Police in Middlebury, Vermont, released this photo of Lia Smith. Middlebury Police Department
(MIDDLEBURY, Vt.) — Police in Vermont said they are searching for a missing college student who hasn’t been seen for nearly a week.
Lia Smith, 21, a senior at Middlebury College, was reported missing on Sunday, according to police.
The California native was last seen in a building on campus on Friday at approximately 9 p.m., according to the Middlebury Police Department.
The search has involved the use of a drone, with investigators “working to identify additional potential search areas,” the police department said on Monday.
Middlebury College said its Department of Public Safety is also assisting the Middlebury Police Department in the search.
“We will do everything we can to find Lia,” Middlebury officials said in a statement to the school community on Monday. “She is a beloved member of our Middlebury family and there is nothing more important than the health, safety, and wellbeing of our students and of our entire community.”
The school said it has been in touch with the student’s family and friends “to offer support and learn all we can about the student’s recent activities and whereabouts.” Counseling services are also being offered, it said.
When contacted on Wednesday for the latest on the missing student, a school spokesperson referred ABC News to its Monday update.
ABC News reached out to the Middlebury Police Department on Wednesday for updates on the search but has not yet received a response.
Smith is described by police as being 5 feet, 11 inches tall and approximately 160 pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes. Anyone with information on her or her whereabouts is asked to contact the Middlebury Police Department at 802-388-3191.
Sean Grayson fatally shot Sonya Massey while responding to her 911 call for help. (Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office)
(PEORIA, Ill.) — The trial began on Wednesday of Sean Grayson, the former sheriff’s deputy, who was charged with first-degree murder in connection with the July 2024 fatal shooting of Sonya Massey, a Black woman who called 911 to report a possible intruder at her home in Springfield, Illinois.
The Sangamon County deputy was charged with a total of three counts in connection with Massey’s death — first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and official misconduct.
Grayson’s attorney, Daniel Fultz, declined to provide comment to ABC News ahead of the trial, but confirmed on Friday that his client has “pleaded not guilty to all charges.”
Sangamon County State’s Attorney John Milhiser, who delivered opening arguments on Wednesday for the prosecution, walked the jury through key moments during the night that Massey died.
“Make no mistake, we are here in this courthouse today because of the actions of Sean Grayson,” Milhiser said. “On July 6, 2024, in her kitchen, without lawful justification, he shot and killed [Sonya Massey]. That’s why we are here.”
“You will see captured on video what happens when the defendant gets mad at a woman who is standing in her own kitchen calling for help,” he added.
Milhiser said that prosecutors will show the jury the body camera footage, which shows the incident from the point of view of Grayson’s partner, who also responded to the scene. The footage released by Illinois State Police shows the incident from the partner’s point of view because Grayson did not turn on his own body camera until after the shooting, according to court documents reviewed by ABC News.
“The defendant does not turn on his bodycam — Which is a pattern you’ll see throughout this trial,” Milhiser said.
Meanwhile, Grayson’s attorney Daniel Fultz, who delivered opening arguments for the defense on Wednesday, urged jurors not to make up their minds early about this case.
“Making your mind up early closes the possibility you will miss facts that will affect your decision,” Fultz said, arguing that Grayson “believed that he would suffer great bodily harm or death” during his encounter with Massey.
“Ms. Massey made the decision to lift the pot of boiling water above her head to attempt to throw that at Dept. Grayson. It was at that moment and only at that moment that Dept. Grayson discharged his weapon,” Fultz said.
“What happened [to] Ms. Massey was a tragedy. But it was not a crime,” he added.
Witness testimony also began on Wednesday in the trial, which is being held in Peoria, Illinois.
The trial began with jury selection on Monday, where a panel of 12 jurors was seated, according to ABC News’ affiliate in Springfield, WICS. The process took more than five hours and ended with a jury made up of nine white women, one Black man and two white men, as well as two white men and one white woman selected as alternate jurors.
The trial was moved from Sangamon County to Peoria County due to extensive media publicity.
What the video shows
Body camera footage of the incident released by Illinois State Police on July 22, 2024 shows Massey telling the two responding deputies, “Please, don’t hurt me,” once she answered their knocks on her door.
“I don’t want to hurt you; you called us,” Grayson responded.
Later in the video, while inside Massey’s home as she searches for her ID, Grayson points out a pot of boiling water on her stove and says, “We don’t need a fire while we’re in here.”
Massey then appears to pour some of the water into the sink and tells the deputy, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus,” video shows.
Grayson threatens to shoot her, the video shows, and Massey apologizes and ducks down behind a counter, covering her face with what appears to be a red oven mitt. She briefly rises, and Grayson shoots her three times, the footage shows.
Massey died from a gunshot wound to her head, according to an autopsy report released in July 2024, Sangamon County Coroner Jim Allmon confirmed to ABC News.
Prosecutors alleged that Grayson discouraged his partner from retrieving the medical kit to render aid to Massey after the shooting because he allegedly thought the injuries were too severe to revive her.
“No, headshot, dude. She’s done. You can go get it, but that’s a headshot,” Grayson tells his partner after he says he is going to retrieve the medical kit, body camera video shows. “What else do we do? I’m not taking pot boiling water to the [expletive] face and it already reached us,” Grayson adds.
The judge in the case ruled during a pre-trial hearing last month against the defense’s request to exclude body camera footage that shows what happened after Massey was shot, according to WICS.
Grayson said he feared for his life during his encounter with Massey, according to documents released by the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office in August 2024.
“While on scene, I was in fear Dep. (redacted) and I were going to receive great bodily harm or death. Due to being in fear of our safety and life, I fired my duty weapon,” Grayson wrote in his field case report.
Attorney Ben Crump, who represents Massey’s family, said during a statement at the time that the autopsy confirmed that this was an “unnecessary, excessive use of force, completely unnecessary, certainly not justified.”
Crump said that Massey struggled with her mental health and body camera footage released in Sept. 2024 shows her interacting with officers on July 5 — 16 hours before she was fatally shot — after her mother called 911 to report that her daughter was having a mental health episode.
A review of the case by the Illinois State Police found Grayson was not justified in his use of deadly force. Garyson was fired in July 2024 by the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office after he was indicted in this case.
ABC News’ Sabina Ghebremedhin contributed to this report.
People inspect the area among the rubbles of burnt houses during Eaton wildfire in Altadena of Los Angeles County, California, United States, January 9, 2025. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — For decades, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s billion-dollar disaster dataset put a dollar figure on the cost of climate change and severe weather events. Understanding the scope and frequency of weather-related damage helped first responders, the insurance industry, and researchers with their planning, recovery operations, and assessments.
But in May, the Trump administration announced it was shutting down the website that hosted the dataset. That made it difficult for the public and experts to track the impact of major disasters, as the program used a combination of private and public data, some of which was not available to organizations outside the government.
However, Climate Central, a nonprofit research organization comprised of scientists and communicators, announced on Monday it brought the billion-dollar disaster dataset back to life. And, it’s being run by the very scientist, Adam Smith, who once managed it at NOAA and who is now Climate Central’s Senior Climate Impacts Scientist.
“The billion-dollar disaster analysis is vital in demonstrating the economic impact of extreme weather and climate events, which helps communities understand the real-world consequences of climate change and the increasing impact of these different events,” said Smith
“I would also say this dataset was simply too important to stop being updated,” Smith added. “We’ve seen a widespread demand for its revival from many aspects of society and industry, including the private sector, academia, local community decision makers, even Congress.”
Smith said Climate Central was able to replicate all the data sources and partnerships that supplied the original NOAA dataset.
In the months since the website was taken offline, Climate Central has recorded 14 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in the United States. It estimates the total damage exceeds $101 billion.
Among those events, the Los Angeles wildfires in January were the costliest disaster of 2025 and the costliest wildfire on record, with more than $60 billion in damage, nearly double the previous record, according to Climate Central.
“This kind of helps deliver the fact that climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of some types of extreme events leading to more damages,” Smith said.
The Climate Central announcement comes after the former team responsible for climate.gov, a popular climate information website that stopped publishing new content in July after the Trump administration fired its staff, relaunched the site as climate.us with the help of several nonprofits.
Among the content, climate.us is now hosting the Fifth National Climate Assessment, one of the most comprehensive reports on the impacts of climate change in the U.S. The Trump administration took down that report and its accompanying website in June.
Climate Central said its disaster dataset uses the same peer-reviewed methodologies as the NOAA version and that it intends to regularly update the information, even expanding upon what’s available in the future. And if previous years are any indication, the cost of climate change will keep growing.
“Over the last 10 years, a conservative view of this analysis, these billion-dollar disasters alone have contributed more than $1.5 trillion in total direct losses. And I’d say that’s even a conservative investment because we’re not able to quantify things like environmental degradation, mental and physical healthcare-related calls after a disaster, or the supply chain ripple effects after a disaster,” Smith said.
In this photo illustration, Mega Millions lottery tickets are displayed on August 01, 2023 in San Anselmo, California. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — The Mega Million jackpot is now up to $680 million after no winners were selected in Tuesday night’s drawing.
The next drawing is Friday night at 11 p.m.
While no one won the big prize, one person in Illinois did win $3 million for matching all of the white balls. The numbers drawn Saturday night were: 2, 18, 27, 34 and 59, plus the gold Mega Ball 18.
There have been 33 consecutive drawings without a jackpot winner. The last jackpot of $348 million was last won on June 27 in Virginia.
The current jackpot prize has a cash value of $318.2 million, which can be offered as a one-time lump sum payment or an immediate payment followed by 29 annual payments.
The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 290,472,336, according to Mega Millions.
Mega Millions is played in 45 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Tickets are $5 for one play.
The largest Mega Millions jackpot prize ever won was a $1.6 billion prize won on Aug. 8, 2023. The $680 million jackpot would the ninth-largest in Mega Millions history.
(NEW YORK) — Tropical Storm Melissa, which is taking aim on the Caribbean, may strengthen to a hurricane in the next 24 to 48 hours.
The storm will stay away from the mainland United States. Instead, Melissa poses the biggest threat to Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Jamaica, where days of heavy rain and severe winds could lead to life-threatening landslides.
Here’s the latest forecast:
Melissa is moving over water temperatures 4 to 5 degrees above average for this time of year, which will help it strengthen from a tropical storm into a hurricane.
Melissa is expected to approach Jamaica and the southwestern portion of Haiti later this week.
The storm is forecast to bring 5 to 10 inches of rain to the southern Dominican Republic, southern Haiti and eastern Jamaica through Saturday. Significant flash flooding and landslides are possible.
Across the northern Dominican Republic, northern Haiti and western Jamaica, 2 to 4 inches of rain are expected through Saturday.
Aruba and Puerto Rico could see less severe impacts from Melissa’s outer bands. One to 3 inches of rain is in the forecast and flooding is possible.
A hurricane watch is in effect for the southwestern peninsula of Haiti, from the border with the Dominican Republic to Port-Au-Prince, while a tropical storm watch has been issued in Jamaica.
The Atlantic hurricane season lasts until Nov. 30.
A baby was found on a subway platform in Manhattan, New York, on Oct. 20, 2025. (WABC)
(NEW YORK) — The mother of a newborn baby found abandoned at a Midtown Manhattan subway station has been arrested, police said.
Assa Diawara, 30, was arrested early Wednesday in Queens on charges of abandonment of a child and endangering the welfare of a child, according to the New York Police Department.
The baby girl was found wrapped in a blanket at the southbound 1 train platform at 34th Street-Penn Station during the Monday morning rush hour, police said.
The baby was taken to the hospital in stable condition, police said, with New York City Transit President Demetrius Crichlow calling it “the miracle on 34th Street.”
A bomb detection robot inspects a vehicle that rammed a security barricade at the White House complex on October 21, 2025 in Washington, DC. The Secret Service reported that one individual was arrested and that the vehicle is now deemed safe. Andrew Leyden/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — A person has been arrested after driving his car into a security gate near the White House on Tuesday night, the U.S. Secret Service said.
It happened at about 10:37 p.m. at a security gate at 17th and E streets southwest of the White House, the Secret Service said in a statement.
“The individual was immediately arrested by U.S. Secret Service Uniformed Division officers, and the vehicle was assessed by Secret Service and the Metropolitan Police Department and deemed safe,” the Secret Service said in a statement. “Additional information will be provided upon conclusion of the investigation.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Federal agents clash with anti-I.C.E. protesters at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building on October 12, 2025 in Portland, Oregon. An Instagram post from the WorldNakedBikeRidePortland account stated – “The emergency WNBR Portland is in response to the militarization of our peaceful city. Right now peaceful protesters are being brutalized as they do their best for our neighbors and cousins who are being kidnapped.” (Photo by Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration has filed a motion seeking to dissolve the remaining order preventing them from deploying National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon.
The filing on Monday came after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned, earlier that day, another temporary restraining order that prevented the Trump administration from deploying the Oregon National Guard to Portland. A panel of judges found that the Trump administration was likely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the TRO.
A broader order that prohibits any state’s National Guard from deploying into Portland remains in effect.
The government referenced the appeals court’s decision in its filing on Monday, stating, “Given the Ninth Circuit’s clear statements on the second TRO’s validity, the Court should address this motion in part today and without awaiting plaintiffs’ response due tomorrow evening.”
The Ninth Circuit’s decision “plainly warrants dissolution of this Court’s second TRO,” the government’s motion stated.
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield decried Monday’s ruling, saying the panel of Ninth Circuit judges “has chosen to not hold the president accountable” and urged the “full Ninth Circuit to vacate today’s decision before the illegal deployments can occur.”
“Portland is peaceful. The military has no place in our streets,” he said in a statement. “We will continue to hold the line and fight for Oregon’s sovereignty.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi, meanwhile, celebrated the ruling, saying the appeals court found that the president “has the right to deploy the National Guard to Portland, Oregon, where local leaders have failed to keep their citizens safe.”
In late September, President Donald Trump issued an order federalizing 200 members of the Oregon National Guard to protect federal propertyamid ongoing protests at a Portland ICE facility, despite objections from local officials.
After the city of Portland and state of Oregon sued, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut earlier this month prohibited the deployment of the Oregon National Guard into the Portland area, finding that conditions in Portland were “not significantly violent or disruptive” to justify a federal takeover of the National Guard, and that the president’s claims about the city were “simply untethered to the facts.”
The Ninth Circuit’s ruling on Monday, which lifted Immergut’s TRO, found that the Trump administration was likely to succeed on the merits of its appeal of Immergut’s ruling.
“After considering the record at this preliminary stage, we conclude that it is likely that the President lawfully exercised his statutory authority” to federalize the National Guard, the court stated in the majority opinion.
Immergut issued a second TRO following the Trump administration’s attempt to deploy members of the California National Guard to Portland.
The government is seeking to dissolve that TRO or “at a minimum” to stay, or suspend, the order until it expires on Nov. 2, according to the motion filed Monday.
The city of Portland and state of Oregon have not yet filed a response to the government’s motion, according to the online docket.
A trial in the matter is scheduled to start on Oct. 29.
In this Aug. 1, 2023, file photo, Special Counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks on an unsealed indictment, including four felony counts against former President Donald Trump, in Washington, D.C. Drew Angerer/Getty Images, FILE
(WASHINGTON) — Attorneys representing former special counsel Jack Smith sent a letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley Tuesday seeking to correct what they call “inaccurate” claims that Smith wiretapped or spied on Republican lawmakers as part of his investigation into President Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
“Although you have not reached out to us to discuss this matter, we are compelled to correct inaccurate assertions made by you and others concerning the issuance of a grand jury subpoena for the toll records of eight Senators and one Member of the House of Representatives,” attorneys Lanny Breuer and Peter Koski wrote. “Mr. Smith’s actions as Special Counsel were consistent with the decisions of a prosecutor who has devoted his career to following the facts and the law, without fear or favor and without regard for the political consequences.”
The outreach from Smith’s team is the latest in a series of efforts by the former special counsel to correct the record on his parallel investigations into Trump that resulted in two indictments for Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified records after leaving the White House in his first term and his attempt to subvert the 2020 election result.
Trump pleaded not guilty in both cases before both were dropped following Trump’s reelection, due to a long-standing Justice Department policy barring the prosecution of a sitting president.
Both cases have since been cast by senior leadership of Trump’s Justice Department — many of whom previously served as Trump’s personal attorneys — as prime examples of political weaponization of law enforcement.
In the letter from his attorneys, as well as two public appearances on university panels, Smith has disputed that he or his team were ever motivated by politics in their prosecutions of the president.
In their letter Tuesday, Smith’s attorneys sought to refute a narrative stemming from a document released by the FBI on the eve of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month.
The record showed that during Smith’s investigation, his office sought limited phone toll data from eight senators and a member of the House in the days surrounding the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.
While such records would not involve the content of any phone calls or messages, multiple Republicans on the committee incorrectly claimed at the hearing the next day that Smith had “tapped” their phones or “spied” on them.
“What was going on here? Who ordered this? Who ordered the tapping of the phones of United States Senators?” Republican Sen. Josh Hawley asked Bondi during the hearing.
“We will be looking at all aspects of this, and I have talked to Director Patel at length about this,” Bondi responded, referring to FBI Director Kash Patel.
Smith’s attorneys, in their letter, stood firmly behind the move to seek the toll records as “entirely proper, lawful, and consistent with established Department of Justice policy,” and further confirmed that Smith received approval to do so from career officials in the Department’s Public Integrity Section.
“The subpoena’s limited temporal range is consistent with a focused effort to confirm or refute reports by multiple news outlets that during and after the January 6 riots at the Capitol, President Trump and his surrogates attempted to call Senators to urge them to delay certification of the 2020 election results,” Breuer and Koski wrote. “In fact, by the time Mr. Smith’s team conducted the toll records analysis, it had been reported that President Trump and Rudy Giuliani tried calling Senators for such a purpose, with one Senator releasing a voicemail from Mr. Giuliani.”
Smith’s attorneys also noted that, during Trump’s first term, the Justice Department “purportedly obtained communications records from two Democratic Members of Congress” as part of an investigation into media leaks.
The letter also criticizes Patel for suggesting in a statement that Smith sought to cover up his office’s use of the toll records, claiming he put them “in a “lockbox in a vault, and then put that vault in a cyber place where no one can see or search these files.”
“It is not clear what cyber place in a vault in a lockbox Director Patel is describing, but Mr. Smith’s use of these records is inconsistent with someone who was trying to conceal them,” the letter said.
Smith’s attorneys point to Smith’s final report on his probe, released in January of this year, which specifically describes some of the calls made to Republican senators during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and contains as a footnote that refers to the use of toll records in Smith’s investigation.
“Moreover, the precise records at issue were produced in discovery to President Trump’s personal lawyers, some of whom now serve in senior positions within the Department of Justice,” Smith’s attorneys added in their letter.
(NEW YORK) — An upstate New York man who was pardoned by President Donald Trump for his actions at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 allegedly threatened to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York State Police said.
Christopher Moynihan, 34, of Clinton, was arrested Saturday and charged with making a terroristic threat, police said. He is the first pardoned Capitol rioter to be arrested over alleged political violence.
He appeared in the Town of Clinton Court where he was remanded to the Dutchess County Justice and Transition Center in lieu of $10,000 cash bail, police said.
He is scheduled to make his first appearance in Dutchess County State Supreme Court on Thursday. It was not immediately clear whether he had hired a lawyer.
Jeffries, D-N.Y., said in a statement Tuesday that he is “grateful to state and federal law enforcement for their swift and decisive action to apprehend a dangerous individual who made a credible death threat against me with every intention to carry it out.”
Moynihan was convicted of obstructing an official proceeding in 2022 after he broke through a security perimeter and entered the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Prosecutors said he entered the Senate Gallery and paged through a notebook on top of a senator’s desk and took photos with his cellphone. During the riot he said, “There’s got to be something in here we can f—ing use against these —-bags,” according to prosecutors. Court filings from when he was charged included screenshots from a video showing Moynihan in the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Moynihan was sentenced to nearly two years in prison in February 2023 before he and more than 1,500 others who had been convicted or otherwise charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot received a pardon hours after Trump took office.
