29-year-old man attacked by bear in Yellowstone National Park
George Rose/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — A 29-year-old man is recovering after suffering significant but non-life-threatening injuries to his chest and left arm following a bear attack in Yellowstone National Park, authorities said.
The solo hiker was walking on the Turbid Lake Trail, located northeast of Mary Bay in Yellowstone Lake and approximately 2.5 miles from the Pelican Valley Trailhead in the Pelican Valley Bear Management Area, when he encountered the bear and deployed bear spray against it, according to a statement from the National Park Service.
The hiker told officials he thought the bear was a black bear but, based on the location, size, and behavior of the animal, park officials said it was likely a grizzly bear and that bear management staff will attempt to confirm the species through DNA analysis, if possible.
National Park Service medics responded to the incident and walked out with the hiker who was subsequently taken to the Lake Medical Clinic before being flown to a nearby hospital for treatment.
“The Turbid Lake Trail is closed until further notice,” officials said. “Because this incident was a defensive reaction by the bear during a surprise encounter, the park will not be taking any management action against the bear.”
This is the first incident of a bear injuring a person in Yellowstone in 2025 and the first incident in over four years when, in May 2021, a grizzly bear injured a solo hiker on the Beaver Ponds Trail in Mammoth Hot Springs.
This incident currently remains under investigation.
(MADBURY, N.H.) — Four members of a family, including two children, were found dead in a New Hampshire home and police are investigating the incident as a possible murder-suicide, authorities said.
A toddler was found alive and uninjured in the home in Madbury, a small town in the state’s Seacoast region northwest of Portsmouth, according to a statement from the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office.
Police officers discovered the bodies of two adults and two children around 8:21 p.m. on Monday after a 911 caller reported that several people were deceased inside the home, according to the statement.
“Each of the deceased family members appears to have suffered gunshot wounds, and were pronounced dead at the scene,” according to the statement from authorities.
The names of the deceased family members are being withheld by law enforcement pending autopsies scheduled for Wednesday by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and notification of next of kin, officials said.
Investigators said there is no known threat to the public.
“I think investigators still have probably more questions than they have answers,” Assistant Attorney General Ben Agati told ABC affiliate station WMUR in Manchester, New Hampshire. “One of the biggest questions they have right now is motive. Why? And I think that’s probably one of the more difficult things that they are trying to grasp, to understand how this came to be and to be able to be more definitive and to understand what the sequence of events was like inside that house.”
(MARTIN COUNTY, Fla.) — A woman was attacked by an alligator while swimming in waist-deep water with her boyfriend and dog in Florida, according to the Martin County Sheriff’s Office.
The attack occurred on Wednesday, when the 27-year-old woman and her boyfriend took their boat out in the South Fork of the St. Lucie River in Stuart, Florida, the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
While the two were swimming in waist-deep water with their dog, “an alligator bit the hand and wrist of the female” and momentarily pulled her underwater, officials said.
The gator released the woman, with her boyfriend “swiftly” jumping in to “save her life,” Martin County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Michael McCarthy told reporters on Wednesday.
The woman’s boyfriend drove her to the boat ramp at Charlie Leighton Park in Palm City, Florida, and the victim was flown to HCA Florida Lawnwood Hospital in Fort Pierce, Florida, officials said.
The sheriff’s office said the woman — who has not been identified — suffered “several broken bones” in her hand and wrist, along with minor lacerations and scuffing on the top of her hand and wrist.
The dog and the boyfriend were not injured in the attack, officials said.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation responded to the scene and are “awaiting their trapper to locate the alligator,” the sheriff’s office said. FWC confirmed to ABC News the trapper has not yet captured the gator and will continue “removal efforts” on Thursday.
The status of the woman’s condition as of Thursday remains unclear.
Martin County Sheriff’s Office and HCA Florida Lawnwood Hospital did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
(NEW YORK) — U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said at a hearing Thursday that he will follow up on a former DOJ official’s allegations that Trump administration officials suggested defying orders from courts in order to enforce the administration’s immigration policies.
The development came at the start of a hearing in which Boasberg was seeking to determine what due process rights were due to more than 250 Venezuelan nationals who were released to their home country from the CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador last week after they were removed from the U.S. under the Alien Enemies Act.
Judge Boasberg began the hearing by bringing up former Justice Department official Erez Reuveni’s whistleblower complaint, saying that Reuveni’s allegations “to the extent they prove accurate have only strengthened the case for contempt” against the administration.
The federal judge said the court will follow up on the allegations made by Reuveni “and how they affect the contempt proceedings” — and also said he will assess whether DOJ attorneys’ conduct might “warrant referral to state bars.”
Regarding the more than 250 Venezuelan nationals who were released to Venezuela last week in a prisoner swap, Boasberg ordered status reports on whether all the CECOT deportees have been released from detention in Venezuela, as well as their willingness to return to the U.S. and any challenges they may want to bring on their deportation to El Salvador.
The judge ordered both parties to submit a status report by Aug. 7 and every two weeks thereafter.
“My sense is that there may be some who will think it’s too dangerous to come back here and risk being sent to CECOT again,” Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the ACLU, told the judge. “But as Your Honor knows, the individuals that were removed under the [AEA] were taken out of immigration proceedings where they were applying for asylum.”
Gelernt said the ACLU has not been in contact with the deportees since their arrival in Venezuela, but said the organization intends to reach them all “immediately.”
In March the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act — an 18th century wartime authority used to remove noncitizens with little-to-no due process — to deport two planeloads of alleged migrant gang members to the CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador by arguing that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a “hybrid criminal state” that is invading the United States.
An official with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acknowledged shortly afterward that “many” of the men deported on March 15 lacked criminal records in the United States — but said that “the lack of specific information about each individual” actually “demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile.”
Boasberg ruled in June that the men, who were then being held in El Salvador’s CECOT facility, were entitled to practice their due process rights to challenge their detentions.
At Thursday’s hearing, an attorney for the Justice Department said the government is prepared to comply with a court order to facilitate the return of the Venezuelans to the U.S.
When asked by Boasberg if the government would be willing to return the Venezuelans if the Supreme Court finds the Alien Enemies Act proclamation invalid, the DOJ attorney said the CECOT deportees would have to “bring different claims.”
“We’d have to see what those claims look like, and I don’t have an analysis on my fingertips of what that would look like absent the AEA,” the DOJ lawyer said.
In a filing last week, lawyers for the former detainees argued that they should still be able to practice the due process rights they were deprived of when they were removed from the country with little notice under an authority that multiple judges have ruled is unlawful.
“Plaintiffs respectfully request that this Court request an immediate status update from the government as to whether it is prepared to bring the members of the class back to the United States for habeas proceedings,” they argued.
As part of a series of lawsuits that began in March when Trump issued the proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act, Judge Boasberg has sharply criticized the conduct of the Trump administration and considered holding officials in contempt. In an order last month, Boasberg rebuked the Trump administration for detaining the men on “flimsy, even frivolous, accusations” and failing to provide them with a meaningful opportunity to exercise their rights.
“Defendants instead spirited away plane loads of people before any such challenge could be made. And now, significant evidence has come to light indicating that many of those currently entombed in CECOT have no connection to the gang and thus languish in a foreign prison on flimsy, even frivolous, accusations,” Judge Boasberg wrote.
