(BAJA CALIFORNIA SUR, Mexico) — Two Americans were found dead in their luxury hotel room in Baja California Sur, Mexico, local police told ABC News.
Police and paramedics arrived at the Hotel Rancho Pescadero in El Pescadero around 9 p.m. Tuesday and found a man and a woman with no vital signs, police said.
The victims have been identified as John Heathco, 41, and Abby Lutz, 28, according to the Baja California Sur Attorney General’s office. Lutz is from Newport Beach, California, the AG’s office said. Local police initially said both victims were in their mid-30s.
Their cause of death was “intoxication by substance to be determined,” the AG’s office said in a statement Wednesday.
The man and woman had been dead for about 10 or 11 hours when they were found, the attorney general’s office said. There were no signs of violence on their bodies, according to the AG’s office.
“We can confirm the death of two U.S. citizens in Baja California Sur, Mexico on June 14. We offer our sincerest condolences to the families on their loss,” a U.S. State Department spokesperson said Thursday. “We are closely monitoring local authorities’ investigation into the cause of death. We stand ready to provide all appropriate consular assistance. Out of respect for the privacy of the families, we have nothing further to add at this time.”
Hotel Rancho Pescadero is a luxury hotel and a Hyatt property.
“We are truly heartbroken by this terrible tragedy,” Henar Gil, general manager of Rancho Pescadero, said in a statement. “Our hearts are with the impacted families and loved ones during this unimaginable loss. Local authorities are still actively investigating the situation, and the safety and security of our guests and colleagues remains a top priority, as always.”
Hyatt didn’t immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
ABC News’ Will Gretsky and Shannon Crawford contributed to this report.
(ATLANTA) — Patients with HIV in the United States saw an increase in rare, deadly meningococcal infections last year, new preliminary data shows.
Nearly 10% of all meningococcal disease cases in 2022 were among people with HIV, according to a report published Thursday afternoon by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This is much higher than the previous five years, from 2017 to 2021, during which patients with HIV made up between 1.5% and 4.3% of annual meningococcal disease cases in the U.S., the report said.
Meningococcal disease is a rare illness caused by the bacteria Neisseria meningitidis. The bacteria are spread by coming into contact with an infected person’s saliva or spit, such as through coughing or kissing. Sometimes the bacteria also spread through prolonged general contact with an infected person.
The illness can often turn severe and lead to meningitis, which is an infection of the lining of the brain and spinal cord.
Symptoms included headache, fever, stiff neck, nausea, vomiting and — if the disease gets into the bloodstream — a dark purple rash.
Between 10% and 15% of all people who fall ill end up dying of the disease even with antibiotic treatment, the CDC said.
Recently, an outbreak of the meningococcal disease in Florida primarily infected men who identify as gay, bisexual or men who have sex with men and resulted in at least 24 confirmed cases and seven deaths, according to the CDC.
The federal health agency recommends that people at risk for meningococcal disease — including patients with HIV — receive a two-dose series of the MenACWY vaccine, which protects against four types of the bacteria that lead to severe illness.
However, vaccination rates among patients with HIV are low. The report cited a recent study of data from January 2016 to March 2018 that found only 16.3% of those with HIV received one or more doses of the vaccine within two years of being diagnosed.
Of the cases among patients with HIV in 2022, 75% were not vaccinated with the MenACWY vaccine, 20% had unknown vaccination history and the remaining 5% had received a vaccine but the number of doses was unknown.
The CDC stressed the importance of primary care doctors and health care providers making sure any patients with HIV in their care are up to date on the meningococcal vaccine.
“MenACWY vaccine coverage among persons with HIV is low; given the recent increase in meningococcal disease cases in this population, health care providers should ensure that all persons with HIV are up to date with MenACWY vaccination,” the authors wrote. “Health care providers should also maintain a high index of suspicion for meningococcal disease among persons with HIV who have symptoms of meningococcal disease.”
(PHILADELPHIA) — The collapse of a section of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia left Glenn Messinger scrambling to find new routes for 40 trucks that deliver food each day from a warehouse located a block away from the wreckage.
“It’s a huge hassle,” said Messinger, the vice president of branch operations for Baldor Specialty Foods, which delivers items to restaurants across the East Coast. “You need to have a lot of patience.”
The branch’s truckers, who Messinger says make between $19 and $23 an hour, have been forced to take an alternative route that takes as much as 40 minutes longer than usual, hiking delivery costs, he said. He noted that the company has opted to leave prices unchanged.
“We’re just going to have suck it up,” Messinger told ABC News.
The truckers coordinated by Messinger are among 14,000 who drive along I-95 each day, making their delay one of the most pronounced economic effects of a highway collapse that has disrupted the transport of goods and the commute of employees, experts and business officials told ABC News.
“A lot of America’s GDP is moving along that road every single day,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said at a press conference in Philadelphia on Wednesday. “It’s not just an inconvenience — it’s a cost.”
Still, the economic damage will remain largely contained to the immediate region, since suppliers and travelers who do not need to stop in the city can avail themselves of alternative highway routes with minimal inconvenience, experts and business officials said.
The highway damage “adds to commute times and raises shipping costs, but too few people and businesses are impacted to matter,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told ABC News. “People and businesses will quickly adjust.”
The section of Interstate 95 collapsed on Sunday following a large vehicle fire, authorities told ABC News.
On Wednesday, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said the “most efficient” way to get I-95 reopened will be to backfill an underpass and then work to build a new permanent bridge.
Shapiro didn’t provide a timeline for when the repaving of the underpass will be completed but said workers will get it done “as quickly as possible.” He previously said it would take months to repair the highway.
The area near the collapse plays host to manufacturers, warehouses and other industrial suppliers that rely on I-95 as a conduit for taking goods to market, Rebecca Oyler, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Motor Truck Association, told ABC News.
The companies depend in part on items that arrive at the nearby Port of Philadelphia, where refrigerated containers make up more than half of the freight due to a heavy share of produce, she added. The delays will impose higher costs due to extra labor hours and fuel costs, she said.
“Most of these businesses are really struggling today to manage new supply issues that have popped up,” Oyler said. “They’re going to need to work up a solution until this is resolved.”
Oyler acknowledged, however, that the damaged highway would have little impact on deliveries without pickup or drop-off in the immediate region.
“Luckily there are several alternatives,” she said, citing nearby I-295 as well as the New Jersey Turnpike.
Zandi downplayed any economic impact from the highway collapse.
“I don’t think there will be any material economic fallout,” he said. “It’s a big nuisance for those that use that part of [I-95], but not an economic event.”
Galasso Trucking Services, which transports auto parts and food from the Port of Philadelphia, faces delivery delays as long as a half-hour, adding costs for labor and tolls, Lou Galasso, the company’s vice president, told ABC News.
For now, business is holding up, Galasso said.
“Mainly it’s an annoyance,” he added. “It’s a pain.”
ABC News’ Morgan Winsor and Amanda Maile contributed reporting.
In a lengthy interview in the German publication ZEITmagazin, embattled actor Kevin Spacey details his life after he became ensnared in the #MeToo movement and how he’s aiming for a career comeback.
The interview was published as Spacey faces sex assault charges in a U.K. court on Friday, June 16, less than a year after a New York City jury cleared him in a civil trial from another accuser, actor Anthony Rapp. Rapp claimed Spacey made sexual advances on him in 1986, when Rapp was 14.
Spacey pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of sexual assault in a London court in July 2022. The charges stem from men who said the two-time Oscar winner sexually assaulted them in England almost 20 years ago.
To the publication, Spacey reportedly said of the accusations, “The moment scrutiny is applied, these things fall apart. That’s what happened in the Rapp trial, and that’s what will happen in this case.”
The interviewer noted interactions the actor had with the public while she spent time with him were overwhelmingly positive. “I draw my resilience from encounters like that,” he comments.
Spacey intimates that’s also the case in private with filmmakers and producers to this day. “It’s a time in which a lot of people are very afraid that if they support me, they will be cancelled,” he says.
“But I know that there are people right now who are ready to hire me the moment I am cleared of these charges in London. The second that happens, they’re ready to move forward.”
Spacey claims in the downtime, he’s been working on himself and his craft, recently in a voiceover role in a low-budget thriller. “Just because I was being benched for a while, I’m not going to stop working,” he says. “I don’t want to get rusty. I’m ready.”
LOCASH‘s Preston Brust and wife Kristen have welcomed their third child, Lion Lockheart Brust.
The baby girl was born Friday, June 9, in Nashville and weighed in at 7 pounds, 3 ounces, and measured 20 inches long. She’s now the youngest sibling to 4-year-old Legend Wilde and 7-year-old Love Lily.
“She’s our little tiebreaker!! The girls outnumber the boys in this party of five,” Preston and Kristen told People recently. “Love’s dreams, wishes and prayers for a little sister all came true! She is magic.”
Check out a photo montage of the newly expanded Brust family, including photos of Lion, on LOCASH’s Instagram.
With the soundtrack for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse out of the way, Metro Boomin is focused on his joint project with Future, which he says will be the “ultimate album.”
“Now that Spider-Man is out and people are loving and resonating with it, my focus can go to what me and Pluto got coming out,” the producer said when speaking to Complex. “I’m not doing anything until that gets done.”
“It’s tunnel vision on that one because I was spreading myself thin between Heroes & Villains, Spider-Man, Coachella, and still shooting videos for Heroes,” he continued. “But now the focus is on this album and we’ve been working.”
Metro first announced his joint album with Future in December and has been teasing the project since. With hits including “Mask Off,” “Honest,” “Wicked,” “Where Ya At” and the Drake-assisted “Jumpman” under their belt, the producer’s aware of “how important this album from both of us is going to be.”
“With our track record, it’s important that we deliver and not miss at all,” he said. “Me and him working together is easy ’cause we’ve been doing it for 10-plus years.”
“He’s one of the best artists to work with like that,” Metro added. “I feel like that’s why we get the results that we do because we don’t come in with any ego. He’s completely there asking you what he should do and what you like. With some other people, sometimes you have to eat whatever s*** they give you that day. But with Pluto, he’s on the same s*** I’m on, and I tell him, let’s make the hardest s*** we can make, and he’s all in.”
As previously reported, Queen’s Brian May is revisiting his 1983 all-star collaboration, Brian May + Friends: Star Fleet Project with a new box set. The project featured Eddie Van Halen, Alan Gratzer, Phil Chen and Fred Mandel, and now May’s sharing some insight into how the project came to be in the first place.
In a new mini documentary, May explains that in 1983, after years of recording and touring, the members of Queen had become “slightly, I think, irritated with each other,” noting, “We decided we needed a break.”
“What I remember most vividly was, waking up in LA, one of my favorite places, thinking, ‘I could do anything today. Sun is shining, I got some friends here. Why don’t I make some phone calls?’” he says. “That’s what happened. I got on the phone with Ed Van Halen.”
May got Van Halen to come to the studio, along with all the others, and soon had an idea for what he wanted to record.
“The biggest idea was I wanted to bring this TV series thing into kind of a rock domain as I saw it. I wanted to experiment with it,” he explains, referring to “Star Fleet,” a tune from a Japanese kid’s science fiction series, noting he “wanted to explore making the song into some sort of rock anthem.”
He adds of the group’s time in the studio, “It was just charged with electricity, excitement and anticipation,” adding, “it was a great feeling just to go in there and have this completely new interaction with people, all of whom I really respected.”
Brian May + Friends: Star Fleet Project will be released July 14 and is available for preorder now.
(NEW YORK) — Poor air quality stemming from the wildfires in Canada is continuing to affect large swaths of the U.S.
The National Weather Service has issued air quality alerts in five Midwestern states on Thursday as hundreds of wildfires continue to burn in several regions throughout Canada.
Minnesota and Wisconsin were under air quality alerts on Thursday, as well as parts of Kansas, Missouri and Illinois.
Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, experienced the cities’ worst air quality on record since 1980 with a “Code Purple” on the Air Quality Index. The AQI was 234 in Minnesota and 271 in St. Paul, meaning “very unhealthy” for all populations.
Photos taken from the Twin Cities on Wednesday and Thursday show a skyline nearly obscured by a thick haze of smoke.
That smoke is expected to spread toward Detroit and Indianapolis on Friday.
That particular intense plume of smoke is currently not expected to spread into the Northeast. However, there is potential for another round of intense wildfire smoke from Quebec and Ontario to return to the northeastern U.S. next week, depending on whether atmospheric conditions drag the smoke south.
Air quality concerns will likely continue in the U.S. through the summer due to Canada’s wildfires, which are forecast to persist for months.
Last week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the start of the country’s wildfire season as “unprecedented.” The warm and dry conditions will likely lead to “higher-than-normal fire activity across most of the country throughout the 2023 season,” according to fire season outlook issued by the Canadian government last week.
There are currently 451 active wildfires burning in Canada, with more than 5.4 million acres burned, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. Nearly 220 of the active fires have been deemed out of control, fire officials said.
For weeks, the smoke from wildfires in different regions in Canada has been making its way south to the U.S. In May, air quality alerts were issued in Montana, Idaho, Colorado and Arizona due to wildfires burning in Alberta.
A cold front that swept across northern Canada on May 15 carried very little precipitation and aggravated several large fires, Jeremy Wolf, climate program leader, for the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Spokane, Washington, said Thursday during the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’ monthly climate call.
As the winds behind that front shifted north on May 16, as all the fires became very active, the winds started to push the wildfire smoke south, especially east of the Rocky Mountains, Wolf said.
By May 31, smoke from wildfires burning on the other side of the country, in Nova Scotia, led to the first stretch of air quality alerts in the U.S. northeast.
Last week, major cities in the U.S. northeast were breaking records for deteriorating air quality due to wildfires burning in Quebec — with New York City reaching 484, nearing highest end of “hazardous” AQI ratings at 500.
The AQI in places like India and China are around 150 on any given day, according to IQAir, a website that publishes air quality data around the world.
Frank Rumpenhorst/picture alliance via Getty Images
(BERLIN)– An American tourist was killed and another was injured when they were attacked by an American man they met near the famous Neuschwanstein castle in southern Germany, authorities said Thursday.
The incident occurred Wednesday afternoon in the German state of Bavaria near the Marienbruecke, a pedestrian bridge popular for its stunning view of Neuschwanstein. Nestled on the edge of the Bavarian Alps, the 19th-century palace was the inspiration for the castle in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. Two women, ages 21 and 22, met a 30-year-old man on a hiking trail east of the bridge who then lured them onto a path that led to a viewpoint, according to a statement from the Bavarian State Police.
The man then “physically attacked” the younger woman, police said. When the other woman tried to intervene, the man choked her and pushed her down a steep slope. He then apparently attempted to sexually assault the 21-year-old before also pushing her down the slope. Both women fell nearly 50 meters (165 feet), according to police.
A mountain rescue service from the nearby town of Fuessen rescued both women. The 22-year-old was injured but responsive and taken to a hospital. The 21-year-old suffered serious injuries and was airlifted to a hospital, where she died overnight, police said.
The suspect had left the scene but was arrested close by soon after, according to police.
Although the names of the suspect and the victims have not yet been released, a Bavarian State Police spokesperson confirmed to ABC News that all three were American tourists.
The suspect appeared before a judge in the nearby town of Kempten on Thursday and was ordered to be held in jail pending a potential indictment. He is under investigation on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and sexual offense, according to police.
Police have called for any witnesses to come forward as they continue to investigate the alleged attack.
(NEW YORK) — Federal prosecutors in New York said they would drop several criminal charges, at least for now, against disgraced crypto executive Sam Bankman-Fried if the judge agrees to try him later on those charges.
The offer to sever five of the 13 charges followed a ruling earlier this week in the Bahamas that allows Bankman-Fried to challenge the additional charges.
A prosecutor said during a hearing Thursday it was uncertain when the Bahamas would decide whether to consent to the new charges, which included bank fraud and an allegation Bankman-Fried bribed the Chinese.
“Severing those counts seems to be appropriate given the developments in the Bahamas this week,” the prosecutor, Nathan Rehn, said.
Bankman-Fried, who has pleaded not guilty, is scheduled to stand trial in October. Rehn said prosecutors would not proceed with the new charges unless the government of the Bahamas consented.
Bankman-Fried was extradited from the Bahamas on eight criminal charges stemming from the collapse of FTX, the crypto-exchange he founded. He has argued the U.S. government breached its extradition treaty with the Bahamas by filing additional charges against him months later, including bank fraud and an allegation he paid a $40 million bribe to the Chinese government to unfreeze a trading account.
“We think dismissal of those counts would be the better outcome,” defense attorney Marc Cohen said.
The judge did not immediately rule.
“I’m not going to rule on this now,” Judge Lewis Kaplan said. “I’m going to give it a little more thought.”
The defense asked the judge to dismiss an original charge that accused Bankman-Fried of violating campaign finance laws, arguing that count also violated the extradition treaty. The charge said Bankman-Fried improperly donated tens of millions of dollars to mainly Democratic and some Republican candidates.
Prosecutors said Bankman-Fried lacked standing to make the argument because the decision to move forward with the charge involved diplomatic policy.
“It’s a matter of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Bahamas,” Rehn said. “It was an understanding of all the parties involved that this was part of the extradition.”
Bankman-Fried is broadly accused of misappropriating billions of dollars in customer and investor money from FTX in what prosecutors have described as one of the biggest financial frauds ever. He has been free on bail, confined to his parents’ home in Palo Alto and restricted in his use of the internet.
