Demonstrators protest calling for action to secure the release of Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip/ Saeed Qaq/Anadolu via Getty Images
(JERUSALEM AND LONDON) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Thursday morning that Israeli forces recovered the bodies of two Israeli-American hostages held by Hamas and returned them to Israel.
Judy Weinstein-Hagi, 70, and Gadi Hagi, 72, were a couple from kibbutz Nir Oz close to the Gaza frontier. Both were dual U.S.-Israeli citizens, with Judy also holding Canadian citizenship.
Their bodies were recovered from the Khan Younis area of the southern Gaza Strip in a special operation by the Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Security Agency, also known as the Shin Bet, according to the statement released by Netanyahu.
Netanyahu said the couple were killed during Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack and their bodies abducted. The IDF had previously determined they were killed on the day of Hamas’ surprise attack by the same terror group, Kitab al-Mujahidin, that abducted and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young children.
“We will not rest or be silent until we return all of our abductees home — the living and the dead alike,” Netanyahu said.
Fifty-six hostages remain in Gaza, of whom 20 are believed to still be alive, according to figures provided by the prime minister’s office. Two Americans — Itay Chen and Omer Neutra — are among the 36 hostages believed to be dead.
ABC News’ Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.
(SEATTLE) — The body of a 41-year-old ski mountaineer has been recovered after he fell over 3,000 feet off of Mount McKinley, the tallest mountain in North America, officials said.
Alex Chiu of Seattle, Washington, was on the Mount McKinley West Buttress climbing route on the Peters Glacier when he fell on Monday, according to a statement from the National Park Service.
“On Monday, June 2, the other two members of Chiu’s expedition reported that the un-roped ski mountaineer fell at a location known as Squirrel Point towards the Peters Glacier, an exposed rocky and serac covered 3000-foot face,” officials said. “After witnessing the fall, the reporting party lowered over the edge as far as possible but was unable to see or hear Chiu. They then descended the West Buttress route for additional help before proceeding to Camp 1.”
Due to high winds and snow, ground and air search was unable to access the accident site until the early morning hours of Wednesday morning, according to the National Park Service.
“Clearing weather on the north side of the Alaska Range provided the opportunity for two mountaineering rangers to depart Talkeetna for an ariel helicopter search to locate and recover the body,” officials said.
After the 41-year-old’s body was recovered from the more than half a mile fall, rangers returned to Denali National Park and Preserve headquarters where his body was transferred to the state medical examiner, park officials said.
In 2010, an un-roped French mountaineer fell to his death near this same location towards the Peters Glacier. His body was never recovered.
There are currently an estimated 500 climbers on the mountain and the climbing season typically begins in early May and ends in early July.
The investigation into the fall is currently open and ongoing.
(GASTONIA, N.C.) — The parents of a 7-year-old boy who was fatally struck by a car while trying to cross a street in North Carolina have been charged with manslaughter and remain in jail on $1.5 million bond, police said.
The child was hit by a Jeep Cherokee on May 27 in Gastonia, located west of Charlotte, police said.
He was attempting to cross the street outside of a crosswalk with a 10-year-old boy when the crash occurred, according to the Gastonia Police Department. He suffered life-threatening injuries and died at a hospital.
His parents — Jessica Ivey, 30, and Samuele Jenkins, 31 — were charged two days after the deadly collision with felony involuntary manslaughter, felony child neglect and misdemeanor child neglect, police said.
The parents said the older child was the boy’s brother, ABC Charlotte affiliate WSOC reported.
The Gastonia Police Department said in a press release that its investigation “revealed that the children involved were unsupervised at the time the boy stepped into traffic.”
“In such cases, adults must be held accountable for their responsibilities to ensure a safe environment for their children,” the department added.
A judge set the parents’ bond at $1.5 million during a court appearance on Friday. They remain in custody in the Gaston County Jail, online jail records show. They have not yet entered a plea to the charges.
ABC News has reached out to Ivey’s public defender for comment and did not immediately receive a response. Jenkins’ attorney said he was appointed to the case on Wednesday and had not received any documents yet.
The 76-year-old female driver of the Jeep has not been charged, police said.
“At this time, there is no evidence of speeding or wrongdoing on the part of the driver, therefore no charges have been filed,” the Gastonia Police Department said. “The driver continues to be cooperative and the incident remains under active investigation by the Gastonia Police Department’s Traffic Division.”
Police did not release the name of the boy who was fatally struck, though his parents said his first name was Legend in an interview with WSOC prior to their arrest.
Ivey told the station that her two sons were walking the two blocks home from a shopping center for the first time on their own when the accident occurred, WSOC reported.
“It was just devastating. I’m still in shock,” she told WSOC.
“It’s hard. I haven’t stopped crying. My husband hasn’t stopped crying,” she told the station.
Ivey added that she wanted “justice for my baby” against the driver, whose name has not been publicly released.
“I just don’t feel like she should still be able to drive,” Ivey told WSOC.
Jenkins told WSOC he was on the phone with his sons when the crash occurred.
“I heard my oldest son, he was like, ‘Oh my God, Legend, no, no,'” he told the station. “So I hung up and … I ran to find them.”
The parents are next scheduled to appear in court on June 20.
(BAXTER STATE PARK, Maine) — A man and his daughter were found dead following an extensive, dayslong search after they went missing while attempting to hike to the summit of Mount Katahdin in Maine, officials said.
Tim Keiderling and Esther Keiderling, both of Ulster Park, New York, set out to hike the summit on Sunday, according to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife.
They were last seen Sunday morning on the Katahdin Tablelands heading toward the summit, which is the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail and located in Baxter State Park.
Baxter State Park rangers began searching for them Monday morning after their vehicle was still found parked at the trailhead in the day-use parking lot, park officials said.
The search on Katahdin expanded Tuesday to include the help of dozens of Maine game wardens, including the Maine Warden Service Search and Rescue team, and the Maine Warden Service K9 team. The Maine Forest Service and the Maine Army National Guard also responded as part of an aerial search.
The body of Tim Keiderling, 58, was found Tuesday afternoon, officials said. A Maine Warden Service K9 search team located him at approximately 2:24 p.m. on the Tablelands near the summit of Katahdin, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife said.
The body of his 28-year-old daughter was found at approximately 1 p.m. Wednesday in a wooded area of Katahdin’s Tableland between two known trails, officials said.
Additional details will be released later Wednesday after search crews return to the base area, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife said.
“We understand that many of our social media followers share in our profound sadness for the family and friends of Tim and Esther Keiderling,” Baxter State Park said in a statement on Facebook. “We appreciate your support for their loved ones and the members of the search teams during this incredibly difficult time.”
Baxter State Park notes on its website that hiking Katahdin “is a very strenuous climb, no matter which trailhead you choose.” The average round-trip time for a Katahdin hike is eight to 12 hours, it said.
All Katahdin trailhead trails are currently closed until further notice, the park said.
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Education sent a warning to the accreditor of Columbia University on Wednesday, saying the Ivy League institution violated federal anti-discrimination laws.
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a press release that the decision came after the spate of protests on university grounds opposing the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
McMahon alleged Columbia leadership “acted with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students on its campus.”
“This is not only immoral, but also unlawful,” McMahon said.
Columbia is accused of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits recipients of federal funding from discriminating on the basis of race, color or national origin, according to the department.
The department said that by violating federal anti-discrimination laws, Columbia has failed to meet the standards of accreditation that have been set by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.
The government claims Columbia leadershup failed to take several actions, including failing to establish effective reporting mechanisms for antisemitism until the summer of 2024, failure to abide by its own policies and procedures when responding to Jewish students’ complaints as well as governing misconduct against Jewish students and not investigating or punishing vandalism in its classrooms.
Now, the university’s federal accreditor is required to establish a plan to come into compliance with the federal law or “take appropriate action against” Columbia, the department said.
ABC News has reached out to Columbia University for a comment.
This is President Donald Trump’s administration’s latest action taken against prominent universities, claiming they have fostered a breeding ground for harassment of Jewish students amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
Last month, the Trump administration announced and then backtracked on a decision to bar Harvard University from allowing international students to enroll at the university.
Harvard is also fighting the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze more than $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to the school. Harvard filed a separate lawsuit to challenge the funding freeze in April, and the next hearing in that case is set for July.
Trump has also expressed interest in revoking the university’s tax-exempt status.
(GAZA and LONDON) — This is not the first time Dr. Victoria Rose has visited the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, but she said the current situation on the ground is the worst she’s ever seen it.
Rose, a London-based consultant plastic surgeon, has been volunteering in weekslong stints at Gaza hospitals since the ongoing Israel-Hamas war erupted in October 2023. Most recently, she spent the month of May operating on the wounded at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, the largest referral hospital — and now the only one still functioning — in southern Gaza.
“I think it’s mainly the volume of patients that are coming in now. When we were here in August, we were seeing a lot of bomb victims, but not as many as we’re seeing now,” Rose told ABC News during an interview at the hospital on Saturday.
“We are seeing patients, we’re getting them on the operating table, we are cleaning the wounds and we are making a plan for their reconstruction,” she added. “And then we’re sending them back to the ward and then we’re not getting a chance to get them back and do the reconstruction because so many more new bomb injuries come in and then we start again. So it’s very difficult to keep up with this ongoing workload that’s coming through the door.”
Rose said Israeli forces have been relentlessly bombing the area in recent weeks and, as a result, Nasser Medical Complex has seen a surge in patients. ABC News was allowed into the hospital’s operating room as Rose performed extensive surgery on an 18-year-old patient, who she said “had quite a significant injury to his right arm” from a blast.
“If they just stop bombing us for a couple of days, it would mean that we could catch up with the backload,” Rose said. “I woke up this morning at 2 a.m. to nonstop bombing and all I could think about is the number of patients that that’s going to bring through the door that we can’t cope with here.”
The Israel Defense Forces launched an extensive new ground operation in Gaza last month targeting Hamas militants and what it called “terrorist infrastructure sites above and below ground.”
At least 54,381 people in Gaza have been killed and 124,054 have been wounded, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, since the war began after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking hundreds hostage. At least 20 hostages remain in Hamas captivity.
Bed occupancy at Nasser Medical Complex is currently over 100%, while 47% of essential drugs are out of stock at the hospital along with 65% of all consumable items, according to Rose.
“So we really are on our knees at the moment. We don’t have anything,” she told ABC News. “And on top of that, we have a really, really depleted health care staff.”
“We’ve lost a lot of them because they’ve been displaced and they’ve had to move, so they can’t get to the hospital,” she continued. “We’ve a lost a lot them because they have been detained or they’ve left Gaza. The staff that we have are tired. They’ve been working nonstop since the war started. So it’s a really difficult situation all around.”
The hospital is located about a mile from where active fighting is currently taking place between Israeli forces and Hamas militants, according to Rose, who fears that Israeli troops will “encircle us” and “cut us off completely” rather than evacuate the complex.
“So it’s a really dire situation because if Nasser goes out of function, all of the patients that you see here on the ICU department will die — and this is one of three ICUs that we have at Nasser,” Rose said, referring to the critically ill patients lying in beds behind her. “Plus, the fact that none of the other hospitals around us — even combined — could take the number of patients that we have here.”
Rose said she’s also seen the effects of malnutrition on the civilian population, particularly children, after Israel’s 11-week blockade on all food and other essential supplies entering Gaza. Since May 19, Israel has allowed a limited amount of humanitarian aid into the Hamas-governed Palestinian territory, but the United Nations and other organizations have repeatedly warned it’s far from enough and that famine is imminent.
“We have had a patient in our operating theater where we’ve had to cancel the procedure because he was so malnourished and we didn’t feel that he would survive the surgery,” Rose told ABC News. “The other thing that we are noticing is that people are not able to heal their wounds as effectively as they should do. So because of the malnutrition, they’re not getting the essential nutrients and vitamins they need.”
Cell turnover — the process of producing new skin cells — “is poor, so they’re not healing,” Rose said.
She added, “Coupled with that, there’s a massive spike in infection this time compared to when we were here in August. Everybody’s wounds get infected and that’s a real sign of malnutrition.”
ABC News’ Helena Skinner contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — A key Republican senator is pushing back against President Donald Trump’s major spending bill, warning that it would add trillions to the nation’s debt.
On Wednesday, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told ABC News he cannot support what Trump calls his “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” despite pressure from the White House to pass it by July 4.
“I refuse to accept $2 trillion-plus deficits as far as the eye can see as the new normal,” Johnson said. “We have to address that problem, and, unfortunately, this bill doesn’t do so.”
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said the bill would add $2.4 trillion to the deficit. While Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought claimed there are “massive levels of savings in this bill,” Johnson disagreed.
“We went from $4.4 trillion in spending in 2019 to over $7 trillion this year,” he said, adding that the slight reduction proposed in the bill is “barely a rounding error in this massive spending.”
The senator told ABC News he isn’t worried about political fallout from opposing Trump’s bill.
“I’m worried about our kids and grandkids, the fact that we’re mortgaging their future. It is wrong. It’s immoral,” Johnson said.
Instead of one large bill, Johnson wants to split it into two smaller pieces. His plan would first deal with matters like border security, defense and extending current tax laws. Then, he wants Congress to take time to carefully review government spending and find ways to cut waste.
On possible criticism from Trump, Johnson said he had a “very cordial conversation” with the president about his concerns.
“I want to see President Trump succeed. I’m a big supporter,” Johnson said, but he added that fixing the budget “is going to take time.”
The bill also faces criticism over its impact on healthcare, with CBO estimates showing around 11 million people could lose health insurance coverage.
As the July 4 deadline approaches, Johnson remained firm in his position.
“You have to do the things we agree on,” he said, listing border security, defense and extending current tax law as priorities. “Then come back, do the hard work of forensically auditing spending on these programs, and get serious about reducing that deficit trajectory, bending it down, rather than having it skyrocket upward.”
(WASHINGTON) — Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he plans to tell American medical schools they must offer nutrition courses to students or risk losing federal funding from the Department of Health and Human Services.
Speaking at an event in North Carolina in April, Kennedy lamented, “There’s almost no medical schools that have nutrition courses, and so [aspiring physicians] are taught how to treat illnesses with drugs but not how to treat them with food or to keep people healthy so they don’t need the drugs.”
He added, “One of the things that we’ll do over the next year is to announce that medical schools that don’t have those programs are not going to be eligible for our funding, and that we will withhold funds from those who don’t implement those kinds of courses.”
The idea, which Kennedy mentioned in passing at an event focused on plastics in the environment, lacks details but has drawn optimism from some nutrition experts who have for years sought ways for medical schools to teach more nutrition content.
An HHS official told ABC News that Kennedy “is committed to understanding and drastically lowering chronic disease rates and ending childhood chronic disease, which includes fresh thinking on nutrition and over-reliance on medication and treatments.”
The official did not respond to requests for more information about Kennedy’s plan, like whether he would require medical schools to follow a specific curriculum. Nor did the official say whether Kennedy has begun speaking with medical schools about the issue.
A study published in the Journal of Biomedical Education in 2015 surveyed 121 American medical schools in 2012-2013 and found that medical students spend, on average, only 19 hours on required nutrition education over their four years.
This does not account for education during residency or fellowship training after medical school, or continuing medical education required throughout a doctor’s career to maintain a medical license or board certification.
Those numbers have frustrated some nutrition experts, who argue doctors should focus more on preventing diet-driven conditions like obesity and diabetes and less on prescribing drugs that treat the problems.
“I think there’s a great sense of urgency that we have to do something about this,” said Dr. David Eisenberg, a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who told ABC News that requiring nutrition education at all medical schools is “long overdue.”
“I think the public imagines that physicians are required to know a lot more than they are trained to know about nutrition and giving practical advice about food to patients,” added Eisenberg.
When presented with Kennedy’s threats to withhold funding, some medical schools reached by ABC News said they already offer sufficient nutrition education.
“We have an extensive nutrition curriculum as part of our medical school training,” Sarah Smith, a spokeswoman for Weill Cornell Medicine, said in an email.
A spokesperson for the University of North Carolina School of Medicine touted the school’s Department of Nutrition, which the spokesperson said is “recognized as a global leader in research and training, and is unique in that it is the only nutrition department in the U.S. that is situated in both a school of public health and a school of medicine.”
A representative for the Association of American Medical Colleges, which counts more than 170 medical schools among its members, declined to comment but told ABC News that an e-survey of medical schools the group conducted last year found that every school that responded reported “covering nutrition content in some form.”
Still, the 2015 study, conducted by two researchers from the University of North Carolina and one from Harvard, painted a damning picture of the state of nutrition education at America’s medical schools.
“Many US medical schools still fail to prepare future physicians for everyday nutrition challenges in clinical practice,” the authors wrote.
Dr. Jo Marie Reilly, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, told ABC News that since the 2015 study (the most recent “scoping review” of medical schools’ nutrition offerings, she said), medical schools have gradually begun offering more nutrition education.
The problem, though, according to Reilly, is the absence of a consistent set of standards for medical schools to abide by.
“Every school has got their own thing,” she said.
That could be changing: Reilly and Eisenberg are among a group of medical and nutrition experts who last year published proposed recommendations in JAMA Network Open for a national curriculum, which would involve 36 “nutritional competencies” for medical students to meet.
“Nothing before this had said, well here’s what we want [medical students] to know, this is what we think we should teach. Now we have those,” Reilly told ABC News.
“We’re moving in the right direction, but we have quite a ways to go,” she said.
Kennedy has long spoken of the need to address chronic disease through changes to what Americans eat.
Withholding or withdrawing federal funding from medical schools, if HHS were to do so, would follow similar moves from departments across the new Trump administration.
This spring, HHS was among several departments which canceled grants to Columbia University in protest of what it called the school’s “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” The university said it planned to work with the federal government to restore its funding.
(PALM SPRINGS, Calif.) — The FBI has arrested a co-conspirator in last month’s car bombing outside a Palm Springs fertility clinic, with officials saying he provided large quantities of ammonium nitrate to the suspect killed in the blast.
Daniel Park has been charged with conspiracy to manufacture an unregistered device and terrorism, according to the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California. Park was arrested Tuesday night at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York after being detained in Poland on May 30, officials said at a press conference Wednesday.
The primary suspect in the case, 25-year-old Guy Edward Bartkus, was found dead next to the detonated vehicle, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s LA field office said last month.
Park allegedly shipped from Seattle approximately 180 pounds of ammonium nitrate, an explosive precursor commonly used to construct homemade bombs, to Bartkus as part of a plot related to the pair’s nihilist beliefs, according to officials. Park also allegedly paid for an additional 90 pounds of the substance in the days leading up to the Palm Springs attack, officials said.
Federal investigators allege the materials were used in the car bombing. Investigators have already conducted searches at Park’s home, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. Park also allegedly spent two weeks visiting the main suspect’s home in late January and early February of this year, the officials said. The two are believed to have been conducting experiments together in the main suspect’s garage.
Park is expected to appear in Brooklyn federal court Wednesday afternoon before he’s transported to California, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Prosecutors are asking that he be held without release. The suspects targeted the fertility clinic because they believed that new life should not be created, investigators said at the press conference Wednesday.
“The subject had nihilistic ideations, and this was a targeted attack against the IVF facility,” Akil Davis, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, said last month. “Make no mistake, we are treating this, as I said yesterday, as an intentional act of terrorism.”
While Park allegedly traveled to Bartkus’ house in January and February, investigators do not believe he was in the area at the time of the bombing. He allegedly fled to Europe after the bombing, officials said.
At least four other people were injured in the explosion last month. The explosion led to a fire and the collapse of a nearby building.
The clinic, the American Reproductive Center of Palm Springs, said no members of its staff were harmed, and its lab — including all eggs, embryos and reproductive materials — were undamaged in the attack.
The clinic is currently seeing patients at a temporary location across the street from its main building.
“We’re grateful to share that consultations, follow-ups, and ultrasounds are continuing with minimal disruption, and our team has made a nearly seamless transition. We’re also in the process of finalizing our new IVF lab and surgery center, and we look forward to resuming those services very soon,” the clinic said in a statement on social media last week.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — Senate Republicans will try to chart a path forward for the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” during a series of meetings on Wednesday — including one where the President Donald Trump will work to shore up support for the megabill that advances his legislative agenda
Republican members of the powerful Senate Finance Committee will go to the White House to meet with Trump at 4 p.m. Wednesday, multiple White House and Hill sources confirm.
The Finance Committee is responsible for writing the tax policy components of the bill, including the extension of the Trump 2017 tax cuts, a key priority for the package.
The House-passed legislation also boosts spending for the military and border security — while making some cuts to Medicaid, SNAP and other assistance programs. It could also add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, according to a new analysis out Wednesday from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The Senate Finance Committee’s Republican members are expected to attend the meeting, including Majority Leader John Thune and GOP Whip John Barrasso, who are both on the panel. Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who is at odds with the White House and is pushing for deeper cuts than those in the bill the House sent to them, is expected to be at the meeting as a member of the committee, too.
Appearing on ABC News Live Wednesday, Johnson attacked the bill, saying it “doesn’t meet the moment.”
Senate Republicans are separately expected to meet behind closed doors as a conference on Wednesday to discuss the parameters of the bill as a group.
Thune has so far not made clear what his strategy will be for moving the package through the upper chamber. As things currently stand, Thune can only afford to lose three of his GOP members to pass the package, and right now, he has more members than that expressing serious doubts about the bill.
Trump’s meeting with the committee is an opportunity for the president to attempt to sway those senators who have concerns about the bill. Earlier this week, Trump worked the phones and took meetings with many of those senators including Republican Sens. Rand Paul, Josh Hawley, Rick Scott and Johnson.
Trump also met with Thune to talk through moving the House-backed bill through the Senate as expeditiously as possible. Lawmakers aim to send a bill to Trump by the Fourth of July.
“At the end of the day, failure is not an option,” Thune said at a news conference Tuesday, adding that he thinks the conference can meet the timing goal.
Trump works to allay senators’ concerns at the same time Elon Musk attacks the bill online, calling it a “disgusting abomination” in a post on X Tuesday. Musk even chastised those who supported the bill.
“Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it,” Musk wrote.
