Special presidential envoy speaks out on Brittney Griner's release
Roger Carstens, the U.S. special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, helped secure WNBA star Brittney Griner’s release from Russia.
Roger Carstens, the U.S. special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, helped secure WNBA star Brittney Griner’s release from Russia.
A student who was under a "certain agreement to be patted down each day" at school allegedly shot and wounded two school administrators at East High School in Denver, authorities said. The suspect, Austin Lyle, 17, fled the school on Wednesday morning after the shooting, Denver police said.
The White House COVID-19 team will wind down as the country moves out of the emergency phase of the pandemic, multiple administration officials confirmed to ABC News. The end will impact public health measures afforded by the pandemic, like expanded Medicaid enrollment, subsidized costs of COVID tests, and data gathering on cases and deaths across the country. It will also mark a "new phase" of COVID response, an administration official said, which will be mirrored by a restructuring within the White House.
An attorney for Dominion Voting Systems accused Fox News on Wednesday of improperly redacting internal materials that the network was forced to hand over as part of Dominion's billion-dollar defamation suit against it. The claim came during a pivotal summary judgment hearing in which each side has asked the judge to rule in their favor before the case is set to head to trial next month. Dominion's $1.6 billion suit accuses Fox News of knowingly pushing false conspiracy theories about the voting machine company in the wake of the 2020 election, in order to combat concerns over ratings and viewer retention.
As the snowpack on the Sierra Nevada mountains melts, flooding in the Central Valley will remain a concern for weeks and months to come, experts say. There has been a "catastrophic level of water," Tricia Stever Blattler, executive director of the Tulare County Farm Bureau, which represents more than 1,100 farms and ranches in the San Joaquin Valley county, told ABC News. "We're still just experiencing so much more water in these storms than can possibly be held back by these dams," she said, calling this a "50-year event."
Death rates from COVID-19 varied dramatically across the United States, a major new analysis finds. COVID death rates in states like Arizona and New Mexico were roughly four times higher than in states like Hawaii, New Hampshire and Maine, researchers found. The highest COVID-19 death rates were seen in Arizona with 581 deaths per 100,000 and Washington D.C. with 526 deaths per 100,000.
The Department of Justice announced Wednesday it made the largest methamphetamine bust in West Virginia history. The DOJ charged 30 people with allegedly distributing more than 200 pounds of meth, alongside guns and other drugs, over a period of seven months, dubbing the operation "Operation Smoke and Mirrors." "The takedown of this drug trafficking organization stopped a record amount of methamphetamine, as well as other dangerous drugs, from reaching our communities and causing harm," United States Attorney Will Thompson said in a statement.
Actress Gwyneth Paltrow's civil trial for a ski accident that occurred more than seven years ago continued Wednesday. Terry Sanderson, a retired optometrist, filed a lawsuit in January 2019 accusing Paltrow of crashing into him at the Utah-based Deer Valley Ski Resort on Feb. 26, 2016, and leaving him "seriously injured." The actress has denied causing the collision and, in a countersuit, claimed it was Sanderson who crashed into her, delivering a full "body blow" from behind.
Aaron Sorkin is opening up about a stroke he had in November. The screenwriter and film director known for his work on "A Few Good Men" and "The Newsroom" told The New York Times in a recent interview that he had a stroke two months before rehearsals began for the upcoming Broadway show "Camelot," which he reimagined in a new book based off the Lerner and Loewe classic tale. When he met with his doctor, his doctor told him that his blood pressure was high and that "you're supposed to be dead."
A proposed Florida Board of Education rule could expand restrictions on classroom instruction related to sexual orientation and gender identity. "For grades 4 through 12, instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity is prohibited unless such instruction is either expressly required by state academic standards … or is part of a reproductive health course or health lesson for which a student's parent has the option to have his or her student not attend," according to the proposed rule. This rule would build up on the Parental Rights in Education law Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in March 2022.
One of former President Donald Trump's official representatives to the National Archives -- the agency that sparked the Justice Department's probe of Trump's handling of classified documents -- has now sued the Justice Department and the National Archives, demanding access to documents that the government has said may themselves contain classified information. At the heart of the lawsuit, filed Tuesday by pro-Trump journalist John Solomon, is what Solomon describes in court records as "a binder of documents" -- "about 10 inches thick" -- that come from the FBI's past probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. As ABC News previously reported, Trump tried to make the binder's worth of documents public the night before he left office, issuing a "declassification" memo for much of the material and secretly meeting with Solomon, who was allowed to review the documents and later keep a batch of them.
An appeals court on Wednesday rejected an effort by former President Donald Trump's attorneys to block Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran from having to testify and hand over records to special counsel Jack Smith's team investigating Trump's handling of classified records after leaving the White House, according to court records. The three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled extraordinarily swiftly against the request for a stay by Trump's attorneys, who sought to block an order last Friday by the chief judge for the D.C. District Court, who determined the government had made a prima facie case that Corcoran's legal services were likely used by Trump in the furtherance of a crime.
A five-planet alignment of Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Uranus and Mars will be visible in the night sky on Tuesday, March 28. Bill Cooke, who has a Ph.D. in astronomy and heads NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center, spoke to "Good Morning America" about the best ways to catch this upcoming alignment. "Perhaps the hardest to see with your eye will be the planet Mercury, [which] will be the one closest to the horizon, and right beside it will be a brighter object, planet Jupiter," said Cooke, who added that the next planet, Venus, will probably be the brightest planet to spot, whereas Uranus, a green star, can be hard to see with an unaided eye.
Cases of invasive group A strep infections, which can cause severe illness and be deadly, remain elevated in some parts of the country, officials warned Wednesday. In a statement to ABC News, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that "preliminary" data from 2023 suggests cases have remained elevated above pre-pandemic levels in some areas of the U.S. This follows confirmed reports that five children have died of invasive Strep A so far this year in Illinois.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis likened former President Donald Trump's jabs against him to so much "background noise," according to excerpts from an upcoming interview with Piers Morgan. "To me, it's just background noise," DeSantis is quoted saying in an account of the sit-down Morgan wrote for The New York Post. DeSantis, a hugely popular and controversial GOP governor considered to be Trump's closest competitor if he enters the race for president, also took an apparent swipe at Trump's character.
Lea Michele revealed that her 2-year-old son Ever is hospitalized with a "scary health issue." The "Glee" alum, 36, shared an Instagram Story on Wednesday in which she apologized to "Funny Girl" ticket holders for her absence ahead of the day's showtimes. "We are at the hospital with our son dealing with a scary health issue that I need to be here for."
The night of the incident, a "huge fireball" was visible from East Palestine resident Misti Allison's driveway, she testified to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, vowing, "We will never forget the night the train derailed." "I'm here to put a face on this disaster," said Misti Allison, a mother of two who lives in East Palestine. During the same hearing at which Allison spoke, Shaw refused to commit fully to backing the RAIL Act, proposed by Reps. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, and Emilia Strong-Sykes, D-Ohio, and the Railway Safety Act, proposed by Sens.
The family of 30-year-old New Jersey councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour, who was shot and killed outside her home in February, spoke out publicly for the first time since her death, calling for justice for her death and that those responsible be apprehended. Eunice Dwumfour — a Church leader and mother of a 12-year-old girl — was shot and killed in her SUV outside her home on Feb. 1. "We are not happy about that, we need justice," Eunice Dwumfour's father, Prince Dwumfour, said during a press conference Wednesday.
Justin Timberlake is having a fun fashion moment. The "SexyBack" singer made his modeling debut with Louis Vuitton for the brand's latest "Creating Infinity" campaign. The Creating Infinity Drop 2 campaign featuring Timberlake was created in collaboration with Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama.
Sean Shelton, 54, learned quickly after he began dialysis just how cold it could get in the room where he was receiving his treatments. Fox took the project to heart, using her skills and talent to create the hoodie-like jackets, which have zippers on the sleeves to allow for direct access during dialysis treatments, which require medical staff to insert a needle into the patient's arm or access an existing IV site. "I gave him the first jacket and he really, really liked it," Fox said.
A "bomb cyclone" is wreaking havoc across an already soaked California, killing at least five people in the San Francisco Bay Area, including four hit by falling trees or limbs, officials said. A dramatic drop in atmospheric pressure triggered the so-called bomb cyclone that swept in from the Pacific Ocean and clobbered the San Francisco area. The storm packed heavy rain and wind gusts of up to 90 mph that knocked down trees, blocking major roadways and highways, officials said.