(NEW YORK) — The unrelenting heat wave pounding the U.S. is still going strong, with 24 states and 103 million Americans on alert for dangerous temperatures Thursday.
Triple-digit heat is still hitting the West with Thursday temperatures forecast to reach 113 degrees in Palm Springs, California and 114 in Las Vegas. If “Sin City” reaches 114, it’ll break its record high of 113.
In the South, Dallas hit a record high of 109 degrees on Wednesday as Texas’ ongoing heat wave continues to fan spreading wildfires.
The heat is spreading from hard-hit Texas to Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and the Carolinas.
The heat is also slamming the Northeast. The heat index — what temperature it feels like with humidity — is expected to skyrocket Thursday to 107 degrees in Philadelphia, 103 in New York City and Washington, D.C., and 101 in Baltimore and Hartford, Connecticut.
The Northeast heat is expected to intensify over the weekend when actual temperatures could approach 100 degrees. Record highs are possible on Sunday from Philadelphia to New York City.
If New York City stays above 90 degrees for seven days in a row, the city will mark its longest heat wave in nine years.
Philadelphia has issued a heat health emergency that’ll begin at noon Thursday.
High temperatures are also still inundating Europe, where it’s forecast to hit 103 degrees in Madrid and 99 degrees in Milan.
(ST. PAUL, Minn.) — Former Minneapolis police officer Thomas Lane will be sentenced in federal court on Thursday morning for violating George Floyd’s civil rights.
Lane, 39, is one of three former Minneapolis police officers who were convicted earlier this year of depriving Floyd of his right to medical care as the handcuffed, unarmed 46-year-old Black man was pinned under the knee of their senior office, Derek Chauvin, for more than nine minutes on May 25, 2020. Floyd’s videotaped killing in Minneapolis sparked anti-racism protests and calls for police reform across the United States and around the world.
Lane’s former Minneapolis police colleagues, 28-year-old J. Alexander Kueng and 35-year-old Tou Thao, were also convicted of failing to intervene to prevent Chauvin, 46, from applying bodily injury to Floyd. Lane, who was heard on video twice asking his fellow officers whether they should turn Floyd onto his side, did not face that charge. Chauvin knelt on the back of Floyd’s neck, while Kueng knelt on his back, Lane held his legs and Thao kept bystanders away.
During their trial in February, Lane, Kueng and Thao each took the witness stand and attempted to shift the blame to Chauvin, who was a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department. Lane told the jury that Chauvin “deflected” all his suggestions to help Floyd, while Kueng testified that Chauvin “was my senior officer and I trusted his advice” and Thao attested that he “would trust a 19-year veteran to figure it out.”
The jury handed down convictions after deliberating for roughly 13 hours.
Magnuson has not yet set sentencing dates for Kueng and Thao.
Lane faces a separate sentencing in state court on Sept. 21, after changing his plea to guilty to a reduced charge of aiding and abetting manslaughter. In exchange for the plea, prosecutors agreed to dismiss the top charge against him of aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional murder, according to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.
Thao and Kueng, who have rejected plea deals offered by prosecutors, are scheduled to go on trial in state court on Oct. 24 over charges of aiding and abetting both second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
Earlier this month, Chauvin was sentenced to 21 years in prison on separate federal civil rights charges in Floyd’s killing and in an unrelated case involving a Black teenager. He had already been sentenced to 270 months, minus time served, which equals about 22 1/2 years in prison, after being convcited in state court last year of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
ABC News’ Kiara Alfonseca, Bill Hutchinson, Janel Klein, Whitney Lloyd, Mark Osborne and Stephanie Wash contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — In the aftermath of the mass shootings in Buffalo, New York; Uvalde, Texas; and Highland Park, Illinois, experts say there is a lot that communities can do to improve how they respond to warning signs indicating people could be a risk to themselves or others.
John Cohen, an ABC News contributor and the former acting undersecretary for intelligence and counterterrorism coordinator at the Department of Homeland Security, told ABC News that law enforcement professionals he has met with around the country have raised concerns that there’s not much they can do when they receive reports of concerning behavior.
But even if the person exhibiting concerning behavior has not committed a crime, there is still room for preventative intervention and community support, Cohen said.
“Too many law enforcement agencies tend to look at these issues, simply from the perspective of: has the person violated the law or not. And what a lot of law enforcement agencies have learned is that there is a middle ground,” he said.
He recognized that a lack of access to inpatient and outpatient mental health care is a large concern.
Jarrod Burguan, a former chief of police in San Bernardino, California, and an ABC News contributor, said in an interview that his experience in law enforcement showed him that the mental healthcare system is a “revolving door” that does not do a good job of forcing people to get help or protecting the rest of society from people who pose a risk.
“We have this major issue of how we deal with mental illness. And we’re very, very ineffective at it,” he said. “We have this disconnect in how we treat mental illness in this country.”
Oftentimes, police take in someone for a mental health evaluation, but there is no leverage for them to get treatment and there is not much else authorities can do to address concerning behavior that has been brought to their attention if it isn’t illegal, Burguan said.
“As a police officer, you’ve got to work within the confines of what you can do legally,” Burguan said.
When police receive a report of concerning behavior, they make contact with the individual to see if they can collect enough information to justify a mental health hold or to determine if a crime has been committed. Police could then take the person into the mental healthcare system if justified, but there is not much else they could do, Burguan said.
Burguan said the threshold for family members to forcibly commit someone into a mental health facility is very high. The process is often difficult for families and can be very expensive, he said. He said that family members rarely think that their loved ones would be able to do something violent like a shooting.
“As a result, we have millions and millions and millions of people that fall through the cracks. We need something that puts more teeth and the ability of the mental health system to hold somebody and force them into treatment and stop allowing people to walk away, and then affect everybody else in society,” Burguan said.
Burguan also said the criminal justice system is not effectively correcting peoples’ paths. While he was chief, he says his department looked through data for two straight years and found that in cases where police had identified a suspect in a murder, an overwhelming majority of the suspects had extensive criminal histories.
“We’re not fixing people through the criminal justice system,” Burguan said.
Cohen said there is still an important role local communities can play to intervene when individuals are showing warning signs that they could be a risk to themselves or others.
He said as far back as 2014 when he was at DHS, the department was working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other law enforcement agencies to study the behavioral characteristics of mass shooters and work to develop prevention strategies to be applied in local communities.
He said the strategies center on law enforcement working with mental health professionals and others in the community to assess the risks of people who exhibit these behaviors, making sure that people within the community are educated on what they should be looking for.
Local authorities should be conducting threat assessments to determine whether the individual poses a high risk of committing an act of violence, Cohen said. If the answer is yes, then the community should engage in threat management strategies, he said.
“You bring mental health professionals, the family community members, our community organizations, faith leaders, social service providers, whoever you need to at the local level, you bring them together and you can put in place a plan to address the underlying issues that are causing this person to travel down the path of violence,” Cohen said.
‘Red flag’ laws
Many states have incorporated the use of “red flag” laws, also called extreme protection orders, in their strategies to temporarily restrict an individual’s access to guns when they are found to be a risk to themselves or others, Cohen said.
He said these threat management and threat assessment strategies, implemented in various jurisdictions around the country, including Los Angeles, have been successful in preventing attacks.
“With all the mass shootings that we have experienced over the last 10 years, it is mind-boggling to me that we still have communities that have not established the capabilities to engage in threat assessment and threat management activities,” Cohen said.
He added, “They save lives. They’ve worked in communities across the country. And what we need is a consistent capability in every locality across the United States to do that type of work.”
Cohen said a strategy should have been created to address warning signs the Uvalde school shooter displayed in the leading up to the shooting. Cohen said the large amount of ammunition the shooter purchased in addition to the other warning signs should have been brought to the attention of law enforcement, who should have launched a threat assessment investigation.
Recognizing that this requires a certain level of sophistication, expertise and funding, Cohen said it falls to state and federal governments to intervene. DHS and the Justice Department provide grant funding to support local efforts and the FBI and U.S. Secret Service can provide training and technical assistance to local communities, Cohen said.
“Any police department or any local community that is not prepared to assess the risk posed by an individual who comes to their attention and to take steps to mitigate that risk, is placing themselves in jeopardy of experiencing this type of attack,” Cohen said.
(NEW YORK) — Two more shark encounters were reported on Long Island Wednesday, including an attack on a teenager, officials said.
A dead shark, which appeared to be a great white according to The Riverhead Society, was spotted on Dune Road Beach in Quogue, New York, by a nearby resident around 9:33 a.m., police said.
Later in the evening, a 16-year-old surfer suffered a minor bite on his foot while he was in the water in Kismet Beach on Fire Island, police said.
The 7- to 8-foot shark found in the morning washed back into the ocean before police could secure it, according to officials from Quogue Village Police Department.
“At this time, we are cautioning swimmers and boaters in the area to be aware of this ongoing situation,” the police said in a statement.
Suffolk County Police Marine Bureau said the Fire Island sighting happened around 5:45 p.m. when the teen paddled approximately 20 yards off the shore. The surfer was bit on his right foot, and sustained an approximate 4-inch laceration, police said.
The teen was able to walk out of the water and was transported to Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center in West Islip for treatment, according to police.
Suffolk County Police Aviation responded by helicopter, but the water was too murky to locate the shark, officials said. Marine Bureau officers continued to comb the water on boats to locate the shark, according to police.
This is the latest in a string of shark sightings and attacks off New York’s coast over the last few weeks.
From June 30 to July 13, five individuals suffered non-life-threatening injuries from shark attacks near Long Island beaches, according to state officials.
On Tuesday, beaches in the Rockaways were shut down after beachgoers spotted sharks in the water. No one was hurt.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul directed state agencies to enhance shark monitoring and patrols at Long Island beaches on Monday in response to the sightings.
(NEW YORK) — New York beachgoers were spooked by another shark sighting Wednesday, albeit a short-lived one.
The dead shark, which appeared to be a great white according to The Riverhead Society, was spotted on Dune Road Beach in Quogue, New York, by a nearby resident around 9:33 a.m., police said.
The 7- to 8-foot shark washed back into the ocean before police could secure it, according to officials from Quogue Village Police Department.
“At this time, we are cautioning swimmers and boaters in the area to be aware of this ongoing situation,” the police said in a statement.
This is the latest in a string of shark sightings and attacks off New York’s coast over the last few weeks.
From June 30 to July 13, five individuals suffered non-life-threatening injuries from shark attacks near Long Island beaches, according to state officials.
On Tuesday, beaches in the Rockaways were shut down after beachgoers spotted sharks in the water. No one was hurt.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul directed state agencies to enhance shark monitoring and patrols at Long Island beaches on Monday in response to the sightings.
(FORT GORDON, Ga.) — One U.S. Army Reserve soldier has died and nine others were injured after a lightning bolt strike while on a range at Fort Gordon, Georgia, a base spokesperson told ABC News.
“We know there were injuries, but we don’t know the extent of those injuries,” base spokesperson Anne Bowman told ABC News.
Bowman said the incident occurred at approximately 11:10 a.m. at Training Area 26 when there was bad weather in the area, and that the soldiers “sustained injuries associated with a lightning strike at one of their training areas.”
Fort Gordon’s Department of Emergency Services and EMS responded to the scene immediately, according to Augusta ABC affiliate WJBF.
The soldiers were taken to the Dwight David Eisenhower Medical Center at the base for treatment, according to Bowman.
(FORT GORDON, Ga.) — Ten soldiers from the U.S. Army Reserve were injured after a lightning bolt strike while on a range at Fort Gordon, Georgia, according to the Army base.
“We know there were injuries, but we don’t know the extent of those injuries,” base spokesperson Anne Bowman told ABC News.
Bowman said the incident occurred at approximately 11:10 a.m. at Training Area 26 when there was bad weather in the area, and that the soldiers “sustained injuries associated with a lightning strike at one of their training areas.”
Fort Gordon’s Department of Emergency Services and EMS responded to the scene immediately, according to Augusta ABC affiliate WJBF.
The soldiers were taken to the Dwight David Eisenhower Medical Center at the base for treatment, according to Bowman.
(NEW YORK) — As grocery prices continue to rise on everything from grains to greens, customers are struggling to find ways to keep costs down.
Consumer prices on food experienced the largest annual increase in over four decades since February 1981, with costs skyrocketing 10.4% in the 12-month period ending June, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Within the “food at home” category — grocery store food products purchased for cooking or eating at home — prices rose 12.2% over the last year, the largest increase since 1979.
Since June, food at home prices have risen another full percentage point, marking the sixth consecutive month of increases.
With prices ballooning constantly, it can be hard to plan out a weekly grocery list. Figuring out which items are consistently the most expensive and which prices have climbed steeply in recent months, however, might at least allow shoppers to craft a backup plan or estimate an approximate budget.
Below is the current breakdown in cost changes across various food categories from the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures the change in prices paid by consumers for goods and services.
Everyday items like meat and dairy see an uptick at grocery store checkouts
Fruits and Vegetables: This group saw an 8.1% increase in price between June 2021 and June 2022 and a 0.7% increase between May and June this year.
Meats, Poultry, Fish and Eggs: Between June 2021 and June 2022, prices rose 11.7%. Prices fell 0.4% between May and June, however, as the cost of pork and beef declined.
Nonalcoholic Beverages: This includes everything from seltzer water to soda. Prices in this category rose 11.9% between June 2021 and June 2022. They increased 0.8% between May and June.
Other food at home
The BLS report also showed sharp increases in the costs of butter (21.3% increase over the past year), sugar and sugar substitutes (11.4% over the past year) and “other sweets” (15.7% over the past year), with cereals and bakery product prices rising 13.8% over the past 12 months.
The cost of flour, meanwhile, rose 19.4% over the past year. Between May and June, prices rose 5.3%.
For those who have time and resources to shop around, similar products can cost different prices at different stores, since every retailer has different pricing variables.
Phil Lempert of supermarketguru.com explained that, due to supply chain issues, some grocery stores aren’t sure when certain items will arrive, so coupons aren’t as common as they used to be either.
In order to find special prices or deals, customers can download their favorite grocery store apps to get the latest savings directly at their fingertips.
(NEW YORK) — The funeral for the late Ivana Trump, first wife of former President Donald Trump, was held on Wednesday at New York City’s St. Vincent Ferrer Church.
Ivana Trump died Thursday after suffering injuries sustained from a fall in her Upper East Side home, New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said. She was 73.
She was married to the ex-president from 1977 to 1992, and they had three children together: Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka.
“Our mother was an incredible woman — a force in business, a world-class athlete, a radiant beauty, and caring mother and friend,” the Trump family said in a statement at the time of her passing.
In a statement on his Truth Social platform, former President Trump called her a “wonderful, beautiful and amazing woman, who led a great and inspirational life.”
He attended the funeral service, alongside former first lady Melania Trump and their son Barron.
Ivana Trump was found unconscious and unresponsive at the bottom of a set of stairs in her apartment, police sources said. Her death was ruled an accident, according to the medical examiner.
Known for her glamour, Ivana Trump created her own clothing line and helped design the interior for the Grand Hyatt Hotel and Trump Tower. She was also a bestselling author and worked for her former husband’s business empire as a senior executive, where she served as the CEO of Trump’s Castle, a hotel-casino in Atlantic City.
Instead of flowers, her family is asking people to donate to the Florida nonprofit Big Dog Ranch Rescue, the organization said on its website.
(CHICAGO) — Just 16 days after a man wielding an AR-15-style rifle allegedly killed seven people and injured more than 40 at a Fourth of July parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, the town’s mayor pleaded with Congress to pass a federal assault weapons ban, saying, “today is the day to start saving lives.”
But Mayor Nancy Rotering quickly learned during her testimony Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee that enacting such a law will be a major challenge. Republican committee members — including two from Texas, where on May 24 a gunman firing an AR-15-style rifle killed 19 students and two teachers — argued that such a ban will not stop massacres and only infringe on the Second Amendment rights of law abiding citizens.
Rotering testified about being in the middle of the Independence Day shooting rampage. She graphically detailed the chaos, panic and bloodied bodies lying on the street of “an All-American Midwestern town,” telling the committee, “I will be haunted forever.”
“Less than a minute is all it took for a person with an assault weapon to shoot 83 rounds into a crowd, forever changing so many lives,” Rotering told the panel. “And the most disturbing part, this is the norm in our country.”
She began her statement by describing a “perfect summer day” with 3,000 people lining the parade route, waving American flags and cheering the marching bands and colorful floats of her city’s first post-pandemic Fourth of July Parade in two years.
“Music and cheering were all we could hear as we headed down the street,” Rotering testified. “I looked left and waved to my husband in the crowd. What I didn’t know at that moment was that just to my right on a one-story rooftop, a 21-year-old was preparing to traumatize my hometown forever with an assault weapon.”
She said that as she and her city council colleagues headed down the parade route, she noticed that a marching band had gone silent and she heard a “tat, tat, tat” sound she initially mistook for a drum cadence.
“I then saw a sea of marching band members sprinting down the sidewalk, some with tubas entwined around their bodies,” Rotering told the committee. “I realized later that the sound I heard wasn’t drum cadence. It was the sound of an assault weapon.”
She said she and her colleagues immediately started an emergency evacuation, screaming at paradegoers to run, repeatedly shouting, “shooter.”
“Adults stared back, not comprehending,” she said. “But the kids knew immediately this wasn’t a drill and they yelled to everybody, ‘run, hide.’ They knew what was happening.”
She said among those killed were Kevin and Irina McCarthy, who were at the parade with their 2-year-old son, Aiden. She said good Samaritans found the boy under his father’s body.
Rotering also told the horrific story of 22-year-old Cassie Goldstein, who she says was forced to leave her mortally wounded mother, Katherine, behind as bullets rained down on the crowd.
“When the shooting stopped, Cassie returned to find her mother lifeless,” said Rotering, as a group of Highland Park residents attending the hearing sat behind her.
She told the committee of hot shrapnel melting into the arms and legs of the victims.
“Highland Park had the uniquely American experience of a Fourth of July parade turned into what had now become a uniquely American experience of a mass shooting,” Rotering said. “How do we call this freedom?”
She noted that in 2013 following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Middle School in Newtown, Connecticut, Highland Park passed a ban on assault weapons and large capacity magazines, but lamented that local laws have little effect as long as such weapons are still being legally sold in neighboring Illinois towns.
“Local government cannot do this alone,” Rotering said. “Congress must take action. You must federally ban assault weapons and large capacity magazines. Today is the day to save lives.”
But Rotering’s plea was met with stiff resistance from Republican members of the committee, who uniformly agreed that renewing the federal assault weapons ban that was enacted in 1994 and expired in 2004, is not the answer to curbing mass shootings.
“These bans would be ineffective and not consistent with the right to self-defense,” said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. “We also know restrictive gun control will hurt vulnerable communities that need to defend themselves against the horrible spike in violence.”
Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, both of Texas, agreed with Grassley, saying they support tougher laws that go after the perpetrators of the violence instead of the guns, which Cornyn described as “inanimate objects.”
Cruz cited a shooting that occurred Sunday at a shopping mall in Greenwood, Indiana, in which three people were killed before an armed good Samaritan shot and killed the suspect who was firing an AR-15-style weapon.
“If the objective is to stop mass murderers, gun control doesn’t work,” Cruz said. “The state of Illinois has the strictest gun control laws of any state in the country, Highland Park has even stricter gun control laws than the state of Illinois. Consistently, if you look across the country with the jurisdictions with the strictest gun control laws, almost without exception, they have the highest crime rates and the highest murder rates.”
In June, Congress a passed a bipartisan gun safety law, the first major piece of federal gun reform in almost 30 years, that was signed into law by President Joe Biden. The legislation — which followed back-to-back mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York — expands federal background checks for buyers under the age of 21, provides financial incentives for states to pass “red flag” laws and other intervention programs and closes the so-called “boyfriend loophole” denying people convicted of domestic violence access to firearms.
But Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, a retired military veteran, testified before the committee that banning AR-15-style rifles needs to be made a priority for Congress. She called the rifles “weapons of war” designed to kill and critically maim people far more efficiently than conventional semi-automatic firearms.
“The leading cause of death of Americans under the age of 16 in this country isn’t cancer, isn’t car accidents, it’s gun violence. Only in America,” Duckworth said. “I’m urging this committee to demonstrate courage in supporting a ban on assault weapons and large capacity magazines.”
Duckworth said that since the assault weapons ban expired, mass shootings in the United States have tripled. Mayor Rotering noted that Highland Park was the 309th mass shooting in the United States this year.
Sen. Dick Durbin, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, ended the hearing by acknowledging the divisiveness of the debate over gun control.
“You saw a good illustration today of the political aspects of this issue involving guns, why we do so little,” Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, said. “Once every 30 years, we’re going to do a gun safety bill? God forbid if that is what happens.”
