(WASHINGTON) — A balloon intercepted by fighter aircraft over Utah on Friday was a “likely hobby balloon” and has since left United States airspace, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said Saturday.
The “small balloon” was allowed to continue to fly above the U.S. after being intercepted Friday morning at an altitude of 43,000 to 45,000 feet because it has been determined not to pose a national security threat, NORAD said.
“After yesterday’s fighter intercepts, and in coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration, the North American Aerospace Defense Command monitored the likely hobby balloon via ground radars until it left US airspace overnight,” NORAD said in a statement on Saturday.
NORAD said it has no additional information on the balloon.
A U.S. official described the balloon as being 50 feet tall and carrying a payload that is the size of a two-foot cube. It is not known what the payload might be carrying, the official said.
“The balloon was intercepted by NORAD fighters over Utah, who determined it was not maneuverable and did not present a threat to national security,” NORAD said in a statement on Friday.
The balloon also posed no hazard to flight safety, NORAD said.
The development comes slightly more than a year after a Chinese spy balloon was tracked across the United States before being shot down by U.S. fighters over U.S. territorial waters east of South Carolina.
That balloon measured nearly 200 feet in height, was equipped with a payload described as being the length of three school buses that carried intelligence sensors and was capable of being maneuvered remotely.
That incident created tensions between the United States and China that have only recently improved.
NORAD subsequently made adjustments to its sensors to increase the detection of high-altitude balloons flying across the U.S. and Canada that led to the shootdown of smaller balloons over Alaska, Canada’s Yukon Territory, and Lake Huron.
(ATHENS, Ga.) — A suspect was taken into custody a day after a woman who went for a run on the University of Georgia’s Athens campus was found dead due to “foul play,” school officials said Friday.
The victim, Laken Hope Riley, 22, was found in a wooded area on campus on Thursday with “visible injuries,” the university said. She died from blunt force trauma, according to University of Georgia Police Department Chief Jeffrey Clark.
A suspect in her death, 26-year-old Jose Antonio Ibarra, has been charged with malice murder, felony murder, aggravated battery, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, kidnapping, obstructing an emergency call and concealing the death of another. He was denied bond during an initial court appearance on Saturday and is being held at the Clarke County Jail.
Clark told reporters Friday evening they took three to four people into custody in connection with the murder but only plan to arrest Ibarra, who is from Venezuela.
“The evidence suggests that this was a solo act,” he said.
Police do not believe he knew the victim and do not have a motive, according to the chief.
“I think this was a crime of opportunity, where he saw an individual and bad things happened,” Clark said.
“Key input” from the community, physical evidence and video footage from campus security cameras helped lead investigators to the suspect, who lives in Athens, the chief said.
“There are no indications of a continuing threat to the community related to this case at this time,” Clark said.
The Justice Department said Saturday that Ibarra’s brother, Diego Ibarra, had also been arrested during the course of the investigation for presenting a fake green card after officers approached him because he matched the description of the suspect. Diego Ibarra has been charged by federal complaint with possessing a fake green card and is in state custody.
A friend reported Riley missing shortly after noon on Thursday when she failed to return home from a run at the school’s intramural fields earlier that morning, the university said.
University police officers subsequently found her behind a lake near the fields “unconscious and not breathing,” the university said. Officers attempted to provide medical aid but she was pronounced dead at the scene.
Riley was a junior at the Augusta University College of Nursing who studied at its Athens campus, the school said. She had previously attended the University of Georgia.
“This sudden loss of one of our students is truly heartbreaking,” the Augusta University College of Nursing said in a statement on Friday.
She graduated from River Ridge High School in Woodstock, Georgia, in 2020, where she ran on the school’s cross-country team for four years.
“Her passion for health care science and running are to be admired,” River Ridge High School cross-country coach Keith Hooper said in a statement to ABC News. “She will always accompany us as we run.”
Classes were canceled at the nursing school on Friday, with counselors available to staff and students.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation and Athens-Clarke County Police Department are assisting in the homicide investigation, the university said.
“We have been fully briefed on this terrible situation,” the university said in a statement. “We want to assure you that the safety and welfare of our campus community is our top concern.”
The incident follows the “sudden death” of a student in the campus’ Brumby Hall Wednesday night, the school said. A cause of death has not been released.
Chief Clark said there is no connection between the two deaths.
Classes will resume on Monday, the school said, calling the past 24 hours a “traumatic time” for the university.
University officials recommended that students travel in groups when possible and download the school’s safety app.
Clark urged anyone with information on the incident to contact the University of Georgia Police Department.
There has not been a homicide on the campus in the past 20 years, according to Clark.
ABC News’ Luke Barr, Alyssa Gregory, Jason Volack and Nick Uff contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A military helicopter crashed in northeast Mississippi on Friday afternoon during a routine training flight, according to the Mississippi National Guard.
The AH-64 Apache crashed in Prentiss County around 2 p.m. Possible casualties have not been confirmed, the Mississippi National Guard said in a statement.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(BIRMINGHAM, Ala.) — Since last year, Jasmine York, 34, and her husband have been trying to have a baby. The couple, both nurses, began freezing embryos before they got married in March 2023.
York had her first embryo transfer in August 2023, but the transfer failed, she told ABC News.
Determined to grow their family, the couple tried again, and they are currently undergoing their second round of in-vitro fertilization, or IVF.
But, after the Alabama Supreme Court issued a new decision last week ruling that frozen embryos are considered children, their embryo transfer appointment scheduled for March 20 was canceled by her hospital.
“It’s obviously really nerve-racking,” York told ABC News. “Where do we go from here? What would happen? We’re in the middle of this process, I’m taking medications, I’ve already purchased all of the medications for the transfer cycle.”
“But now, it’s just devastating, honestly, that all of that has been put on hold, and we don’t know what the next steps will be for us, or if we’ll even be able to afford the transfer of them out of state,” she continued.
The couple has spent more than $20,000 trying to get pregnant, according to York. They are now in limbo, unsure when they’ll be able to get the procedure, and if the money they spent on expensive medication will go to waste.
“We’re frustrated. Now, especially that a decision has been made to put everything on pause, I’m sad. I’ve had my moments of crying throughout the whole day and I’m angry. I’m angry that other people get to make a decision about whether or not I get to grow my family. I’m mad that other people’s opinions affect medicine and the practice of it,” York said.
“None of this is intentionally going in with an intent to harm a child. This is an attempt to create a child and it’s just frustrating and it’s sad that it could impact the rest of my life,” she said.
Alabama Supreme Court rules frozen embryos are ‘children’
News that York’s appointment was canceled comes days after the state Supreme Court issued a decision saying that frozen embryos are considered children under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, opening the door to civil — and potentially even criminal — lawsuits for destroying the embryos, even if done accidentally.
The decision stemmed from a lawsuit by couples whose embryos were destroyed after a patient wandered into a fertility clinic and dropped the embryos, according to court documents. In order to remain viable, embryos are stored in subzero temperatures and handled with care to avoid contamination. When the embryos were dropped, they were no longer viable and could not be transferred to create a pregnancy.
The couples then brought civil lawsuits against the facility, but a trial court threw out their wrongful death suits.
The Alabama state Supreme Court then reversed that decision late Friday, ruling that embryos are “children.”
“Unborn children are ‘children’ … without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics,” the Court wrote in its opinion.
Associate Justice Gregory Cook, who wrote the lone fully dissenting opinion, said it was not the Court’s decision who meets the definition of “person” under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act and that the ruling would have devastating consequences for Alabamians.
“Moreover, there are other significant reasons to be concerned about the main opinion’s holding,” he wrote. “No court — anywhere in the country — has reached the conclusion the main opinion reaches. And, the main opinion’s holding almost certainly ends the creation of frozen embryos through in vitro fertilization (“IVF”) in Alabama.”
Patients see IVF services paused
At least three IVF providers in Alabama have indefinitely paused procedures following the Court’s decision, among them being the University of Alabama Birmingham health system, the largest in the state.
Alabama Fertility Specialists and the Center for Reproductive Medicine in Mobile – in southwest Alabama — announced Thursday they had decided to pause IVF treatments.
Meanwhile, Huntsville Reproductive Medicine, P.C., located in Madison, near the Tennessee border, told ABC News it was still proceeding with IVF treatments but pausing on discarding embryos, whether the embryos “were genetically tested and found to be abnormal or the couple has simply reached their family building goals and don’t want to donate their” embryos.
Already a mother to a 13-year-old from a previous marriage, York has since had three ectopic pregnancies, resulting the removal of one her fallopian tubes. York says IVF was her only option to get pregnant.
“I want to go forth with the IVF. The problem is that I don’t know what that looks like for us right now. I don’t know. If it’s something that will be an option for us, because of all of the factors that come into play, with the transfer in the finding of physician and in taking off work, to go do this whole procedure,” York said.
Kendall Diebold, 32, a hematology nurse practitioner from Hanceville — about 40 miles north of Birmingham — and her husband have been trying to conceive for two years.
They used two rounds of letrozole, a medication that decreases the amount of estrogen in the body to increase the odds of pregnancy. The first round resulted in a pregnancy that ended in miscarriage, the second round was unsuccessful.
The couple also went through two rounds of intrauterine insemination, which were unsuccessful. They were getting ready to begin IVF at UAB in April when the court issued its ruling and UAB shut down its IVF program.
Diebold was at work when her colleague came in and told her the program was being suspended indefinitely.
“I didn’t even stick around to hear what she said next, because I left,” Diebold said. “One of my best friends, I called her and I said, ‘Where are you because I need you to come take care of me right now.’ So, she took care of me. We went on a walk, and she quite literally held me while I cried.”
Diebold and her husband have discussed potentially going out of state to seek care in Georgia, Kentucky or Tennessee, which she described as a privilege that many other families may not have. She said she’s reached out to Emory Healthcare in Atlanta to ask about what the IVF process may look like there.
“I don’t want to transfer care because I love my physician so much and after a while you build a rapport with them,” she said. “It’s doable, but it’s likely incredibly challenging, just from a logistical standpoint.”
She described not being able to potentially get fertility care in her home state as “frustrating.”
“It’s stressful when you’re already dealing with something that is so emotional, and so, it’s absolutely frustrating, overwhelming, scary, all of the things,” Diebold said.
‘It should be my choice’
Also impacted by the decision are women who currently have embryos in storage and now may not be able to pursue IVF in Alabama or are not able to discard their embryos.
Audrey B, who asked that just the last initial of her name be used to protect her privacy, from north-central Alabama, is currently 31-weeks pregnant via IVF after she and her husband struggled to conceive for about two years.
Audrey, 35, who was being treated at UAB, still has two frozen embryos. She and her husband originally planned to wait a year or two after giving birth to try and transfer a second embryo.
“It just feels like now we do not have any control over our embryos,” she told ABC News. “Like, what does that decision do for me? Like, am I going to have to pay for storage for the rest of my life for those embryos if I don’t use them?”
“Even if I do want to use them, who is going to transfer them? My fertility clinic, they said they were stopping all IVF programs,” she added.
Audrey and her husband have talked about possibly going out of state for IVF in the future but worry about the added cost and travel expenses.
“Can we transfer or should we transfer our embryos out of state?” Audrey said. “And even though we were transferring out of state, what state? Because like are we transferring them to Georgia, which is the neighbor state, but I mean, what tells us that Georgia is not going to pass the same kind of law?”
“So [if] you have to transfer those embryos to states like Colorado, New York … how much it’s going to cost?” she said.
Taylor Cater Durham, 30, who lives in Birmingham is in a similar situation. Cater Durham and her ex-husband went through IVF for two years but were unable to conceive.
During that time, Cater Durham said she had at least two egg retrievals. The first resulted in just one viable embryo, which was transferred but she didn’t become pregnant.
The second resulted in eight eggs being retrieved, four of which led to viable embryos that could be transferred. Three were transferred but they didn’t result in pregnancy. They still have one embryo left.
“This new law, the [embryos] that they knew were inconclusive and were not viable, it states that we couldn’t donate, we couldn’t discard them, that we would have to store them or use them,” she told ABC News. “And going through IVF is already very, very heartbreaking, and to know that you’re going to have to put these embryos in or store them and know they’re not going to work. It’s just crazy.”
Cater Durham said she is paying $850 a year to store her last embryo and is worried that the price could potentially increase with all the embryos that will now have to be stored due to so many clinics stopping IVF procedures.
She added that she was not planning to discard her last embryo but she’s angry that the court took that choice away from her.
“It should be the patient’s choice,” Cater Durham said. “I’m not ready to get rid of that embryo yet [but] I feel like it should be my choice if I want to keep it, donate it, discard it. Whatever I decide I want to do, it should be my choice, not the state of Alabama’s.”
(NEW YORK) — A student at the University of Colorado – Colorado Springs who is accused of gunning down two people in a dorm room had an AK-47-style assault rifle and a handgun in his car when he was arrested, according to prosecutors.
Nicholas Jordan was arrested on Monday and charged with two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of his roommate, Samuel Knopp, and Celie Rain Montgomery, who were found shot dead on Feb. 16, according to the Colorado Springs police.
Knopp, 24, was a registered student at the school while Montgomery, 26, was not currently registered, police said.
Prosecutors described Jordan, 25, as a relatively new student in the process of withdrawing from UCCS.
A motive for the murders is not clear.
As Jordan appeared in court in person for the first time on Friday, the judge ruled the arrest warrant and affidavit to be unsealed.
A status conference has been scheduled for March 15.
(NEW YORK) — Old images of African Americans picking cotton remind many of the oppression suffered by generations of Black slaves before the Emancipation Proclamation. For Black Americans in particular, their history with this famous crop, that helps clothe the world, is complicated.
Now Julius Tillery, a Black cotton farmer in North Carolina, is working to turn cotton’s painful story with Black Americans into an affirmation of the economic progress that his community has achieved over the years.
“If I don’t create a new history for us, it will always be a bad history,” Tillery told ABC News. “So I think it’s really important that the work I do to help and foster a better idea around cotton is important. We have to remember, cotton wasn’t the oppressive thing. Cotton is just a plant, and it’s a magical plant at that. It was people that were oppressive and made us work like machines.”
Tillery owns several hundred acres of farmland and has been teaching other farmers how to survive in a global economy.
The 37-year-old said it is important for him to see the Black farming community grow.
“It’s not many of us. We’re basically… extinct,” he said. “It’s less than 100 Black cotton farmers in the whole country.”
Outside of his advocacy, Tillery started a side business, Black Cotton, in 2016. He promotes other cotton farmers across the South. The business has created and sold home décor, jewelry, and accessories handmade with cotton. The tagline for the company is: Cotton is Our Culture. Let’s Grow Together.
The company also has partnered with shoemaker and clothing line Vans, which purchased 10,000 pounds of cotton from Black Cotton two years ago. Vans produces streetwear, including a T-shirt with a cotton flower logo that uses cotton from the company.
Vans said it plans to buy more cotton from Black Cotton this year.
Tillery said that he sometimes gets remarks from people who wonder how, as a Black man, he could be a cotton farmer. He said that he sees his work as a way for the community to grow.
“I’m a fifth-generation cotton farmer, and I emphasize that because that means five generations of free men decided to do this work,” he said.
Former President Donald Trump leaves the courtroom on the third day of his civil fraud trial at New York State Supreme Court on Oct. 4, 2023, in New York. — Spencer Platt/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump’s legal team on Thursday filed a series of motions to dismiss the classified documents case brought by special counsel Jack Smith.
The four motions argue that the case should be dismissed on the grounds of presidential immunity; that Smith’s appointment as special counsel was unlawful; that Smith charged Trump with statutes that shouldn’t apply to the former president’s behavior based on an unclear precedent in the Constitution; and that Trump should have been able to have custody of the documents in question, even after he was president, because of the Presidential Records Act.
The filings came as Trump’s team faced a deadline Thursday to file motions to dismiss.
Trump pleaded not guilty last June to 37 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information ranging from U.S. nuclear secrets to the nation’s defense capabilities, and took steps to thwart the government’s efforts to get the documents back.
His longtime aide, Walt Nauta, also pleaded not guilty to related charges.
A superseding indictment subsequently charged Trump, Nauta, and Carlos De Oliveira, the head of maintenance at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, with two obstruction counts based on allegations that the defendants attempted to delete surveillance video footage at Mar-a-Lago in the summer of 2022.
Trump has denied all charges and denounced the probe as a political witch hunt.
(NEW YORK) — Three members of the University of Wyoming swimming and diving team have died in a single-vehicle crash, according to the school.
The accident happened on U.S. Highway 287, about 10 miles south of the Wyoming-Colorado border Thursday afternoon, according to the University of Wyoming. Two other members of the men’s swimming and diving team were injured in the crash but their injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.
The crash happened between Livermore and Virginia Dale, Colorado, at the intersection of Highway 287 and Red Mountain Road, according to reports from the Colorado State Patrol.
Authorities are still investigating what led up to the accident, but Initial indications are that the driver swerved and the vehicle went off the road, causing it to roll multiple times.
“We are heartsick at the news of this terrible tragedy for our university, our state, our student-athlete community and, most importantly, the families and friends of these young people,” University of Wyoming President Ed Seidel said in a statement released by the school following the accident. “Words are insufficient to express our sadness.”
The university is not releasing their names until next of kin are notified.
“My thoughts and prayers are with our swimming and diving student-athletes, coaches, families and friends,” University of Wyoming Director of Athletics Tom Burman said. “It is difficult to lose members of our University of Wyoming family, and we mourn the loss of these student-athletes. We have counseling services available to our student-athletes and coaches in our time of need.”
The accident is currently under investigation and more details are expected to be released at a later time.
(KILLEEN, Texas) — A small county in Texas is bracing for a state of emergency when hundreds of thousands of skywatchers are expected to flock to the South for the total solar eclipse in April.
Bell County Judge David Blackburn issued a local disaster declaration this week, ahead of the April 8 natural phenomenon, saying the county’s population of 400,000 residents is expected to double in tourists.
The declaration allows Bell County to coordinate with the state’s Department of Emergency Management if needed on eclipse day.
“In order to protect the health, safety, and welfare of both residents and visitors, Bell County has determined that extraordinary measures must be taken in the form of a local disaster declaration,” the county said in a press release Wednesday.
Bell County is expecting the influx of eclipse viewers in the area to cause traffic congestion, shortages of food and fuel and cellular network congestion, according to the release.
The declaration also requires property owners planning to host events with over 50 attendees to register with the county to ensure proper “life safety and critical infrastructure” is in place.
“Registering information will provide public safety officials and first responders with important information that will aid them during this period when roads and highways may be stressed, and responders may be impeded by population conditions,” the release notes.
A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the sun and the Earth and, for a short time, completely blocks the face of the sun, according to NASA.
In the U.S., the path of totality begins in Texas and will travel through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Small parts of Tennessee and Michigan will also experience the total solar eclipse, the agency reports.
April’s total solar eclipse will be the last of its kind to occur in North America for 20 years and is expected to be the largest mass travel event in 2024, Michael Zeiler, expert solar eclipse cartographer, told ABC News.
Zeiler compared eclipse day travel to “50 simultaneous Super Bowls across the nation,” saying 4 million people are estimated to travel to view the eclipse.
“When you look at the number of people expected to come to the path of totality for the solar eclipse, we estimate those numbers are roughly the equivalent of 50 simultaneous Super Bowls across the nation, from Texas to Maine,” he said.
Zeiler said Texas is a prime place for eclipse chasers to head to because it is located in the path of totality and has the best chances for clear skies on eclipse day.
“You want to be in the center of the path for the longest duration,” Zeiler explained. “If you have a friend or relative in the path in Texas, and there are 12 million Texans inside the path, that’s the spot to go because that’s where the best weather prospects are.”
Zeiler explained how eclipse travel should be celebrated, despite the hazard of heavy tourism, “All of us are united in pursuing the unimaginable beauty of a total solar eclipse.”
(NEW YORK) — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg criticized his Maricopa County, Arizona, counterpart who doesn’t want to extradite a New York City murder suspect, saying she’s playing “political games in a murder case.”
Raad Almansoori, 26, is in custody in Arizona, where he is charged in two stabbings. He is also the suspect in the death of Denisse Oleas-Arancibia, 38, who was found beaten and strangled at New York’s SoHo 54 Hotel earlier this month.
Bragg said he learned from Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell’s Wednesday news conference that Mitchell would not extradite Almansoori.
“Her reasoning?” Bragg said at a news conference Thursday. “Not because that’s what the law dictates. Not because that’s what advances justice. Not because of a concern for victims. Not at the request of the NYPD. But rather, plain and simple, old-fashioned grandstanding and politics.”
“That should have no place in our profession,” Bragg said. “It is deeply disturbing to me that a member of my profession … would choose to play political games in a murder case.”
Mitchell said at her news conference Wednesday that she would not agree to send Almansoori to New York.
“Having observed the treatment of violent criminals in the New York area by the Manhattan DA there, Alvin Bragg,” Mitchell said, “I think it’s safer to keep him here and keep him in custody, so that he cannot be doing this to individuals either in our state or county, or anywhere in the United States.”
Mitchell “professes concern that a murder suspect in Manhattan would be released?” Bragg responded at his news conference. “I do not know what they do in Arizona, but I know that here in this county, New York County, we routinely seek and get remand … in our murder cases.”
Bragg said shootings in Manhattan decreased by 38% and homicides have dropped 24% during his two years as DA.
He stressed that New York City’s murder rate is less than half Phoenix’s rate.
Almansoori is facing charges of attempted homicide, theft of means and aggravated assault in Surprise, Arizona, and robbery, assault, theft and criminal damage in Phoenix, police said. He is being held without bond.
The Arizona and New York crimes are both important, Bragg said, but he slammed Mitchell for not calling him to speak about the cases and instead holding a news conference.
Moving forward, Bragg said he hopes to have “regular, professional conversations” about Almansoori’s extradition.
If Almansoori agrees to be extradited to New York, “it’s a moot issue,” Bragg said, but if he does not agree to be extradited, Bragg said his office would likely prepare an extradition package.
Bragg said that extradition package would be reviewed by the governor, not a local prosecutor.
“This is not the Maricopa County attorney’s decision, and I’m hoping that facts, law, justice and reason will prevail,” he said.
Almansoori was arrested in Arizona on Feb. 18 after he allegedly stabbed a woman and stole a car, authorities said. While in custody, Almansoori allegedly indicated to police that he was involved in another stabbing in Arizona, a deadly attack in New York City and an attack in Florida, authorities said.
ABC News’ Aaron Katersky and Alex Stone contributed to this report.
