in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, when he was shot by an Okaloosa County Sheriffâs Office deputy, according to law enforcement authorities.At Friday's service, Fortson was laid out wearing his Air Force uniform and his coffin was draped with the American flag.âAs you can see from the sea of Air Force blue, I am not alone in my admiration of Senior Airman Fortson,â Col. Patrick Dierig told mourners at ... Read More
Man in custody for punching actor Steve Buscemi in Manhattan: Authorities
amphotora/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- A 50-year-old man has been taken into custody for allegedly assaulting actor Steve Buscemi on a New York City street earlier this month, authorities said.Buscemi was walking down the street just before noon on May 8 when he was punched in the face, suffering bruising, swelling and bleeding to his left eye, according to the NYPD.Clifton Williams, who was identified as a suspect earlier in the week, was taken into custody in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood Friday afternoon, authorities said. The officers were responding to a harassment call of a man yelling at people when they realized the suspect was Williams, authorities said.A representative for Buscemi said the 66-year-old "Boardwalk Empire" star "is ok and appreciates everyoneâs ... Read More
Menopause, women’s health focus of new book by Dr. Sharon Malone
Getty Images - STOCK(NEW YORK) -- Dr. Sharon Malone, a board-certified OB/GYN, is on a mission to help women understand the importance of critical thinking when it comes to health products. She advises readers to scrutinize everything they consume, even items marketed as 'natural' or 'organic', as she says these terms can often be misleading marketing ploys.Malone discussed her new book, "Grown Woman Talk: Your Guide to Getting and Staying Healthy," with ABC News, and focused on how women over 40 should take care of themselves and be their best health advocates.She also tackles vitamins and supplements in her book, stating that most are harmless. Some do nothing, she says, despite their claims, while others are known to interact poorly ... Read More
Houston storm: At least five killed, more than 600,000 without power
Getty Images - STOCK(HOUSTON) -- At least five people were killed when a powerful storm tore through Houston on Thursday night, officials said.Fallen trees appeared to cause at least two of the deaths, according to officials.Straight-line winds peaked at around 100 mph in downtown Houston, and residents told ABC News the winds sounded like a freight train.The winds were so powerful, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said they were comparable to Hurricane Alicia in 1983.One tornado was confirmed near Cypress, officials said.Houston Mayor John Whitmire urged residents to stay home Friday following the "exceptionally" strong storm, noting 2,500 traffic lights are not functioning.Houston schools closed on Friday and more than 600,000 customers remain without power.For some, the power could be ... Read More
70 years after Brown v. Board of Education, many schools remain segregated: Data analysis
Carl Iwasaki/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- In the Mississippi Delta, farms, wildlife refuges and churches dot the landscape alongside the Magnolia State's country highways.In some ways, the region looks on the surface in 2024 as it did in 1954. Yet a quick drive reveals that even though the area's population has long been on the decline, something in the Delta has increased over the last seven decades â the number of private schools.In Tunica, a private school opened its doors in 1964. The next year, Deer Creek School opened in the former white-only Arcola Public School that had been consolidated with Hollandale. Today, 96% of Deer Creek's students are white, even though the school-aged children living in its neighborhood are majority-non-white.Indianola ... Read More
Photo of upside-down flag at Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s house raises concerns: Report
Alex Wong/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday called on Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 election after a photo of an upside-down American flag flying at his home in January 2021 was published in The New York Times.Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said in a statement Friday that, "Flying an upside-down American flag -- a symbol of the so-called 'Stop the Steal' movement -- clearly creates the appearance of bias."Since a mob of then-President Donald Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021, rioters and affiliated groups have been known to fly the American flag upside-down in protest of Joe Biden's ... Read More
Missing 23-year-old climber found dead in Rocky Mountains
Getty Images - STOCK(GRAND LAKE, Colo.) -- The body of 23-year-old Lucas Macaj was recovered in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park on Thursday after he took a "significant fall," according to an initial investigation, the park said.Search and rescue teams had been looking for Macaj on Mills Glacier since Monday.His body was flown by helicopter to a landing zone in Rocky Mountain National Park before being transferred to the Boulder County Coroner's Office. Park rangers completed an on-scene investigation.The search for Macaj began when he was reported overdue following an attempt to summit Longs Peak on Sunday. He was last heard from at about 1 p.m. on Sunday when he texted a friend indicating that he was on the summit ... Read More
‘Overlooked’ workers who train AI can face harsh conditions, advocates say
ABC(NEW YORK) -- Krystal Kauffman, a gig worker, spent one workday watching footage captured by a camera that had been placed on a baby's head, labeling objects as they came into view, she said. For another job, she said she looked at images of feet, while on another, she marked aerial photographs of animals.Over nearly a decade, Kauffman has performed thousands of tiny tasks that have helped companies assemble the immense data sets used to train artificial intelligence (AI), she said."It's supposed to look like these products are magic," Kauffman, who performs tasks on the platform Amazon Mechanical Turk and advocates for workers as a lead organizer for the group Turkopticon, told ABC News. "People don't know that behind all ... Read More
Betrayal turned deadly: The killing of a celebrity hair stylist
ABC(WOODLAND HILLS, Ca.) -- When famed stylist and hair care executive Fabio Sementilliâ was found him stabbed to death on the patio of his home in Woodland Hills, California, on January 23, 2017, the crime was assumed to be a burglary gone wrong. Since 2012, police were noticing a rising trend of burglaries in upscale neighborhoods in Los Angeles that were causing alarm among residents.As detectives got to work and looked deeper, they began to realize something more sinister than a burglary gone wrong happened at the home, something that would lead them on what they described as a trail of love and murder.âHowever this went down,â Fabio Sementilliâs sister Mirella Sementilli told ABC News, âit was executed brilliantly because ... Read More
How experts are trying to save the Florida panther
Getty Images - STOCK(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) -- The fate of the endangered Florida panther, also known as the North American cougar, could depend on a network of wildlife corridors and panther crossings currently being established by conservation groups and state officials.The North American cougar once roamed throughout the southern U.S., Elise Bennett, Florida and Caribbean director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told ABC News. The species has even been documented as far north as Louisiana, Tiffany Burns, senior director of animal programs at ZooTampa, told ABC News.The panthers have been confined to a small geographic area in southwest Florida after being hunted to near-extinction. The population is capped due to the limited amount to space to house them and a ... Read More
‘I can’t believe this’: Truck driver recounts harrowing moments dangling off bridge
ABC(LOUISVILLE, Ky.) -- The driver of a semi truck that careened off the Clark Memorial Bridge in Louisiana is speaking out for the first time since her miraculous 40-minute rescue."It happened so fast," Sydney Thomas told ABC News Louisville affiliate WHAS."I was like, I can't believe this, that I'm really hanging over the river," she said.It all began when the driver of a pickup truck, 33-year-old Trevor Branham, swerved to avoid a stalled car on the bridge. Branham then slammed into the semi Thomas was driving.As a result, the semi crashed through the railing, leaving Thomas dangling above the Ohio River."I'm going to have to jump. I can't swim either," she told herself. "I didn't know how bad it was. ... Read More
Exclusive: Members of ‘Little Rock Nine’ reflect on 70 years since Brown v. Board of Education
Getty Images - STOCK(LITTLE ROCK, Ark.) -- Seventy years after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision ended racial segregation in public schools, members of the "Little Rock Nine" -- the first group of African American students to attend Little Rock Central High School -- sat down with ABC News to discuss the challenges they faced in education then and the challenges that remain today.Minnijean Brown, Terrence Roberts, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Pattillo, Gloria Ray, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls LaNier, known as the Little Rock Nine, began attending Little Rock Central High School in 1957, three years after the historic decision, making them the first students to desegregate the school.The Nine were all ... Read More
Paul Pelosi attacker David DePape sentenced to 30 years on federal charges
In this screen grab from police body cam footage released by the San Francisco Police Department, Paul Pelosi, the husband of Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, is shown with his assailant, David DePape, at the Pelosi home, in San Francisco, Oct 28, 2022. -- San Francisco Police Dept(SAN FRANCISCO) -- The man convicted of breaking into former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's home and attacking her husband Paul Pelosi with a hammer has been sentenced to 30 years in federal prison.The Pelosis' daughter, Christine Pelosi, appeared in court Friday and read victim impact statements from the family, according to San Francisco ABC station KGO.David DePape was convicted in November 2023 for the Oct. 28, 2022, break-in and attack at the Pelosis' San ... Read More
Texas governor pardons ex-Army sergeant convicted of killing BLM protester in 2020
AUSTIN, Texas -- Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a full pardon Thursday for a former U.S. Army sergeant convicted of murder for fatally shooting an armed demonstrator in 2020 during nationwide protests against police violence and racial injustice. Abbott announced the pardon shortly after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles announced a unanimous recommendation that Daniel Perry be pardoned and have his firearms rights restored. Perry had been in state prison on a 25-year sentence since his 2023 conviction in the killing of Garrett Foster, and was released shortly after the pardon, a prison spokeswoman said. Perry, who is white, was working as a ride-share driver when his car approached a demonstration in Austin. Prosecutors said he could have ... Read More
Why a Texas divorce case could impact IVF care in the state
fstop123/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- An acrimonious divorce between a Texas couple fighting over their frozen embryos could end up having an impact on in vitro fertilization care in the entire state, and possibly a replay of the controversial court decision in Alabama that briefly ended IVF access in the state.Caroline Antoun has argued that life begins when an egg is fertilized and claims the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization -- which overturned Roe v. Wade and left it up to the states to regulate abortion care -- gives her a right to "custody" over their three embryos, despite previously signing over her rights to the embryos to her husband in the event of a ... Read More
DOJ schedules meeting with Boeing victims as decision nears over whether company breached prosecution deal
Thinkstock/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- The Justice Department on Tuesday contacted the families of victims of two fatal Boeing 737 Max crashes as it nears a crucial decision over whether the company violated a 2021 deal that allowed it to escape criminal prosecution over the incidents, according to a letter obtained by ABC News.The letter, sent by the department's fraud section, invited families to attend a May 31 meeting where they will be informed of the DOJ's decision as to whether the company breached the deferred prosecution agreement, or DPA.If prosecutors believe they can make the case that Boeing violated the agreement's terms -- which demanded the company's continued cooperation with the government, a requirement it disclose any allegations of fraud, and ... Read More
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