Woman and 3 grandchildren found safe after getting lost on hike: Sheriff’s office
The Greenville County Sheriff’s Office released these images of, from left, Tonda Michelin, Melody Bangs, Michael Lawton, Dale Moser. (Greenville County Sheriff’s Office)
(GREENVILLE, S.C.) — A woman and her three grandchildren who went missing while on a hike in South Carolina have been found safe, authorities said Tuesday.
The four family members — Tonda Michelin, 53; Melody Bangs, 14; Michael Lawton, 11; and Dale Moser, 9 — were found by search and rescue teams, according to the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office, which said all four “are okay!”
They had been missing since Monday evening, authorities said.
One of the children called 911 shortly before 7 p.m. Monday to report they had been lost for approximately three hours in the area of Caesars Head State Park, according to the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office.
The group’s vehicle was subsequently located at the Raven Cliff Falls trailhead, the sheriff’s office said.
Authorities had not received any additional calls because the phone died, a sheriff’s office spokesperson said.
An “urgent” search and rescue effort was underway in the area of Caesars Head and Raven Cliff Falls, the sheriff’s office said Tuesday. The hikers were ultimately found on the Bill Kimbrell trail, it said.
Dozens of personnel from multiple agencies were involved in the search on the ground and air. Helicopters, drones, UTVs and other tools were used, authorities said.
“Search teams are working in rugged terrain and utilizing air, ground, and other resources to locate the hikers as quickly and safely as possible,” the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office said earlier Tuesday.
The Raven Falls trailhead was closed amid the search, the sheriff’s office said.
(NEW YORK) — Immigration can be a hot-button topic, something frequently discussed on cable news and splashed across the headlines. But to one enterprising young author, it’s also the perfect material for a children’s book that helps young people understand each other’s roots.
Last month, Scarsdale, New York, high school senior Max Reddy Spencer wrote and self-published a children’s book titled “We Are All Immigrants.”
Spencer, the son of an Indian American mother and a white American father, said he was motivated to share the message that we are all more alike than different.
“We Are All Immigrants” follows the story of a young boy with a very similar background as Spencer’s. But he said he wanted the character to stand in for every child.
“I didn’t name the protagonist in the book,” he told ABC News. “I did that intentionally, actually, as a way to try to make the boy represent all of us and also not be the highlight of the story … I wanted the characters he interacted with to be the center of focus and attention.”
Through the boy’s journey in the book, he discovers that most people in his life who live in the United States are, in fact, immigrants. Whether it be his Venezuelan American neighbor, his Taiwanese American teacher, or his Italian American lunch cook, he begins to understand the fabric of his community is woven from different, diverse backgrounds.
Spencer said his book aims to make conversations about immigration more accessible to children, and it doubles as a coloring book with illustrations generated by artificial intelligence.
For Spencer, immigration is deeply personal, he said. His maternal grandparents immigrated from India. His grandfather was from a tiny, rural village in south India called Pathur, in Andhra Pradesh, India. His grandmother’s hometown was called Madanapalle.
Spencer said he grew up understanding America is built on immigration and that his goal in writing the book was to teach children about immigration, while also encouraging people to reflect on their similarities.
“I am very much pro-immigration from an economic and cultural perspective, but I am mostly just trying to remind our country that we are all far more similar than we are different,” he said. “I know that is obviously far more than my little book can do. But that was a big piece of what I was trying to share.”
Previously, Spencer started an initiative called the Inspiration Project, which collects and distributes free children’s books to underserved communities. His goal is to collect more than 3,000 children’s books to redistribute before he graduates high school. He estimated he’s collected at least 2,000 so far.
Spencer said he is donating all the proceeds from “We Are All Immigrants” to the organization Hearts & Homes for Refugees, a New York-based organization that helps resettle refugee families.
(NEW YORK) — A federal appeals court has found that the Trump administration likely acted unlawfully when it ended protections for nearly 600,000 Venezuelans to live and work in the United States, upholding a lower court’s decision to postpone the government’s termination.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals also upheld District Judge Edward Chen’s authority to issue a final decision in the case, which challenged the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans ahead of a deadline previously issued by the Biden administration.
“In enacting the TPS statute, Congress designed a system of temporary status that was predictable, dependable, and insulated from electoral politics,” the three-judge panel wrote in Friday’s ruling.
“Moreover, Plaintiffs have demonstrated that they face irreparable harm to their lives, families, and livelihood, that the balance of equities favors a grant of preliminary relief, and that nationwide relief is appropriate,” the court added.
The government argued that a district judge could not challenge Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to end the protections.
Although the DHS secretary has wide discretion to extend or end protections for TPS holders, Venezuelan plaintiffs — represented by the National TPS Alliance, the National Day Labor Organizing Network and other advocacy groups — argued a secretary could not reverse a predecessor’s decision.
On Friday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously disagreed with the government, paving the way for Chen to make a final decision in the case.
Because of Noem’s decision to reverse former DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ extension of protections, around 350,000 TPS holders from Venezuela lost status in April. Another estimated 250,000 are set to lose protections in September depending on the outcome of the case.
Chen had halted the administration’s efforts to end protections while the case continued, but his order was overturned by the Supreme Court in May.
ABC News has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment on Friday’s ruling but has not yet received a response.
Emi Maclean, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California, said the “severe effects” of the Trump administration’s decisions are already being felt by Venezuelans previously protected by the program.
“Individuals who have been deported, who have been separated from infant children, who are living in their car after they lost legal status… who have fled a country in crisis and sought refuge in the United States,” she said. “The government and the courts abandoned them to really devastating circumstances.”
The appeals court seemed to echo those sentiments in Friday’s ruling.
“The TPS statute is designed to constrain the Executive, creating predictable periods of safety and legal status for TPS beneficiaries. Sudden reversals of prior decisions contravene the statute’s plain language and purpose,” the court wrote. “Here, hundreds of thousands of people have been stripped of status and plunged into uncertainty. The stability of TPS has been replaced by fears of family separation, detention, and deportation. Congress did not contemplate this, and the ongoing irreparable harm to Plaintiffs warrants a remedy pending a final adjudication on the merits.”
Chen can now issue a final ruling, though it will likely get appealed to the Supreme Court if the Trump administration finds it unfavorable.
(EVANSTON, Ill.) — Officials in Illinois are searching for a Northwestern University professor who was reported missing after leaving home to go on a walk, according to the Evanston Police Department.
Nina Kraus, a 72-year-old professor at the university’s school of communication, was last seen on Monday after she left her Evanston home to go on a walk at approximately 9 a.m. local time, officials said. Her family reported her missing the same day, officials said.
“The University is hopeful that with the community’s help, we can find Professor Kraus and assure her safety,” Northwestern said in a press release on Monday.
She was last seen wearing long pants and a windbreaker, and was believed to be carrying a dark backpack, officials said.
Kraus is 5 feet, 4 inches tall, weighs approximately 140 pounds and has long silver hair, police said.
On Tuesday, police said they would be flying drones along the waterfront of Lake Michigan as part of the investigation.
According to her faculty bio, Kraus’ is a “scientist, inventor and amateur musician who studies the biology of auditory learning.”
“My research on sound and the brain aims to understand how our life in sound, for better or worse, alters the processing of sound in the brain, makes us us, and affects the world we live in,” Kraus wrote in her bio.
Officials said anyone with information on Kraus’ whereabouts should contact police at 847-866-5000.
