You may have seen this video of Matthew Myslenski and his sister, Magda, screaming after Matthew got accepted to Harvard University. It shows how Matthew didn't let cerebral palsy halt his dream.
Americans expressed scant confidence in President Joe Biden and his party heading into the 2023 State of the Union address. Few give him credit for a range of accomplishments he may try to claim in tomorrow's address, from infrastructure to prescription drug prices. The public takes Biden's side in the debt ceiling debate, with broad support for handling debt payments and federal spending as separate issues, along with extensive worry about the impacts of a default.
More than 1,200 people are dead after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked southeastern Turkey and northern Syria early Monday, officials said. The pre-dawn quake was centered in the town of Pazarcik in Turkey's southeastern Kahramanmaras province and was followed by several powerful aftershocks. Both Turkey and Syria have declared a state of emergency.
Local officials in East Palestine, Ohio, have ordered roughly 2,000 residents, about half the town's population, to evacuate their homes after a Norfolk Southern train derailed and caught fire. Gov. Mike DeWine urged all residents living within a mile of the derailment to evacuate "immediately" Sunday night, "due to the potential of a major explosion." East Palestine: Residents living within a mile of the train derailment site who have not yet left their homes are asked to immediately evacuate due to the potential of a major explosion.
At least 24 people are dead as dozens of wildfires rage in Chile amid a scorching heat wave, Chilean authorities confirmed to ABC News. The fatalities included two firefighters, authorities said. Approximately 1,000 people have also been injured, with 26 in life-threatening condition, and 1,475 people were evacuated and staying in shelters, authorities said.
Two Missouri children were found inside a supermarket in Florida nearly a year after they were abducted, according to law enforcement officials. Brooke Gilley and Adrian Gilley were found on Wednesday at a Florida Winn-Dixie with their non-custodial mother, Kristi Nicole Gilley, the High Springs Police Department said on Thursday.
Viola Davis has officially joined the elite group of EGOT winners. The beloved actress achieved this impressive feat by taking home the Grammy for best audio book, narration & storytelling recording for her 2022 memoir, "Finding Me," at the 2023 Grammys. In her acceptance speech at the 65th Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony, which was held at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, Davis said she wrote her memoir "to honor the 6-year-old Viola."
A new winter storm is bringing heavy rain and snow along the West Coast this weekend, with some areas expected to see up to four feet of snow. A foot of snow has fallen in the mountains around Lake Tahoe, with nine inches reported further south at Mammoth Mountain in California, as snow still falls on Sunday afternoon, according to meteorologists. Heavy snow will continue over mountain ranges in the West.
A fire Sunday morning in a laundry room at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a 90-minute ground stop on all United Airlines flights to Houston, officials said. The FAA issued the ground stop shortly before 5:30 a.m. local time and lifted it about 7 a.m., officials told ABC Houston station KTRK. The fire broke out around 4 a.m. in the airport's Terminal C in an employee laundry room, airport officials said on Twitter.
One hundred and twenty-eight House Republicans and nearly all Republican senators on Friday filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court opposing the Biden administration's federal student debt cancellation plan, which has been halted as tens of millions of Americans await the justices' ruling on its legality. While White House officials have been adamant that the president is within his authority to wipe out hundreds of billions in government-backed loans to provide "breathing room to tens of millions of working families," Republicans challenging it take the opposite view. The forgiveness plan that could relieve up to $20,000 for eligible loan recipients is an unconstitutional breach of the separation of powers and a violation of the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003 (HEROES Act), according to the House GOP brief.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu said Sunday that he is considering a run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. "I'm definitely thinking about it and having those conversations," Sununu told ABC "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl. The field of 2024 GOP contenders already includes former President Donald Trump while former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is expected to announce her own bid later this month, sources have told ABC News.
The downing of a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon by the U.S. military was met by lawmakers with a mix of praise for the safe and successful operation, criticism for it not happening sooner and concern over what intelligence may have been gathered and how to prevent something like this from happening again. The balloon was shot down by a U.S. fighter aircraft off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday afternoon after traveling across the continental U.S. since Tuesday, according to officials. The Pentagon has said the high-altitude balloon was being used for surveillance, disputing China's claim that it was a civilian aircraft used for meteorological purposes.
With President Joe Biden preparing to deliver his second State of the Union address on Tuesday, a new ABC News/Washington Post shows many people feel their finances are worsening -- but Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg on Sunday said the president can "make the case" that the economy is back on track. "You make that case by pointing to the reality and recognizing that the story won't tell itself," Buttigieg told ABC "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl. Record job creation, as the president has pointed out, more created in two years on his watch than four years on any other president's watch, and usually, when you have unemployment go down like this, you have inflation go up.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that despite China's claims otherwise, they sent a balloon into the U.S. to send a message about the country's sway across the globe. "The key part here is they knew exactly what they were doing and there was a message behind it," Rubio told ABC "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl. The balloon's presence over Montana caused the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a ground stop for the Billings airport on Wednesday.
The hit HBO series "The Last Of Us" describes a post-pandemic world devastated by a mass outbreak of a "zombie fungus" that infects and takes over the mind of its hosts. Cordyceps – the so-called "zombie fungus" – is a real fungus and is sometimes used in treatments and therapeutics in Chinese herbal medicine. Although cordyceps does not infect humans, it does infect a wide range of insects.
A senior Russian army lieutenant who fled Russia told ABC News he witnessed his country's troops torture prisoners in Ukraine, including beating and threats to rape them. Konstantin Yefremov, the most senior Russian soldier to defect and speak out openly against the war, is now in hiding and spoke to ABC News from Mexico. Yefremov, 33, spent three months as an officer in areas of Ukraine's southern Zaporizhzhia region that were occupied by Russian forces in the first phase of the war.
Four in 10 Americans say they've gotten worse off financially since Joe Biden became president, the most in ABC News/Washington Post polls dating back 37 years. Political fallout includes poor performance ratings for Biden and a tight hypothetical Biden/Trump rematch next year. Given disaffection with both leaders, a rerun of the 2020 presidential election is hardly enticing: Nearly six in 10 Democratic-aligned adults don't want to see Biden nominated again for the job, and half on the Republican side would rather not see Donald Trump as their party's nominee.
A five-year veteran of the New York Police is "fighting for his life" after being shot Saturday night during a robbery, officials said. The officer, who was off-duty, attempted to buy a car on Ruby Street in Brooklyn after the details of the purchase were arranged on social media, police said. Mayor Eric Adams said that the officer was conducting a simple errand and was shot.
The Department of Justice will help conduct a review of the Memphis Police Department following the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols, city officials said. Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland announced Friday that the DOJ's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, along with the International Association of Police Chiefs, will conduct an "independent, external review" that will include assessing the department's special units and use-of-force policies "to honor Tyre and help make sure this type of tragedy does not happen again." "While we no doubt have a long way to go on the road to healing, hopefully through our actions, citizens will see we are working to be better and that we are heading down the right path," Strickland said in a bulletin.
The Democratic National Committee near unanimously approved a reconfigured presidential primary calendar rubber-stamped by the White House at the group's winter gathering on Saturday. Under the new calendar, the 2024 Democratic presidential primary begins in South Carolina -- the state that revived President Joe Biden's campaign in the 2020 contest -- on Feb. 3. Modernization and representation were two key guiding pillars for the DNC as they strategized changing their early nominating window.
Jerry Mata, whose 10-year-old daughter Tess was killed in the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting last year, still returns to the campus of Robb Elementary to honor his child. Mata and other victims' families are waiting for the buildings to be torn down, while the community grapples with mixed emotions over plans to demolish the school and replace it with a new one elsewhere in Uvalde. Robb Elementary is the site of the second-deadliest elementary school shooting in American history, where 19 children and two teachers were killed on May 24, 2022.
