(NEW YORK) — There were more than 300 severe storm reports in the United States on Monday, mostly along the East Coast from New Hampshire to South Carolina, as threatening weather and dangerous heat plagues the nation.
Gusty winds of 60 to 66 miles per hour were reported from New York to North Carolina, with golf ball-sized hail damaging cars in the latter.
Some areas in New Jersey received close to half a foot of rain, which flooded roadways. There were even tornado warnings in the Garden State but, as of Tuesday morning, no actual twisters reported.
More thunderstorms are in the forecast for Tuesday, with lightning, flooding rain and gusty winds expected from North Carolina all the way up to New England. The areas along Interstate 95 will begin seeing storms develop after 3 p.m. ET that will last into the night.
The National Weather Service has issued a flood watch from Delaware to Maine, where local rainfall amounts of 4 inches are possible.
Another severe weather system moving eastward across the country will hit the central Plains and parts of the South on Tuesday, from South Dakota to Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Damaging winds and huge hail will likely be the biggest threat there, though a few tornadoes can’t be ruled out. Monday’s storms spawned seven reported tornadoes in Wyoming and Nebraska.
Meanwhile, a heat wave continues in the South and is expected to expand over the coming days, moving into southern parts of the Midwest and the Mid-South, including Memphis and Nashville in Tennessee as well as parts of southern Illinois and Indiana. The hottest days will be Tuesday through Thursday, with temperatures forecast to feel like nearly 120 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas across the southern half of the country.
As of Tuesday morning, 13 states were under a heat alert from Arizona up to southern Illinois and down to northern Florida. Major cities such as Houston, Austin, New Orleans and even Orlando could see record high temperatures on Tuesday.
A record high of 111 degrees Fahrenheit was reported in Del Rio, Texas, on Monday for the ninth consecutive day. Another record high of 112 degrees Fahrenheit was reported in San Angelo, Texas.
The extreme heat will continue into the weekend for parts of Texas and the Deep South.
Deadline reports Book Club: The Next Chapter will make its debut on Peacock June 30, the streamer announced on Monday. Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen star in the sequel to the 2018 film, which takes the four best friends to Italy on a girls trip that turns into a cross country adventure. Andy Garcia, Don Johnson and Craig T. Nelson also star…
The first season of HBO’s drama The Idol, originally believed to consist of six episodes, will conclude with its fifth installment, airing Saturday, July 2, according to Deadline. The series stars Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye as cult leader Tedros, who worms his way into the life of troubled pop star Jocelyn, played by Lily-Rose Depp. Troye Sivan also stars along with Dan Levy, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Eli Roth, Hari Nef, Jane Adams, Jennie Ruby Jane, Mike Dean, Moses Sumney, Rachel Sennott, Suzanna Son and Hank Azaria. The series has yet to be renewed for a second season…
Lew Palter, the veteran character actor best known for playing department store magnate Isidor Straus in Titanic, died May 21 of lung cancer at his home in Los Angeles, his daughter, Catherine Palter, told The Hollywood Reporter. He was 94. Palter also played one of the Supreme Court justices in 1981’s First Monday in October and appeared on the small screen in The Flying Nun, Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law. Palter also served as an acting teacher and director at the Santa Clarita school and later conducted private workshops. His many students included Ed Harris, Don Cheadle and Cecily Strong, the last of whom he encouraged to try out for the improv group The Groundlings, leading to her breakout gig on Saturday Night Live…
(NEW YORK) — For Emma Goidel and Ilana Caplan, building a family using assisted reproductive technology was never going to be easy, but the couple says they never imagined the financial costs they’d face simply because of who they are.
“We looked really closely at our insurance and we saw, oh my God, Aetna covers fertility procedures. But then when we read the fine print, we saw – wait a minute, this coverage is only for people having heterosexual sex,” said Goidel, who lives in New York City.
As a growing number of same-sex couples turn to intrauterine insemination (IUI) and in vitro fertilization (IVF) to have children, many say they’re encountering entrenched inequality in how benefits are provided by health insurers and employers.
While insurance companies in more than a dozen states offer no-cost fertility treatments for straight couples who struggle to get pregnant, they often refuse to cover those same services for lesbian or gay couples until they’ve paid out of pocket for up to a year.
Goidel and Caplan spent nearly $50,000 of savings to have their son Avi, who is a year old. None of the expenses for IUI or IVF were reimbursed by the insurer, Aetna, they say.
“How is it OK to say if you’re straight and your partner can’t get you pregnant, you come into the doctor and we’ll cover your treatment, but if you’re a queer and your partner can’t get you pregnant, too bad you’re going to pay?” said Goidel.
One-in-three American adults say they’ve used fertility treatments, like IUI or IVF, to grow their families or know someone who has, according to Pew Research Center, and many have spent thousands of dollars out of pocket in the process.
In places where fertility benefits are offered or required, LGBTQ people can be disadvantaged.
“Only 14 states provide coverage on private insurance plans for fertility health care, [but] only three states have fertility insurance laws that inclusively cover LGBTQ people,” said Polly Crozier, director of family advocacy, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD).
“When there’s not access to fertility health care in your state, it particularly hits LGBTQ people hard, and then even in the states that do have access to fertility health care, LGBTQ people there face different standards. There are different rules for those families. It’s just not equal,” Crozier said.
Advocates say the fight for “fertility equality” is emerging as a key legal battleground. More than 100,000 same-sex couples are raising children in this country, according to government data, and increasing numbers are looking to grow their families, advocates say.
“We’ve always wanted to have kids. We knew when we got married that we wanted to have a family,” said Goidel, 33, who wed Caplan, 33, in 2017.
After having their first child through self-funded intrauterine insemination using donor sperm, in 2020 the couple consulted with their newly acquired Aetna health plan about fertility coverage for a second pregnancy.
The plan stipulated a diagnosis of infertility in order to qualify, they said. For Goidel and Caplan, that meant having to first attempt at least 12 months of IUI treatment — paid out of pocket — before any insurance coverage would kick in.
They got pregnant using IUI after five prior attempts, one of which resulted in a miscarriage, and one cycle of IVF, which also resulted in a miscarriage.
“My partner can’t get me pregnant. Whether that’s because she doesn’t have the gametes or something’s going on internally with me. No one makes that distinction when you’re a straight couple,” Goidel said.
Goidel brought a federal class-action lawsuit against Aetna in 2021, accusing the insurance company of sex discrimination for denying equal access to fertility treatment.
In court documents, the company denies the claims, saying Goidel did not meet requirements for fertility coverage under her health plan.
“Aetna is committed to equal access to reproductive health coverage for all members,” the company told ABC News in a statement on the Goidel case. “We offer infertility coverage for our plan sponsors, which aligns with our publicly available guidelines, individual benefit plans, and regulations. We have a history of strong support for the LGBTQ+ community, which we continue to build on. We continually evolve our benefit coverage guidelines based on evidence-based clinical information and member safety as a top priority.”
The case is currently pending in federal district court.
For gay men who want their own kids through surrogacy, it can be even more complicated and costly.
Corey Briskin, 34, and Nicholas Maggipinto, 37, of Brooklyn, New York, say neither their health insurance nor Briskin’s employer, the City of New York, would cover any costs of fertility treatment needed to get a surrogate pregnant.
“There’s just no way that that’s not some form of discrimination,” Maggipinto said in an interview.
Both men are attorneys.
“The No. 1 hurdle that every same-sex couple faces is that they can never meet the definition of infertility, which is the threshold qualifier for covered IVF,” he said.
Briskin and Maggipinto filed a class-action discrimination complaint in April 2022 with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), seeking a nationwide order that employers must extend fertility benefits to LGBTQ employees.
The City of New York provides IVF benefits for heterosexual employees who have faced difficulty getting pregnant and are deemed infertile but does not cover LGBTQ employees because they cannot meet the infertility criteria.
The City, which declined an interview with ABC, argues the charge should be dismissed, telling the EEOC in a legal filing that “practically all” employer-provided health insurance nationwide does not cover IVF for surrogate pregnancies, “consistent with the law” and is “not discriminatory.”
The complaint remains pending at EEOC.
“I think there’s a fair argument that that’s sex discrimination, sexual orientation discrimination, and frankly, just bad business,” Crozier said.
A small growing number of companies are providing benefits for family building outside of insurance plans, some chipping in for IVF and others offering to help cover the cost of adoption.
Both couples — Briskin and Maggipinto, and Goidel and Caplan — said they respect adoption as an option for same-sex couples to build families but not one that should be imposed on them.
“There’s nothing wrong with adoption, and for many people, that is a really wonderful option and maybe even their preference,” said Briskin. “But at the same token, no one should tell us that we should build our family that way.”
As the legal cases play out, both families hope change is on the horizon.
“We are hopeful that whatever becomes of this, there will be a change for the better for people who are similarly situated to us,” Briskin said.
(NEW YORK) — Drugs used for diabetes and weight loss like Ozempic and Wegovy were found to be effective for weight loss when taken as a pill, according to research published over the weekend.
Rybelsus is the pill version of semaglutide — the active ingredient that helps patients lose weight — and is already approved for those with Type 2 diabetes.
A new study published in The Lancet highlighted that a higher dose of the pill also worked for weight loss in those without diabetes. Researchers looked at nearly 700 patients with overweight or obesity for over a year and found that the drug lowered body weight by an average of 15%.
Nearly 70% of those who took the pill achieved a 10% reduction in body weight. Additionally, over three times the number of people taking the drug achieved a 5% reduction, a generally accepted baseline for clinically meaningful weight loss.
Ozempic and Wegovy are typically injected once a week. Researchers noted that a once-daily pill would increase the options for those struggling with obesity.
Although studies were not designed to directly compare, the injectable form of the drug appears more effective than the pills. Both versions of the drug have similar safety profiles but come with a relatively high proportion of patients reporting side effects like nausea and constipation.
“This is not just for cosmetic or vanity’s sake. This is to change health risks and outcomes,” Dr. Jennifer Ashton, ABC News chief medical correspondent and a board-certified obesity medicine specialist, said on Good Morning America.
Those with obesity may struggle to manage long-term weight loss with changes in diet and exercise alone. While doctors can prescribe the pills off-label, additional research may help open doors to getting semaglutide pills used more widely for weight loss, rather than just for those with diabetes.
The results come on the heels of new research estimating that the number of people living with diabetes will double by 2050, exceeding 1.3 billion worldwide.
Around half of this increase may be attributable to obesity fueled by the widespread availability of ultra-processed and relatively cheap food options.
“Remember, when you talk about the bad news of these increasing Type 2 diabetes rates, the good news is that Type 2 diabetes is largely reversible and preventable, but that does not mean it’s easy to do that,” Ashton said.
Those who are overweight or obese are often at a higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Over 70% of American adults are considered to be overweight or obese, and more than 37 million people in the U.S. have diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
(MIAMI) — The longtime aide to former President Donald Trump who was federally charged alongside him earlier this month is set to be arraigned Tuesday morning in Miami as part of the classified documents case brought by special counsel Jack Smith.
Walt Nauta, who first worked with Trump in the White House, is charged with six counts as part of the criminal case involving Trump’s handling of classified documents.
The charges include conspiracy to obstruct justice and making false statements.
Nauta, 40, appeared in court in Miami with Trump earlier this month, but was not arraigned because he did not have local counsel. The pair sat with each other at the defendants’ table for the duration of that hearing, separated by Trump’s attorney.
Trump, who was indicted on 37 felony counts, pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Nauta is not expected to appear in court on Tuesday.
Prosecutors allege that Nauta moved boxes containing classified documents around Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate at Trump’s direction, in an effort to prevent the documents from being turned over to authorities.
In one instance, prosecutors allege that boxes were moved out of a storage room at the Palm Beach estate before Trump’s attorney searched the room for documents to hand over to investigators in compliance with a grand jury subpoena seeking their return.
According to the indictment, Nauta was seen on surveillance footage moving boxes.
Prosecutors also accuse Nauta of lying to investigators when questioned about his knowledge of the boxes’ whereabouts.
Nauta, a Guam native who enlisted in the Navy in 2001, worked in the Trump White House, where in 2021 he was promoted to the rank of Senior Chief Culinary Specialist, according to Navy records. Trump, according to investigators, subsequently promoted Nauta to be his valet, otherwise known as a “body man.”
After Trump left the White House and moved to Florida, Nauta left the Navy and continued to work for the former president. In August 2021, Nauta became Trump’s executive assistant, serving as his personal aide, a role in which he “reported to Trump, worked closely with Trump and traveled with Trump,” according to the federal indictment.
(COLUMBUS, Mont.) — Parts of a freight train carrying hazardous materials remain in the Yellowstone River in southern Montana after a bridge collapsed over the weekend.
Nine mangled cars — six that contained hot asphalt, three holding molten sulfur and one with scrap metal — were still in the rushing water on Monday evening as cleanup work continued, according to Columbus Fire Chief Rich Cowger.
“Some divers were brought in to see about how we would attach to those cars,” Cowger said during a press conference. “While those assessments were being done, it was noticed that there is still some products of asphalt that’s leaking out of those cars that are damaged.”
The incident occurred early Saturday near the town of Columbus, about 40 miles west of Billings, in a rural area of the Yellowstone River Valley. The train was traveling over a bridge when it collapsed and 16 cars derailed, sending 10 of them into the river below, some 110 miles downstream from Yellowstone National Park. No injuries were reported.
It remains unclear whether the derailment caused the bridge to collapse or if the collapse precipitated the derailment.
“We honestly have no idea what happened first, whether it was the bridge or the derailment,” Cowger told reporters on Monday evening. “There was an eastbound train across that bridge an hour before and things were fine with the bridge then. So there’s an investigation to figure what that looks like and what exactly happened. That’ll take some time as cars are pulled out of the river.”
The train’s operator, Montana Rail Link, is developing a cleanup plan and will be responsible for all related costs. Both asphalt and sulfur “harden and solidify quickly when interacting with water and modeling suggests that significant downstream movement of material is unlikely,” according to a statement from Montana Rail Link spokesperson Andy Garland.
Two cars containing sodium hydrosulfide were successfully offloaded and removed on Sunday via a 120-ton crane, according to Cowger. There has been no release involving this material, according to Montana Rail Link.
“We’ve made some good progress today with some cleanup,” Joe Racicot, president of Montana Rail Link, said during the press conference on Monday evening.
Test results from water samples taken on Saturday indicated the materials from the derailment had not affected water quality, according to Shasta Steinweden, complaint coordinator for the Montana Department of Environmental Quality’s Enforcement Program. She said the tests showed no presence of petroleum, while the sulfur levels detected were consistent with upstream water samples.
“We are awaiting results from Sunday’s and Monday’s samples,” Steinweden told reporters on Monday evening. “We will continue to evaluate our sampling plans and locations and expanding those based on the evolving nature of this incident.”
Based on the results so far, Steinweden said officials “don’t foresee any long-term damages” to water quality, though testing will continue for “as long as needed.”
“What we are going to be assessing and looking at as far as long-term cleanup will be asphalt that is on the banks of the river and looking to remove all of that,” she added.
When asked how much substance is being leaked on an hourly or daily basis, Steinweden told reporters: “We can’t determine that at this time. However, when the tank cars are removed, we will do an assessment on what is left product-wise in those cars and from that information, we will be able to tell more accurately what our release estimate is.”
And regarding the possible damages to fish and wildlife in the affected area, Steinweden said: “We don’t know, which is why we’re calling in the experts to sort of make those determinations.”
“What we are concerned about is, you know, the fish and wildlife potentially coming into contact with the product,” she added.
The Colombus fire chief noted that there “isn’t a sheen on the water or anything like that,” since the product is “somewhat solidifying together as it comes out.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has invited both federal and state fish and wildlife agencies to come to the site in Montana’s Stillwater County and assess how the derailment has impacted wildlife, according to Joni Sandoval, the EPA on-scene coordinator. A portion of the Yellowstone River remains closed, she said.
(NEW YORK) — Ralph Yarl, the teenager who was shot after mistakenly going to the wrong house to pick up his siblings, opened up about the harrowing experience for the first time in an exclusive interview with ABC News’ Good Morning America co-anchor Robin Roberts that is set to air on Tuesday morning.
Yarl told Roberts that his mother asked him to pick up his twin brothers from a friend’s house, but he had never been there before and accidentally arrived at the wrong address. According to Yarl, he pulled his car into the driveway and walked up the steps and rang the doorbell and then waited for “a long time” until an older man with a gun opened the door. They were separated by another glass door, Yarl recalled.
“He points [the gun] at me … so I kinda, like, brace and I turn my head,” Yarl told Roberts. “Then it happened. And then I’m on the ground … and then I fall on the glass. The shattered glass. And then before I know it I’m running away shouting, ‘Help me, help me.'”
Yarl was shot in the head and in the right arm on the evening of April 13 by Andrew Lester — a homeowner in Kansas City, Missouri, according to police. The teenager, who celebrated his 17th birthday last month, suffered a traumatic brain injury, his family previously told ABC News.
Lester, 84, was charged with one count of felony assault in the first degree and one count of armed criminal action, also a felony, Clay County prosecuting attorney Zachary Thompson said during a press conference on April 17.
Lester pleaded not guilty and was released on April 18 on a $200,000 bond. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for Aug. 31 after a judge agreed to partially seal the evidence in the case in response to a protective order filed by Lester’s attorney, Steven Salmon.
“In this case, the court entered an order prohibiting the dissemination of information from the discovery by both the prosecution and defense,” Salmon told ABC News in a statement on Monday. “As a party to the criminal case, any statement from Mr. Lester would certainly violate that order. I can say Mr. Lester is looking forward to the upcoming preliminary hearing.”
Yarl told Roberts that after he was shot, he was bleeding from his head and was surprised that he was as “alert” as he was. He said that his “instincts took over” and he went looking for help, but according to Yarl, he had to approach multiple homes after the first house he approached declined to help him and locked the door.
“So then I go to the next house across the street. No one answers. And the house to the right of that house, I go there and someone opens the door and tells me to wait for the police,” he said.
Yarl’s mother, Cleo Nagbe, told Roberts that after her son didn’t return from picking up his siblings, she was worried and drove around looking for him.
Shortly after, she said she received a phone call from police, telling her that Ralph was shot so she headed straight to the hospital.
“It was traumatic,” she said.
According to a probable cause statement obtained by ABC News, Lester told police that he “believed someone was attempting to break into the house” and grabbed a gun before going to the door because he was scared.
Lester, who is white, claimed that he saw a “Black male approximately 6 feet tall” pulling on the door handle and “shot twice within a few seconds of opening the door.” He said that the Black male ran away and he immediately called 911.
Police spoke with Yarl on April 14 while he was recovering at Children’s Mercy Hospital. According to the probable cause statement, he told police that he rang the doorbell and said that he didn’t pull on the door knob.
Yarl’s aunt, Faith Spoonmore, told ABC News last month that after the shooting her nephew didn’t want to go back home because he was shot in the neighborhood where he also lived.
But since then, Yarl and his family have relocated. He said that he is seeing a therapist and hoping to continue his recovery by focusing on his passions for chemical engineering and for music.
“I’m just a kid and not larger than life because this happened to me,” he said. “I’m just gonna keep doing all the stuff that makes me happy. And just living my life the best I can, and not let this bother me.”
Yarl, who played the bass clarinet during his interview on GMA, also plays the saxophone, the tenor saxophone, the clarinet and the contrabass clarinet. He told Roberts that music helped him cope during his recovery.
“Classical music kinda resonates with me,” he said. “Just the feeling that it creates and the fact that you can make it yourself … it kinda invigorates me.”
Nagbe said that her son’s recovery has been a “blessing” and the family is “overwhelmingly grateful” for the outpouring of love and support that they have gotten since the shooting — from people donating to the fund, to those writing letters of support for Ralph.
“Every day I sit and I read a letter and I cry,” she said.
Nagbe told Roberts that Ralph and his family have been writing thank you notes to the people who sent him letters.
“I just feel that if they took the time to send Ralph a letter, I owe them the time to write them a thank you note,” she said.
Asked what justice looks like for him, Yarl said, “Justice is just the rule of the law, regardless of race, ethnicity, and age.”
“[Lester] should be convicted for the crimes that he made,” he added. “I am past having any personal hatred for him.”
(NEW YORK) — Nine years before he was accused of killing four college students in Idaho, Bryan Kohberger was arrested in his native Pennsylvania and charged with misdemeanor theft for allegedly stealing his sister’s iPhone, according to records reviewed by ABC News.
It was Kohberger’s father, Michael, who reported the incident to police, according to the court records.
According to the records, Michael Kohberger told law enforcement Bryan had warned him “not to do anything stupid” after learning his son had taken the phone, adding that his son had struggled with drug addiction.
Bryan Kohberger’s earlier run-in with the law, as described in these records, is only now coming to light, as he prepares to defend himself against charges he killed four University of Idaho students last fall.
According to the records, Bryan Kohberger was 19 years old when he was arrested for the alleged theft in 2014. He served no jail time, according to officials. There is now no public record of that arrest or the outcome of the case.
Monroe County, Pennsylvania, offers first-time offenders the opportunity to enter into a pretrial program called “Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition,” which allows for charges to be dropped and the record to be “expunged” once the accused successfully completes probation.
Martin Souto Diaz, an attorney representing the Kohberger family, declined to comment on the record describing the earlier arrest. The district attorney’s office in Monroe County also had no comment.
In a court filing Monday, Idaho prosecutors announced they intend to seek the death penalty against Bryan Kohberger for the alleged murders.
It remains to be seen whether the alleged incident in 2014, and his previous alleged history with substance abuse, will have any bearing — or offer any clues — in relation to what happened in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022, when four college students — Ethan Chapin, 20; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21 — were stabbed to death at an off-campus home on King Road in Moscow, Idaho.
A source briefed on the case told ABC News the alleged 2014 incident is now a subject of inquiry for prosecutors in Idaho, as they prepare for an impending capital trial that could start as early as October.
“You want to get all the puzzle pieces figured out, even as you keep finding new pieces,” said ABC News law enforcement contributor Richard Frankel, a retired senior FBI official and former prosecutor in the New York City suburb of Suffolk County.
“You’re working to figure out how they all fit together,” Frankel said, speaking generally on investigative procedure for building a case.
“One, that’s a big jump to go from [an alleged] non-violent theft — and from a family member — to being charged with multiple homicides. And two, eight years is a long time for nothing to happen,” Frankel said. “So, I would want to know, both as a prosecutor and as the investigator, what he did in those years in between?”
ABC News contributor Robert Boyce, the retired chief of detectives for the New York City Police Department, said, “What you look for now, is, was this a foundational moment, and was this a precursor for things to come.”
A trial in the quadruple homicide has been set for Oct. 2, though that could be delayed.
Bryan Kohberger is due to appear at the Latah County Courthouse Tuesday afternoon, for another in an ongoing series of pretrial hearings connected to the murder case. He is being held without bail at the Latah County Jail.
Bryan Kohberger’s team is pushing for a pause in his case while the defense and prosecution argue over the scope of which grand jury materials can or should be released. His lawyers are looking to determine whether there are grounds to dismiss his indictment based on the way the grand jury was selected, according to court documents.
The defense is asking Idaho prosecutors to disclose more information about their investigation, including more detail on their forensic DNA analyses, and information obtained from cellphone records, according to court filings.
The hearing Tuesday is also expected to focus on Bryan Kohberger’s request for more time to decide whether to offer an alibi at trial, as his attorneys say they are trying to navigate the “voluminous” and “still ongoing” discovery process, according to recent court filings. Prosecutors said they wouldn’t object to a “reasonable extension” to decide, so long as any potential alibi is offered within the next month.
Back in Pennsylvania, on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2014, Bryan Kohberger had “recently exited a rehab center and rejoined the family,” his father told police, according to the records reviewed by ABC News. Home from rehab, Bryan took his sister Melissa’s iPhone, which had an estimated value of $400, Michael Kohberger told police, according to the records.
Authorities said, according to the records, Bryan Kohberger paid a friend $20 to pick him up and take him to a local mall, where he sold the phone for $200 at an automated kiosk for used electronics.
The records say Bryan Kohberger was charged with misdemeanor theft and offer no further explanation about what happened from there.
“With any case, we’d always do a timeline. And on this case, I would want to do the timeline not just of the actual [alleged homicide] incident, minute by minute — but also I would want to do a behavioral timeline from his teens into his adulthood, because I want to know who this guy is,” Frankel said.
“It all goes to the assessment of his character — it may also help me when I interview other people about him, because I may know what the right questions are to ask going in,” Frankel added.
Bryan Kohberger, now 28, was indicted in Idaho last month and charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary.
At his Idaho arraignment in late May, Bryan Kohberger declined to offer a plea, so the judge entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.
Authorities allege that in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022, Bryan Kohberger, a criminology Ph.D. student at Washington State University, broke into an off-campus home and stabbed to death the four students from the nearby University of Idaho.
After a more than six-week hunt, according to police documents, police zeroed in on Bryan Kohberger as a suspect, tracking his white Hyundai Elantra, cellphone signal data, and recovering what authorities say was his DNA on a knife sheath found next to one of the victims’ bodies.
That DNA evidence taken from the knife sheath at the crime scene “showed a statistical match” with a cheek swab taken directly from Bryan Kohberger after his arrest, authorities said in a recent filing.
Bryan Kohberger’s attorneys pushed back on that analysis in several recent court filings, casting doubt on whether that DNA evidence irrefutably implicates their client, saying the “statistical probability is not an absolute,” and pointing to what they called a “total lack of DNA evidence” from the victims in Kohberger’s home or car.
He was arrested on Dec. 30, 2022, at his family’s home in Pennsylvania, after driving cross-country to spend the holidays in Albrightsville.
Some of Bryan Kohberger’s childhood acquaintances have recalled to ABC News that the “quiet” but “funny” person they knew began to alienate some of his friends in high school, as his drug habit developed.
Casey Arntz, who went to high school with Kohberger, told ABC News he would ask her for rides that she later found out were to buy drugs.
“Bryan used me to, you know, drive him around and get heroin,” Arntz said. “A lot of people are like, well, why were you still friends with him after that? And I’m like, because you gotta forgive him. I mean, you can’t fault him for being so sucked down this hole. And I did, I did forgive him.”
(SARASOTA, Fla.) — Five people caught malaria locally in the U.S. for the first time since 2003, according to health officials.
Four people in Sarasota County, Florida, and one person in Cameron County, Texas, reported cases of the mosquito-borne illness, state officials said. Cameron County is the southernmost county in Texas, about 1,300 miles away from Sarasota, Florida.
All four Florida patients “have been treated and have recovered,” according to a statewide mosquito-borne illness advisory from the Florida Department of Health released Monday. Residents have been advised to “take precautions by applying bug spray, avoiding areas with high mosquito populations, and wearing long pants and shirts when possible — especially during sunrise and sunset when mosquitos are most active,” the health department said.
The last locally acquired Texas cases occurred in 1994 and 2003 in Palm Beach, Florida, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The illness is caused when a person is bitten by a mosquito carrying malaria parasites, the CDC said. Malaria isn’t contagious and can’t be spread person-to-person.
Symptoms include fever, chills, muscle aches, nausea headache and anemia, and can sometimes be fatal if not treated, according to the CDC.
Malaria used to be common in the U.S., but a 1947 campaign by southeastern states to spray insecticides and drain breeding grounds eliminated transmission, according to the CDC.
There are around 2,000 malaria cases a year, the CDC said, but they’re most often diagnosed in people who caught the disease while abroad.
The risk to most people of locally acquired malaria is currently extremely low, the CDC said in a statement regarding one of the Florida cases.
Climate change could reverse progress made in fighting the illness, with warmer temperatures possibly expanding the range for mosquitoes that carry diseases like malaria, research published in the Lancet Planetary Health indicates.
“The presence of competent mosquitoes and warmer temperatures in the Southeast will likely lead to additional cases in the coming months and years,” Dr. John Brownstein, an infectious disease epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital, told ABC News. “Future invasion of new mosquitoes, coupled with potential climate change effects, could significantly expand the malaria risk.”
“While the permanent return of malaria is still unlikely, these cases represent a broader warning of mosquito-borne diseases in the region,” he said.
People can protect against mosquito bites by draining standing water in gutters and flowerpots, wearing long sleeves and long pants, wearing insect repellent and using screens on windows, according to the CDC.
(WASHINGTON) — ABC News has obtained an audio recording of former President Donald Trump appearing to acknowledge he held onto a sensitive military document after leaving office — but can no longer declassify it because he is no longer president.
The contents of the recording, made during a July 21, 2021, meeting at Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, have been previously reported and are quoted in the Justice Department’s 37-count indictment related to Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving office — but the recording itself has never before been heard publicly.
ABC News was able to confirm the authenticity of the recording from another source who has heard it.
The meeting involved people who were helping Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, with his memoir, according to sources. Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has spoken to the meeting’s attendees, which included autobiographers for Meadows and at least two aides to Trump, sources tell ABC News.
On the recording, Trump is heard attacking Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley and referencing a document that Trump claimed Milley had compiled.
“Well, with Milley — uh, let me see that, I’ll show you an example,” Trump says on the recording. “He said that I wanted to attack Iran. Isn’t that amazing? I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look. This was him. They presented me this — this is off the record, but — they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him. We looked at some — this was him. This wasn’t done by me, this was him. All sorts of stuff — pages long, look.”
“Wait a minute, let’s see here. I just found, isn’t that amazing?” Trump says. “This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this. This was done by the military and given to me. As president I could have declassified, but now I can’t.”
Trump pled not guilty this month to 37 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information ranging from U.S. nuclear secrets to the nation’s defense capabilities. He has denied all charges and denounced the probe as a political witch hunt.
Prosecutors say that Trump’s acknowledgement on the recording that he could no longer declassify the document undercuts his argument that he had declassified all the documents in his possession before leaving the White House.
The audio recording was first published by CNN.
“The audio tape provides context proving, once again, that President Trump did nothing wrong at all. The president is speaking rhetorically and also quite humorously,” a Trump campaign spokesperson said regarding the recording.
“As we’ve been saying from the moment President Trump rode down the golden escalator, the president did nothing wrong,” Trump himself said in a statement.
In an interview with Fox News last week, Trump denied that the material in his possession at Bedminster was a classified document.
“It wasn’t a document, OK? I had lots of paper — I had copies of newspaper articles, I had copies of magazines,” Trump said during the Fox News interview. “There was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things. And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document.”
“I didn’t have a document, per se,” Trump said. “There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”
ABC News reported earlier this month that Trump’s attorneys had not located the material Trump was referencing in the recording.
