Ukrainians seek haven in warming shelters as shelling continues
ABC News’ Ines De La Cuetara provides updates amid blackouts in Kyiv, Ukraine, following Russian strikes in the region.
ABC News’ Ines De La Cuetara provides updates amid blackouts in Kyiv, Ukraine, following Russian strikes in the region.
First lady Jill Biden on Tuesday will sit during the State of the Union with the Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S., the parents of Tyre Nichols and the man who last month wrestled the gun away from a shooting suspect in Monterey Park, California. Many of the guests present in the first lady’s viewing box were invited because they “personify issues or themes” President Joe Biden is expected to address in his speech, the White House said in a statement on Tuesday. Nichols' mother and stepfather, RowVaughn and Rodney Wells, will sit in the first lady's box on Tuesday, weeks after their son died following a traffic stop that turned into a a violent altercation with police.
A major set of changes to the rules for retirement finances took effect this year, but many people may not have noticed. The rules were buried within a 4,000-page long, $1.7 trillion spending measure signed by President Joe Biden in December. The batch of changes, called Secure Act 2.0, affords people greater flexibility in how and when they withdraw from their retirement accounts.
Residents near the Ohio-Pennsylvania state line who were told to evacuate after tanker cars derailed in a fiery crash days ago have still not been allowed to return home. Crews conducted a controlled release and burn of toxic chemicals from five of the derailed cars that were in danger of exploding on Monday afternoon. A large ball of fire and plume of black smoke could be seen billowing high into the sky from the smoldering derailment site in East Palestine, Ohio, as the controlled burn took place.
When President Joe Biden delivers his second State of the Union on Tuesday, he'll no doubt tout a list of what he considers his greatest accomplishments. Among the top priorities he outlined last March were rallying American support for Ukraine in its effort to repel the Russian invasion and efforts to fight record-setting inflation.
When American presidents appear before a joint session of Congress, and often their largest television audience, to deliver a State of the Union address -- they're important benchmarks in not only updating the nation but in setting political priorities. Tuesday's speech comes at a critical juncture in Joe Biden's presidency as he navigates the ongoing war in Ukraine, reignited calls for policing and gun reform, and for the first time in his presidency, a divided Congress. Biden will carry out the tradition of all 45 presidents before him, beginning with in-person speeches by George Washington and John Adams before Thomas Jefferson transitioned to solely written addresses.
One person in Washington has won the Powerball jackpot prize of $754.6 million -- the fifth-largest Powerball jackpot and the ninth-largest U.S. lottery jackpot in history, according to Powerball. The winning numbers for the jackpot were 5, 11, 22, 23, 69 and the Powerball 7. There were also 58 tickets nationwide that won $50,000 prizes and 16 tickets that won $100,000 prizes.“The Powerball jackpot that has eluded players since last November was finally hit on the 34th drawing of the jackpot run,” Powerball said in a statement following the winning draw.
The family of a 12-year-old girl in Kenosha, Wisconsin, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against police and the city after accusing an off-duty police officer of kneeling on the girl’s neck while trying to break up a fight she was allegedly involved in. The lawsuit, which was obtained by ABC News, was filed on behalf of the girl's father Jerrel Perez and his daughter, who is identified as Jane Doe because she is a minor. The complaint names the Kenosha Police Officer Shawn Guetschow, the City of Kenosha and the Kenosha Unified School District in the Eastern District of Wisconsin as defendants.
In the latest development in Florida's conflict with Walt Disney World, a bill filed Monday during the state's special legislative session would give Gov. Ron DeSantis the ability to appoint a board to run Disney's Reedy Creek Improvement District -- the small, autonomous region that encompasses the company's theme parks outside Orlando. Currently, Disney elects the members because it owns the district, essentially allowing the company to govern the region around its businesses. According to the 189-page bill, none of the appointees to the oversight board could be recent Disney employees or have had a contractual relationship with a theme park within the past three years.
When President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address on Tuesday with new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy sitting over his shoulder, looming between the two will be a possible standoff over raising the federal debt ceiling. The management of how to increase the borrowing limit, which the Treasury Department has indicated will need to be done as soon as June to make sure none of the federal government's bills go unpaid, is shaping up to be the first major obstacle that McCarthy and Biden must work together to overcome. The conflict, along with the potentially calamitous economic consequences of a debt default, will no doubt color some of Biden's remarks on Tuesday as he looks to reassure the 53% of Americans who are "very" concerned about that outcome, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll.
If you ever needed artificial intelligence's help to plan a friend's baby shower, your time has come, as Google officially unveiled an AI program it's calling Bard, seemingly its answer to the viral ChatGPT. Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced Bard on the company's blog Monday, calling it "an important next step" in AI for the search engine giant. "Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world's knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models," Pichai said.
Embattled crypto executive Sam Bankman-Fried agreed on Monday to stop using Signal and other encrypted messaging apps as a condition of his release on bail, according to a letter his attorney filed with the court. Prosecutors had sought to limit how Bankman-Fried communicates while he is out on bail, citing concerns over possible efforts to influence potential witness testimony. According to his attorney, Bankman-Fried, who has pleaded not guilty to criminal charges stemming from the collapse of FTX, and the government resolved their dispute and proposed a jointly agreed-upon bail modification to the judge.
A 38-year-old man suspected of shooting an off-duty NYPD officer has been arrested in Rockland County, New York, where he was found hiding out in a hotel, police sources told ABC News. The unidentified officer, who remains hospitalized, attempted to buy a car on Ruby Street in Brooklyn on Saturday night after the details of the purchase were arranged on social media, police said. The unidentified suspect has nearly two dozen prior arrests, including for strangulation, grand larceny, and aggravated harassment, and is believed to be part of a two-man stick-up crew that has been linked to at least three robberies in the area, according to sources.
United Airlines is facing a possible $1.15 million fine after allegedly conducting flights with planes that hadn't undergone a certain safety check, federal regulators said, though United called the check "redundant" given other systems. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposed the fine on Monday and said that from June 2018 to April 2021, United removed the fire system warning check from its Boeing 777 pre-flight checklist -- an inspection task required in its maintenance specifications manual. United operated more than 100,000 flights with the Boeing 777 during this time, according to a letter from the FAA.
U.S. Navy vessels on Monday swarmed a widespread debris field with divers and cranes to retrieve pieces of the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon shot down by a U.S. fighter aircraft off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday afternoon. A senior government said the FBI is expected to take custody of any recovered components of the balloon’s payload and to ship it to its laboratory in Quantico, Virginia. The balloon had been traveling across the continental U.S. since at least Tuesday, with the White House facing mounting questions and political blowback as to why the balloon was allowed to cross the country in the first place, especially as the U.S. deals with tensions with China.
Previous Chinese surveillance balloon incidents that occurred during the Trump administration and early under the Biden administration were not spotted by NORAD at the time, Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, told reporters Monday. VanHerck said that U.S. intelligence made NORAD aware of the threat posed by the surveillance balloons after the fact through "additional means of collection and made us aware of those balloons that were previously approaching North America or transit in North America."
As U.S. intelligence agencies continue to investigate the situation around what the Department of Defense is calling a spy balloon from China, there are still several questions about how this aircraft was able to move across the globe and what its purpose was, according to government officials and intelligence experts. "What's really concerning here is just the arrogance of the Chinese [government] to be able to say, we're going to fly through your sovereign territory and you know that they'd be screaming bloody murder if we'd done that to them," Col. Stephen Ganyard, an ABC News contributor and former State Department official, told "Start Here" Monday. Authorities are working to recover what's left of the balloon from the waters off South Carolina after fighter jets shot it down on Saturday and Chinese government officials have criticized the U.S. for striking down the aircraft that they claim was a private weather balloon.
Tim McGraw showed his love for fellow country superstar Shania Twain recently by covering one of her biggest hits. McGraw, 55, took to Instagram on Friday to share a video of himself performing an acoustic rendition of Twain's '90s classic "You're Still the One" off the Canadian singer's 1997 mega-hit album "Come on Over." Twain, 57, saw the cover and approved.
Nearly 150 New York City police officers violated department rules during 2020 protests over the death of George Floyd, according to a new report issued Monday by the Civilian Complaint Review Board. Most of the violations involved excessive force, including improper use of batons and pepper spray. The report said there were hundreds more allegations the CCRB could not investigate because officers wore bands over their badge numbers or refused to be interviewed remotely.
New York City workers will no longer need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to be employed by the city, Mayor Eric Adams announced Monday. The mayor said the vaccine mandate for city employees will end Friday, nearly 15 months after his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, implemented the policy, during a vote by the city's Department of Health. Adams said 96% of the city workforce has received both shots so the mandate for current and prospective employees served its purpose.
A Florida man and a Maryland woman have been arrested on federal charges of plotting to attack multiple energy substation with the goal of destroying Baltimore, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday. The suspects, Sarah Clendaniel of Catonsville, Maryland, and Brandon Russell of Orlando, Florida, were allegedly fueled by a racist extremist ideology as they "conspired to inflict maximum harm" on the power grid with the aim to "completely destroy" Baltimore, U.S. Attorney Erek Barron and a top FBI official said at a Monday morning press conference. Russell is quoted in court documents saying that attacking power transformers is "the greatest thing somebody can do."