An undated photo of Tondra Madruga who died when a boat capsized in San Francisco Bay on July 14, 2026. (Madruga Family)
(SAN FRANCISCO) — The body of a 58-year-old woman has been recovered after a boat capsized and sank near Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, marking the second person confirmed dead from the incident.
The San Francisco Medical Examiner’s Office identified the second victim as Tondra Madruga. Two people remain missing.
Madruga’s relatives said in a statement that they’re “heartbroken by the loss of our beloved mother, daughter, sister, and aunt.”
“Our hearts remain with every family impacted, and we sincerely appreciate your kindness and understanding,” the family said. “We extend our heartfelt thanks to the U.S. Coast Guard, the San Francisco Fire Department, the San Francisco Police Department, all of the first responders, and the civilian boaters and community members who selflessly assisted in the search and rescue efforts. Your dedication and support mean more to our family than words can express.”
Authorities said they believe 20 people were aboard the Volare, a 50-foot cabin cruiser based out of Stockton, California, when it was hit by a wave Tuesday evening, causing it to capsize.
One man who was aboard was taken to the shore severely injured and, despite CPR being administered, was pronounced dead, officials said. He was identified by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner as 79-year-old Clifford Joseph Boisa.
A dog also died, San Francisco Fire Chief Dean Crispen said.
Three people were taken to the hospital and later released, Crispen said.
Crispen told reporters that authorities believe there was a memorial service that the 20 passengers, all adults and mostly comprised of family members, were taking part in on the vessel when it capsized. One survivor said it was a memorial for her sister, ABC San Francisco station KGO reported.
The Coast Guard announced Wednesday that it suspended search operations
Jarod Toczko, commander for U.S. Coast Guard Sector San Francisco, said the decision to suspend the search was not easy, but his teams swept through 950 square nautical miles and hadn’t found the missing people or the boat.
Toczko said there was a “high possibility that individuals could have been trapped in the vessel.”
Rescuer Justin Marceline told KGO that some passengers were “banging on the windows, trying to get out” of the boat.
“It was pretty wild, seeing that, honestly,” Marceline said, adding that conditions in the water were “really bad.”
“The people that were bobbing in the water, we pulled them out first,” Marceline said. “The people in the water were elderly folks, they were conscious, but people were too tired and worn out.”
Toczko praised those who jumped to save the passengers.
“No question, no doubt…those people saved lives,” he said.
ABC News’ Emily Shapiro and Jennifer Watts contributed to this report.
Former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov attends a march in memory of Russian opposition leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov on March 1, 2015 in Moscow, Russia. (Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Once one of the most powerful men in Russia, Mikhail Kasyanov now lives in exile in Latvia, his name on a list of “extremists and terrorists” that the Kremlin alleges are trying to overthrow the state.
Kasyanov first served as Russia’s finance minister before being elevated to prime minister under President Vladimir Putin from May 2000 to February 2004 — the early years of Putin’s time in office when the future strongman was embedding his control and beginning to formulate his vision of a revitalized Russia.
Putin’s decades-long project culminated in the February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a gambit now in its fifth year. Kasyanov told ABC News last week that the campaign has achieved none of Putin’s goals and could yet prove an existential challenge to the Kremlin regime.
In recent months, Kasyanov told ABC News on the sidelines of the Chatham House think tank conference in London, “the overall sentiment, overall attitude, to Putin started to change.”
Among the factors applying more pressure to the Kremlin are expanding Ukrainian long-range drone strikes on Russia’s oil production, refining and export facilities — plus on the capital Moscow and the so-called “second capital” St. Petersburg — apparent public concern about spreading fuel shortages, troubling macro-economic indicators and new restrictions on internet usage, Kasyanov said.
Putin, Kasyanov said, built his image around providing both stability and security. “There is nothing on this — no stability and no security,” he said, adding, “The situation now has started to change in the minds of people — not only the ruling group, but also just the middle class, who in fact, could in any country be a driving force for any changes.”
That middle class is a key constituency for the Kremlin. Concentrated in Russia’s largest cities, analysts have watched keenly for any hint of dissent from this social strata.
Putin’s continued refusal to order a general mobilization despite Russia’s enormous battlefield losses and reported manpower strains have been interpreted by some analysts as a tacit acknowledgement that the Kremlin does not want to risk urban, middle class ire. “Putin is very much concerned about this,” Kasyanov suggested.
In cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, Kasyanov said, it had until recently been possible to continue as if “nothing is happening.”
“But, in the spring and now, of course, Ukraine changed their attitude. They have an advantage in long-range missiles and they have an advantage in drones,” Kasyanov said.
“Gradually, they moved the war from being an ‘accident’ somewhere, an emergency case somewhere in the corner of Russia, to Russia — even to Moscow. And that is quite a significant change.”
‘He needs pressure’
Kayanov said Western powers should seek to exploit the growing pressure on Putin and force him back to the negotiating table with genuine concessions, not the same maximalist demands the Kremlin has long made of Ukraine.
“It could happen by the end of the year if consistent pressure continues,” Kasyanov said. Russia’s growing budget deficit — which as of last month reached 2.5% of GDP, according to preliminary Finance Ministry data — could prove a particular pain point, he added.
So too might international sanctions on — and long-range Ukrainian drone attacks on — Russia’s vital oil industry, Kasyanov added. “By the end of the year, he will face a big problem,” Kasyanov said of Putin.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov this week acknowledged some economic strains, telling reporters that Russia’s rate of growth is currently “insufficient.” But Peskov said the problems facing the country were not critical, but rather a reflection of the “rather dire state” of the global economy.
On the diplomatic front, Kasyanov said Moscow has largely failed to convert apparent diplomatic openings with Washington — for example its success at Putin’s summit with President Donald Trump in Anchorage in August 2025.
“What Putin wanted was to divide the transatlantic unity, dreaming of what they call the ‘Anchorage spirit,'” Kasyanov said, referring to the U.S.-Russian understanding that Moscow said was reached at the Alaska summit, which was widely interpreted as a diplomatic coup for the Kremlin.
Broadly, Kasyanov suggested that Washington had a “wrong understanding of the whole problem.” He added, “All those years, it was a useless undertaking trying to give a carrot to Putin. Because they don’t understand what the Putin regime is about.”
The negotiations, Kasyanov suggested, were interpreted by the Kremlin “as a demonstration of weakness.” Nonetheless, both Moscow and Kyiv have acknowledged that the current conflict can only end with a diplomatic settlement.
Trump has repeatedly said he is the only Western leader capable of pressuring Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to agree a deal to end the fighting. This week, Trump told Fox News he believes that Putin is “ready to make a deal,” possibly “soon.”
“I tell him the same thing all the time. I don’t want to go into great detail, but I say: ‘Vladimir, it’s time for you to stop. It’s time for this war to end,'” Trump said. “It takes two to tango. But I think he’s ready to make a deal,” Trump added.
Earlier this month, Trump told ABC News of a potential deal, “We’re getting much closer than people realize, and President Putin wants it to end.”
But for all the Russian maneuvers and White House criticism directed toward Kyiv, Western funds and weapons have continued to flow into Ukrainian hands.
Last week, during a warm face-to-face meeting with Zelenskyy, Trump said Ukraine would be allowed to produce key Patriot surface-to-air system interceptors.
“That is, I think, creating a shock in Moscow,” Kasyanov said of the resolute Western backing of Ukraine.
Life after Putin
Putin dismissed Kasyanov and his cabinet in early 2004, weeks before that year’s presidential election. In the years that followed, Kasyanov became a prominent opposition figure, faced fraud charges — which he denied — and was blocked from standing as a candidate in Russia’s 2008 presidential election.
After Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine In 2022, Kasyanov left Russia. He now leads the People’s Freedom Party from Riga — “temporarily,” according to his business card.
Kasyanov, 68, said he has no concrete political ambitions in a post-Putin Russia. Rather, he suggested that the best case scenario would be a “long process” of political normalization and eventual democratization.
A years-long “gray period,” he said, could see Putin’s successors allow “imitation” or “quasi” elections and the return of a true political opposition, which Kasyanov hopes will eventually give way to a genuine vote that draws real legitimacy from the population.
“If Putin stays in power, it means there will be another period in which Russia will represent a threat and there will continue to be some kind of negotiations and preparations for some kind of revanche, as we saw in previous years,” Kasyanov said.
For the time being, Kasyanov said he expects Putin to simultaneously seek to “destroy unity” within Europe and within the transatlantic system and seek negotiations.
On the domestic front, Putin will continue to keep a tight grip on the narrative, Kasyanov said, lionizing Russian achievements in the war like the retention of Crimea, further territorial gains in southern and eastern Ukraine and a supposed defeat of NATO.
In the long term, Kasyanov said he still hopes for Putin to leave the scene, one way or another. But he doubts Putin will be overthrown from the inside.
“I don’t think there will be a coup, because there are no such people. All those people inside who were capable, with strength, disappeared,” Kasyanov said. There are, he added, people in Russia who are “ready for changes, but they are not ready to fight, because they immediately will be in jail.”
“When the situation starts to change, some of us could come back to participate in quasi-elections, which will happen not in two years after Putin, maybe in three years, maybe in four years. And at that time, real change could start,” he said.
“I hope my country will be a normal European state,” Kasyanov said. “We’ll see.”
U.S. President Donald Trump looks on during a bilateral meeting with the Prime Minister of Iraq Ali al-Zaidi, in the Oval Office of the White House on July 14, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump, in a primetime address on Thursday, announced he has declassified a slew of documents he claims reveal vulnerabilities in America’s elections systems, election fraud and interference in elections by China, and ordered the Department of Justice to prosecute those believed to be involved.
“America is back and doing really well, but we still have a major challenge that must be urgently addressed because no country can be great without fair and honest elections, you have to trust your country,” Trump said. “Because if there can be no trust, there can be no greatness, and that’s very simple: no trust, no greatness.”
But throughout the more than 20-minute speech, the president did not provide specific evidence that the election outcome, or any votes, were altered in the 2020 election, despite his repeated claims that the election was “stolen” or “rigged.”
Trump has long pushed debunked conspiracy theories to claim that his 2020 election loss was fraudulent.
The president’s speech led to his main argument: he wants Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, his sweeping elections reform bill that Senate Majority Leader John Thune has repeatedly said does not have enough Republican votes to pass.
In his remarks, the president said that he would immediately declassify the release of “critical intelligence, revealing shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure.”
According to the president, the documents focus on what he said were a number of areas of concern, including claims that China “compromised” election data during the 2020 election, and attempts to downplay the extent of China’s efforts.
Trump argued that the intelligence community suppressed information about China accessing 220 million voter files and trying to turn American opinion against him in the run-up to the 2020 election.
The president also accused the “deep-state” of keeping information about election meddling from him.
Trump claimed that U.S. intelligence agencies learned that tens of millions of voters’ data in 18 states had been “bought, stolen, or hacked” by China, and that the intelligence community deliberately kept this information from him while he was president.
Trump’s remarks asserting that the Chinese undertook a far more ambitious role in attempting to dictate the outcome of the 2020 election goes beyond what U.S. intelligence community has previously assessed.
In March 2021, two months into the Biden administration, a declassified “Intelligence Community Assessment” (ICA) that was produced at the end of Trump’s first term publicly acknowledged the belief among some intelligence officials that “China took at least some steps to undermine former President Trump’s reelection chances.” But the ICA said any such actions were “primarily through social media and official public statements and media,” not through interference with “election processes.”
Further, the ICA said that while China was “probably” trying “to gather information on U.S. voters and public opinion; political parties, candidates and their staffs; and senior government officials,” the more reliable intelligence indicated that such efforts were not actually intended to undermine Trump but instead to “predict electoral outcomes and to inform its efforts to influence US policy toward China under either election outcome.”
The heavily redacted documents released by the White House on Thursday do not appear to back up Trump’s assertions, instead containing scattershot intelligence that descries efforts to obtain — but not alter — voter records and to conduct social media activity to sow social discord.
One heavily-redacted document titled “200M Voter Records Compromised. repeatedly references personally identifiable information being compromised. This information includes names, phone numbers and addresses — which can also be found from many other sources.
In another series of near-completely redacted memos, words such as “state voter registration data” and “personal identifiable information” appear between large blocks of black redaction markings. It is impossible to surmise the meaning of these records without context, but they appear to point to some Chinese efforts to gather American voter data, much of which is publicly available.
Notably, these memos document Chinese activities ahead of both the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Trump alleged that former Justice Department officials slow-walked an investigation in Michigan that involved the submission of voter registration applications that had forged signatures and other indications of fraudulent applications. Trump called on FBI Director Kash Patel to look into whether any charges can still be brought.
Local media at the time said that a state-level investigation was halted so the FBI could continue with a related investigation. It’s unclear why no federal charges were ever brought or if federal charges were warranted.
At the time, state officials said that the fact that the fraudulent applications were detected shows that the system worked.
The president also said the documents released Thursday include a Department of Homeland Security report he called “stunning,” alleging approximately 278,000 non-citizens were included on voter rolls.
In the documents released by the White House, the DHS report that alleged 250,000 noncitizen voters on the rolls came from a review of “public voter files” that appear to have come from four states: California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Nevada. DHS did not provide any methodology about how it reached that number, nor does it specify what “public voter files” it reviewed.
DHS acknowledged it did not have access to those states’ voter rolls, and alleges that in the 10 states that provided the federal government access to their rolls, the agency found 28,000 noncitizen voters.
Findings from the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation have found only around 100 verified instances of non-citizen voting going back two decades.
-ABC News’ Lucien Bruggeman and Mike Levine contributed to this report.
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks to members of the media outside the U.S. Capitol on June 18, 2026, in Washington, DC. Sen. Schumer blasted President Trump’s new agreement with Iran, calling it an “epic failure” that keeps Americans in the dark due to a lack of transparency while leaving the U.S. in a worse strategic and security position. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, whose home state has been the target of many of the administration’s election challenges, told reporters Thursday, “If the president declares Georgia’s elections illegitimate, or if the president declares Georgia’s sitting United States senators illegitimate, he is declaring Georgia voters illegitimate. It’s Donald Trump who tried to defraud Georgia voters in that election.”
Ossoff is up for re-election in November and his seat is being targeted by Republicans as a possible pickup opportunity. He predicted that Trump would use his speech to rehash challenges to the 2020 election that failed in court.
“Here’s what’s going to happen tonight: the world’s most famous sore loser will deliver a prime-time presidential sour grapes address to pursue his six-year-old grievances about the 2020 election, while his war in the Middle East spirals out of control and the cost of living continues to rise for Americans across the country,” Ossoff said.
In a White House briefing Thursday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt was tight-lipped about what the president would say besides that he will discuss “protecting the integrity of our elections.”
When pressed by a reporter about concerns from some Republicans that the president was litigating past elections that could turn off some swing voters, Leavitt said that Trump would focus on secure elections as key to American democracy.
“I’ve seen a lot of reporting and, frankly, misreporting about what the president will say. I think the American people will be relieved to hear what they are hearing from the president of the United States and his commitment to transparency and the focus on the integrity of our elections tonight,” she said.
When later pressed by ABC News’ Rachel Scott about the political concerns of some Republicans, Leavitt said only that people should wait until they’ve heard the speech.
Outgoing Republican Sens. Thom Tillis and John Cornyn and Rep. Thomas Massie said Trump looking back on the 2020 elections is not a productive message for the party as it heads into the upcoming midterm cycle.
Asked if he thought Trump focusing on the 2020 election going into the midterms was a good messages for Republicans, Tillis said, “No, not at all. Look, we can’t re-prosecute that campaign. Anytime you’re looking back, you’re not looking ahead and I’m looking ahead to these elections, and the president should as well.”
Massie said that the White House was “trying to convince the American people the problem is the elections” rather than other issues they are concerned about.
“The problem is not that we didn’t win the elections. The problem is that we broke our promises when we got here … So, it’s a ruse because they’re trying to convince the American people the problem is the elections. The problem is the people that they’ve elected.”
Cornyn said that he wasn’t pleased with Jay Clayton’s answers on the 2020 election during his Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing to be Trump’s director of national intelligence on Tuesday when he refused to answer who won.
“I thought a lot of it was pretty silly,” Cornyn said of Clayton’s performance. “I don’t know why we’re still talking about the 2020 election on either side of the aisle. We got important work to do and I think the most important is coming up here in the midterms. “In the meantime, to continue to do the people’s work, and when we’re talking about what happened six years ago, I don’t think we’re doing them any favors.”
Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said Trump’s speech could influence how he votes on Clayton.
“If Donald Trump does what I expect and makes outrageous claims and uses those claims as an attempt to interfere in the elections, boy oh boy, more than ever do you need somebody in that role that’ll take truth to power,” he said.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that Trump is “scared to death that he will lose in 2026” and is trying to change the subject.
“The bottom line is, if Trump wants to win the American people over, instead of the bulls— that he’s peddling about 2020, he ought to focus on lowering people’s costs, getting rid of the chaos in administration, getting rid of the corruption,” Schumer said.
ABC News’ Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.
An ABC News graphic shows the forecast for Thursday, July 16, 2026. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — Air quality alerts are in place on Thursday across at least 18 states, from Minnesota to New Hampshire to Virginia, as dangerous smoke continues to waft into the U.S. from Canadian wildfires, including more than 100 blazes burning out of control.
Smoke from at least 850 active wildfires in Canada is traveling more than a thousand miles to reach U.S. locations including New York City. At least another nine large fires are burning in northern Minnesota.
On Thursday afternoon, Minneapolis surpassed Detroit for having the worst measured air quality in the world among major cities, according to the air quality monitoring website IQAir.
Earlier Thursday, Detroit, which dropped to second on the list, reached an air quality index, or AQI, of nearly 570. IQAir rates the most dangerous air quality index, described as “hazardous,” as 301 or above.
Chicago was third on the IQAir’s AQI scale for the worst air quality on the planet while Toronto, Ontario, was sixth on Thursday afternoon. Toronto is more than 1,100 miles from where some 180 wildfires are burning in sparsely populated areas of Ontario province.
Meanwhile, all of New York State, including New York City, and parts of New Jersey are under an Air Quality Advisory on Thursday due to the wildfire smoke.
The extreme smoke will continue through Thursday evening in the Upper Midwest, including northern Wisconsin, northern Michigan, the New York City area and across the Northeast. Heavy smoke will also stretch from Chicago to Detroit and from Philadelphia to Boston.
New York City could see orange skies on Thursday afternoon as dense plumes of hazardous smoke continues pour into the area.
According to the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System, 859 active wildfires are burning as of late Thursday afternoon, including 37 new fires that ignited Thursday. At least 109 of the wildfires were burning out of control Thursday afternoon, according to the agency.
So far this year, according to the agency, Canada has had 3,549 wildfires that have burned a total of 2.3 million hectares, or more than 93,000 square miles, which is roughly the size of the United Kingdom.
The smoke and ash from the Canadian wildfires was even affecting commercial air traffic. On Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it was slowing arriving flights into the Philadelphia International Airport due to low visibility from wildfires smoke.
An American Airlines pilot told Philadelphia air traffic controllers on Thursday that ash was sticking the windshield of his aircraft, according to a recording of the communications provided by ATC.com.
“I’ve never seen it stick to the windshield like this,” the pilot was heard telling air traffic controllers.
American Steve Ventling of Montana told ABC News that he witnessed the Canadian wildfires up close this week when a blaze began while he was on a fishing trip in Northern Ontario. Ventling shared photos with ABC News of billowing smoke and flames quickly spreading through a lakeside forest.
“I’ve seen plenty of fires in my lifetime. Nothing prepared me for this. The flames exploded through the treetops. Entire trees vanished in seconds,” said Ventling, adding that he and others he was fishing with evacuated the area in a boat.
On Wednesday, the wildfire smoke cast a yellowish haze over New York City, leaving a strong stench of smoke in the air.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani warned that “a combination of dangerous heat and unhealthy air” will continue to be a serious threat to the health of New Yorkers on Thursday.
“This is very serious,” Mamdani said at a news conference on Thursday morning. “We are reaching into a level of air quality that is dangerous for every single New Yorker.”
In a social media post on Wednesday night, Mamdani advised New Yorkers to “stay somewhere cool with air conditioning, limit your time outdoors, drink plenty of water, and check on your neighbors – especially older New Yorkers and anyone with a health condition.”
The mayor said the city is providing free masks to help people cope with the smoke.
By Thursday noon, air quality was rated as “unhealthy” in New York City, with air quality in the Long Island and Lower Hudson Valley regions forecast to also become unhealthy before the end of the day, according to the air monitoring site AirNow.
Air quality in the Central and Western New York regions and the Eastern Lake Ontario region of New York state were rated as “very unhealthy,” according to AirNow.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said smoke will be thick on Thursday and spread across the rest of the state throughout the day.
“Distant wildfires have impacted New York State in recent years, and this week unfortunately will be no different with expected hazy skies and poor air quality,” Hochul said in a statement on Wednesday. “We are now closely tracking these conditions and I strongly encourage New Yorkers to stay informed and take appropriate precautions to stay safe. Sensitive groups should take particular caution.”
By Friday morning, the smoke is expected to push farther south, affecting areas through Ohio and Virginia, including Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, throughout the day.
An ABC News graphic shows the forecast for Thursday, July 16, 2026. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — Air quality alerts are in place on Thursday across at least 18 states, from Minnesota to New Hampshire to Virginia, as dangerous smoke continues to waft into the U.S. from Canadian wildfires, including more than 100 blazes burning out of control.
Smoke from at least 850 active wildfires in Canada is traveling more than a thousand miles to reach U.S. locations including New York City. At least another nine large fires are burning in northern Minnesota.
On Thursday afternoon, Minneapolis surpassed Detroit for having the worst measured air quality in the world among major cities, according to the air quality monitoring website IQAir.
Earlier Thursday, Detroit, which dropped to second on the list, reached an air quality index, or AQI, of nearly 570. IQAir rates the most dangerous air quality index, described as “hazardous,” as 301 or above.
Chicago was third on the IQAir’s AQI scale for the worst air quality on the planet while Toronto, Ontario, was sixth on Thursday afternoon. Toronto is more than 1,100 miles from where some 180 wildfires are burning in sparsely populated areas of Ontario province.
Meanwhile, all of New York State, including New York City, and parts of New Jersey are under an Air Quality Advisory on Thursday due to the wildfire smoke.
The extreme smoke will continue through Thursday evening in the Upper Midwest, including northern Wisconsin, northern Michigan, the New York City area and across the Northeast. Heavy smoke will also stretch from Chicago to Detroit and from Philadelphia to Boston.
New York City could see orange skies on Thursday afternoon as dense plumes of hazardous smoke continues pour into the area.
According to the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System, 859 active wildfires are burning as of late Thursday afternoon, including 37 new fires that ignited Thursday. At least 109 of the wildfires were burning out of control Thursday afternoon, according to the agency.
So far this year, according to the agency, Canada has had 3,549 wildfires that have burned a total of 2.3 million hectares, or more than 93,000 square miles, which is roughly the size of the United Kingdom.
The smoke and ash from the Canadian wildfires was even affecting commercial air traffic. On Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it was slowing arriving flights into the Philadelphia International Airport due to low visibility from wildfires smoke.
An American Airlines pilot told Philadelphia air traffic controllers on Thursday that ash was sticking the windshield of his aircraft, according to a recording of the communications provided by ATC.com.
“I’ve never seen it stick to the windshield like this,” the pilot was heard telling air traffic controllers.
American Steve Ventling of Montana told ABC News that he witnessed the Canadian wildfires up close this week when a blaze began while he was on a fishing trip in Northern Ontario. Ventling shared photos with ABC News of billowing smoke and flames quickly spreading through a lakeside forest.
“I’ve seen plenty of fires in my lifetime. Nothing prepared me for this. The flames exploded through the treetops. Entire trees vanished in seconds,” said Ventling, adding that he and others he was fishing with evacuated the area in a boat.
On Wednesday, the wildfire smoke cast a yellowish haze over New York City, leaving a strong stench of smoke in the air.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani warned that “a combination of dangerous heat and unhealthy air” will continue to be a serious threat to the health of New Yorkers on Thursday.
“This is very serious,” Mamdani said at a news conference on Thursday morning. “We are reaching into a level of air quality that is dangerous for every single New Yorker.”
In a social media post on Wednesday night, Mamdani advised New Yorkers to “stay somewhere cool with air conditioning, limit your time outdoors, drink plenty of water, and check on your neighbors – especially older New Yorkers and anyone with a health condition.”
The mayor said the city is providing free masks to help people cope with the smoke.
By Thursday noon, air quality was rated as “unhealthy” in New York City, with air quality in the Long Island and Lower Hudson Valley regions forecast to also become unhealthy before the end of the day, according to the air monitoring site AirNow.
Air quality in the Central and Western New York regions and the Eastern Lake Ontario region of New York state were rated as “very unhealthy,” according to AirNow.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said smoke will be thick on Thursday and spread across the rest of the state throughout the day.
“Distant wildfires have impacted New York State in recent years, and this week unfortunately will be no different with expected hazy skies and poor air quality,” Hochul said in a statement on Wednesday. “We are now closely tracking these conditions and I strongly encourage New Yorkers to stay informed and take appropriate precautions to stay safe. Sensitive groups should take particular caution.”
By Friday morning, the smoke is expected to push farther south, affecting areas through Ohio and Virginia, including Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, throughout the day.
Police and firefighters work on the site after a helicopter crashed in the Hudson River on April 10, 2025, in Jersey City, New Jersey. All six people on board were killed when a helicopter plunged into the Hudson River off of Lower Manhattan. (Photo by Andres Kudacki/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A bird strike likely caused last year’s tourist helicopter crash in New York City’s Hudson River that killed all six people on board, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
The more than 2,000 pages of information released by the NTSB is not the final report and does not state the probable cause, but the documents show the chopper slammed into multiple large birds before the crash.
The birds hit the rotor blades and the horizontal stabilizer, according to an analysis by the Smithsonian Institution’s Feather Identification Lab. Samples of “mixed species” of birds were found, including Canada Geese and black-backed Gull. Canadian Geese can sometimes weigh more than 10 pounds each.
Videos showed the rotors flying off the helicopter as it plummeted to the water.
The chopper crashed into the Hudson in April 2025 while carrying a pilot and a family from Spain: Siemens executive Agustin Escobar, his wife Merce Camprubi Montal, and their three children.
One witness told ABC News she watched the helicopter “fall out of the sky” from her apartment window.
“I heard five or six loud noises that sounded almost like gunshots in the sky and saw pieces fall off, then watched it fall into the river,” she said.
Police and firefighters work on the site after a helicopter crashed in the Hudson River on April 10, 2025, in Jersey City, New Jersey. All six people on board were killed when a helicopter plunged into the Hudson River off of Lower Manhattan. (Photo by Andres Kudacki/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A bird strike likely caused last year’s tourist helicopter crash in New York City’s Hudson River that killed all six people on board, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
The more than 2,000 pages of information released by the NTSB is not the final report and does not state the probable cause, but the documents show the chopper slammed into multiple large birds before the crash.
The birds hit the rotor blades and the horizontal stabilizer, according to an analysis by the Smithsonian Institution’s Feather Identification Lab. Samples of “mixed species” of birds were found, including Canada Geese and black-backed Gull. Canadian Geese can sometimes weigh more than 10 pounds each.
Videos showed the rotors flying off the helicopter as it plummeted to the water.
The chopper crashed into the Hudson in April 2025 while carrying a pilot and a family from Spain: Siemens executive Agustin Escobar, his wife Merce Camprubi Montal, and their three children.
One witness told ABC News she watched the helicopter “fall out of the sky” from her apartment window.
“I heard five or six loud noises that sounded almost like gunshots in the sky and saw pieces fall off, then watched it fall into the river,” she said.
Sen. Thom Tillis attends the confirmation hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee for acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Capitol Hill, July 15, 2026, in Washington. Win McNamee/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — A key GOP member of the Senate Judiciary Committee whose vote is needed to secure acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s confirmation as the next attorney general said Thursday that he will require Blanche to sit down with victims of deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein before he can vote for him.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., announced the new condition during a hearing Thursday where one of the witnesses was Epstein victim Dani Bensky.
Facing a potentially rocky confirmation, Blanche made a brief attempt to meet with Epstein survivors on Capitol Hill Thursday afternoon.
He and his team arrived at a Senate Judiciary Committee office where they sat for about half an hour, but no one joined them.
“I rearranged my schedule to try to meet with them,” Blanche told ABC News after leaving the office. “I’ve been here waiting. It didn’t work out, so we’re going to see if there’s a way we can meet either later today or sometime soon.”
“There’s nothing newsworthy about this fact because the Department of Justice will always meet with victims or their representatives, and if those victims or their representatives have evidence that anybody committed a crime, whether it has to do with Jeffrey Epstein, anybody else that was associated with Jeffrey Epstein, or anybody else, we will of course move forward and investigate and prosecute,” Blanche said.
Bensky testified in Thursday’s hearing that Blanche has never responded to repeated attempts to reach him to sit down and recount her story.
“Blanche was willing to say that he would meet with [Epstein victims] and counsel — I understand the restriction that counsel has to be present,” Tillis said. “I expect that meeting to occur before I vote to vote out of this committee and I’m trying to get to yes. But this is a very important part of getting to yes.”
“There should not be any reason why, based on what Mr. Blanche said yesterday, if he said that he would do it today, then he can certainly do it over the next two weeks,” Tillis added.
Blanche told lawmakers during his confirmation hearing Wednesday that he would be happy to meet with victims but initially said he couldn’t meet with them personally if they were represented by legal counsel, before correcting himself later in the hearing.
“I never said I can’t meet with them. I said if they were represented, I had to meet through counsel,” Blanche said. “But of course, I can meet with them. I’m the acting attorney general of the United States, so yes, I can.”
This ABC News graphic shows flood warnings in Texas as of July 16, 2026. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — At least one person has died as a result of the flash flooding emergency currently ongoing in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott confirmed on Thursday.
The death was reported overnight between Kerrville and Comfort, Texas, Abbott said. More than 70 people have been rescued so far, he added.
Rescue operations are underway for people stranded in homes and potentially larger facilities, with 1,300 emergency personnel responding, according to the governor.
Torrential rain from Wednesday into Thursday prompted flash flood emergency warnings for Texas Hill Country as water levels in creeks and rivers rose rapidly.
As of early Thursday morning, there were two flash flood emergencies ongoing in Texas Hill Country, impacting Kerrville — the city where the deadly Camp Mystic flooding occurred in July 2025 — Hunt, Uvalde and Knippa.
Evacuations and water rescues were reported in all four areas, with warnings of life-threatening flash flooding and reports of water entering buildings.
The Guadalupe River at Hunt rose from 9 to 19 feet between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. CT, cutting off access to some roads and bridges. Just before 6 a.m., the Guadalupe River gauge measured 37 feet at Hunt, and more rise is possible, according to the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office.
No camps along the river had sustained any damage as of Thursday afternoon, Abbott said. Warning sirens were activated and functioned properly.
The National Weather Service issued another flash flood emergency later Thursday morning along the Pedernales River, located just north of the Guadalupe River.
A large and deadly wave is moving down the Pedernales River — with the gauge at Fredericksburg rising to more than 31 feet and counting, according to the NWS.
Engineers assessed the bridge over the Guadalupe River on Highway 87 into Comfort, Texas, due to fears that the force of the water may have made it unstable, Kendall County Judge Shane Stolarcyz told ABC News. The engineers concluded that the bridge is structurally sound for now, ABC News has learned.
There are 63 residents inside the town’s evacuation center with their pets, waiting out the storm.
The fast-moving water below the bridge could be seen carrying debris within the current. The water is starting to recede, but authorities anticipate there could be a second wave later Thursday. They do not believe it will be anywhere near the level seen in the morning.
The National Weather Service elevated the flash flood emergency on Thursday to say a “large and deadly flood wave” had begun along the Guadalupe River around Kerrville and was moving through Center Point, which is downstream of Kerrville, and on to Comfort and Waring, Sisterdale, Crown and Bergheim.
The river gauge at Center Point rose 32 feet in four hours and was expected to reach a crest similar to the catastrophic July 4, 2025, river flood.
A rainfall rate of 2 to 4 inches per hour was forecast for the region. Up to 20 inches of rain had fallen in the Uvalde area over the previous 48 hours — more than six months’ worth of rain for this area — with 8 inches falling in 2 hours.
Abbott said in a press conference on Wednesday that disaster declarations had been made for 59 counties, with the possibility of more being added.
He said that more than 75 people had been rescued so far and that the expected rainfall from this storm could exceed 30 inches, 10 inches more than the level recorded during last year’s deadly floods.
“We are dealing with and responding to a flood that is likely going to break records,” Abbott said. “There are over 1,300 state personnel from more than 30 agencies that are already activated. More than 800 vehicles, more than 75 boats, and 20 aircraft have been deployed. Our primary focus right now and throughout the remainder of this torrential rain is saving lives.”
The NWS issued a flash flood emergency warning for Boerne, located in Texas Hill Country about 55 miles southeast of Camp Mystic, on Wednesday afternoon, urging residents to relocate to higher elevations immediately.
“This is a PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION,” the NWS warning stated. “SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW!”
A rain gauge near Boerne measured 3.5 inches of rain within one hour Wednesday morning, according to the NWS. The Cibolo Creek rose 10 feet in just 90 minutes — between 9:45 and 11:15 a.m. local time, and measured at a record-high level of more than 22 feet.
A flash flood emergency was also issued for D’Hanis, Texas, about 60 miles southwest of Boerne, where between 4 and 10 inches of rain have fallen, according to the NWS. The Seco Creek is rapidly rising, prompting local officials to advise those in flood-prone areas to move to higher ground without delay.
Intense rainfall began in parts of Texas Hill Country on Tuesday, where some areas received between 6 inches and 16 inches of rainfall in 24 hours.
The NWS had previously issued a high risk for flash flooding — a level 4 out of 4 — for the same region on Wednesday due to a forecast of an additional 6 to 12 inches of rain.
A “high risk” is a rare occurrence. It’s only issued about 4% of days, but accounts for around one-third of all flood-related fatalities and 80% of all flood-related damages, according to the National Weather Service.
Between 4 and 12 inches of rain had fallen by noon Wednesday, and an additional 1 to 2 inches of rain were possible in the area. Flash flood warnings were also issued for Kerrville, Uvalde and just north of San Antonio.
Life-threatening flash flooding occurred at low water crossings, small creeks and streams, urban areas, highways, streets and underpasses, according to the NWS.
In Uvalde County, about 100 miles southwest of Boerne, at least 25 rescues had occurred by 9 a.m. on Wednesday. Additional rescues were underway Wednesday afternoon in North County, where the Leona River gauge reached nearly 20 feet, according to the Uvalde Police Department.
When will the heavy rain, flooding risk end
The flood watch across Texas Hill Country remains in effect through Thursday.
The same area faces a level 4 of 4 risk for flash flooding on Thursday, with the heaviest rain expected between 2 a.m. and 2 p.m. Another round of heavy rain could occur Thursday night.
Isolated additional rain totals of more than a foot are possible through Thursday, forecasts show.
Why Texas Hill Country is prone to flash flooding
Texas Hill Country is often referred to as “Flash Flood Alley,” one of the most flood-prone regions in the U.S., because the weather and landscape in the south-central Texas allow for rapid flood events, according to the Texas Water Resources Institute (TWRI).
The “alley,” which stretches from Dallas to San Antonio and encompasses the Colorado and Guadalupe River basins, is highly susceptible to dangerous flood events due to its steep terrain, shallow soil and repeated high rainfall events.
Much of the region is situated on a floodplain between tall hills, funneling any rainfall into rivers and creeks, causing them to rapidly rise. In addition, the clay soil does not easily absorb water and triggers high water runoff once wet, the TWRI said.
Major floods have occurred over nearly all sections of the Guadalupe River Basin, according to U.S. Geological river streamflow records dating back to the 1800s.
High rainfall intensities are a common occurrence because the Gulf provides an infinite source of moist air, as does the Pacific, which produces monsoonal moisture as well as cool air masses from the north that converge to produce extreme rainfall events.
Last year, more than 100 people died, including 25 girls at Camp Mystic, as a result of catastrophic flooding along the Guadalupe River during the Fourth of July weekend.
The torrential rain that turned the river into a raging wall of water was fueled by unique atmospheric conditions, meteorologists and climate scientists told ABC News last year.
Heavy rain combined with slow-moving thunderstorms caused the Guadalupe River to rise 26 feet in less than an hour, officials said.
ABC News’ Melissa Griffin and Faith Abubey contributed to this report.
