(NEW YORK) — Sam Altman is stepping down from his role as CEO of OpenAI, the company announced on Friday.
The departure follows a review process undertaken by the company’s board of directors, OpenAI said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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(PLAINS, Ga.) — Former first lady Rosalynn Carter has entered hospice care at home, nine months after her husband, former President Jimmy Carter, started hospice care.
Rosalynn Carter, 96, and “President Carter are spending time with each other and their family,” their grandson said in a statement Friday.
In May, the Carter Center said the former first lady had been diagnosed with dementia.
“She continues to live happily at home with her husband, enjoying spring in Plains, [Georgia], and visits with loved ones,” the Carter Center said in a statement at the time.
Jimmy Carter, 99, is the oldest-living American president and the longest-living president in U.S. history. The Democrat served as president from 1977 to 1981, defeated in his bid for reelection by Ronald Reagan.
The Carters, who wed in 1946, are also the longest-married presidential couple in American history. The president told ABC News two years ago that marrying Rosalynn Carter was the “most important thing in my life.”
The couple made a rare public appearance this September, attending the Plains Peanut Festival in their Georgia hometown.
The Carters have four children: three sons and one daughter. They are also the grandparents of 12 (one deceased) and great-grandparents to 14 children, according to the Jimmy Carter Library.
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(BALLSTON SPA, N.Y.) — Craig Ross Jr., the man accused of kidnapping a 9-year-old girl riding her bike in Moreau Lake State Park in September, was charged with several new crimes Friday in Saratoga County Court, including sexual assault.
Authorities arrested Ross, 47, on Oct. 2, after a two-day manhunt, which led authorities to a camper van in Ballston Spa, New York, where Ross was living on his mother’s property.
In addition to the original kidnapping charge, Ross is now facing four charges of predatory sexual assault against a child, two counts of first-degree sexual abuse, one count of second-degree assault and one count of endangering the welfare of a child.
The victim was found in a cupboard in his camper van and in good health, police said.
Search teams were led to the property after discovering a ransom note in the mailbox of the kidnapped girl’s home on which they discovered Ross’ fingerprints. His fingerprints were in the system due to a prior arrest for a DWI in 1999.
The child, from Greenfield, New York, disappeared while on a bike ride at the campground where she was staying with family and friends, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said at a news conference.
Hochul said the fourth grade girl was doing one last lap around the park alone when she went missing.
An Amber Alert was issued for the missing child that same evening and an intense search involving up to 400 local, state and federal law enforcement officers and firefighters was conducted at the sprawling park.
The day after his arrest Ross appeared in Milton Town Court where he was charged in relation to the kidnapping.
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(NEW YORK) — A search is underway in Big Bend National Park for a hiker who has been missing for over a week, according to to authorities.
Christy Perry, 25, has been missing since Nov. 9 when she did not show up to her camping reservation, according to the National Park Service.
Perry traveled from Houston to Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas. She picked up a rental car in Midland, Texas, and arrived at the park on Nov. 9, according to the NPS.
She did not show up at her campsite that evening in the Chisos Basin Campground, according to the NPS.
Perry’s last known location was the beginning of the park’s Lost Mine Trail. Her vehicle was located at the trailhead, according to the NPS.
Big Bend National Park’s Lost Mine Trail is closed due to the search.
Search teams made up of NPS employees, U.S. Border Patrol, Texas Game Wardens with two K-9 teams and Los Diablos fire crew are combing through the surrounding canyons and ridges. U.S. Customs and Border Protection will also be conducting an aerial search by helicopter, according to the NPS.
Lost Mine Trail, which climbs steeply though the woodlands of the Chisos Mountains, is 4.8 miles round trip.
Perry is 5 feet, 2 inches tall and weighs 100 pounds. She has brown hair and a fair complexion, according to the NPS.
“If you were in the area of the Lost Mine Trail on November 8th or 9th and saw Christy, please call the TipLine at 888-653-0009, or email nps_isb@nps.gov,” the NPS said.
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(NEW YORK) — Prosecutors have dropped a weapons charge against New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, who showed up to counter protest a pro-Palestinian rally at Brooklyn College last month with a gun strapped to her hip, according to Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.
The gun was not loaded and was determined to be inoperable, prosecutors said.
“Peaceful protest is the right of every American, but bringing a gun to a protest is illegal and creates an unacceptable risk of harm that has no place in our city,” a spokesman for Gonzalez said. “The firearm recovered by the NYPD in this case was unloaded and missing the recoil spring assembly, rendering it inoperable, according to the NYPD’s lab report. In order to sustain this charge, it must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the weapon in question was capable of firing bullets. Absent such proof, we have no choice but to dismiss these charges.”
Vernikov, a Republican who represents the south Brooklyn neighborhoods of Sheepshead Bay and Brighton Beach, was filmed at the Oct. 12 rally with a handgun in her pants. Although the councilwoman has a concealed carry permit, she violated the recently passed city law that prohibits civilians from bringing firearms to protests, police said.
The 39-year-old lawmaker was contacted by police the following day and she surrendered to police at the 70th Precinct. She was charged with criminal possession of a firearm.
“At no point in time was anyone menaced or injured as a result of her possessing the firearm at the earlier protest,” the NYPD said in a statement at the time.
Vernikov, a Ukrainian immigrant who has been a staunch opponent of Palestinian rallies, posted a video of herself at the rally on X, formerly known as Twitter, claiming, “If you are here, standing today with these people, you’re nothing short of a terrorist without the bombs.” She still has the video pinned to the top of her account.
Her arrest had been referred to the City Council’s Standards and Ethics Committee, of which she happens to be a member, for possible disciplinary action. Under New York law, a person convicted of a felony or misdemeanor can be barred from elected office.
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(NEW YORK) — In a rare admission, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has gone public about the reduction in the supply of artillery shells to Ukraine, telling reporters that deliveries of the munitions have “really slowed down.”
The 155mm artillery shells are arguably the most important munition for Ukraine in its war with Russia.. Ukraine has always been outmatched by Russia’s superior artillery firepower, however this imbalance, which is key on the battlefield, is set to get worse.
In a briefing on Thursday, Western officials agreed with an estimate, attributed to Ukrainian officials, that Russia currently produces around a million artillery shells a day.
U.S. arms companies are ramping up production. However, according to The Economist, U.S. output of 155 mm shells in 2025 “is likely to be lower than that of Russia in 2024.”
European efforts to try and address the problem also appear to be falling short.
The German Defense Minister earlier this week warned that the European Union would fail to meet its pledge of providing a million rounds to Ukraine by March 2024.
Any further reduction of ammunition supplies to Ukrainian forces would limit Ukrainian troops’ ability to mount offensive operations as well as increase pressure on areas of the frontline where Russia is on the offensive.
Western officials on Thursday also conceded they were “concerned” about the supply of artillery ammunition to Ukraine. The officials claimed they had “always been concerned,” but it was a change in tone on the topic, compared to previous briefings.
President Zelenskyy, in comments to journalists Thursday said “warehouses are empty” in allied nations which have been supplying Ukraine with the shells.
Israel’s war in Gaza and tensions on its northern border with Lebanon have also put pressure on U.S. stocks, with some supplies of artillery shells, which were designated for Ukraine in recent weeks, being diverted to Israel.
In a reference to the increased pressure on production and supply of the munitions, Zelenskyy said “everyone is fighting” for stockpiles.
It is true that, for months, Ukrainian officials have repeatedly warned that their ability to fire artillery shells has always been way lower than their Russian enemy.
And as the war has dragged on, the supply of 155mm shells to Ukraine inevitably has come under greater pressure, with the U.S. calling on other allies, namely South Korea to help out.
However, Zelenskyy’s warning comes amid the row in Congress over continuing funding for the war in Ukraine.
If the Biden Administration cannot keep military aid flowing to Ukraine, the situation could get a lot worse.
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(NEW YORK) — After the pandemic hit, many schools across the country faced a growing problem of teacher shortages.
Around 300,000 public school teachers and other staff members left the field as the pandemic took hold between February 2020 and May 2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Kaetlynn Ruiz became a kindergarten paraprofessional, or what’s also known as a teaching assistant, in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite, Texas during the pandemic – one of the thousands of teachers in the Mesquite Independent School District, which serves more than 38,000 students in 51 schools.
She says there are many reasons why teachers say they have been leaving the field in recent years.
“I hear that teachers aren’t being as supported when it comes to behavior in the classroom,” Ruiz told “ABC News Live Prime.” “A lot of them are leaving because of the pay. They just say it’s very hard to live on a teacher’s salary.”
Mesquite District Superintendent Dr. Ángel Rivera said the pandemic also put additional stress on educators.
“We had to have teachers work on two platforms, the face-to-face while simultaneously doing a virtual piece. And so pretty much it doubled up their work… and it probably expedited people leaving the profession,” Rivera said. “If the teachers were stressed before, they probably doubled their level of stress at that particular time.”
But the district says it has worked on combating problems facing educators by implementing new strategies that they say have been successful to retain more teachers.
Last year, voters passed a tax measure leading to $16 million in new revenue annually for the district – critical funding used in part to boost teacher salaries.
“This money will be paid on safety and security, teacher compensation along with paraprofessionals, and then programming for kids. Those were my three points,” Rivera said.
In addition, the district implemented new programs such as the Pathways Advancing Certified Educators or “PACE,” which helps teaching assistants pay for school as they fill vacancies, while working toward becoming fully certified teachers.
Ruiz is a member of the PACE program, which she used to move from being a kindergarten teaching assistant to now being in her first year as a full-time fourth grade teacher at Tosch Elementary School in Mesquite, where she herself was once a student.
“So many of us want to go into teaching,” Ruiz said of Mesquite’s paraprofessionals. “We just didn’t have the means to get there. And so this program truly helped us get our foot in the door. It’s pretty special to be able to do what I love, and also be able to earn that certification and degree.”
Long before the pandemic, the district also instituted its “Excellence in Teaching” incentive program, which gave a financial boost to veteran teachers to stay in the classroom. Teachers in the program get a salary stipend after two years of additional training, and receive additional stipends if they pursue advanced degrees while teaching.
“They were trying to figure out a way that we can, the district can, grow better teachers. And that takes time. And it takes additional instruction and training just like any other profession,” said Jeffrey Blackwell, who teaches high school speech, debate and academic decathlon classes at his alma mater Poteet High School in Mesquite.
As the pandemic waned, the district said it was able to cut teacher vacancies from 145 at the start of last school year to just 16 this year.
Blackwell was once a practicing attorney, but the 20-year teaching veteran says he can’t see himself in a profession outside of the classroom.
“There’s always going to be compelling arguments not to be a teacher, in terms of the marketplace,” Blackwell said. “But being a teacher, it’s, it’s a calling. That’s what teaching is. That’s who we are.”
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(NEW YORK) — Maria Cristina Benavides is still haunted by the chilling premonition she said her daughter shared in August 2018, just two weeks before her murder.
“She told me, ‘They’re going to kill me with a gun,'” Benavides told ABC News in Spanish. “It’s like she saw the future.”
Melissa Ramirez, Benavides’ 29-year-old daughter, was found dead on the side of a dirt road in a remote part of Webb County, Texas. The mother of two small children had been shot at close range several times.
Ramirez was one of four victims found murdered in a span of 12 days on the outskirts of Laredo, Texas, in September 2018.
The murders shook the border town, especially after learning the identity of the serial killer. Police arrested Juan David Ortiz, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Supervisor, who had been tasked with aiding investigators in the case.
“The shock of it all! It was something out of a movie,” said Maria Salas, who covered the case for the Laredo Morning Times. “It was crazy to think that the person that was supposed to help you solve this case, is the one responsible for it.”
During Oritz’s nearly nine-hour interrogation, he confessed to murdering all four women – Ramirez, Claudine Luera, Guiselda Hernandez, and Janelle Ortiz who was of no relation to the killer. At his trial last year, Ortiz was convicted of the murders and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Investigators at the crime scenes recovered .40 caliber shell casings, as well as distinct tire marks that helped connect the murders. But their big break in the case came from a woman who reported to police she escaped an attack by Ortiz.
Erika Peña, then 26, testified at trial that Ortiz picked her up in his truck in September 2018, went to his house, and later took her to a gas station where he pointed a gun at her. She said she then ran out of Ortiz’s truck and located a state trooper who was pumping gas nearby.
“She was scared that she could have possibly been the next victim,” Trooper Francisco Hernandez told “20/20.”
All of the murder victims in this case were Latina women who frequented La Sanber, an area along San Bernardo Avenue known for sex work which ultimately became Ortiz’s hunting ground.
“20/20” correspondent John Quiñones visited La Sanber in August and spoke with a sex worker who had worked on the same street where Ramirez was picked up by Ortiz. On the night of Ramirez’s murder, the woman, who does not wish to be named, said she was at home.
“I was going to be out here. Thankfully, I was asleep,” she told Quiñones.
“How dangerous is it?” Quiñones asked. “Very,” she said.
Sex workers are particularly vulnerable to physical and sexual violence at work. Globally, sex workers face a 45% to 75% chance of experiencing sexual violence on the job, according to a 2014 study published in the American Journal of Public Health. This systematic review was commissioned in part by the Department of Reproductive and Research of the World Health Organization. The Gender Policy Report, published in December 2022 by the University of Minnesota, detailed how several “studies of sex work in the U.S. confirms high rates of violence, often from law enforcement.”
Ciara Munguia said her mother, Claudine Luera, deeply loved her children and turned to sex work as another way to provide for her four children.
“I would cry, pray to God because she was on the streets,” Munguia said. “I always had that worry in the back of my head.”
Despite any of her concerns with her work, Munguia said her mom “was perfect” and was “always reminding me how much she loved me.”
Rose Ortiz described how her older sister, Janelle Ortiz, “was never a bad person.”
“She would light up the room,” Ortiz said. “That’s the kind of person she was. That’s why we loved being around her.”
Ramirez’s best friend, Erika Quiroz, remembered her as someone who “was loved” and “didn’t have any enemies.”
“Everybody loved being around her,” Quiroz said, “because she was such a goofball. She was always joking around, singing and dancing.”
At Ortiz’s trial last year, Joey Cantu gave a tearful statement about his younger sister, Guiselda Hernandez.
“She will always be the six-year-old girl who will wake up in the middle of the night and walk her eight-year-old brother to the restroom because I was scared of the dark,” Cantu said in court. “My sister was empathetic, and she was compassionate.”
Five years after their murders, the community of Laredo has found ways to remember and honor the four women.
Munguia is now a clerk at the Webb County Sheriff’s office and works alongside the same investigators who helped solve her mother’s case.
“I’ve learned the blood, sweat, and tears that go into the investigation,” Munguia said. “I never wanted to be in law enforcement…it’s kind of the silver lining. It was the light at the end of the tunnel. Now, I’ve met some of the greatest people.”
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(NEW YORK) — Members of the United Auto Workers voted to ratify a contract with General Motors, making it the first of the Big 3 U.S. carmakers to formally conclude a weekslong labor dispute that brought tens of thousands of autoworkers to picket lines and risked major economic disruption, balloting results posted online by the union showed.
Employees at General Motors voted to ratify the labor contract by a relatively narrow margin of about 55% to 45%, affirming a deal that top union officials touted as historic but a sizable minority of workers rejected, returns showed.
Soon afterward, Stellantis employees represented by the UAW voted to approve their agreement. A tentative agreement at Ford appears headed for ratification. The votes at Stellantis and Ford appear to have approved their respective agreements by a larger margin than the contract with General Motors, according to vote tallies posted online by the UAW on Friday.
The tentative deals reached with the Big 3 included a record 25% raise over four years, as well as significant improvements for pensions and the right to protest the closure of plants.
But the agreements fell short of some ambitious demands made by UAW President Shawn Fain at the outset of the strike in September. Initially, the union called for 40% wage increases over the four-year duration of the contract as well as a four-day workweek at full-time pay.
If union members had voted down the agreement, more than 50,000 employees at General Motors represented by the UAW would have potentially relaunched their strike against the company.
Ultimately, the deal with General Motors received majority support from union members at dozens of workplaces spanning from Michigan to Texas to Pennsylvania. However, the agreement appeared to elicit disapproval from many longtime workers, returns indicated.
A major GM plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, which employs more than 2,000 workers building the company’s Cadillac and Acadia vehicles, voted down the contract by a margin of 56% to 44%, the results showed.
A thousand-employee transmission plant in Toledo, Ohio, which experienced a layoff of about 200 workers amid the strike, voted against the contract by a nearly identical margin, according to the results.
After reaching tentative agreements with each of the Big 3 automakers late last month, Fain touted the set of contracts as a victory not only for autoworkers but also for the broader working class.
President Joe Biden also praised the deals. Addressing UAW members at a car plant in Illinois last week, Biden described tentative contracts reached at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis as model agreements that he hoped would fuel a wave of unionization across the auto industry.
“I’m a little selfish,” Biden said. “I want this type of agreement for all auto workers.”
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(NEW YORK) — When a recent federal report published last week showed routine childhood vaccination rates had fallen among kindergartners for the 2022-23 school year, public health experts were disheartened to see the drop.
However, there was one state that lagged behind the rest: Idaho.
For all four major vaccines — measles, mumps and rubella (MMR); diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis (DTaP); poliovirus (polio) and varicella (chickenpox) — Idaho had the lowest percentage of kindergartners who met school requirements for vaccinations, all around 81% compared to a nationwide rate of 93%.
What’s more, Idaho was the state with the highest percentage of exemptions from one or more required vaccines at 12.1%. Comparatively, the rate of exemptions across the U.S. was about 3%.
“This is concerning not only at a state level but nationally, as well, because we’re not the only state experiencing this; we just appear to be experiencing it a little more than other states,” Dr. Bethaney Fehrenkamp, a clinical assistant immunologist at Idaho WWAMI — a partnership between the University of Washington School of Medicine and Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho — told ABC News.
Public health experts noted that clusters of unvaccinated or under-vaccinated children can lead to outbreaks of preventable diseases such as measles, which is exceptionally contagious and can lead to serious complications such as pneumonia, encephalitis — which is inflammation of the brain — and even death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In one case, between November 2022 and February 2023, a measles outbreak swept across several schools and day cares in central Ohio, infecting 85 children, 80 of whom were unvaccinated.
In Idaho, there was a measles outbreak last month that infected 10 people, according to the Idaho Department of Health & Welfare. Prior to that, there had been just two cases reported in Idaho in 20 years.
When you have an under-vaccinated population and a contagious disease, “it’ll spread and it’ll spread more easily,” Dr. Kevin Cleveland, an associate professor at the College of Pharmacy at Idaho State University, told ABC News.
The type of exemptions allowed also may pose a problem. All 50 states and Washington, D.C. allow exemptions for medical reasons while 45 states and D.C. grant exemptions on religious grounds, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).
However, there are also 15 states that grant philosophical exemptions due to “personal, moral or other beliefs,” the NCSL says. This means that parents can ask for an exemption for their child for just about any reason.
Experts say there are a few reasons why rates might be low. One is access. Idaho is a state with 35 of its 44 counties being rural and 174 physicians per 100,000 people, which may make it hard for people to reach providers or schedule appointments.
Additionally, the rates may be an after-effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the hesitancy around COVID-19 vaccines may have inadvertently spilled into concerns about other vaccines.
“We’ve seen a slow but kind of steady increase in vaccine hesitancy but that was exasperated by COVID-19,” Fehrenkamp said. “While some of the decreased vaccination rates during the pandemic itself were probably likely due to access and availability and maybe a fear of bringing your child to a health care facility during a pandemic — potentially, like misinformation and some lack of trust as well as incomplete transparency has also just kind of exasperated that trust, and made it worse.”
Cleveland said people may also be experiencing vaccine fatigue after being recommended by health experts to get COVID-19 boosters and updated vaccines to help combat circulating variants at various times.
“Every time we talk about a vaccine, it goes back to COVID vaccine,” he said. “I think people are just a little tired. It’s like, ‘Oh, no, another vaccine.'”
Another reason may be that because these diseases have been circulating at low rates due to vaccines, people have forgotten how serious they were before the advent of vaccines.
For example, in the decade before the MMR vaccine became available, it was estimated that 48,000 people were hospitalized with measles each year and between 400 and 500 people died each year, according to the CDC.
“These diseases are really, really contagious and they’re really serious and I think potentially, we’ve forgotten how serious these diseases can be and we require a certain number of the population to be vaccinated in order to get that protection for those that can’t be vaccinated,” Fehrenkamp said. “We’ve previously eradicated these diseases in the U.S., which is why I think maybe, culturally we have forgotten how serious and how detrimental they can be.”
To try to increase these numbers, Fehrenkamp said it’s important for health care providers to have honest conversations with parents about why they’re hesitant or concerned about vaccines to try to assuage their fears.
“I want parents to choose to vaccinate their children, but I want them to feel really good about it and I want them to feel really informed about it and so we need to do a better job informing on vaccine safety,” she said.
At Idaho WWAMI, Fehrenkamp said they bring in students from Idaho that have links to underserved communities to help educate them with the hope they’ll go back and practice in those areas and fill a health care gap.
Cleveland, who specializes in immunization outreach to underserved populations in Idaho, said it’s also important to bring those vaccines into rural or underserved communities to make it easier for people to keep up with vaccine schedules.
“Taking the vaccines to the people, especially in the rural areas or even like workplaces or schools, we usually have really good success in vaccine uptake,” he said.
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