(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. government is concerned about COVID surges in China and a lack of transparency from the Chinese government, resulting in the U.S. considering imposing new restrictions on travelers coming to the U.S. from China, according to U.S. officials.
“There are mounting concerns in the international community on the ongoing COVID-19 surges in China and the lack of transparent data, including viral genomic sequence data, being reported from the PRC,” the officials, who requested anonymity, said in a written statement, using the acronym for China’s official name. “Without this data, it is becoming increasingly difficult for public health officials to ensure that they will be able to identify any potential new variants and take prompt measures to reduce the spread.”
The officials noted that public health officials in the U.S. have been talking with partners around the world about “their concerns about this and potential steps that can be taken to monitor the surge of COVID cases effectively and identify any potential variants of concern.”
Bloomberg was the first to report the news on Tuesday.
The World Health Organization, Japan, India and Malaysia have expressed concern as well, the officials noted. Japan recently announced it will require a negative COVID test upon arrival for travelers from China and Malaysia “has announced new tracking and surveillance measures,” the officials said.
“The U.S. is following the science and advice of public health experts, consulting with partners and considering taking similar steps we can take to protect the American people,” the officials said.
(WASHINGTON) — A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with a group of mostly Republican-led states and ordered the pandemic-era public health protocol known as Title 42 — which started in the early days of COVID-19 and allows the expulsion of migrants at the border — to remain in place pending a hearing before the justices.
The 5-4 decision reverses lower court decisions that Title 42 had to end in December and means that the policy will remain in effect until a final ruling.
The Supreme Court scheduled oral arguments on the appeal for February but said in a statement that “the stay itself does not prevent the federal government from taking any action with respect to that policy.”
In other words, in the court’s view, the Biden administration still has the power and prerogative to discontinue the policy on its own if it so chooses.
The court said it was preparing to examine a narrow, procedural question unrelated to the merits of Title 42 itself: whether the states challenging the policy may intervene to challenge the district court’s summary judgment order.
Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, John Roberts and Clarence Thomas, all members of the conservative wing, agreed to grant a hearing on the appeal.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan indicated that they would have denied the application from the states. Justice Neil Gorsuch — the lone Republican appointee not to vote to grant the request — and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also would have denied the application, writing in dissent that “we are a court of law, not policymakers of last resort.”
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan previously set a Dec. 21 deadline to terminate the fast-track expulsion order, finding it “arbitrary and capricious,” with minimal public health impact despite its purported purpose to slow the spread of COVID-19.
That date will now be pushed back for several months until the Supreme Court holds its hearing and issues its ruling.
Nineteen states intervened after Sullivan’s decision in November. They have contended that Title 42 ending would create a “crisis” of unauthorized migration that would unduly burden law enforcement, education and health care services.
Their appeal was denied in December and the states filed an emergency application with Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts on Dec. 19.
Roberts, who oversees the appellate circuit handling the case, initially granted a temporary stay later that day, allowing the court time to consider the application.
The justices have now agreed to hear the states’ appeal and issued a longer stay until after their decision on Title 42’s fate.
Migrant and civil rights advocates argue Title 42 illegally prevents people from making asylum claims while trying to enter the U.S.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a written statement that the Biden administration would “of course, comply with the order and prepare for the Court’s review.”
“The Supreme Court’s order today keeps the current Title 42 policy in place while the Court reviews the matter in 2023,” she said. “We will, of course, comply with the order and prepare for the Court’s review.”
Jean-Pierre called on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform.
“Today’s order gives Republicans in Congress plenty of time to move past political finger-pointing and join their Democratic colleagues in solving the challenge at our border by passing the comprehensive reform measures and delivering the additional funds for border security that President Biden has requested,” she said.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement, in part: “As required by today’s Supreme Court order, the Title 42 public health order will remain in effect and individuals who attempt to enter the United States unlawfully will continue to be expelled to Mexico or their home country. People should not listen to the lies of smugglers who take advantage of vulnerable migrants, putting lives at risk. The border is not open, and we will continue to fully enforce our immigration laws.”
In a statement, Lee Gelernt, the lead lawyer for the ACLU’s challenge to Title 42, said: “We are deeply disappointed for all the desperate asylum-seekers who will continue to suffer because of Title 42, but we will continue fighting to eventually end the policy.”
“Notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s ruling, nothing prevents the administration from revoking the Title 42 policy after notice and comment to the public,” Gelernt told ABC News.
“At the end of the day, this is not about whether temporarily Title 42 stays in effect or not,” ABC News contributor and former head of DHS intelligence John Cohen said. “It is about how — as a nation — we are going to address the crisis posed by the millions of displaced persons in Central and South America, who fled violence, persecution, COVID and economic crisis and who seek the protection and economic opportunities that come by their entering the U.S.”
“It is a crisis that will not be solved by political posturing, bus trips and calls to close the border,” Cohen added. “It will be solved through a cohesive and comprehensive plan that involves bringing together federal, state, local and private sector resources.”
ABC News’ Armando Garcia, Benjamin Gittleson and Luke Barr contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A dog that was stranded near a frozen waterfall in Utah on Christmas Eve was saved by search and rescue officials and reunited with her owner.
According to the Weber County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue, a local man was hiking near Waterfall Canyon on Saturday when he became separated from his dog Nala.
The unidentified hiker couldn’t find Nala by nightfall and resumed his search the morning of Christmas Day, the sheriff’s office wrote on its Facebook page.
The hiker’s family members contacted authorities around 1:00 p.m., local time, saying he wasn’t responding to their calls or text messages, officials said.
Nala’s owner answered one of the phone calls once he regained cellphone service and was able to let people know that Nala was around the waterfall, but couldn’t reach her because of the steepness and the icy condition of the terrain, according to Weber County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue.
The search and rescue team responded to the call and were able to save a skittish Nala after a little coaxing, officials said. ]
“Nala was cold with a few minor injuries, but was able to hike down with the rescuers,” officials wrote. “She is one tough puppy! Once reaching the trailhead parking lot, both human and canine couldn’t have been happier to be reunited.”
According to Waterfall Canyon it is a “moderately challenging,” 2.4-mile trail near Ogden, Utah, according to AllTrails. Ogden is around 38 miles north of Salt Lake City.
(NEW YORK) — In a nearly three-minute video statement Tuesday, Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said he is “truly sorry” for the airline’s failures over the holiday weekend, praising the airline’s employees, who he said “are showing up in every way,” as the airline grapples to catch up after canceling thousands of flights.
“I’m apologizing to them daily,” he said.
Airlines canceled thousands of flights in what became a Christmas nightmare for many passengers as winter storms and staffing issues wreaked havoc across the U.S.
Most major airlines canceled or delayed flights, but Southwest Airlines canceled at least 70% of its flights Monday — more than 2,600 — due to a reported system meltdown. The chaos continued Tuesday, with the airline canceling 62% of flights for the day and canceling 62% of flights on Wednesday.
Jordan attributed some of the issues to how Southwest constructs its flight paths.
“We build our flight schedule around communities, not hubs, so we are the largest airline in 23 of the top 25 travel markets in the U.S., cities where large numbers of scheduled flights simultaneously froze as record bitter cold brought challenges for all airlines,” he said.
Southwest is “significantly reduc[ing]” its number of flights over the next few days,” Jordan added, in the hope that things will “be back on track before next week.”
“We’re focused on safely getting all of the pieces back into position to end this rolling struggle,” he said.
Southwest is now doing a “reset” by moving some crews and planes around the country without passengers to get them into place and restart operations. Southwest have stopped selling tickets on flights coming up in the next few days. Passengers are being encouraged to buy flights on other airlines to get to their destinations before the new year.
President Joe Biden tweeted that his administration is “working to ensure airlines are held accountable” amid the changes. Biden urged those who have been affected by cancellations to visit the Department of Transportation website to see if they’re entitled to compensation.
On Christmas Day, 42% of Southwest’s flights were canceled and 48% were delayed, according to data from FlightAware. As of Monday night, data showed that nearly 4,000 flights had been canceled within, into or out of the U.S., while more than 7,700 had been delayed.
Jay McVay with Southwest Airlines said Monday night that “the sheer size of the storm” nationwide affected all major airports.
“It’s just the fact that this one started West swept east and impacted almost every single one of our largest airports that put us in a position where we struggled to recover, and we struggled to get our flight crews and airplanes where they needed to be,” McVay said from Houston’s William P. Hobby Airport.
Capt. Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, said in a statement earlier Monday that the ordeal has “been catastrophic.”
“It’s been a failure at every level at Southwest. Our pilots, our front-line employees have worked under enormous stress to try to get our passengers from A to B, but we were dealt a really bad hand as far as Southwest is concerned,” Murray said, in part, adding that their “processes,” information technology or infrastructure “just wasn’t there to support the operation.”
“And, unfortunately, our customers are bearing the brunt of it,” Murray added.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told ABC News Live Prime on Tuesday that Southwest must repair its relationship with passengers and crew.
“Cancellation rates across the system for all of the other airlines together are averaging about 5%. With Southwest, it’s more in the neighborhood of 60 or 70%,” Buttigieg said. “It’s a shocking and unacceptable level of disruption combined with passengers being unable to get anybody on the phone to help them, and the airline indicating that they’re actually not able to fully keep track of where their own flight crews are.”
Buttigieg said passengers are entitled to refunds when their flights are canceled and that additional accommodations — like covering the cost of food, ground transportation and hotels — should be provided in this specific scenario.
“As I made clear to the CEO, you shouldn’t have to request it. This should be something that they’re proactively offering,” he added.
Angry Southwest customers took to Twitter on Monday, sharing their frustrations over the delays, cancellations and long hold times to speak to customer service agents.
“With consecutive days of extreme winter weather across our network behind us, continuing challenges are impacting our customers and employees in a significant way that is unacceptable,” Southwest said in a statement posted online. “And our heartfelt apologies for this are just beginning.”
Southwest said it is working to “address the wide-scale disruption” by repositioning its crew and planes, which were all in the wrong spots.
The Department of Transportation issued a statement Monday night, saying it’s “concerned by Southwest’s unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays and reports of lack of prompt customer service. The Department will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan.”
ABC News spoke with three stranded travelers — one staying overnight at an airport in Boston until her new flight, one stranded in Chicago after his flight got canceled and one driving with a stranger to make it to his Disney Cruise in Tampa after flight issues.
Each traveler blamed delays on staffing rather than the weather.
ABC News reached out to American Airlines, JetBlue, Delta and United to learn about how staffing is impacting their current delays and cancellations.
“American’s operation, like the entire industry, was heavily impacted by Winter Storm Elliott. After a challenging day on Friday, Dec. 23, the American operation was largely recovered by Saturday evening and we have been operating normally since Christmas Day,” American Airlines said in a statement. “Our quick recovery was only made possible by the American team working diligently at our airports, on our aircraft and in our operations and reservation centers.”
“I wanted to fly home for Christmas,” Laetitia Duler, who was flying home to San Francisco from Boston for the holiday, told ABC News. “As soon as I entered the line, they were just like, ‘your flights canceled. Like, bye.'”
Eric Jernigan was trying to fly from Jackson, Mississippi, to Tampa, Florida, for a Disney cruise when his Delta flight was canceled because of a lack of crew, he told ABC News.
He and five others decided to drive to Florida after getting stuck at Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport.
The city of Buffalo, New York, initiated a travel ban as blizzard conditions moved into the area.
According to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and local officials, 29 people have died in the state following the aftermath of an enormous lake-effect snowstorm.
Buffalo Niagara International Airport announced Monday that it will be closed until Wednesday as its crews work “around the clock” to get the airport back up and running.
ABC News’ Cherise Rudy contributed to this report.
Kevin Mazur/One Love Manchester/Getty Images for One Love Manchester
It’s been five years since the terrorist bombing of England’s Manchester Arena during an Ariana Grande concert killed 22 people, but Ariana will never forget the city whose history is so intertwined with her own.
The Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital Charity posted a tweet thanking Ari for sending holiday gifts to the children who are patients at the the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital and three other local hospitals.
“We were so excited to receive Christmas gifts for young patients across our hospitals from Ariana Grande,” the charity tweeted, adding that the presents were distributed to babies, children and teenage patients. The charity also posted photos of the presents, all of which carried tags reading, “Merry Christmas, happy holidays, love Ariana Grande.”
The Manchester Evening News reported that last year, Ariana doled out a thousand presents to kids who were hospitalized over Christmas, and in 2020, she gave an Amazon gift card worth 100 pounds to every kid at Royal Manchester’s Children’s Hospital and Manchester Royal Infirmary.
Ariana has had a relationship with the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital ever since the bombing. She memorably organized the star-studded One Love Manchester benefit concert in June of 2017, which raised more than 17 million dollars for the families of the attack’s victims.
(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — At least 55 people have died nationwide from the wintry weather wreaking havoc across the U.S. over Christmas weekend.
The most deaths are in western New York, where 32 people have died in the wake of a massive lake-effect snowstorm, according to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and local officials.
Hochul called the storm “the blizzard of the century” in western New York during a news conference Monday and said the White House has promised to quickly approve an emergency disaster declaration. President Joe Biden said he spoke to Hochul on Monday afternoon. He approved a federal emergency declaration in New York Monday evening.
Thirty-one of New York’s deaths are in Erie County, which includes the city of Buffalo, Mark Poloncarz, the executive of Erie County, said Tuesday. One storm-related death was reported in neighboring Niagara County, officials said.
Poloncarz said Tuesday morning that while three new storm-related deaths were confirmed overnight by the Erie County Medical Examiner’s Office, the death toll in Erie County rose by only one because the coroner determined the first two people reported dead during the storm in the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga were not directly related to the blizzard but due to “medical conditions that were not savable.”
Among the storm-related causes of death confirmed by the Erie County Medical Examiner’s Office were three people who suffered heart attacks while shoveling or blowing snow, 14 people who were found outside and three who died due to an EMS delay.
“We do expect that there will be more,” Poloncarz said.
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said 18 bodies were recovered in the city of Buffalo; most were found by police inside vehicles.
Among those who perished in the storm in Buffalo was William Clay, who died on his 56th birthday, his sister, Sophia Clay, told ABC News. Sophia Clay said her brother was on his way to a store on Friday when the weather worsened. His body was found frozen on a street, authorities said.
William Clay, according to his sister, was the father of one son, a grandfather of two, and one of seven siblings. She said he read the Bible daily and could quote scripture by heart.
“He’s one of those people that it was in his heart. He spoke it; he lived it. He was a great brother, he was a great grandfather, he was a great friend,” Sophia Clay said.
A driving state of emergency remains in effect in Erie County and Poloncarz said police will start issuing summons to people driving around — “joyriding” — in violation of the driving ban. He said the city of Buffalo remains impassable.
A driving ban remained in effect for the city of Buffalo Tuesday, but Poloncarz said people were not heeding the ban and getting stuck, causing delays for emergency vehicles, snowplows and other large pieces of equipment trying to clear the streets of mountains of snow and abandoned vehicles.
He said 100 National Guard police officers and additional New York State troopers are expected to mobilize in Buffalo Tuesday to prevent unauthorized vehicles from entering the city.
“People just are not obeying the driving ban,” said Poloncarz, justifying the use of military police to enforce the ban.
Buffalo received more than 50 inches of snow over the weekend, according to the National Weather Service.
Reports of looting
Poloncarz also said that police are investigating scattered reports of looting in Buffalo.
“I’m heartbroken about the deaths, just absolutely devastated to see as many deaths. And then to find out that there’s looting going on in our community at the same time we’re still recovering bodies is just horrible,” Poloncarz said.
Daniel Neaverth Jr., the Erie County commissioner of Emergency Services, said more than a dozen gas stations in the county have been reported inoperable “because the convenience side of them has been looted and the equipment inside has been rendered ineffective and thus the pumps for the fueling are ineffective.”
Neaverth said the looting was hampering emergency vehicles from fueling up.
“So if you don’t think there’s a trickle down from going looting and grabbing individual little things, this is a drastic implication for us that we now have to deal with to find alternate fuel sources,” Neaverth said.
Brown said police responded to several looting in the city of Buffalo and have made some arrests. The mayor said it was “reprehensible” that people are taking advantage of a natural disaster, calling the looters “the lowest of the low.”
Poloncarz said 12,473 utility customers countywide remain without power on Monday and he warned some might not have electricity until Tuesday due to the “serious nature of the substation damage.” He said power was restored to about 13,000 customers overnight.
At one point, 23,000 households lost power, said Jackie Bray, the state commissioner of Homeland Security and Emergency Services. Bray said 12,500 households remain without electricity Monday.
Polocarz said that fewer than 5,000 utility customers in Erie County were still without power Tuesday morning.
‘Winter wonderland tour’ bus rescue
Polocarz added that hundreds of cars were left abandoned on roadways across the county, including tractor-trailer rigs and buses.
“There are cars everywhere pointing the wrong direction on roads. They’ve basically been plowed in and need to be dug out and towed,” Poloncarz said.
Among the hundreds who had to be rescued was a group of tourists from around the world on a “winter wonderland bus tour,” Poloncarz said. He said the bus got stuck in the Buffalo suburb of Lackawanna and that rescue crews had to evacuate passengers and take them to a nearby shelter.
“These tourists are getting more than they bargained for with regards to their ‘winter wonderland tour’ as they’ve gone through one of the worst storms in U.S. history,” Poloncarz said.
The “colossal” snowstorm brought winds of nearly 80 mph to Buffalo, the governor said.
“This will go down in history as the most devastating storm” in Buffalo, Hochul said during a Christmas morning news conference.
Poloncarz said Monday that the death toll has now outpaced the Blizzard of 1977.
Buffalo initiated a travel ban as blizzard conditions moved in.
“I cannot overstate how dangerous the conditions still are,” Hochul said Sunday, urging people to stay off the roads on Christmas.
This storm marked the first time in history that the Buffalo Fire Department couldn’t respond to any calls, officials said. National Guardsmen have been called in.
Hundreds of people have been rescued from cars, Hochul said, adding, “We still have people who need to be rescued.”
Buffalo’s airport will be closed until Wednesday. Pittsburgh’s airport is sending plows to help dig out the runways.
The National Hockey League canceled the Tuesday game between the Buffalo Sabres and Columbus Blue Jackets due to the weather and the Sabres not being able to travel from Buffalo in time for the game.
Weather fatalities across the nation
The storm comes as brutally cold air slammed the country on Christmas morning.
The temperature plunged to minus 9 degrees in Minneapolis, 2 degrees in Chicago, 3 degrees in Denver, 15 degrees in New York, 16 degrees in Atlanta and 21 degrees in Dallas.
More than 6.3 million customers across the United States were without power at some point over the holiday weekend, officials said.
More than 165,000 customers woke up without power on Christmas morning across Maine, New York, New Hampshire, Virginia and Florida. The majority of those customers had power restored by Monday, though 15,800 customers in Maine and 13,900 in New York — the vast majority in Erie County — remained without power Monday afternoon.
Airlines continue to cancel thousands of flights in what is becoming a Christmas nightmare for so many. More than 18,200 flights have been canceled since Wednesday, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking website. More than 3,000 flights were canceled into, out of or within the United States on Christmas Eve, and more than 2,000 flights were canceled on Christmas Day.
Another 3,500 flights were canceled in the United States Monday, as of 3:30 p.m. Southwest Airlines is having significant systemwide issues and has canceled 2,600, or about 65%, of scheduled flights.
Ava Max is counting down the days until she releases her new album, Diamonds & Dancefloors, which she says helped her process a traumatic breakup from a controlling ex.
“I’m definitely more vulnerable with my personal life now, especially after going through a crazy breakup. I just felt my whole world come crashing down,” she told Rollacoaster magazine for its forthcoming 2022/2023 winter edition.
Ava didn’t identify her ex in the interview, but she did explain how their romance and subsequent breakup affected her. “I had to figure out who I was again because I let someone else define me for the past year,” she explained. “It’s been a journey for sure. I’m stronger than ever now, I look back and realize it was all a good thing.”
Ava says that while her new album is full of “sadness and relief” from her journey, it allowed her stop feeling “scared of the bad anymore.”
“Writing Diamonds & Dancefloors allowed me to realize all of my fears and turn them around,” she declared.
(NEW YORK) — An atmospheric river is slamming the West Coast, bringing intense rain, winds and snow that could make for treacherous conditions.
Atmospheric rivers are like “rivers in the sky,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The long, narrow regions in the atmosphere carry large amounts of water vapor over the Pacific Ocean, which is released as rain in lower elevations or snow in higher elevations when they make landfall. The events are “tied closely to both water supply and flood risks,” NOAA said.
More than a dozen states in the West are under weather alerts from this storm, which is bringing damaging winds and flood risks from Washington state down to California Tuesday into Wednesday.
“As a deep layer of moisture streams onshore it will help spread a few inches of rainfall/feet of snowfall at elevation possible along the coastal areas and south into central California throughearly Wednesday morning,” the National Weather Service said. “The pattern will present the possibility for widely scattered instances of flash flooding are possible at lower elevations, particularly in burn scars.”
Flood concerns
Flood watches and advisories have been issued from Seattle to the San Francisco Bay, with up to 6 inches of rain possible in some locations. Flooding caused by “excessive rainfall” is possible in portions of northern and central California.
Areas along the coast of Oregon have already reported 2 to 4 inches of rainfall. Hoodoo Ski Area, a ski resort in the central Cascade Range of Oregon, said it be closed Monday and Tuesday “due to excessive rain.”
There have already been several reports from law enforcement and the public of roadway flooding Tuesday in Seattle and in several California cities, including Salinas, Clayton and Gonzales, with vehicles reported to have been getting stuck.
Strong winds and high surf
The system has brought strong winds as it moved ashore this week. Heavenly Ski Summit in California, south of Lake Tahoe, recorded a 111-mph wind gust overnight.
Wind advisories are in effect for parts of northern and central California, with the National Weather Service warning of downed trees and power lines and power outages possible. Nearly 200,000 customers from Washington to California are without power as of midday Tuesday, with most in Oregon, according to PowerOutage.us.
High surf advisories have also been issued along the California coast. Large breaking waves of up to 26 feet are forecast in Northern California throughout Tuesday.
Heavy snowfall
Winter storm warnings have been issued from California to Colorado, where some areas could see up to 40 inches of snow. Avalanche danger is high, with five states under avalanche watches and warnings — California, Nevada, Colorado, Montana and Idaho.
Into the rest of the week, a “significant atmospheric river storm will bring renewed impacts” to the greater Lake Tahoe area Friday through early Sunday morning, according to the National Weather Service, including heavy rain and snow.
ABC News’ Max Golembo and Kenton Gewecke contributed to this report.
(INDIANAPOLIS, Ind.) — Three days after he went missing in an alleged carjacking in Ohio, 5-month-old Kason Thomass was found safe across state lines in Indiana.
It was an emotional moment for the Indianapolis officers who were the first to arrive at the scene.
“The first thing that went through my mind was thank God we found baby Kason. He’s alive and well,” Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Sgt. Shawn Anderson told ABC Indianapolis affiliate WRTV on Friday.
His colleague, Sgt. Richard El, said he picked up Kason and held him, thinking, “You’re safe now, we got you, we going to get you back to your parents.”
“He was still in a onesie and it just gave me memories of my kids being young and whatnot,” El told WRTV. “So I gave him a hug and just held him and bounced him around a little bit and let him know that everything was going to be all right and that he would soon be reunited with his family.”
The search for Kason began Monday night, after a homeless woman allegedly stole his mom’s running 2010 Honda Accord outside a Columbus restaurant. Kason and his twin brother, Kyair, were inside the vehicle while their mom stepped away to pick up a food order, police said.
Kyair was found early Tuesday at the Dayton International Airport, more than 70 miles from Columbus. Surveillance cameras captured the suspect, 24-year-old Nalah Jackson, allegedly abandoning Kyair in his car seat in a parking lot at the Dayton airport, authorities said.
Police had received tips earlier Thursday that Jackson may have been spotted in Indianapolis. A person believed to be Jackson was stopped by police Thursday afternoon in the city and was positively identified through fingerprints, police said. She has been charged with two counts of kidnapping.
Kason was not with Jackson at the time of her arrest, at which point the search for the missing baby expanded to Indiana and an Amber Alert was initiated there, police said. Kason was ultimately located near an Indianapolis Papa Johns on Thursday in the stolen car, police said.
A Columbus Division of Police spokesperson confirmed to ABC Cleveland affiliate WEWS this week that two women, Shyann Delmar and her cousin Mecka Curry, were involved in the arrest of Jackson and the recovery of Kason, as first reported by the Indianapolis Star. The two mothers, confident they had met the suspect in Indianapolis, told the publication they helped lead police to Jackson during a traffic stop on Thursday, then found the Honda Accord with Kason inside near the Papa Johns later that day.
The two Indianapolis officers couldn’t speak to the details of the ongoing investigation, though they said they knew to be on the lookout for Kason.
“We understood that as the day went on, and the colder that it got, the conditions would have gotten a little bit worse if maybe Kason was out there,” El said. “So we wanted to make sure that we could reunite him with his family.”
Kason was found to be in good health and taken to a hospital for further evaluation. His grandmother, Lafonda Thomass, told WRTV the family was waiting for him to return home to Columbus.
“We are thankful he’s OK and for the support,” Lafonda Thomass said.
For Anderson, holding Kason after he was found safe was “one of the best feelings I’ve had in my career,” and reminded him why he became an officer.
“Moments like this are few and far in between. We see a lot of terrible things as law enforcement officers, it doesn’t happen a lot where we have positive, successful outcomes,” he said. “But when it does, it’s really what keeps me going. So this is just more fuel in my tank to continue to serve the community.”
Both officers are fathers, which made the moment particularly poignant.
“I got three kids at home. When I got home last night, I got out of my uniform, went and gave all of them a big hug,” El said. “It was just a very emotional day.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story stated the officers found the baby. It was updated to reflect they responded to the scene and to note the participation of Shyann Delmar and Mecka Curry in the case.
Here’s a belated Christmas gift for Taylor Swift: She’s just set another Billboard record.
Her hit “Anti-Hero” has just hit number one on Billboard’s Radio Airplay chart, meaning that it’s currently the most-heard song on U.S. radio. It’s the seventh time Taylor’s topped that chart, but this latest number one means that she’s the first artist to have done so in the 2000s, ’10s and ’20s.
What’s more, Taylor is now also the first artist to have topped that chart on her own in any three decades. Christina Aguilera did it in the 1990s, 2000s and ’10s, but she shared billing on two of those number ones: “Lady Marmalade” and “Moves Like Jagger.”
Elsewhere on the chart, Wham!‘s classic “Last Christmas” has reached the Hot 100 top five for the very first time since it was first released in 1984. It first reached the top 10 in 2020 and last year, it climbed to number seven; it’s currently at number five.
This marks the sixth U.S. top-five hit for the U.K. duo of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, following “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” “Careless Whisper,” “Everything She Wants,” “Freedom,” “I’m Your Man” and “The Edge of Heaven.” It’s the first time a Wham! song has been in the top five since 1986, while George Michael’s last trip to the top five was in 1992.
Coincidentally, Michael died on Christmas Day 2016.
