(BALTIMORE) — Several people were injured as they attempted to flee a Baltimore pride event after a “chemical agent” was released and fireworks were set off in a crowd Saturday evening, according to Baltimore Police.
Shortly after 8:30 p.m., officers stationed for Pride Parade festivities were informed that a possible chemical agent, potentially mace, hair spray, or another agent was released into the crowd gathered in front of the main music stage, according to police.
Fireworks were also set off at the same location, causing a mass exodus that left several people injured as they attempted to flee the area.
Fire officials treated those individuals and the event was subsequently shut down.
Police did not share how many people were injured in the mass exodus.
Authorities are still working to confirm what type of chemical agent was used and are “diligently reviewing” surveillance video to piece together the series of events. Police say they do not believe this was a targeted attack.
The investigation is ongoing, according to police.
(GREECE) — An American tourist was found dead Sunday on a beach on the Greek Island of Mathraki, the latest in a series of foreign tourists found dead or reported missing in the scenic vacation paradise in the past week, authorities said.
The remains of the missing American were discovered at about 1:30 p.m. local time on a beach near the old port of Mathraki Island, the president of the community of Mathraki Island told ABC News.
The cause of death was not immediately disclosed.
The man was last seen Tuesday at a tavern in Mathraki, west of Corfu Island, where he was staying with a Greek American friend, investigators told ABC News.
The friend called the police after he returned home Thursday and found the door of the house open, the lights on, and the air conditioning unit running, but there was no sign of the missing American or his identification and travel documents, according to investigators.
Mathraki has no police station or coast guard. Law enforcement officers from Corfu were called in to assist with the investigation.
A coroner was headed to the island Sunday to conduct a preliminary investigation, the president of Mathraki Island said. The body is expected to be taken to nearby Corfu Island, where an autopsy will be performed, officials said.
It’s the second time in a week that an American tourist has been reported missing on the Greek Isles.
A search continued Sunday for a retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy who has been missing since Tuesday on the Greek Island of Amorgos, officials said. The retired deputy, identified by Greek authorities as 59-year-old Albert Calibet of Hermosa Beach, California, was reported missing when he failed to return from a hike, officials said.
Drone video obtained by ABC Los Angeles station KABC showed rescue crews searching the rocky terrain where they believed Calibet was hiking.
“We’re sick to our stomachs, knowing he’s out there somewhere,” Calibet’s girlfriend, Debbie Leshane, told KABC.
Leshane said Calibet called her just before leaving to go on a hike. She said they spoke for about six minutes and that Calibet later sent her a photo about 9:20 a.m. local time Tuesday from the trailhead sign. She said that was the last she heard from him.
On Saturday, a missing 74-year-old Dutch tourist was found dead on the eastern Greek island of Samos, according to The Associated Press.
The body of the Dutch tourist, whose name has not been released, was discovered by firefighters using a drone. He was found lying face down in a ravine 330 yards from the spot where he was last seen walking.
Officials said the Dutch tourist was reported by observers to be having some difficulty hiking in the triple-digit heat that has enveloped the islands.
Some of the five tourists missing or found dead were believed to be hiking in blistering temperatures.
On June 9, Dr. Michael Mosley, a noted British TV anchor and author, was found dead on the the island of Symi. A coroner concluded that he had died around June 5, shortly after going for a hike over treacherous, rocky terrain.
(ROCHESTER PARK HILLS, Mich.) — Nine people were shot, including two children, after a person opened fire at a splash pad park in Michigan Saturday afternoon, according to police.
The Oakland County Sheriff’s office said the suspect was found dead after the shooting near the Brooklands Plaza Splash Pad in Rochester Hills, about 25 miles north of Detroit, Saturday evening.
The suspect was identified by the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office as 42-year-old Michael William Nash. He died by suicide, police said.
Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard told reporters that preliminary information shows the shooting appeared to be random. The suspect allegedly exited a vehicle, opened fire on the splash pad, reloaded, opened fire again and then left, according to Bouchard.
The suspect allegedly fired 28 rounds, according to the sheriff.
An 8-year-old boy was struck in the head and was in critical condition, the sheriff said. A 4-year-old boy was struck in the thigh and was in stable condition, he said. Their mother, 39, was in critical condition with injuries to her abdomen and legs, the sheriff said.
A sergeant monitoring a live 911 channel heard the first call come in at 5:11 p.m. on Saturday, officials said. Officers arrived at the scene within 2 minutes, but the suspect had already fled, Bouchard said.
Officers said they recovered a semi-automatic handgun and three magazines at the scene. An AR-15-style rifle was found on a table at the suspect’s home, he said.
“I am heartbroken to learn about the shooting in Rochester Hills. We are monitoring the situation as updates continue to come in, and are in touch with local officials,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said on X.
(LOS ANGELES) — A Southern California wildfire doubled in size overnight, causing the evacuation of more than 1,000 campers from a park, closing a popular recreation area on Father’s Day and threatening a major freeway in and out of Los Angeles, authorities said.
The Post Fire was burning out of control Sunday near Gorman, California, in the Tejon Pass area of Los Angeles County. The blaze started just before 2 p.m. PT on Saturday in the mountainous region and gusty winds caused flames to quickly spread to 5,000 acres, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).
On Sunday morning, the fire had grown to more than 11,000 acres with zero percent containment, according to Cal Fire.
At least two structures have been damaged by the fire, Cal Fire said. No injuries have been reported.
Authorities issued evacuation orders Saturday as a wildfire in Los Angeles County, dubbed the Post Fire, spread over thousands of acres close to a major highway and threatened nearby structures, officials said. https://t.co/QhTLmLUBdkpic.twitter.com/ftiI26VpmP
The cause of the fire remained under investigation Sunday.
More than 300 firefighters, including air tanker crews, are battling the fire from the ground and sky, authorities said.
About 1,200 campers at the Hungry Valley Park State Vehicular Recreation Area were ordered to evacuate Saturday night, and authorities closed Pyramid Lake, which was expecting thousands of visitors for Father’s Day, due to the threat of the Post Fire, Cal Fire said.
The fire was burning parallel to Interstate 5, a major artery in and out of Los Angeles. The freeway was briefly closed on Saturday, triggering a traffic jam through the area, officials said.
The wind-driven fire was pushing east Sunday toward the Arrowhead Equestrian Estates in Hesperia, where residents were under an evacuation warning, according to Cal Fire.
The Hesperia Fire was 5% contained Sunday morning. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
(NEW YORK) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen joined ABC News’ “This Week” to discuss the $50 billion loan to Ukraine from world leaders.
The money will help Ukraine rebuild and stave off continued Russian offensives. The loan is backed by the profits of frozen Russian assets.
After the announcement from the G7 conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the “theft” of Russian assets “will not go unpunished.” Yellen pushed back on that, saying “[the assets have] been impounded, the investments that Russia had have matured, so Russia’s funds are sitting in cash. But they’re generating income for the institution, which Russia has no claim on.”
She added, “So there’s no legal issue here.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who is on the short list to be former President Donald Trump’s running mate, said Sunday he stands by his vote on Jan. 6, 2021, to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.
“I will stand by that decision and the next decision to certify the fact that Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States,” Scott said on “This Week.”
When pressed if then-Vice President Mike Pence did the “right thing” by bucking Trump’s demands to block certification of the results, Scott implied that Pence had no choice, saying the “constitution is clear.”
The remarks come as Scott and others, like Sens. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum are being vetted to join Trump on the ticket this November. Whether or not they would have certified the 2020 election results has emerged as a dividing line among some of the possible vice presidential picks.
Vance told ABC News in February that “we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there.”
Rubio voted to certify the 2020 election results but said in May that he did so “because at that stage in the process, you have no options.”
Burgum has accepted Biden as the legitimate 2020 election victor but has been more circumspect on accepting the results of the 2024 race.Trump made his first trip back to the Capitol last week since the riot to discuss future policy plans with congressional Republicans. Scott, who met with Trump, praised the former president’s policies to help working class Americans.
“The working-class coalition that is now supporting Donald Trump is supporting Donald Trump because they know … they were better off under Donald Trump,” Scott said. “And so, what we talked about during the meeting with President Trump is the importance of focusing on the actual working class.”
Karl also pressed Scott on whether or not he supported a recent Supreme Court decision on bump stocks.
Scott said “we trust and believe and respect the decision of the Supreme Court,” though he demurred when asked about his past support for legislation codifying a ban on the device.
(ROUND ROCK, Texas.) — Two people were shot and killed during a Juneteenth celebration on Saturday at a park in Round Rock, Texas, police said.
A fight broke out between two groups at the Old Settlers Park at about 11 p.m., Round Rock Police Chief Allen Banks told reporters early Sunday. At about the same time, someone produced a gun and began to fire, Banks said, adding that multiple people were struck by gunfire.
Two people died at the scene, Banks said. The dead did not appear to have been part of the larger altercation and it was unknown how many shooters there had been, he said.
The Juneteenth Festival, which was put on by a local nonprofit and the city government, included a free concert with a series of acts on Saturday night.
The shooting occurred near vendor area of the concert stage, Banks said.
At least six people were transported to hospitals with “potentially serious” injuries, emergency response officials said.
Four adults and two children were transported to local trauma facilities, the Austin-Travis County EMS said.
(SOMALIA) — A United States military airstrike in Somalia targeted the top Islamic State leader in late May, but it remains unclear if the leader was killed in the airstrike, according to U.S. officials.
Abdulqadir Mumin has been identified by the U.S. as the head of the Islamic State in Somalia, an African affiliate of the terror group once known as ISIS.
A statement from U.S. Africa Command disclosed that on May 31 it had conducted an airstrike in a remote area of northeastern Somalia, south of the Gulf of Aden, that killed three militants affiliated with the Islamic State. The statement did not provide more accurate information about who was specifically being targeted in the airstrike.
Three U.S. officials confirmed to ABC News that the target of the strike was the top leader of the Islamic State in Somalia whom the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) identified as Mumin. However, the U.S. officials said it remained unclear if Mumin had been killed in the airstrike.
A fourth U.S. official would only confirm that a senior Islamic State leader was the target of the strike but would not comment on the individual’s name.
NBC News was first to report that Mumin was the target of the May 31 airstrike and that he had become the global leader of Islamic State.
The NCTC describes Mumin as the founder and leader of the Islamic State in Somalia that operates primarily in the semi-autonomous area of northeastern Somalia known as Puntland.
Founded in 2015, the terror group became an official affiliate of ISIS in 2018 and is believed to have between 100 and 400 members that mainly carry out what are described as “small-scale, sporadic attacks and assassination operations against Somali Government officials and security forces, government-affiliated civilians, Puntland security forces, Africa Union Mission in Somalia peacekeepers, business owners refusing to pay extortion demands, and al-Shabaab.”
Al-Shabaab is the main Islamic militant group in Somalia where its nearly 10,000 members operate in the southern part of the country and is the usual target of U.S. airstrikes in support of Somalia’s government.
(NEW YORK) — Fifty years after they published “All the President’s Men,” Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein remain “joined at the hip.”
“We’re on the phone, usually a couple times a week to each other,” Bernstein said. “We keep up with the work that the other is doing. We talk about what’s going on here in Washington, about what’s going on in the White House.”
The two Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters sat down with ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl at the Watergate Hotel as they marked the 50th anniversary of their iconic book, which Time called “perhaps the most influential piece of journalism in history.”
Asked whether they predicted the impact “All the President’s Men” would have on the country, they both laughed. Writing the book was a “necessity,” Woodward said. “We’d written these stories that no one believed.”
“But more than that, we didn’t think the truth about Watergate was going to ever come out,” Bernstein added.
Their first approach was to lay out the facts of the Watergate scandal. But it soon became clear it should center on the two of them, they said.
“I said, ‘Well, the one rule of journalism, write about what you know best, and you know nothing better than what you’ve done, so let’s write about what we did,’” Woodward said.
Bernstein was skeptical. “[I thought] that it would be an undisguised ego trip and recognized as such, that we should just stick with the facts of Watergate,” he recalled. “But Woodward said, ‘Look, we don’t have anything to write about at this point but ourselves.’”
The two wrote the book in Woodward’s mother’s house in Naples, Florida.
“Carl sat out by the swimming pool in the most awful pair of green shorts you’ve ever seen,” Woodward joked. “I sat in the kitchen and we said to get this done, we’re going to have to each do 10 pages a day, and then we can go out to dinner. And so that’s what we did.”
While they had a rocky relationship at first, as they detail in the book, they quickly gained an appreciation for each other.
“Within a few days of working on this story together, each of us saw in the other remarkable things,” Bernstein shared. “We often switch, to this day half a century later, roles that are expected. What’s expected of me, he’ll do, what’s expected of him I’ll do.”
Added Woodward: “What it demonstrates is the power of collaboration. We learn in our personal lives you never do anything alone effectively. And it’s the same with journalism.”
Karl asked their view on why the book, and the Hollywood adaptation in 1976, became such an important work of journalism.
“The book itself is like a primer on basic reporting,” Bernstein responded. “You see what’s the most important decision we make as reporters? To go out at night and to visit people who work for Richard Nixon and his reelection in their homes, knock on their doors, have the doors you know, slammed in our faces, except for the few that didn’t.”
(CHINO, Calif.) — Two people who were aboard a World War II historical plane were killed Saturday when the aircraft crashed shortly after takeoff from Chino Airport in Southern California, firefighters said.
The private Lockheed L12 aircraft was off the runway approximately 200 yards away in a grass field, when firefighters arrived around 12:35 p.m., Bryan Turner, the battalion chief with Chino Valley Fire District, told ABC News.
The identities of the deceased passengers weren’t immediately revealed.
Turner said it’s too early to tell why the plane crashed, but there was fire involved.
The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board will be investigating the crash, both agencies said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
