Cadaver dogs helping with search for American woman missing in Bahamas, police say
The Hookers’ boat, “Soulmate,” is seen in Marsh Harbor on Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas, April 8, 2026. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — Cadaver dogs are heading to help with the search for Lynette Hooker, an American woman who’s missing in the Bahamas, according to police.
The K-9 team from the U.S. Coast Guard will be on the ground in Hope Town on Wednesday morning, Advardo Dames, assistant commissioner of the Royal Bahamas Police, told ABC News.
Lynette Hooker has been missing since she went overboard on a dinghy on the evening of April 4.
When the 55-year-old Michigan woman and her husband, Brian Hooker, departed Hope Town on the Abaco Islands for their yacht, Soulmate, in Elbow Cay, bad weather caused her to fall off the dinghy, her husband told authorities.
Brian Hooker, 58, was arrested on April 8 and questioned by police. He was released on Monday without charges.
Brian Hooker told ABC News on Tuesday that he’s staying in the Bahamas with a “sole focus” of finding his wife, “no matter how likely or unlikely that is.”
He said he was planning “to go back to the boat, and then hire or beg people to help me go find some areas to search.”
Brian Hooker’s attorney did not allow him to answer questions about what happened the night his wife went overboard due to the pending investigation.
When asked if there was anything he wishes he’d done differently, Brian Hooker was emotional, saying, “I will always think there was something I could have done differently. My one job, my one job was to look out for her, and that has not happened. And I’m gonna keep looking out for her now, the best I can.”
ABC News’ Brian Andrews contributed to this report.
In this photo illustration, a PolyMarket logo is seen displayed on a smartphone with stock market percentages on the background. (Photo Illustration by Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — One week after a special forces soldier was indicted on charges of using classified information to wager on the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the prediction market Polymarket announced it is increasing its internal monitoring of trades.
Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, who prosecutors say helped plan and execute the raid on Maduro’s Caracas compound, allegedly made more than $400,000 on Polymarket by using insider knowledge to place 13 bets on the outcome of the operation.
On Thursday, Polymarket announced that it had tapped a blockchain data company to continually monitor the platform for suspicious trades.
Polymarket and analytics firm Chainalysis said they are working together on a “first-of-its-kind” system to enforce the Polymarket’s market integrity rules by monitoring transactions on-chain — referring to the platform’s public disclosure of transaction data.
“Polymarket was built on-chain because transparency matters, and our platform shows what markets can look like when trades are open, traceable, and accountable by design,” Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan said in a statement.
Through the partnership, the company is looking to confront the longstanding challenge of insider trading by leaning into a decentralized solution based on the public blockchain — essentially a distributed database — on which it can follow the tracks of every trade based on data that’s permanently stored and sealed with unique identifier.
Chainalysis says they will use their technology to quickly provide law enforcement with “blockchain-verified evidence” to proactively identify threats.
While Polymarket already had a monitoring system for insider trading, both companies say the new partnership will help them quickly identify patterns that suggest an trader with insider knowledge is placing bets.
“With this collaboration, on-chain markets have the potential to be the most trustworthy markets for understanding world events,” Chainalysis CEO Jonathan Levin.
Online sleuths have been successful in flagging suspicious trades such as the bet that prosecutors say Van Dyke placed on Maduro’s capture. Posts about the suspicious wager began appearing online within hours of the trade, and prosecutors then took about four months to build their case.
Van Dyke pleaded not guilty to all charges Tuesday in Manhattan federal court and was released on bond.
US President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media outside the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, April 13, 2026. Trump is highlighting the “No Tax on Tips” policy, which allows eligible workers to deduct qualified tips from their federal income taxes as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. (Photographer: Salwan Georges/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(PALM BEACH, Fla.) — Mike Tyson, Tony Robbins, and President Donald Trump walk into Mar-a-Lago.
It’s not the setup to a joke — it’s a pitch to investors.
On Saturday, all three men and 297 of the top holders of Trump’s meme coin, called $TRUMP, are expected to convene for what organizers call “the most exclusive crypto & business conference in the world” at Trump’s Florida estate — the second such bid to boost interest in Trump’s digital asset since his return to office.
The event website warns that “no gifts will be accepted,” but some attendees, by virtue of their investment in the coin, will have already spent millions of dollars — much of which flows directly to the Trump family — for the privilege of potentially lunching with the president.
Critics have panned the event as a brazen pay-for-play opportunity, accusing Trump of attempting to personally profit by selling access to the presidency.
In a letter transmitted earlier this month to the event organizer, longtime Trump friend Bill Zanker, a group of Senate Democrats sought records tied to the event, stating that “it is essential that Congress fully understand the extent to which President Trump and his family are profiting off of his cryptocurrency ventures.”
Zanker did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
President Trump launched his meme coin — a type of digital currency that’s often based on an internet meme — in January 2025, just days before his inauguration. The coin’s value initially soared to more than $44 before plummeting almost immediately.
Last May, in a bid to reinvigorate interest in the coin, Trump announced plans for an “intimate private dinner” at his golf club in Virginia. Hundreds of investors attended the event, where Trump spoke briefly and handed out gold watches to a subset of attendees, many of whom traveled from overseas and remained anonymous until arriving in person at the event.
The 2025 event in Virginia helped bolster the coin’s value for a time, but interest in the currency again tapered off. By early March 2026, its value dipped below $3, meaning that an investor who purchased $10,000 worth of Trump coins at its peak would have been left with assets worth less than $700.
Last month, when Trump announced plans for the Mar-a-Lago gala, the coin’s value climbed above $4 before settling back below $3, according to CoinGecko data.
On-chain trading activity analyzed by the cryptocurrency data firm Nansen shows that the coin generated roughly $1.35 billion in trading volume on decentralized platforms across 2.74 million transactions ahead of the gala. The Trump family earns a fee from each of those transactions, according to its website, but the structure of those transaction fees remains opaque.
Notably, the volume of tokens bought and sold ahead of the Mar-a-Lago gala remained almost entirely flat, “suggesting wallets may be flipping for leaderboard points rather than building long term positions,” said Jake Kennis, an analyst at Nansen.
At the upcoming event, top investors will receive Trump-branded watches, colognes, posters and a VIP reception with the president, according to the event website. Like the event last May, the identities of these investors are hidden behind pseudonyms or a series of letters and numbers. Attendees will hear keynote addresses from Tyson, Robbins and other business executives.
Buried in the event fine print, organizers say that “President Trump may not be able to attend” — and in fact the White House has said the president plans to attend the White House Correspondents Association Dinner in Washington later that evening.
Critics say these events are just one way in which the president has used the office of the presidency to line his own pockets. His family business has struck several real estate licensing deals around the world over the past year, most notably in the Persian Gulf region, and he has lent his name and likeness to myriad merchandise, including watches, spirits, sneakers, Bibles, guitars and fragrances.
One year into his second administration, Trump’s personal wealth has ballooned to more than $6 billion, according to Forbes. Despite the fact that his meme coin has lost more than 94% of its value since its all-time high early last year, the transaction fees on trades for the currency has generated nearly $400 million for the president, Forbes reported.
Trump and the White House have repeatedly and forcefully denied that his private business interests create a conflict of interest.
“The President is working to secure GOOD deals for the American people, not for himself,” a White House spokesperson said when Trump held his earlier meme coin event. “President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public — which is why they overwhelmingly reelected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media.”
People gather in Washington Square Park for a mass snowball fight on Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, in Manhattan. (Barry Williams/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A man has been arrested after a viral incident between New Yorkers and NYPD officers during Monday’s blizzard has snowballed into Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first test with the police brass after he appeared to downplay the issue.
Gusmane Coulibaly, 27, has been arrested for “assaulting” police officers earlier this week in Washington Square Park, the New York City Police Department announced Thursday.
“Coulibaly was previously arrested less than three weeks ago for an attempted robbery in the transit system,” according to the NYPD.
With Mamdani capturing attention on the national stage, the progressive mayor is threading the needle carefully to avoid repeating the mistakes some of his predecessors made to ensure he doesn’t lose that critical police support, according to a political expert.
Mamdani came under fire on Tuesday after the president of the Police Benevolent Association — the union representing NYPD officers — accused the mayor of downplaying the severity of an incident. The NYPD said people playing in the snow on Monday in Manhattan were “attacking” officers with snowballs.
“I’ve seen the videos of this snowball fight. I think that it was a snowball fight,” the mayor said during a news conference when asked repeatedly ifanyone should be charged for the incident.
Mamdani echoed his sentiment on Wednesday at another news conference.
“What I saw was a snowball fight that got out of hand and it should be treated accordingly,” he said.
The incident took place Monday afternoon in Washington Square Park when police were called in about parkgoers playing aggressively, according to the NYPD.
Parkgoer Rahul Nag told WABC 7 that it started off as harmless fun but escalated when several young people began tossing snow from the roof of the park’s restrooms. The officers were confronted after they arrived to investigate.
“It wasn’t supposed to be violent. It started out as a very fun thing to do, and then, you know, it just escalated, and there weren’t any older kids or older people out here,” he told the station.
“It was just young kids having fun. And then it kind of became a back-and-forth thing between NYPD and those young kids,” Nag added.
Police say the crowd began throwing snowballs at them and continued to pelt them and their vehicles with snowballs as they left the park. The mayor and NYPD said two officers were treated for minor injuries, including lacerations.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said in an X post Tuesday night that the incident was being investigated. The NYPD also released images of the people who allegedly threw the snowballs at the officers.
“The NYPD is aware of certain videos taken earlier today in Washington Square Park showing individuals attacking cops. I want to be very clear: The behavior depicted is disgraceful, and it is criminal,” Tisch said in her post.
No arrests had been made as of Wednesday afternoon.
Although Mamdani did not describe the incident as an attack, he repeatedly has condemned anyone who would antagonize the police, and praised their work during the snowstorms over the last two months.
“I want to say that officers have been on the front line of helping our city respond to this blizzard. They have been keeping New Yorkers safe, and they have also been at the heart of our efforts of digging New Yorkers’ cars out of these kinds of conditions and ensuring that our ambulances, our MTA buses can keep functioning across this city” he told reporters during the Tuesday news conference.
“They and our entire city workforce deserve to be treated with respect. The only person in our city’s workforce who deserves to be treated with a snowball is me,” Mamdani added.
The mayor’s remarks, however, did not sit well with the leaders of the Police Benevolent Association. The union’s president, Patrick Hendry, released a statement Tuesday calling the mayor’s response “a complete failure of leadership.”
“This was disgraceful. It wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t a game. It was a vicious attack,” he said.
Mamdani told reporters Wednesday that he and Tisch are in constant communication but declined to talk more about the investigation into the incident.
Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University, told ABC News it was inevitable that Mamdani and the police brass would butt heads, given the mayor’s past criticism of the NYPD and the pushback by Republicans across the country against him and his progressive policies.
“Mamdani is cognizant of that and trying to balance what some people felt was pretty innocuous and the NYPD saw it as a different way,” she said. “He’s also cognizant that there are groups that, frankly, do not want him to succeed.”
Greer noted that Mamdani is taking hard lessons from previous Democratic mayors, especially Bill de Blasio and David Dinkins, who had extremely strained relationships with the NYPD.
Greer said that De Blasio’s relationship with the police seemed to crystalize in 2014 when officers turned their back to him during the funeral for two slain officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu. That came weeks after protests broke out over the death of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man who died after he was put in a chokehold during an arrest.
“You never want to be in a position where the NYPD turns their back to you and you never regain their trust,” she said.
Greer noted that even though he is extremely early in his tenure, Mamdani has taken smart first steps to show not just the NYPD but also his critics that he cares about his officers. Those moves include apologizing for his previous criticisms and retaining Tisch as his commissioner after his predecessor Eric Adams’ term ended.
Even in his response to the snowball incident, where the mayor repeatedly said that snowballs should be thrown at him, indicated a sense of humility, according to Greer. She said Mamdani is willing to take on New Yorkers’ frustrations, especially over the weather.
“It’s putting the onus on him,” she said. “I think it’s brilliant because it says I’m the one in charge. The NYPD is not in charge, it’s me. It’s hard for people to wrap their heads around, but that’s the truth and a brilliant way to articulate a very real fact.”
Greer said the snowball incident is unlikely to hamper Mamdani’s status or alter his overall “report card” on the local or national level, given fast-paced nature of the city’s politics.
However, she said that the mayor will need to continue to thread the needle with the NYPD for his entire tenure in City Hall, as he is seen as the star figure in the Democratic progressive movement.
“The question behind all of this, really, is can he keep the city safe? That’s not fair to make this situation a real assessment when we’re talking about snowballs and not bullets,” Greer said.
