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(WASHINGTON) — One week after announcing an end to the requirement that passengers remove their shoes when undergoing airport security screening, the Department of Homeland Security could also alter another post-9/11 mainstay of air travel – the amount of liquid ounces that people can take with them onboard commercial planes.

“The liquids I’m questioning, so that may be the next big announcement is what size your liquids need to be,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said at an event in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. “We’re looking at our scanners, what we have put in place in TSA, multi-layered screening process that allows us to change some of how we do security and screening so it still is safe.”

Noem didn’t indicate when the updated policy announcement might be made.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in 2006 implemented a policy limiting liquids, gels and aerosols in passenger carry-on luggage to 3.4-ounce containers or smaller, to lessen the chances of liquid explosives being brought onboard commercial aircraft.

Noem announced on July 8 that DHS was ending the nearly 20-year requirement that passengers remove their shoes for inspection before boarding commercial aircraft. The policy was implemented in 2006 after the so-called “shoe bomber,” Richard Reid, unsuccessfully attempted to detonate plastic explosives concealed in his shoes onboard a flight from Paris, France to Miami, Fla. On Dec. 22, 2001.

Noem said during last week’s announcement that DHS was able to terminate the shoe removal policy due to the “layered security” by the TSA now place. These layers include additional officers at security checkpoints, new scanners and technology and the recently enforced REAL ID requirement, Noem said.

Secretary Noem was also asked about the current threat environment in the United States.

“We have the threat from terrorists that are in our country today that we need to remove,” she said. “We also have the crimes that are happening on our streets by those individuals that are murderers and rapists that affect families immediately.”

Noem said the U.S. critical infrastructure is also vulnerable to attack and pointed to various cyber incidents that have occurred in the past year.

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(PAWLEYS ISLAND, S.C.) — A Georgia father drowned after saving five people from a rip current at a beach in South Carolina, according to the Pawleys Island Police Department.

At approximately 4:45 p.m. on Sunday, police received a call for “multiple swimmers in distress” in Pawleys Island, South Carolina, and once on the scene, they discovered one person was missing and a “search was initiated.”

Then at approximately 6:15 p.m., the body of the missing person was found and identified as 38-year-old Chase Childers, officials said.

Officials later found out that Childers — a former professional baseball player for the Baltimore Orioles’ minor league team and police officer — and one other individual entered the water to help a family of five, with Childers getting “caught in the rip current.”

“He died trying to save others,” police said.

Childers’ family said in a statement that they are “devastated by the tragic loss of our beloved Chase Childers” and that the news feels “surreal, incredibly hard to grasp and profoundly unfair.”

His family described his death as a “heroic act,” where he paid the “highest sacrifice with his life in front of his three children and wife.”

“Word are hard to find at the moment,” the family said in a statement shared on social media.

Childers leaves behind three children and his wife, the family said. He would have turned 39 next month, his brother-in-law confirmed to ABC News.

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(WYOMING) — More geological changes are occurring at Yellowstone National Park, as another hole forms in one of the park’s basins.

The hole is a blue water spring, discovered by geologists in April as they conducted routine maintenance of temperature logging stations at Norris Geyser Basin, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The pool, located in the Porcelain Basin sub-basin west of a patch of vegetation known as “Tree Island,” was not there during their last visit to the area in the fall, according to the USGS.

The water is light blue in color and is about 1 foot deep below the rim. It’s geological features indicate it formed as a result of a hydrothermal explosion — an event caused by pressure changes that result from the transition of liquid water to steam, according to the USGS.

The pool measures about 13 feet in diameter and is surrounded by numerous small rocks about 1 foot across. The rocks are covered by light gray, sandy mud.

It is “not surprising” that a hydrothermal explosion occurred at the site, as it has happened several times in recent decades, according to the USGS. The North Geyser Basin is the “most dynamic” area in Yellowstone, the agency said.

High-resolution satellite imagery indicates that the hole was not present on Dec. 19, but images taken on Jan. 6 show a depression that had formed in the area. By Feb. 13, the pool had been filled with water, the satellite images show.

More will hydrothermal explosions will likely be recorded, as a monitoring station installed in 2023 can detect geophysical data indicating an explosion.

In April 2024, a “small” explosion at the Porcelain Terrace left a crater measuring several feet across in diameter, according to the USGS.

A hole that formed in Yellowstone’s Biscuit Basin, near Old Faithful, in July 2024 was also attributed to a hydrothermal explosion, according to the National Park Service.

While that hole likely formed in a single major explosive event, the newest thermal feature appears to have formed by multiple small events that initially threw rocks but later threw silica mud a short distance, creating a small pit that became filled with silica-rich water.

Geologists estimate that the feature probably started to develop on Dec. 25, with further activity occurring through late January and early February, according to the USGS.

Beneath Yellowstone National Park lies a complex and extensive volcanic system. The park is thoroughly monitored by the USGS and the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.

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(NEW YORK) — The nation’s largest police force is “criminal at its core,” according to a new federal lawsuit by former interim New York City Police Commissioner Thomas Donlon.

Donlon said the NYPD “functions as a racketeering enterprise,” at the direction of Mayor Eric Adams.

In addition to Adams, the lawsuit named Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Kaz Daughtry, Chief of Department John Chell and former Deputy Commissioner Tarik Sheppard among others.

“Senior leadership had abandoned lawful governance and engaged in outright malfeasance by using the NYPD to consolidate political power, obstruct justice, and punish dissent,” the lawsuit said. “The Defendants engaged in a coordinated pattern of racketeering activity that was deliberate, sustained, and directed from the highest levels of the NYPD and City Hall.”

The accusations in Donlon’s lawsuit are “absurd,” Adams’ press secretary, Kayla Mamelak Altus, said in a statement in response to the lawsuit.

“These are baseless accusations from a disgruntled former employee who — when given the opportunity to lead the greatest police department in the world — proved himself to be ineffective. This suit is nothing more than an attempt to seek compensation at the taxpayer’s expense after Mr. Donlon was rightfully removed from the role of interim police commissioner,” Altus said.

“The NYPD is led by the best, brightest, and most honorable professionals in the nation — and their results speak for themselves: crime continues to fall across the city, with shootings at the lowest level in recorded history. We will respond in court, where we are confident these absurd claims will be disproven,” she added.

Adams appointed Donlon interim commissioner in 2024 after Edward Caban resigned the post following an FBI search of his home. Caban has not been charged with any wrongdoing and said at the time he was resigning because the raids “created a distraction.”

In the complaint, Donlon said he was commissioner “in name only” and true authority remained with an inner circle of Adams’ loyalists.

“The Defendants undermined Donlon’s authority by blocking his merit-based promotions and instead elevating unvetted individuals of their choosing. The Defendants then fraudulently used Donlon’s official Police Commissioner stamp — without his consent — to legitimize and carry out their corrupt scheme,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit also accused several of the defendants of carrying out “a calculated and deeply personal act of vengeance” by orchestrating the false arrest of Donlon’s wife and leaking it to the press. Donlon’s wife was arrested for expired car insurance last December, sources told the New York Post.

“This was not a mistake. It was a deliberate abuse of power designed to punish and intimidate Donlon for exposing their misconduct,” the lawsuit said. “This coordinated humiliation was a direct warning: the NYPD Defendants would stop at nothing to silence and personally destroy Donlon, even if it meant violating the constitutional rights of his spouse.”

Donlon is looking for compensatory, emotional and punitive damages as well as injunctive relief, with “the full extent of damages incurred by Donlon are to be determined at trial.”

Adams is currently running for a second term as mayor, but chose not to run in the Democratic primary and will run for reelection as an independent instead.

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(NEW YORK) — The largest Mars meteorite ever found on Earth was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York on Wednesday for $4.3 million.

The Martian rock, known as NWA 16788, weighs more than 54 pounds, is nearly 15 inches long and is 70% larger than the next biggest piece of Mars that has been recovered, according to the auction house.

Sotheby’s said the piece broke from the surface of Mars following a recent asteroid strike and traveled more than 140 million miles across the Solar System.

It crashed in the Sahara Desert in the Agadez region of Nigeria and was found by a meteorite hunter in November 2023, Sotheby’s said.

“This is the largest piece of Mars on planet Earth. The odds of this getting from there to here are astronomically small,” Cassandra Hatton, vice chairman of science and natural history at Sotheby’s, said in a video posted online. “Remember that approximately 70% of Earth’s surface is covered in water. So we’re incredibly lucky that this landed on dry land instead of the middle of the ocean where we could actually find it.”

The auction house said the reddish brown rock is “unbelievably rare” because meteorites from Mars make up just 400 of the 77,000 officially recognized meteorites. According to Sotheby’s, the rock that was sold represents 6.5% of all Martian material currently on Earth.

Hatton said a sample of the rock was sent to a specialized laboratory to be tested for Maskelynite glass, which is only found in meteorites.

Testing determined the rock is an olivine-gabbroic shergottite, which is a relatively new type of Martian meteorite, according to an April 2024 report from researchers the U.S. and Canada. It was formed from the as magma on Mars slowly cooled, Sotheby’s said, and contains materials such as olivine, which is also found in Earth’s upper mantle.

“This isn’t just a miraculous find, but a massive data set that can help us unlock the secrets of our neighbor, the red planet,” Hatton said.

Prior to going up for auction at Sotheby’s, the rock was in a public exhibit at the Italian Space Agency in Rome during the 2024 European Researchers’ Night and in a private gallery in Arezzo, Tuscany.

It’s unclear who the current owner is and if the Martian rock will be in a public or a private collection.

Also up for auction was a Ceratosaurus skeleton from the late Jurassic period, about 154 to 149 million years ago, which was sold for $30.5 million, and the skull of a Pachycephalosaurus from the late Cretaceous period 72 million to 66 million years ago for $1.75 million.

Wednesday’s auction, containing 122 items, is part of Sotheby’s Geek Week, which holds sales for items related to natural history, the history of science and technology, and space exploration.

Among the items up for sale on Thursday, the final day of Geek Week, include a first generation of Apple-1 computer from the first batch of 50 built by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976.

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(DINOSAUR RIDGE, Colo.) — Researchers have discovered evidence of one of the largest dinosaur mating “dance arenas” in present-day Colorado.

Previous studies have identified a couple of “dinosaur lek” areas — where male dinosaurs likely congregated to perform courtship displays for females, primarily for the purpose of finding a mate — at Dinosaur Ridge, 20 miles west of Denver.

However, using high-resolution drone photography and photogrammetry to make 3D models of the sandstone at Dinosaur Ridge, a team reexamined the area to see if there were more markings on the surface.

What they found were dozens of lek traces tightly clustered together, suggesting the area was once a site to perform mating rituals, similar to some modern-day birds.

“So, these trace fossils, we interpret them to be evidence of dinosaur courtship activities, just from kind of process of elimination,” Caldwell Buntin, co-author of the study and a lecturer at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, told ABC News.

Buntin said the team ruled out that these “scrapes” were caused by dinosaurs digging for food and water, from marking their territories or from colonial nesting, which is when animals build their nests close together in groups.

“Basically, these were a lot of organisms that were coming together, performing some kind of activity that would include building some kind of nest to display to a female, and then maybe doing some kind of a dance or scraping activity, which generates a lot of the scrapes around the nest display structure,” Buntin said.

The scrapes belong to theropod dinosaurs, characterized by hollow bones and three toes and claws on each limb, which were alive during the Cretaceous period, between 145 million and 66 million years ago.

It’s not clear which species made the scrapes, but they were likely three to four feet high at the hip and were between 2.5 and 5 meters (8 to 16 feet) long, from the size of an emu to the size of an ostrich, according to Buntin.

There’s a “spectrum of different scrapes,” according to Buntin. Some are simple, shallow toe claw marks, indicating one or two scrapes from the left and right legs. There are also longer scrapes overprinting one another, resembling a wagon rut.

Additionally, there are semicircular bowl-shaped marks “associated with a step backward” with a second set of scrapes “indicating a counterclockwise or a clockwise turn.” Lastly, there are deep bowl-shaped marks with some shallow toe claw marks, Buntin said.

In terms of behavior, Buntin said these dinosaurs most resemble that of banded plovers, which are small shorebirds.

“Basically, they will dig out a nest display, basically a fake nest, to be able to show a female that, ‘Hey, I’m a strong male. I can dig this. I can make a good, strong place for you to lay your eggs,'” Buntin said. “And then when a female comes to visit, they’ll perform a dance which consists of kind of bowing, bobbing, raising their wings out, creating some scratches around the sides of that display nest.”

The authors emphasized that the site is public, meaning anybody can visit and see the scrapes for themselves compared to other scrap sites, which are on federally protected land.

“It does really make it a very, very unique site, because not only does it have this amazing like type behavior displayed, but it also is so accessible for lots of people to be able to see it and understand better about the behavior of these wonderful animals that we can see now,” Neffra Matthews, study co-author and former employee of the Bureau of Land Management, told ABC News.

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(NEW YORK) — A heat advisory is in place across the Northeast, from Maryland to Maine, where residents are bracing for temperatures 5 to 15 degrees above average.

The heat index — what the temperature feels like with humidity — could reach 103 degrees in Philadelphia on Wednesday and Thursday.

New York City and Boston could feel like 100 degrees with humidity on Wednesday and Thursday.

Further north, the heat index may climb into the upper 90s in Burlington, Vermont, and Syracuse, New York, on Wednesday.

The dangerous heat is also invading the South and West.

The heat index could hit a scorching 105 to 109 degrees on Wednesday in New Orleans; Memphis, Tennessee; and Little Rock, Arkansas.

In the West, a heat advisory is in place from Northern California to northern Washington with temperatures 10 to 15 degrees above average. Portland, Oregon, could near 100 degrees on Wednesday and Seattle could reach the 90s.

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(MARICOPA COUNTY, AZ) — Police have recommended charges in the drowning of influencer Emilie Kiser’s 3-year-old son, Trigg Kiser, who was found unresponsive in his family’s backyard pool in May.

“After a thorough review of the evidence, we have submitted the case to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office for further review and any potential prosecutorial decisions,” the Chandler, Arizona, Police Department said in a statement Thursday.

A felony charge of child abuse was recommended by the police department. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office has final say in whether charges are actually brought against anyone.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge in Tennessee is set to hear from federal prosecutors on Wednesday regarding their request that Kilmar Abrego Garcia be detained pending trial.

Last month, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes ordered Abrego Garcia not to be detained pending trial and set conditions for his release. However, after the federal government requested a stay of the order, a district judge scheduled an evidentiary hearing to allow the government to argue their request for his detention.

Robert E. McGuire, the Acting United States Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, said in a filing that he could call on a Department of Homeland Security official to testify at the hearing about his review of body and camera footage from a 2022 traffic stop of Abrego Garcia by the Tennessee Highway Patrol.

In a separate filing on Tuesday, McGuire argued Abrego Garcia should be detained pending trial because “there is no combination of bail conditions that can reasonably assure either the safety of the community or the defendant’s appearance in future court proceedings.”

McGuire said that the evidence he presented during a detention hearing last month “was overwhelming, corroborated, and otherwise uncontradicted by anything else in the record.” He also argued the court cannot “be reasonably assured” Abrego Garcia will refrain from committing additional crimes and appear for court proceedings given the likelihood of deportation that he faces.

The government in both the criminal case and the Maryland case has said that Abrego Garcia will likely be deported to a third country if released from criminal custody.

An official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement testified last week in Maryland that Mexico and South Sudan were among a handful of countries where the U.S. has deported noncitizens who have asked not to be returned to their countries of origin out of fear of torture or persecution.

Abrego Garcia’s legal team in the Maryland case requested the court to order that he not be removed from the U.S. without at least 72 hours notice should he be released on bond from detention in Tennessee.

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(NEW YORK) — A tropical threat on the Gulf Coast has a 40% chance for development into a tropical depression in the next 48 hours, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The system, which could currently be considered a “tropical rainstorm” or “tropical disturbance,” is likely to bring heavy rain to the central Gulf Coast for days — especially to the state of Louisiana.

The disturbance is expected to move along the coast, but the closer it stays to shore, the less chance it will have to grow into a tropical depression or storm since these weather patterns need time over water to develop, though a change to a more southerly track would give it a chance to gain steam.

A flood watch will go into effect at 1 p.m. this afternoon for portions of Louisiana and Mississippi and is expected to last at least through Friday night, with the eastern part of the watch in effect until at least Saturday evening.

This tropical disturbance is expected to produce long duration heavy rainfall and, if it develops into a tropical storm, it would be designated by the name Dexter.

Rainfall totals are generally expected to be between 2 and 6 inches, but the National Weather Service is highlighting some localized areas expected to receive as many as 15 inches in the region.

Elsewhere, heavy showers and thunderstorms are expected today for Ohio, West Virginia all of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey with rainfall rates of potentially more than 2 inches per hour on Wednesday and Thursday.

Storms are expected to begin around 2 p.m. in Ohio and then move east in a very scattered fashion through the afternoon, evening and overnight.

A flood watch is already in place for central and northern New Jersey where 1 to 2 inches of rain could fall in a 1-to-3-hour period, likely in the evening or overnight hours for this location.

A severe risk for damaging wind and tornadoes, along with flash flooding, is in place for portions of Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan on Wednesday, including Chicago, Milwaukee, Green Bay and Peoria.

A flood watch is already in place for Green Bay where they are expecting 2 to 3 inches of rain over a short time span, with locally higher amounts possible, and storms may reach Chicago, Milwaukee and Green Bay around 4 p.m. local time.

Heavy thunderstorms are also possible late tonight from Kansas to northern Missouri, with rainfall rates of 1 to 2 inches per hour possible.

Meanwhile, 70 million Americans are under heat advisories coast-to-coast, with dangerously hot conditions expected today for people in the Northwest, South and Northeast.

For the Northwest, a heat advisory is in place from northern California to northern Washington as Portland, Oregon, could reach near 100 degrees and Seattle, Washington, could hit the low to mid 90s — temperatures that are 10 to 15 degrees above average.

A heat advisory is in effect for parts of the South from Louisiana to Illinois, with a heat index up to 105 to 109 possible, including New Orleans, Memphis, Little Rock and Shreveport — temperatures that are 5 to 10 degrees above average.

The United States is now heading into the hottest part of the year, climatologically, and this weekend looks seasonally hot across the nation, with above average heat possible next week, especially for the Midwest, South and East, meaning temperatures in the upper 90s and lower 100s, with humidity making things worst for these regions.

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