All 6 on board private jet presumed dead after crash during takeoff at Maine airport: Police
(BANGOR, Maine) — All six people on board a private jet are presumed to be dead after the plane crashed while taking off from Bangor International Airport in Maine during the winter storm, according to police.
No victims were taken to the hospital, Bangor police said on Monday. The victims’ identities have not been released.
The Bombardier Challenger 600 crashed around 7:45 p.m. Sunday as the deadly storm slammed the Northeast, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
At the time of the crash, the Bangor International Airport was open, with deicing operations underway and both commercial and private planes landing and departing, Bangor International Airport Director Jose Saavedra said on Monday.
First responders were at the scene of the crash within a minute, Saavedra said.
“The snowstorm started taking effect into the vicinity right around that time,” he said.
“This is normal for us to deal with weather events, and we had crews on site to address the weather event,” he said.
The airport will be closed for at least 24 hours as airport officials wait for National Transportation Safety Board investigators to arrive, Saavedra said.
An ABC News graphic from Sunday, Feb. 22, 2026, on the expected winter storm. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — A highly impactful and potentially historic nor’easter is expected to quickly strengthen as it collects itself offshore near Delaware, Maryland and Virginia on Sunday, leading to major and potentially extreme impacts for millions along the I-95 corridor.
More than 50 million Americans were on alert on Sunday morning for winter storm conditions beginning later Sunday and continuing into Monday.
Blizzard warnings are in effect for more than 35 million Americans from Cape Charles, Virginia, to Dover, Delaware, up to the I-95 corridor from Philadelphia to Boston for increased confidence in snowfall of more than a foot and gusty winds that will likely cause blizzard conditions. The entire states of Delaware, New Jersey and Rhode Island were included.
Winter storm warnings were in effect for parts of central Virginia and Maryland, east-central Pennsylvania, southern New York, northern Connecticut, west-central Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire and Vermont, and southern Maine for increased confidence of snowfall.
Some areas are expecting about 6 inches, while some areas may potentially see more than a foot, as well as gusty winds that will likely cause blowing snow and whiteout conditions.
Those conditions could hit major cities, including Baltimore; Harrisburg and Scranton, Pennsylvania; Albany, New York; Hartford, Connecticut; Concord, New Hampshire; and Portland, Maine.
On Sunday afternoon, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro signed a disaster declaration ahead of the evening’s storm, saying it will allow “our state agencies have every resource they need to prepare and keep people safe.”
Shapiro asked people to stay off the roads and stressed that people should take the storm seriously and seriously and stay inside.
Conditions are expected to begin to worsen in the Philadelphia area later today, the governor said.
New York City and Philadelphia were under a blizzard warning for total snowfall reaching between 12 and more than 18 inches, with potential winds gusting up to 55+ mph, causing whiteout conditions and difficult-to-impossible travel conditions later Sunday through Monday.
New York City hasn’t been under a blizzard warning since March 2017, close to a decade ago. The last such warning for Philadelphia was in January 2016, more than a decade ago.
“The snow is back,” New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on social media early on Sunday. “But New York is ready.”
At a press conference later Sunday afternoon, Mamdani announced a state of emergency for the city and a travel ban beginning at 9 p.m. Sunday and ending at 12 p.m. Monday. New York City schools will also be closed Monday, Mamdani said.
According to the National Weather Service, this is the first time that all of New Jersey has been under a blizzard warning since January 1996.
The entire state of Delaware is under a blizzard warning for the first time since Feb. 10, 2010, more than 15 years ago, according to the National Weather Service.
More than 7,400 flights have been canceled for Sunday and Monday, according to flight tracker FlightAware. Over half of all flights at John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports have already been canceled ahead of the storm.
Airports in Newark, Boston, Philadelphia, D.C. and Baltimore have also seen significant cancellations. Between 88% and 93% of flights scheduled for Monday at New York airports and in Boston have been canceled as of noon Sunday.
Coastal Flood alerts were also up from coastal Delaware, Maryland and Virginia to the Jersey Shore, as well as from Long Island to the coast of southern and eastern New England for minor to moderate coastal flooding during high tide.
Emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) with chicks on the sea ice at Snow Hill Island in the Weddell Sea in Antarctica. (Photo by Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The status of several threatened species has been downgraded to endangered, and climate change is to blame, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The Red List of Threatened Species, which was updated by the IUCN on Thursday, now includes the Emperor penguin and Antarctic fur seal on its endangered list.
The IUCN is the world’s largest environmental network and provides scientific, data-driven expertise on biodiversity conservation.
The Red List of Threatened Species is a comprehensive information source on the global conservation status of animal, fungi and plant species. The species are listed in nine categories of risk: Not Evaluated, Data Deficient, Least Concern, Near Threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered, Extinct in the Wild and Extinct.
Climate change is altering ice conditions and impacting food availability for these species, researchers told ABC News.
Emperor penguins moved from “near threatened” to endangered, according to the IUCN.
Satellite images collected from the region since 2009 indicate that the population of Emperor penguins in Antarctica has been decreasing for about a decade, Phillip Trathan, member of the IUCN’s Penguin Specialist Group, told ABC News.
“Ultimately, there’s only one trajectory, and that’s downwards,” Trathan said.
The main threat the penguins are facing is lack of sea ice due to climate change, Trathan added. Since 2016, sea ice has been diminishing and changing the whole ecosystem in Antarctica, including the molting process — when penguins shed their old feathers — and foraging opportunities, he said. Emperor penguins mainly consume fish, squid and crustaceans in Antarctic waters.
Scientists also are seeing patterns and major population changes in pinnipeds, commonly known as seals, that are making them “very nervous,” Kit Kovacs, Svalbard program leader for the Norwegian Polar Institute and chair of IUCN’s Pinniped Specialist Group, told ABC News.
The Antarctic fur seal has declined “precipitously” — losing about 57% of the adult population in the last three generations, Kovacs said.
The IUCN moved the species from “least concern” in the last pinniped assessment — which happened in 2014 — to endangered.
“That doesn’t happen very often, that you jump so many categories at once,” Kovacs said.
Populations of the krill that Antarctic fur seals subsist on are also dropping, which is likely fueling the decline, she added.
“Krill seems to be the crux of everything in the Southern Ocean,” Kovacs said.
Another Antarctic species — the Southern elephant seal — is also now at risk of extinction due to bird flu, moving from least concern to vulnerable, according to researchers.
Three out of the four big groups of Southern elephant seals have been hit by avian influenza, Kovacs noted. Those seals breed on shore, and 2023 and 2024 saw a 90% pup mortality, according to Kovacs. Breeding females are down about 67%.
There is growing concern that disease-related mortalities of marine mammals will increase due to the climate change, the IUCN said in a release. The organization noted that polar regions, where animals have not had much previous exposure to pathogens, and animals that live close together in colonies, such as southern elephant seals, could be particularly hard-hit.
Antarctic sea ice is declining at record rates, according to climate scientists.
Antarctica has lost enough ice over the last 30 years to cover the City of Los Angeles area 10 times over, glaciologists at the University of California, Irvine, found in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last month.
The regions losing ice the fastest are West Antarctica, the Antarctica Peninsula and parts of East Antarctica, the research found.
Glaciers all over the world — especially in Antarctica — are also retreating at a rapid pace, recent research shows.
Scientists have taken a particular interest in Antarctica’s western shelf due to its potential to cause a significant rise in sea levels. Thwaites Glacier, also known as the “Doomsday Glacier,” already contributes to 4% of overall sea level rise due to rapid retreat, while Pine Island Glacier is Antarctica’s fastest-melting glacier and has the potential to raise sea levels by 1.6 feet if melted.
Throughout the globe, climate-driven degradation to ecosystems is accelerating faster than conservation frameworks can respond, according to the IUCN.
U.S. Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem looks on during a meeting of the Cabinet in the Cabinet Room of the White House on January 29, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
(MINNEAPOLIS) — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday said that in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday, federal officials issued public statements about the incident based on “the best information” they had at the time and “what we knew to be true on the ground.”
Noem previously suggested on the day of the shooting that the agents’ actions were justified, claiming at a press briefing that Pretti had “attacked” officers and was “wishing to inflict harm” on them. But appearing Thursday on Fox News, Noem offered no evidence to support such claims, saying instead that the scene was “chaotic.”
After her initial statements, Minnesota officials were quick to push back on her public comments, pointing to the multiple videos from witnesses which appeared to tell a different story.
She said the FBI is now leading the investigation, though officials previously said DHS was investigating, with assistance from the FBI.
Noem’s shift in tone comes amid growing criticism of how quickly officials characterized the shooting. Some critics told ABC News that issuing definitive conclusions following immigration enforcement shootings is “incredibly irresponsible” and may undermine the long-term credibility of federal agencies.
The critics warned that rushing to label suspects as “domestic terrorists” — as White House adviser Stephen Miller and Noem did in the aftermath of the shooting deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good — or declaring shootings justified before evidence is reviewed represents a departure from the norm.
“It’s just incredibly irresponsible to rush to conclusions,” said John Sandweg, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Obama administration. “When you have a senior adviser to the president and the cabinet secretary saying, ‘These are the facts, this is what happened’ … you’ve now undermined all the credibility and really made it impossible for the public to have confidence in that investigation.”
‘Public trust is everything’ An ABC News review of several recent incidents involving federal immigration agents found a consistent pattern: high-level officials publicized findings within hours of gunfire, only for those initial accounts to be challenged later by body camera footage, witness videos or court filings.
In at least five major cases, officials appeared to make public declarations about the incidents before formal investigations had reached final conclusions about those assertions.
“Public trust is everything to these agencies, and it just destroys them when you tell something that is so visibly and obviously contradicted by the video evidence,” Sandweg said.
Jason Houser, a former ICE chief of staff under the Biden administration, told ABC News that the rush to conclusions suggests the focus has shifted away from public safety toward a political narrative.
“It just shows that this is about the political debate. It’s not about actually arresting the most convicted criminals,” Houser said. “It should … create a lot of distrust that can tear at the core trust in law enforcement, especially federal law enforcement.”
In response to questions regarding the swiftness of the administration’s public comments and the information released following major incidents, a DHS spokesperson said, “DHS follows proper legal processes and protocols for all statements disseminated by the Department.”
What Pretti video shows In the shooting involving Pretti, DHS officials released a detailed statement just two and a half hours after the incident, claiming he “approached” officers with a handgun. Miller labeled Pretti a “domestic terrorist” and a “would-be assassin” on social media less than four hours after the gunfire.
Noem, during her Thursday interview, responded to critics on Capitol Hill calling for her resignation by stating she is “following the law, and enforcing the laws like President Trump promised he would do.”
Video analyzed by ABC News showed agents pinning Pretti down and removing a weapon from his waist before the shooting occurred — contradicting the initial claims from officials. Three days later, Miller issued a statement acknowledging that the initial DHS account was based on “reports from CBP on the ground” and suggested protocol may not have been followed.
“Any experienced law enforcement professional will understand that initial information coming from the scene of a major incident is usually flawed, so you have to sort of take it with a grain of salt,” said John Cohen, an ABC News contributor who served as acting DHS undersecretary for intelligence and analysis under the Biden administration.
During Thursday’s appearance on Fox News, Noem said, “We will continue to follow the investigation that the FBI is leading and give them all the information that they need to bring that to conclusion and make sure the American people know the truth of the situation,” she said.
After announcing on Friday that the Justice Department opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting Pretti, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters that “a single video should not determine an entire investigation.”
“We have said repeatedly over the past week that of course this is something that we are investigating and that is what we would always do in circumstances like this,” Blanche said.
Earlier shootings: Renee Good, Marimar Martinez Following the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, DHS issued a statement within two hours declaring that a “violent rioter” had “weaponized her vehicle” in an “act of domestic terrorism.” According to an ABC News analysis of verified video, Good can be seen turning her steering wheel to the right — away from the ICE agent — just over one second before the first of three gunshots was fired.
In October, less than four hours after Marimar Martinez was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent in Chicago, a DHS assistant secretary posted that law enforcement was “forced” to fire defensive shots. A DHS statement that day labeled Martinez and another individual “domestic terrorists,” while Noem later characterized the incident as a “ten-car caravan” that “ambushed” and “stalked” agents.
During court hearings, an attorney representing Martinez told the court that body-worn camera footage did not align with the government’s allegations. A federal judge later dismissed the indictment against Martinez after the Department of Justice abruptly filed a motion to withdraw the case.
That same month, in an incident in California, DHS issued a statement claiming that during a vehicle stop, an “unknown individual” attempted to “run officers over by reversing directly at them without stopping.” The statement asserted that an ICE officer, “fearing for his life, fired defensive shots.”
However, a lawyer for Carlos Jimenez told ABC News that after an agent pulled out pepper spray, Jimenez began to maneuver his vehicle “to get around” and was shot in his back shoulder through the back passenger window.
Chicago shooting In another incident in September, an ICE officer shot and killed Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez outside Chicago. According to a lawsuit filed by the state of Illinois, Villegas-Gonzalez, a 38-year-old father, was driving home from dropping his three-year-old son at day care. A DHS statement issued hours after the shooting claimed an officer “fearing for his life” was “seriously injured.”
But the Illinois complaint and body camera video obtained by ABC owned station WLS-TV revealed the agent who fired the weapon described his own injuries as “nothing major.”
“Videos of the incident did not corroborate DHS’s assertion that the shooting officer was ‘seriously injured’ by a ‘criminal illegal alien,'” the lawsuit states.
Cohen, the former DHS official, noted that describing incidents as domestic terrorism before an investigation is complete could later be viewed in court as prejudicial.
“When you make commentary on these types of incidents to advance an ideological or political narrative or objective, you run the risk of putting out inaccurate information and as a result, losing the public’s confidence,” Cohen said.
Sandweg, the former ICE official, told ABC News the only responsible approach for officials is to remain restrained in their public statements until there is reliable information.
“The only approach is … ‘We’re aware, we are conducting a full investigation,'” Sandweg said. “Public trust … is everything to these agencies. Once you destroy that, it bleeds over into everything else they do.”
