The booking photo for Hassan Moutassim. (Illinois State Police)
(CHICAGO) — A semi-truck driver has been charged with attempted murder after allegedly causing multiple crashes on a Chicago highway and then trying to strangle another driver, according to police.
The alleged road rage incident occurred Tuesday morning on Interstate 57, Illinois State Police said.
The semi-truck driver — identified by authorities as 25-year-old Hassan Moutassim of Jersey City, New Jersey — allegedly caused eight separate crashes while driving north on I-57, police said.
After the last crash, Moutassim stopped, exited the semi-truck and then allegedly removed a driver from one of the crashed vehicles “and began battering the driver, including an attempt to strangle the victim,” Illinois State Police said in a press release on Thursday.
The victim was transported to an area hospital with unspecified injuries.
Officers took Moutassim into custody at the scene and he was charged Wednesday with attempted murder, aggravated battery on a public way and aggravated battery-strangulation, police said.
He is being held pending his first court appearance, police said. It is unclear if he has an attorney at this time.
Workers at Spirit Airlines wait for passengers to arrive for their flights at O’Hare Airport on March 10, 2026 in Chicago, Illinois. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said an announcement was expected Friday on Spirit Airlines, amid a report that the airline was preparing to cease operations after a $500 million rescue deal fell apart.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that the airline is preparing to shut down operations.
When asked if the administration had decided against bailing out Spirit Airlines, Trump told reporters on Friday, “I guess we’re looking at it. If we could do it, we do it, but only if it’s a good deal.”
“No institution’s been able to do it,” he continued. “I said ‘I’d like to save the jobs,’ but we’ll have an announcement sometime today. We gave them, we gave them a final proposal.”
ABC News has reached out to the White House for additional comment.
A spokesperson for Spirit Airlines declined to comment on ongoing discussions as it related to the WSJ report.
“Spirit is operating as usual,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The Florida-based carrier is currently operating with over 40 flights in the air, according to FlightRadar24 data.
Other airlines have responded to the news saying they will be ready to help stranded passengers in the event that Spirit shuts down.
American Airlines told ABC News it will offer fare caps on main cabin tickets for routes they share with Spirit.
Similarly, United Airlines said they’re “preparing to support Spirit customers in the event of a shut down.”
“We are ready to support customers who may be impacted if Spirit Airlines ceases operations, with a focus on helping people continue their travel plans with low-fare options,” Frontier Airlines posted Friday on X.
ABC News previously reported that Spirit could run out of the cash it needs to keep operating within days, not weeks, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Spirit filed for bankruptcy for the second time last August — having previously filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November 2024 — to restructure financially and “reduce its cost structure,” with hopes of emerging from Chapter 11 by the spring or summer of 2026.
The soaring price of jet fuel amid the ongoing war in Iran has had widespread impact on airlines and travel expert Katy Nastro, of airfare monitoring site Going, previously told ABC News that Spirit could be out of time to try and turn things around.
“It’s never a good sign to file bankruptcy to begin with, but a second within six months, even worse,” Nastro said. “Spirit suggested that they were going to be able to come out of bankruptcy this time by the spring. We’re in the spring now, we have higher jet fuel prices — this is a recipe for disaster for them.”
What travelers need to know about Spirit Airlines shutting down
Bradley Akubuiro, a crisis expert and former Boeing spokesperson, told ABC News that losing a budget airline like Spirit will raise the floor on airfares.
“Frontier, Allegiant, and Breeze are still flying, but Spirit was the biggest, and in the markets it dominated — Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, a lot of the Caribbean — there isn’t another carrier ready to backfill at the same price tomorrow,” he explained. “The pain isn’t immediate. It’s structural. A fare that used to be $89 is $140 six months from now, and most consumers won’t connect the two.”
When airlines liquidate, they immediately cease operations without notice, which means that passengers will be stranded and employees will not show up to work.
There is generally no airline assistance when it comes to helping stranded passengers after an airline shuts down operations.
For any ticketed passengers scheduled to fly Spirit or already in the middle of their trip, below are some tips from travel experts on how to navigate the situation.
Don’t immediately cancel your flight, Nastro advised, adding that travelers who cancel forfeit their right to a refund. And make sure to keep all records and receipts.
If you booked with a credit card, you can dispute the charge with your credit card company and likely get the money back.
There is less protection if you booked with a debit card, but you can still contact your company to see if you can get reimbursed.
If you have travel insurance, she reminded customers to read the fine print as not all of them cover this type of scenario.
Per the Department of Transportation, customers could consider filing a proof of claim in the bankruptcy proceeding to try and get a partial refund, but the claim will be considered along with all the other creditors that the airline owes money to and you may only get a small portion of your money back.
If you’re stranded, check options with other airlines that might be able to offer relief flights, fare caps or emergency fares, like they would do after a big weather event.
This is a developing story, check back for updates.
S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One on April 24, 2026 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. (Photo by Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Despite facing the 60-day deadline under the War Powers Act, the president is not asking Congress for authorization, rather providing an update to the posture of U.S. forces in the region.
Echoing Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth, the president noted that he ordered a two-week ceasefire on April 7 that has since been extended.
“On April 7, 2026, I ordered a 2-week ceasefire. The ceasefire has since been extended,” Trump wrote. “There has been no exchange of fire between United States Forces and Iran since April 7, 2026. The hostilities that began on February 28, 2026, have terminated.”
Trump also stressed that he ordered Operation Epic Fury “consistent with my responsibility to protect Americans and United States interests at home and abroad, and in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests.”
New data from NISAR shows where Mexico City and its environs subsided by up to a few centimeters per month (shown in blue) between Oct. 25, 2025, and Jan. 17, 2026. Uneven and seemingly small elevation changes have added up over the decades, fracturing roads, buildings, and water lines. (David Bekaert/JPL-Caltech//NASA)
(MEXICO CITY) — More than 20 million people in Mexico City are living on ground that’s sinking above an ancient reservoir.
The city has long been recognized as one of the fastest sinking sites in the world, but researchers didn’t have the ability to continuously track the movement from space until now.
NASA shared a satellite image on Wednesday from the U.S.-India satellite NISAR that captures parts of Mexico’s capital sinking by more than half an inch every single month. The space agency said the impact of those incremental changes have added up over time, leading to “fracturing roads, buildings, and water lines” across the city.
Dora Carreón-Freyre, a researcher who has studied Mexico City’s sinking for more than 25 years, has seen that damage up close in the Iztapalapa region, which she says is one of the hardest hit.
“The houses that are founded in [volcanic] rock are stable, but the houses in the middle between the rock and the lacustrine plain are already broken, most of them,” Carreón-Freyre told ABC News. “In 2017, a taxi fell inside a fracture.”
Over the years, scientists studying the city’s land subsidence, a scientific term for sinking, primarily relied on ground and space satellites that could only collect annual data.
NASA says NISAR is the first satellite to carry two radar systems at different wavelengths, allowing it to record near real-time ground movement changes from space every 12 days. For David Bekaert, a scientist who works on the NISAR mission, that frequency is what makes the data so valuable.
“This all allows us to build time series or snapshots on how the ground is moving over time,” Bekaert told ABC News.
For researchers who have spent decades studying the city on foot, the new satellite data offers something they never had before.
“To have these tools and to realize the distribution of these differential rates –it’s amazing,” Carreón-Freyre said. “Things that we only learned by walking everywhere when we were young, it’s different now. Technology is here to help us.”
The image is a compilation of data collected by NISAR between October 2025 and January 2026.
A century of sinking
Th fact that Mexico City is sinking is not new. NASA says it has been documented the changes for more than a century.
According to a 1995 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the city was already sinking roughly two inches per year by the late 1800s.
By the 1950s, that number jumped to 18 inches, the report found.
The first finding was reported by engineer Roberto Gayol in 1925, who pointed to a large canal and tunnel built to drain water out of the city’s waterlogged ground as the potential cause.
Scientists now point to a more direct culprit — decades of draining the ancient lakebed aquifer that the city was built on.
As water is pumped out, the ground above it compacts and stays that way, according to a study published by the American Geophysical Union. Think of wet clay that gets squeezed flat and hardens in place.
Still, not every part of the city sinks at the same rate, Bekaert said.
“That compaction causes the ground surface to sink, and because it doesn’t happen evenly, different parts of the city move at different rates,” Bekaert explained.
Parts of the city have lost as much as 30 feet of elevation over the last century, according to researchers, and scientists say the worst-hit areas have sunk as much as 127 feet.
NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation launched NISAR on July 30, 2025, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre.
Mexico City is just the beginning when it comes to this technology, scientists say.
“More broadly, my interest lies in mapping ground motion across coastal zones, where a large proportion of the world’s population lives and understanding surface change is particularly important,” Bekaert said.
Scientists say NISAR can now continuously monitor sinking cities anywhere on Earth — a capability Carreón-Freyre says is urgently needed as that threat is already playing out elsewhere in the world.
“And what I saw in the Philippines is really terrible because they have two phenomena working together that is very bad for the population: subsidence and sea level rise,” she said. “They are sinkings 30 centimeters per year.”
Kentucky State Police released this image of the suspect in a bank robbery in Berea, Kentucky, on April 30, 2026. (Kentucky State Police)
(BEREA, Ky.) — An 18-year-old is in custody after he allegedly gunned down two people during a bank robbery, according to Kentucky authorities.
Braelin Weaver, wearing a black mask and black gloves, allegedly went into the U.S. Bank in Berea just before 2 p.m. Thursday, immediately shot and killed a male victim, and then shot and killed a bank teller, court documents said.
He then allegedly checked multiple drawers before fleeing the bank, according to the documents.
Surveillance footage linked the suspect to a silver BMW, court documents said, and investigators traced the car to a Facebook account under Weaver’s name.
At about 8 p.m. Thursday, Weaver posted an image to social media showing an alien holding a large amount of cash, according to the court documents.
On Thursday night, authorities zeroed in on Weaver’s car on Interstate 75 in Somerset, Kentucky, and he allegedly led police on a chase, driving over 100 mph, documents said. He eventually crashed the BMW and fled on foot, according to documents. A gun was found in the car, documents noted.
Weaver has since been arrested and is facing federal charges, according to prosecutors. He will make his first court appearance in Lexington on Monday, authorities said.
“Our hearts go out to the families of the victims, our colleagues and the entire Berea community,” U.S. Bank said in a statement. “We are committed to supporting the victims’ families and our colleagues. And we will continue to work closely with law enforcement on this active investigation.”
Berea, a city of more than 16,000 people, is roughly 40 miles south of Lexington.
Workers at Spirit Airlines wait for passengers to arrive for their flights at O’Hare Airport on March 10, 2026 in Chicago, Illinois. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said an announcement was expected Friday on Spirit Airlines, amid a report that the airline was preparing to cease operations after a $500 million rescue deal fell apart.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that the airline is preparing to shut down operations.
When asked if the administration had decided against bailing out Spirit Airlines, Trump told reporters on Friday, “I guess we’re looking at it. If we could do it, we do it, but only if it’s a good deal.”
“No institution’s been able to do it,” he continued. “I said ‘I’d like to save the jobs,’ but we’ll have an announcement sometime today. We gave them, we gave them a final proposal.”
This is a developing story, check back for updates.
U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One on April 24, 2026 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. (Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump announced Friday he will increase tariffs on European Union cars and trucks to 25% next week, claiming in a social media post that the E.U. is “not complying with our fully agreed to Trade Deal.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
In these photos released by the University of South Florida Police Department, Nahida Bristy is shown. (University of South Florida Police Department)
(TAMPA, Fla.) — Investigators said Friday they identified remains found this week as part of the investigation into the murders of two missing University of South Florida doctoral students as Nahida Bristy.
Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said that forensic investigators took several days to identify the remains of the 27-year-old student because of the advanced stages of decay her body was in.
The announcement came a week after investigators found and identified the remains of Zamil Limon, 27, a friend of Bristy who was also reported missing from the campus on April 16.
“We are now actively working to release both bodies for religious reasons back to the families who live in Bangladesh,” Chronister told reporters.
Investigators allege that Hisham Abugharbieh, 26, Limon’s roommate, murdered the pair and dumped their bodies.
Chronister said that Limon was stabbed repeatedly. He did not reveal how Bristy was killed and said the investigation is ongoing.
“At this point we don’t know what the motive is. The why, we don’t know yet,” Chronister said.
Abugharbieh was arrested on April 24, following a standoff with police. His family called 911 about a domestic dispute involving Abugharbieh.
He was charged on with with two counts of first-degree murder with a weapon and ordered to be held without bond.
The sheriff revealed more details about the investigation, including that Abugharbieh allegedly used a cart that belonged to the apartment building he lived in to move the bodies to his car.
Chronister alleged that Abugharbieh searched for terms on his Internet devices related to murdering the victims including “can you bury a body in a trash bag and throw it in a dumpster” and “can a knife penetrate a skull?”
“This is someone very calculated,” the sheriff said.
Prosecutors alleged that the suspect used ChatGPT for those searches and it answered “that it sounds dangerous,” and then Abugharbieh allegedly asked, “How would they find out.”
Chronister added that tech companies have been cooperating with the investigation by providing them with the suspect’s search history.
“This might be able to provide us with the why that we are still searching for,” he said.
Cessna Golden Eagle (Francois Joseph Berger / 500px/Getty)
(WIMBERLEY, Texas) — Five people were killed in a plane crash in Texas on Thursday night, investigators said.
Hayes County Judge Ruben Becerra said first responders received a call around 11:00 p.m. local time about a plane down in the area of Wimberley, which is roughly 30 miles southwest of Austin.
Fire and EMS crews found the downed Cessna 421C, along with the bodies of the five deceased passengers. Their identities were not immediately released.
Stacey Rohr lives in a house close to the crash site and told local reporters, including one from ABC affiliate KVUE, Friday morning that the crash rattled the neighborhood.
“It felt like an earthquake,” she said.
Although a cause of the crash was not immediately determined, investigators said preliminary information shows that there was no midair collision.
“Preliminary information indicates the aircraft was traveling at a high rate of speed at the time of impact,” Becerra said in a statement.
The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board will take over the investigation, according to the judge.
The NTSB said in a statement that the Cessna was destroyed in a post-impact fire. An investigator is on the way to the scene, according to the agency.
Preliminary flight data obtained by ABC News found that the plane took off from Amarillo, Texas, which is about 420 miles northwest of the crash area, and was in the air for almost two hours before it crashed.
More than a dozen thieves stole more than 250 cars and a million dollars’ worth of auto parts throughout the Bronx, according to the NYPD and the Bronx district attorney’s office. (Bronx DA/NYPD)
(NEW YORK) — An alleged group of car thieves who worked fast and furious at night to steal over 250 cars and auto parts in the Bronx were arrested and charged Friday, investigators said.
The Bronx District Attorney’s office indicted 16 alleged members of the Trinitarios street gang in a nearly 1,000-count indictment with grand larceny, auto stripping, and other offenses. Nine of the 16 were arrested as of Friday morning, according to the DA’s office.
The suspects would allegedly lift the target car and use power tools to remove all four tires and rims off within minutes, according to the NYPD and DA.
“These defendants allegedly worked as fast as a racetrack pit crew in the dead of night, stealing cars, tires and rims and catalytic converters worth more than $1 million on the black market,” Bronx DA Darcel Clark said.
Many of the thefts, as many as six per night, were caught on video showing a three-person crew exiting a stolen car, fully masked, with gloves, a car jack and milk crates, investigators said.
“All across the Bronx, people heading to work or school in the morning found their cars propped on crates, or an empty parking space, leaving them stranded and financially strained, the DA said.
The suspects allegedly used public parking garages throughout the Bronx to store the stolen vehicles before and after the thefts, which occurred between midnight and 5 a.m., according to the police.
Other defendants bought the stolen catalytic converters and then sold them on the black market, the indictment said. In one defendant’s home, police said they found a suitcase with $116,000 in cash.
Attorney information for the suspects was not immediately available.
