(MOSCOW) — An apparent coordinated attack Sunday in southern Russia has left at least nine people dead, including seven law enforcement officers, when gunmen wielding automatic weapons opened fire on a synagogue and an Orthodox church in two cities miles apart in the Dagestan region, according to the region’s Ministry of Internal Affairs.
At least 25 people were injured in the two attacks, Russian officials said.
The attack in Derbent, a city on the Caspian Sea, unfolded around 6 p.m. local time, when multiple gunmen unleashed a barrage of automatic weapons on a synagogue and an Orthodox church and set fire to both houses of worship, according to the Russian National Anti-Terrorism Committee.
A second attack occurred about 75 miles away in Makhchkala, also on the Caspian Sea, Russian officials said.
An ongoing gun battle between police and the suspects was occurring Sunday night in Makhachkala, according to officials.
A Volkswagen Polo is believed to have been used by the suspects in the Derbent attack and was seen by witnesses fleeing the scene, Russian officials said.
In Makhachkala, gunmen opened fire on traffic police on one street and a police car was set on fire on another street, the TASS state-owned news agency reported.
Sergei Melikov, a Russian leader of the Dagestan region, said in a statement that an operational headquarters had been established amid the attacks.
“This evening in Derbent and Makhachkala, unknown persons made attempts to destabilize the social situation. Dagestan police officers stood in their way. According to preliminary information, there are victims among them,” Melikov said in his statement.
Melikov asked residents of Dagestan to remain calm.
(FORDYCE, A.R.) — The shooting at an Arkansas grocery store on Friday was “a completely random, senseless act,” Arkansas State Police Col. Mike Hagar said in a press conference Sunday.
Police have not determined a motive for the attack at the Mad Butcher grocery store in Fordyce that killed four people and wounded 10 others, Hagar said, noting that they have found no connection between the suspect and any of the victims or the store.
The four people killed were identified as 23-year-old Callie Weems, 50-year-old Roy Sturgis, 62-year-old Shirley Taylor and 81-year-old Ellen Shrum.
The suspect, identified as 44-year-old Travis Eugene Posey, was shot by officers at the scene and treated for non-life-threatening injuries.
Posey is believed to have opened fire in the parking lot “immediately” upon exiting his vehicle, then entered the store where he continued his rampage.
“He simply started engaging victims indiscriminately, just as targets of opportunity,” Hagar said.
Hagar said the suspect had “very limited” previous criminal history, or possibly none at all.
Posey faces three capital murder charges and is currently being held at Ouachita County Detention Center, according to Hagar.
He could face the death penalty, Hagar said.
One of the victims, Weems, a nurse, died while attempting to treat another victim, Hagar said.
“During the incident, we observed the very best and the very worst of humanity,” he said. “As an example, instead of fleeing from the obvious danger, Callie Weems began using her training as a nurse to render aid to a gunshot victim and, unfortunately, became a victim herself as a result of her selfless actions.”
Hagar thanked the police officers who responded to the incident, who he said neutralized the suspect within five minutes of the shooting beginning.
“These officers literally and intentionally put themselves between the suspect and defenseless citizens,” he said. “Their actions were nothing short of heroic.”
(NEW YORK) — An expanding heat dome Sunday had 100 million people across 27 states on alert for extremely high temperatures coast to coast, including America’s two largest cities.
While Los Angeles is under a heat advisory with temperatures forecast to reach 90 to 100 degrees on Sunday, an extreme heat risk warning has been issued for New York City, where a daily high-temperature record that has stood for 136 years could be broken.
On June 23, 1888, the record high for New York City was 96 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.
Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C.; Norfolk, Virginia, and parts of Oklahoma, including Tulsa, are also under extreme heat warnings.
The temperature in Washington, D.C., climbed to 100 degrees on Saturday, making it the first time the nation’s capital has hit the century mark in June since 2012.
Baltimore also marked its first 100-degree June day in 12 years when temperatures on Saturday rose to 101 degrees, setting a new daily record. With the temperature forecast to reach the high 90s, Baltimore could see another daily record fall on Sunday.
Daily high-temperature records could also be threatened in Philadelphia, Salt Lake City and Greenville, Mississippi.
Out west, scorching triple-digit weather is expected for California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah.
Palm Springs, California, is forecast to reach 111 degrees on Sunday and 112 degrees by Tuesday. Fresno, California, is forecast to reach 106 degrees on Sunday, while temperatures in Las Vegas were expected to soar to 109 on Sunday and 110 on Monday.
Phoenix is forecast to reach 111 degrees on Tuesday.
A cold front headed to the Northeast is forecast to cool things down, but could also bring severe thunderstorms and possible tornadoes.
A tornado watch has been issued for parts of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine until 8 p.m. ET. It’s the highest tornado risk in this area in more than six years. Meanwhile, there have already been numerous severe thunderstorm warnings as of Sunday afternoon.
Damaging wind and tornadoes are possible with severe thunderstorms in the Northeast through Sunday evening. New England states — including Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire — are forecast to be in the bullseye for the greatest threat of severe weather.
Stormy weather is also expected Sunday afternoon in the areas of Lake Ontario, Lake Erie and through the Ohio Valley.
On Monday, Minnesota and Wisconsin could see strong winds and the possibility of tornadoes.
On Tuesday, the threat of severe storms is expected to move into Chicago, Detroit and Omaha, Nebraska.
(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — A 3-year-old boy was killed and his 7-year-old sister was injured after being hit by gunfire while at a family gathering in Buffalo, New York, officials said.
Police who responded to the Friday night incident rushed the boy to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
His sister suffered graze wounds but is expected to recover, according to police.
“Last night was a very tragic night for our community,” Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph A. Gramaglia said during a press conference Saturday.
Gramaglia said the shooting had not been related to the family gathering.
“It was a hot night with a lot of people out, and the gunfire was unrelated to the gathering,” he said. “These children were simply out enjoying a summer evening when tragedy struck.”
“A 3-year-old riding his tricycle, having fun with members of his family on a hot summer night, his 7-year-old big sister right by his side, and out of nowhere gunfire erupts. And the children are struck by gunfire,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said.
Gramaglia commended the speed with which officers responded to the shooting, saying they arrived on the scene “very quickly.”
According to Erie County District Attorney Michael Keane, the mother of the two children is a well-known member of the community who is active in Most Valuable Parents, a local organization focused on improving safety in Buffalo.
“She is a strong woman, consistently working with other families to keep our children safe,” he said. “And now this tragedy has struck her own family.”
Police have not said whether any person or persons of interest have been identified as of Sunday afternoon, and they are encouraging anyone with information about the shooting to come forward.
A gun recovered at the scene is currently undergoing testing, police said.
“We need the community to come together and help us put an end to this violence,” Gramaglia said. “Our hearts are with the family of these children, and we will do everything in our power to bring justice for this senseless act.”
(NEW YORK) — Dangerous rip currents are forecast to persist Sunday along much of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, where at least eight people have drowned since Thursday after being dragged out to sea by the powerful currents, officials said.
The likelihood of life-threatening rip currents is high for beaches along the Atlantic Coast, including the Jersey Shore from Point Pleasant to Cape May, according to the National Weather Service. Dangerous rip currents are also forecast Sunday for North Carolina beaches from Frisco to Emerald, according to the NWS.
High-risk warnings for rip currents were also issued for the Gulf Coast, where the remnants of Tropical Storm Alberto continue to stir up the water.
A high-risk warning means the surf zone is dangerous for all levels of swimmers, and beachgoers should stay out of the water.
Moderate risk warnings, which have been issued for other parts of the Atlantic Coast, mean rip currents are likely, and swimmers are advised to stay near lifeguards and heed the advice of local beach patrols and flag warning systems.
“It’s a beautiful place, but they don’t realize how dangerous it can be. The ocean is strong and final when it gets ahold of you,” Chief Deputy John Budensiek of the Martin County, Florida, Sheriff’s Office told West Palm Beach ABC affiliate WPBF after a Pennsylvania couple got caught in a rip current and drowned while swimming with their six children at Hutchinson Island off Florida’s east coast.
The bodies of the couple, identified as 51-year-old Brian Warter and 48-year-old Erica Wishard, were found by lifeguards about 100 to 125 yards, or 300 to 375 feet, offshore, Martin County fire officials said.
Warter and Wishard were among eight people who have drowned since Thursday while swimming in the rough waters of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, according to officials.
On Friday, three men from Alabama who were visiting a Florida beach drowned after they went out swimming in the Gulf off Panama City Beach. The drownings occurred a day after a 19-year-old man drowned in the same area, authorities said.
In New York, the U.S. Coast Guard suspended a search Sunday for two boys, ages 16 and 17, whom witnesses said were apparently caught in a rip current at Jacob Riis Park in New York City’s Queens borough and were quickly swept out into the Atlantic, according to New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry.
“The teens tried to jump up to kind of slice the wave, the wave was extremely high, and it went on top of them and sucked them over,” Daughtry said during a news conference.
Meanwhile, the New York State Police said the body of a 15-year-old boy has been recovered after he was swept away and drowned Thursday in a powerful current while swimming in the Genesee River, a tributary of Lake Ontario near Caneadea, New York. Investigators said the teenager and a friend were swimming when he was swept away by the current.
The teen’s body was recovered on Thursday after multiple search-and-rescue teams combed the river.
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on Sunday pushed congressional Republicans for a comprehensive deal on immigration after a bill was blocked earlier this year.
Warren, a member of the national advisory board for President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, defended the president’s patchwork of executive actions after she claimed Republicans caved to former President Donald Trump by blocking bipartisan legislation to beef up border security, among other things.
“Right now, Joe Biden is using the tools available to him to try to do as much as he can. But keep in mind there was a deal that had been hammered out. In my view, it only had part of what was necessary, but it was a bipartisan deal. And we were just two days short of voting on it when Donald Trump said no, and the Republicans walked away,” Warren told “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz.
“He can’t deal with it if Congress and the Republicans continue to block him,” she added when pressed on the spike in border apprehensions under Biden compared to those under Trump. “And so, the president is using the tools available to him, both to create border security, but he doesn’t have the resources because the Republicans are blocking access.”
During Biden’s term so far, there have been more than 6.9 million border apprehensions, according to compiled data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. There were under 2.1 million such apprehensions during Trump’s four years in office, according to compiled CBP data.
Warren’s comments come as Democrats still point to Republicans’ rejecting a bill crafted by Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz.; James Lankford, R-Okla., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., earlier this year.
Among other things, the bill would have implemented funding for beefed-up border security and additional immigration judges, while also allowing Biden to declare a border emergency and turn migrants away if unauthorized crossings averaged 4,000 or more each day at the southern border over the course of seven consecutive days.
After the bill failed, Biden has leaned on executive orders and actions to grant his administration the ability to declare such an emergency while also offering protections for undocumented spouses of American citizens. He cannot, however, create new funding for border security and judges — money that can only be allocated by Congress.
“He can’t manufacture more judges, he can’t manufacture more guards if Congress doesn’t give him the resources to do that. The president is out there doing everything he can, not just at the border but overall for families. And the action he took in this last week is exactly Joe Biden being Joe Biden,” Warren said.
Liberals have been torn over Biden’s executive actions. Many were pleased with the order announced this past week allowing undocumented spouses to stay in the country, but others — including Warren — criticized his move in early June to allow his administration to declare a border emergency and restricting asylum claims at the border.
“I understand President Biden’s urgency to make changes at the border, but we can — and should — do better than a functional ban on asylum,” she said earlier this month.
Warren, who debated Biden during the 2020 Democratic primary, also forecasted that the president would present a contrast between his economic vision and Trump’s at this Thursday’s debate.
“He’ll be out there for working families,” Warren said. “He’s going to say $35 insulin, and 5 million people have seen their student loan debts canceled. He’s going to talk about getting rid of junk fees and how his administration is going after the price gougers at the oil pump and the grocery store, and that’s the contrast with Donald Trump.”
(WASHINGTON) — After a week of record-breaking extreme heat across the nation, science educator Bill Nye told “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz that the extreme heat and flooding making headlines is “a taste of the new normal.”
“The latest research is that there’s not a turning point or a tipping point or a knee in the curve. It’s just gonna get hotter and hotter and worse and worse and more and more extreme,” Nye said Sunday. “So this is a taste of the normal of the future, unless we humankind get to work and address it.”
More than 100 million Americans across 27 states are under heat alerts Sunday from coast to coast, including two of the nation’s largest cities, New York and Los Angeles.
Extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related fatalities, according to the National Weather Service.
Research has shown that extreme heat waves like these have been amplified due to human-induced climate change, which has increased the intensity, frequency and length of many naturally occurring weather events.
The average number of heat waves that major U.S. cities experience each year has doubled since the 1980s, according to the federal government’s fifth National Climate Assessment.
“Our [ABC News Chief Meteorologist and Chief Climate Correspondent] Ginger Zee talks about climate change a lot, global warming,” Raddatz told Nye. “What do we need to do right now, in your view?”
“The first thing is talk about climate change,” Nye said. “If we were talking with our families and friends and people we vote for about climate change, we’d be much more inclined to do something about it.”
“And then the other thing I always say is vote,” he added. “We have a situation right now here in the United States where one side, one political party isn’t acknowledging the problem, let alone coming up with a plan to do something about it. Furthermore, the other side is kowtowing — is doing what the fossil fuel industry wants to do.”
A recent Quinnipiac poll found that only 4% of registered voters consider climate change the most urgent issue facing the country today.
Democrats and Republicans have also grown further apart on climate change and environmental issues in recent years, according to data from the Pew Research Center.
Some Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have repeatedly called climate change a “hoax.” Trump has said that, if elected in November, he would roll back many of the Biden administration’s climate policies.
“If you meet with people who don’t believe in climate change, don’t believe in global warming — and there are a lot of them — what do you say to them? What do you say to them to convince them?” Raddatz asked Nye.
“If I could convince people in one sitting that would be fabulous, but that is proven quite difficult,” Nye said. “The problem we have in climate change is we don’t have a 9/11 or a Pearl Harbor. It’s slow motion.”
Meanwhile, some environmental activist groups, like the Sunrise Movement, have long been calling on Biden to declare a national climate emergency and take what they consider to be more aggressive action to combat climate change in the U.S.
Raddatz asked Nye about the push for a national climate emergency on Sunday, saying, “Some advocates are pushing for President Biden to declare a national climate emergency. Is that something that he should do, in your view?”
“I don’t know how well that would work,” Nye said. “People who are already inclined to dismiss what he says will just be that much more dismissive, perhaps. What we want to do is get everybody to work together to acknowledge that we have this problem. And I, as I say, I strongly believe that the United States has to lead the world.”
Nye explained that part of his work has been pointing out that humans are causing climate change.
“We’re doing it because we’ve created this wonderful quality of life for so many people by burning ancient carbon — ancient swamps — coal, oil, gas. We just got to stop doing that,” he said. “And so there are many alternative sources of energy, but we have to work together to share it. And I’m talking about transmission lines and energy storage, as well as developing more efficient renewable sources at the same time.”
ABC News’ Kenton Gewecke and Dan Peck contributed to this report.
(COLUMBUS, Ohio) — At least 10 people were injured in a shooting in Columbus, Ohio, police said, adding that they were searching for a suspect and a vehicle that may have been involved.
“The vehicle is believed to be a white, 4-door Honda Civic with tinted windows,” the Columbus Division of Police said on social media. “The suspect involved in the shooting was described as a male wearing all black clothing.”
Police posted two pictures they said were of the vehicle, adding that the car may have been involved with a shooting on the 1100 block of N. High St. early Sunday.
The 10 people who were injured in the shooting ranged in age from 16 to 27, police said. Nine were in stable condition and one was in critical condition, police said.
(WEST HAVEN, Conn.) — Two children are recovering in a Connecticut Intensive Care Unit after police officers stopped their father from allegedly trying to drown them at a West Haven beach early Saturday morning, according to investigators.
A West Haven Police Department patrol officer spotted an SUV parked at Dawson Avenue Beach around 2:30 a.m. and heard screaming from the water as the officer inspected the car, according to investigators.
The officer encountered Romney Desronvil, 41, with two children in the water, the police said.
“As the officer entered the water the adult male continued to drift further away with the children all while screaming at the responding officers to ‘stay back,'” the West Haven Police Department said in a statement. “It was obvious at this point that the male…was deliberately drowning his children.”
Additional police officers and members of the fire department entered the water to assist, going as far as 100 yards from the shore, police said.
Officers were able to get the children, who were described as under 3 years old, away from their father and bring them back to shore to give life-saving measures before they were rushed to the hospital, investigators said.
West Haven Mayor Dorinda Borer told reporters later in the day that the victims were showing signs of improvement but remained in critical condition.
She commended the actions of two of the officers, who she identified as Officer Williamson and Officer Miller, for saving their lives.
“They had guardian angels this morning,” Borer said.
Desronvil, a Queens, New York, resident, was arrested and charged with two counts each of attempted manslaughter and risk of injury, according to investigators.
The investigation is ongoing and more charges may be brought, according to the police.
Attorney information for the suspect was not immediately available.
(PROVIDENCIALES, Turks and Caicos) — Two people have been rescued after a small plane that took off from Florida crash-landed in the waters of the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean.
The Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force said shortly after noon on Saturday they received reports of an aircraft landing in water, approximately 10 miles off the island of Providenciales.
“The aircraft, which had departed from the United States, experienced engine failure,” police said in a statement. “Two individuals are reportedly on board.”
Police sources told ABC News a search operation was launched and with help from the U.S. Coast Guard, both passengers were rescued on Saturday afternoon and taken to a local hospital.
“The individuals rescued were last reported in stable condition,” U.S. Coast Guard spokesperson Petty Officer 3rd Class Eric Rodriguez told ABC News.
Authorities are yet to release the names of the passengers or their nationalities.
The plane departed from Palm Beach, Florida, and was traveling to Providenciales Island when problems were experienced with both engines, according to police sources.
