National

(NEW YORK) — A swath of the United States is facing a dangerous combination of extreme heat and wildfire smoke this week.

More than 85 million Americans across 15 states — from California to Florida — are under heat alerts for Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service.

The consecutive days of record-high temperatures combined with high overnight temperatures makes this heat wave especially threatening, as the longer it lasts, the more dangerous it becomes.

Six more heat-related deaths were confirmed in Maricopa County, Arizona, on Wednesday, the Maricopa County Department of Public Health announced. A total of 18 people in Maricopa County, which includes the cities of Phoenix, Mesa and Scottsdale, have died this summer of heat complications, and another 69 deaths are under investigation, health officials said.

A number of cities are shattering records amid scorching temperatures.

Tuesday marked the record-breaking 19th straight day the heat index value was at or above 110 degrees Fahrenheit in Phoenix, Arizona, with no end in sight. Overnight temperatures there also haven’t dropped below 90 degrees for a record 9 days in a row.

In Miami, Florida, the heat index value has been at or above 100 degrees for a record 38 consecutive days.

El Paso, Texas, has counted a record 33 straight days with the heat index value at or above 100 degrees.

Las Cruces, New Mexico, has gone a record 17 days in a row with the heat index value at or above 100 degrees.

Tucson, Arizona, broke its all-time record warm low temperature at 86 degrees on Wednesday morning.

The heat wave isn’t expected to end anytime soon. The latest forecast shows above-average temperatures for the rest of July, particularly in the West and the South.

The last 16 days on Earth have been the hottest on record and the planet’s surface temperature is on track to break a record set only a couple of weeks ago.

Meanwhile, several states in the East are under air quality alerts due to smoke from raging wildfires in neighboring Canada. The smoke was expected to lighten up on Wednesday as the weather front moves through the region.

California is now battling its own wildfires, with heavy smoke drifting over cities such as Fresno and areas up the northern coast. Dangerous smoke was expected to spread into Medford, Oregon, on Thursday.

Severe storms are possible Wednesday night and Thursday across the Plains from the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles up through Minneapolis, with damaging winds, hail and possible brief tornadoes.

Multiple counties in far western Kentucky were under flash flood emergencies on Wednesday afternoon. The area is already experiencing widespread flooding due to significant rainfall Wednesday morning — up to 10 inches and more in some spots, according to the National Weather Service.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear declared a state of emergency Wednesday afternoon, describing “significant damage” in the town of Mayfield due to heavy rainfall.

“So, the first thing for everyone is be safe and make sure your family is safe,” Beshear said in a statement. “Remember, we can replace stuff and we can rebuild homes. We don’t want to lose any lives.”

Flooding has also been reported across middle Tennessee as the heavy rain moved through on Wednesday – up to 6 inches in some regions. A flood watch will continue in the region today, which includes Nashville.

The influx of rain is being fueled by the abundant heat, moisture and instability in the atmosphere.

Another small area in coastal North Carolina and Virginia, including Virginia Beach and the Outer Banks, could also see severe storms on Wednesday. A tornado watch has been issued in those areas until 7 p.m.

A tornado has been confirmed to strike Halifax County, North Carolina, on Wednesday afternoon.

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(NEW YORK) — A federal judge in New York has rejected former President Donald Trump’s request to move his hush-money criminal case into federal court.

“Trump has failed to show that the conduct charged by the Indictment is for or relating to any act performed by or for the President under color of the official acts of a President,” Judge Alvin Hellerstein wrote in his ruling Wednesday.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to a 34-count indictment charging him with falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election.

He had argued the case belonged in federal court because Trump reimbursed his then-attorney, Michael Cohen, who made the payment to Daniels, while Trump was in the White House.

“Trump also has failed to show that he has a colorable federal defense to the Indictment,” Hellerstein said in his ruling.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg argued the hush payment had nothing to do with Trump’s presidential duties.

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(UPPER MAKEFIELD, Pa.) — A search for a 2-year-old girl and her 9-month-old brother who were washed away with their mother in a flash flood in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, is expected to be scaled back on Wednesday after officials said rescue crews combed the entire flood zone more than a dozen times.

Severe weather Wednesday morning in the search area was delaying rescue crews from resuming the search for 2-year-old Matilda “Mattie” Sheils and her 9-month-old Conrad Sheils, according to the Upper Makefield, Pennsylvania, Police Department.

“The area and conditions will be continuously monitored throughout the day and if we are able to deploy our assets, we will do so. This setback has us all frustrated as we are desperate to bring Mattie and Conrad home,” police officials said in a statement.

The children have been missing since Saturday afternoon when they and their family were caught in the deluge while driving on Route 532 to a barbecue, authorities said.

The children’s mother, 32-year-old Katie Seley, died after she grabbed Mattie and Conrad and tried to escape their vehicle but ended up being swept away in the violent weather event near Upper Makefield Township, officials said.

Seley was among five people killed in the storm. Her body was recovered on Sunday.

Rescue crews are expected to scale back the search on Wednesday after more than 100 emergency personnel spent the past four days scouring the flooded area along Hough’s Creek, Chief Tim Brewer of the Upper Makefield Fire Company said. He said crews have used cadaver dogs in ground searches of the creek’s banks and have deployed sonar equipment and drones to search the creek, a tributary that leads to the Delaware River.

“We have searched the entire flood zone more than a dozen times,” Brewer said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon, adding that the search covered roughly 117 acres.

Brewer said the focus of the search will switch on Wednesday to a “dive rescue operation.”

“That will mean underwater assets mainly in the creek and we will work out from there. We still have K-9 assets in place, but we are going to begin to scale down,” said Brewer, adding that crews have searched and re-searched the area.

“Tracking logs are over 160 miles, meaning we have backtracked several times,” Brewer said.

The tragedy unfolded around 5:30 p.m. Saturday when more than 7 inches of rain fell within 45 minutes, causing Hough’s Creek to spill its banks and generating a “wall of water” that took drivers on Route 532, also known as Washington Crossing Road, by surprise, Brewer said. He said 11 cars were washed away in the flash flood and at least one was found 1.5 miles from where it was swept into the creek.

The missing children and their family are from South Carolina and were in Pennsylvania visiting friends and relatives when disaster struck.

Mattie and Conrad’s father, Jim Sheils, and their grandmother grabbed ahold of the missing siblings’ 4-year-old brother and escaped their car as it and other vehicles were being washed away, according to officials. The father, grandmother and 4-year-old were found alive, officials said.

“They were caught in a flash flood,” Brewer said. “The wall of water came to them, not the other way around.”

Besides Katie Seley, four other people were confirmed dead in the Bucks County flooding. They were identified by the Bucks County Coroner’s Office as Enzo Depiero, 78, and Linda Depiero, 74, both of Newtown Township, Pennsylvania; Susan Barnhardt, 53, of Titusville, New Jersey; and Yuko Love, 64, of Newtown Township.

The coroner’s office said all of the victims died from drowning.

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(HOOVER, Ala.) — Carlethia “Carlee” Russell, the Alabama woman who returned home on Saturday after she went missing for two days, called 911 to report a toddler walking down the highway before her disappearance, but the Hoover Police Department said in a press release on Tuesday evening that investigators have not found any evidence of a child walking on the side of the road.

“The Hoover Police Department has not located any evidence of a toddler walking down the interstate, nor did we receive any additional calls about a toddler walking down the interstate, despite numerous vehicles passing through that area as depicted by the traffic camera surveillance video,” the press release said.

Police also previously said that they did not receive any calls to report a missing toddler.

The update came amid questions surrounding the circumstances of Russell’s disappearance. Police said in the statement that detectives are continuing to investigate what happened from the time she called 911 on Wednesday at around 9:30 p.m. ET to report a toddler on Interstate 459 in Alabama, until she returned home on foot late Saturday.

Police said they will share more information about the investigation during a press conference on Wednesday afternoon. ABC News has reached out to Russell’s family for comment.

The Hoover Police Department previously said the 25-year-old stopped her car to check on the toddler she reported after making the 911 call and called a family member to report what she saw. The family member lost contact with Russell, but the line remained open, according to police.

Officers who responded to Russell’s 911 call found her vehicle and some of her belongings on the scene, but there was no sign of Russell or the child she reported. Authorities said Tuesday that Russell stopped at a Target to buy snacks, but they were not found in her belongings at the vehicle.

Police said in the statement on Tuesday that detectives have obtained surveillance video of Russell that shows her walking alone in her neighborhood before she arrived home on Saturday night.

Medics were dispatched to Russell’s residence on Saturday after she returned home to aid an “unresponsive but breathing” person as described in the 911 call, but police said that first responders found Russell “conscious and speaking” when she arrived and she was transported to a local hospital, where she was treated and released.

ABC News’ Nadine El-Bawab and Mariama Jalloh contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Police have called the Gilgo Beach murders “one of the most consequential homicide investigations” in Long Island’s history.

The search for missing sex worker Shannan Gilbert led to the grisly discovery of 10 other bodies on a stretch of beach along the island’s South Shore.

Now, nearly 13 years after the first victim was discovered, a suspect has been arrested in connection with the case.

New York City architect Rex Heuermann has been charged with the murders of Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Costello, whose bodies were found covered in burlap in December 2010, according to court records.

Heuermann, 59, a married father of two, is also the “prime suspect” in the death of a fourth victim, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, who was also found that month, according to the court document. He has not been charged with her murder.

The four victims have become known as the “Gilgo Four”; the Craigslist escorts were found along the beach about 500 feet from each other, and all died by homicidal violence, according to officials.

Here’s a timeline of the investigation:

July 9, 2007

Brainard-Barnes, 25, is last seen alive in New York City, according to prosecutors.

July 10, 2009

Barthelemy, 24, is last seen alive in New York City, according to prosecutors.

May 1, 2010

Gilbert, 23, goes missing after fleeing from a client’s home in Oak Beach, near Gilgo Beach, according to police. Her disappearance prompts several searches in the area.

June 6, 2010

Waterman, 22, is last seen alive at the Holiday Inn in Hauppauge, New York, according to prosecutors.

Sept. 2, 2010

Costello, 27, is last seen alive at her home in West Babylon, New York, according to prosecutors.

Dec. 11, 2010

An officer conducting a search for Gilbert with his police K9 along Ocean Parkway in Gilgo Beach — near her last known location — discovers a set of human remains that are later identified to be those of Barthelemy, police said.

Dec. 13, 2010

During a search of the area, police find the remains of Brainard-Barnes, Waterman and Costello within a quarter mile of where Barthelemy’s remains were recovered, police said.

March 29, 2011

Amid the continued search for Gilbert, police find partial skeletal remains several miles east of where the Gilgo Beach Four were found belonging to Jessica Taylor, a 20-year-old sex worker. Other remains from Taylor were previously discovered in Manorville, in eastern Long Island, in July 2003.

April 4, 2011

Police find three sets of remains along Ocean Parkway while searching for Gilbert.

The remains of Valerie Mack, a 24-year-old escort who disappeared while living in Philadelphia, are found about a mile and a half east of Taylor’s remains and a little over 2 miles east of the Gilgo Four. Mack’s partial remains were previously discovered in Manorville in November 2000, and police have suggested there may be a connection to Taylor’s remains.

The remains of an unidentified female toddler are also located in the same area.

The remains of an unidentified man are also discovered closer to the remains of the Gilgo Four. Authorities said the person was about 17 to 23 years old, Asian, and had died five to 10 years before being discovered.

April 11, 2011

Two sets of remains are located off of Ocean Parkway in Nassau County, seven miles west of Gilgo Beach.

One set of remains is determined to be the mother of the female toddler discovered on April 4, 2011. The mother’s partial remains were first discovered in 1997 in Hempstead Lake State Park.

The second set, known as Jane Doe Seven, is confirmed to belong to an unidentified victim whose remains were located on Fire Island in 1996.

Dec. 13, 2011

Gilbert’s remains are found in marshland near Oak Beach. Her death is later ruled as an accidental drowning, though her family maintains they believe she was murdered.

January 2022

The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office creates a task force to conduct a comprehensive review of evidence in the investigation.

March 14, 2022

Heuermann first comes up as a suspect in the investigation, according to Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney. Heuermann was tracked through his car, a Chevrolet Avalanche, according to court documents. A witness to Costello’s disappearance reported seeing a Chevrolet Avalanche at Costello’s home, court records stated.

July 13, 2023

Heuermann is arrested in Manhattan at his midtown office. Investigators matched DNA from hair recovered from the burlap used to wrap Waterman’s body to leftover pizza crust Heuermann threw into a Manhattan garbage can in January 2023, according to court documents.

Detectives also tracked Heuermann through cellphone records, according to court records. Tierney said cellphone mapping led investigators to zero in on areas in midtown Manhattan and Massapequa Park, where Heuermann lives.

July 14, 2023

Defense attorney Michael Brown enters a not guilty plea on Heuermann’s behalf at his arraignment for three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder. Heuermann was ordered held on no bail.

He is next scheduled to appear in court on Aug. 1.

ABC News’ Aaron Katersky, Jon Haworth, Emily Shapiro, Josh Margolin, Mark Osborne and Mark Crudele contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — A federal judge in New York on Wednesday denied former President Donald Trump’s request for a new trial in the defamation and battery case brought by E. Jean Carroll that resulted in a $5 million damage award.

Trump had sought a new trial after a New York jury in May found him liable for sexually assaulting the former Elle magazine columnist in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s, then defaming her in a 2022 Truth Social post by calling her allegations “a Hoax and a lie.”

Judge Lewis Kaplan denied the request, saying, “The jury in this case did not reach ‘a seriously erroneous result.'”

“Its verdict is not ‘a miscarriage of justice,'” the judge said.

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(NEW YORK) — A swath of the United States is facing a dangerous combination of extreme heat and wildfire smoke this week.

More than 85 million Americans across 15 states — from California to Florida — are under heat alerts for Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service.

The consecutive days of record high temperatures combined with overnight temperatures remaining high makes this heat wave especially threatening. The longer it lasts, the more dangerous it becomes.

A number of cities are shattering records amid scorching temperatures.

Tuesday marked the record-breaking 19th straight day that the heat index value was at or above 110 degrees Fahrenheit in Phoenix, Arizona, with no end in sight. Overnight temperatures there also haven’t dropped below 90 degrees for a record nine days in a row.

In Miami, Florida, the heat index value has been at or above 100 degrees for a record 38 consecutive days.

El Paso, Texas, has counted a record 33 straight days with the heat index value at or above 100 degrees.

Las Cruces, New Mexico, has gone a record 17 days in a row with the heat index value at or above 100 degrees.

The heat wave isn’t expected to end anytime soon. The latest forecast shows above average temperatures for the rest of July, particularly in the West and the South.

The last 16 days on Earth have been the hottest on record and the planet’s surface temperature is on track to break a record set only a couple weeks ago.

Meanwhile, several states in the East are under air quality alerts due to smoke from raging wildfires in neighboring Canada. The smoke was expected to lighten up on Wednesday as the weather front moves through the region.

California is now battling its own wildfires, with heavy smoke drifting over cities such as Fresno and areas up the northern coast. Dangerous smoke was expected to spread into Medford, Oregon, on Thursday.

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(CLAYCOMO, Mo.) — A Ford assembly plant in Claycomo, Missouri, was evacuated and shut down on Tuesday night after police received a report about a possible threat.

At a press conference, Clay County Sheriff’s Office officials said a man who claimed to be armed with explosives, a rifle and a handgun barricaded himself in a bathroom. The incident occurred at 5:20 p.m. local time.

As authorities tried to verify the possible threat, the man provided officers with a fake name. He was, however, able to correctly name a supervisor at the plant, law enforcement said. The man’s identity is not known.

The call about the possible threat came from a spoofed number, the sheriff’s office said, noting it makes it challenging to verify.

The incident prompted an evacuation at the Ford plant and a suspension of production for the night.

Late Tuesday night, the sheriff’s department said its Special Tactics and Response (STAR) Team “was unable to locate anyone on their initial search of the area where the suspect said he was located.”

The Ford plant is large — about 5 million square feet, per Kansas City ABC station KMBC-TV — and additional tactical teams in the region were recruited to help search and clear the facility.

Negotiators and response teams from law enforcement agencies are on site, officials said during their earlier press conference.

No injuries have been reported, and there is no evidence of gunfire or weapons, the sheriff’s office said earlier. Authorities are taking the threat seriously and treating it as real until proven otherwise.

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(HOUSTON) — A man who’s been nicknamed the “Sticky Note Bandit” robbed another bank in Houston on Tuesday, marking his fourth robbery in two weeks, the FBI said.

“He has committed four robberies in less than two weeks, and we need your help to find him!” the FBI’s Houston office said in a statement posted to social media on Tuesday.

The man, who hasn’t been publicly identified, allegedly robbed a Bank of America branch on San Felipe Street in Houston while dressed as a woman, the bureau said.

He also allegedly struck three other banks this month, the bureau previously said. In each case, he handed tellers sticky notes with “threatening” messages demanding cash, earning him the nickname “Sticky Note Bandit,” the FBI said.

It was unclear if the suspect left Tuesday’s alleged robbery with money, but he left the two other Houston-area banks with undisclosed sums this month, the bureau’s Violent Crime Task Force said in a press release.

The man allegedly entered Hancock Whitney Bank in Houston on July 5 “dressed as a female, approached a teller, and handed them a threatening note written on a sticky note which demanded cash,” the FBI said. He left that branch with an undisclosed sum, the FBI said.

“No one was physically hurt during the robbery,” a statement said.

The suspect, who was described as a 5-foot-8-inch Black man with a “thin to medium build,” allegedly used a similar method at two Wells Fargo branches in Houston on July 11 and 13.

“During the last two robberies he wore a black wig, black sunglasses, a blue medical mask, a green women’s style sweater, black women’s ballet flats, and carried a black purse,” the FBI said prior to Tuesday’s alleged robbery.

During the July 11 robbery, the “teller walked away from the counter and locked themselves in the back room for safety,” the FBI said. “The suspect remained in the bank lobby for a short time, then fled the scene on foot without any money.”

He left the July 13 robbery with an undisclosed sum, the FBI said.

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(MOSCOW, Idaho) — Idaho prosecutors responded to a suggestion from the defense that suspect Bryan Kohberger’s DNA could have been planted at the scene of last year’s quadruple murder, saying it does not support one of their requests for additional discovery.

In previous court filings, lawyers for Kohberger asked for more information on the genealogical analyses used to zero in on the suspect, attempting to cast doubt on the strength of investigators’ evidence and whether it pointed irrefutably to just their client. The defense lawyer even questioned the investigators’ objectivity.

The Latah County Prosecutor, leading the case against Kohberger, said in court filings Monday that none of the defense’s arguments hold water as reasons to share the additional information.

“The State is at a loss as to how that theory supports a claim that the lGG information is material to the preparation of his defense,” they wrote.

Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG) helped law enforcement eventually link Kohberger to the crime scene, after a more common DNA criminal profiling method, called a short tandem repeat analysis (STR), first found no match with the DNA left at the crime scene.

Prosecutors said the profile used in their IGG was informed by the same DNA as the STR analyses they performed, and they are already handing over information related to the STR analyses in discovery.

“If Defendant wishes to explore the theory that his DNA was planted on the Ka-Bar knife sheath, he is free to do so. But the family tree created by the FBI has no relevance to that theory,” the prosecution wrote.

Kohberger’s attorneys said last month they should get additional discovery on the genealogical “family tree” which helped lead authorities to their client.

The defense said in a June filing that Kohberger’s DNA could have been planted — put on the Ka-Bar sheath by someone other than him — by someone throughout the investigation, for instance, which spanned “hundreds of members of law enforcement and apparently at least one lab the State refuses to name.” The IGG process was “like a lineup where the government was already aware of who they wanted to target,” they said, pointing to three additional males’ DNA they say were found in and around the scene after the killings, and adding that “precisely how the police came to believe” they had identified the suspect’s car as the kind Kohberger drove “is still unknown.”

“The Defense is to guess whether the State focused its investigation on Mr. Kohberger via a bizarrely complex DNA tree experiment or through its faulty identification of the vehicle involved in this case,” they wrote in the June filing.

In their filing Monday, the prosecution said that even if Kohberger’s team wants to go down that road and claim that process was “rigged” — it would be an irrelevant argument because they are not planning to present the genetic genealogy information at trial.

The prosecution said the IGG analysis was used to point them in the right direction — but is a separate process from the ultimate STR DNA profile — and they are not planning on using IGG at trial.

The prosecution also noted they have already handed over information related to the STR analyses.

The two analyses are distinct, they say — the IGG was used “to develop a lead, not to demonstrate substantive evidence of guilt,” while the STR analysis “is substantive evidence the State intends to use at trial to prove its accusations” against Kohberger, the prosecution writes.

They include an affidavit from the Idaho State Police Forensic Services Laboratory manager who notes the STR data and the data used in investigative genetic genealogy “cannot be directly compared.”

Because they don’t plan to use the IGG analyses at trial, the prosecution argued it wasn’t relevant information to disclose. Anyone involved with those analyses wouldn’t constitute a prosecution witness, thus making that defense argument inapplicable, they said.

“The IGG information is neither exculpatory nor material to guilt or punishment. The family tree built by the FBI merely pointed law enforcement to Defendant, and law enforcement followed that lead to develop the substantive evidence of guilt that was used for his arrest and that will be used at trial,” the prosecution writes.

Responding to a June defense expert declaration in support of further discovery on the DNA analyses, the prosecution says that expert, who is also an attorney, should not “hijack” the court’s role in determining evidence’s relevance and admissibility, adding their declaration was a “poorly disguised legal brief” by a lawyer who is not on the case.

Prosecutors allege that in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022, Kohberger, a criminology Ph.D. student at nearby Washington State University, broke into an off-campus home and stabbed to death four University of Idaho students: Ethan Chapin, 20; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21.

After a six-week hunt, police zeroed in on Kohberger as a suspect, saying they tracked his white Hyundai Elantra, cellphone signal data, and recovering what authorities said was his DNA on a knife sheath found next to one of the victims’ bodies.

That DNA evidence taken from the knife sheath at the crime scene “showed a statistical match” with a cheek swab taken directly from Kohberger after his arrest, authorities said in court filings.

Kohberger’s attorneys pushed back on that analysis in several court filings, saying the “statistical probability is not an absolute,” and pointing to what they called a “total lack of DNA evidence” from the victims in Kohberger’s home or car.

Kohberger was arrested on Dec. 30, 2022, at his family’s home in Pennsylvania, after driving cross-country to spend the holidays in Albrightsville.

He was indicted in May and charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. At his arraignment, he declined to offer a plea, so the judge entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf.

A trial in the quadruple homicide has been set for Oct. 2, though that could be delayed.

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