(NEW YORK) — A woman’s ex-boyfriend is in police custody after she was found dead in a suitcase on Thursday in Yonkers, New York, law enforcement sources said.
Pamela Alcantara, 26, was found dead in a marshy area by the side of Saw Mill River Parkway after going missing over the weekend, according to law enforcement sources.
The woman was pronounced dead at the scene, the NYPD said.
While her 46-year-old ex-boyfriend remains in custody, no one has been charged yet in her death. He is not cooperating with police, sources said.
The couple had been dating for three years before she recently broke it off, her family told New York ABC station WABC.
Alcantara lived with the man in her Bronx apartment. Detectives were looking to talk to him this week in connection to her disappearance, according to sources.
Her ex-boyfriend’s license plate pinged near the location the body was found at 9:50 a.m. on Thursday, according to WABC.
The NYPD searched an area along the roadway where his vehicle stopped and a drone spotted the red suitcase containing her body in the water, according to law enforcement sources.
The man was taken into custody soon after. He initially told detectives Alcantara left her apartment in a hurry, wearing pajamas and carrying the red suitcase, sources sad. Evidence recovered by detectives later revealed that was not accurate, and he requested a lawyer, according to sources.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner will determine the cause of death, according to the NYPD.Alcantara was reported missing on Sunday after she did not show up to church. The circumstances surrounding her death remain under investigation, according to law enforcement sources.
Alcantara was last seen on surveillance video early Sunday at her residence, according to the NYPD.
ABC News’ CeFaan Kim, Mark Crudele and Omar Rodriguez contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Fed Chair Jerome Powell said on Friday that the Trump administration’s tariffs would likely raise prices for U.S. shoppers and retailers.
The scale and duration of the tariffs remain unclear but a portion of the taxes on imports will probably reach consumers, Powell told an economic forum in New York City on Friday.
“We’re at a stage where we’re still very uncertain about what will be tariffed, for how long, at what level,” Powell said. “But the likelihood is some of that will find its way. It will hit the exporters, the importers, the retailers and to some extent consumers.”
The Trump administration slapped 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, as well as 10% tariffs on imports from China. The fresh round of duties on Chinese goods doubled an initial set of tariffs placed on China last month.
Tariffs of this magnitude are widely expected to increase prices paid by U.S. shoppers, since importers typically pass along a share of the cost of those higher taxes to consumers.
“Everybody is forecasting some inflation effect from tariffs,” Powell said on Friday.
The remarks from Powell at the annual US Monetary Policy Forum marked a notable prediction from the nation’s top central banker charged with keeping inflation under control.
While acknowledging the likelihood of price hikes, however, Powell said the Fed’s response would depend on what exactly transpires.
A potentially temporary bump in prices may not warrant intervention, while a more sustained increase could require action, Powell said, noting that the strength of the economy affords the Fed time to assess the impact.
“In some cases, where we think it’s a one-time thing, the textbook would be to look through it,” Powell said. “If it turns into a series of things and it’s more than that — [and] if the increases are larger — that would matter.”
Powell spoke hours after Trump on Truth Social threatened to slap tariffs, sanctions and other measures on Russia in response to conduct in the war with Ukraine.
The tariffs may become necessary “based on the fact that Russia is absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield right now,” Trump said.
The potential move could expand Trump’s confrontational trade policy beyond an initial set of countries targeted this week.
Later on Friday, Trump told reporters at the White House that tariffs could cause “some disturbance” for the U.S.
The Trump administration has eased some of the tariffs against Canada and Mexico in recent days.
Trump issued a one-month delay for tariffs on auto-related goods from Mexico and Canada. The carve-out expanded soon afterward with an additional one-month pause for goods from Mexico and Canada compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, a free trade agreement.
In addition to tariffs, Powell mentioned other economic proposals pursued by the Trump administration, including measures affecting fiscal policy and regulation.
“The new administration is in the process of implementing significant policy changes,” Powell said. “Uncertainty around these changes and their likely effects remains high. We are focused on parsing the signal from the noise as the situation evolves. We are not in a hurry.”
(NEW YORK) — Butterfly populations have dropped by 22% across 554 recorded species in the United States, according to a new study in the journal Science.
“Our national-scale findings paint the most complete — and concerning — picture of the status of butterflies across the country in the early 21st century,” the study said.
The study, titled “Rapid butterfly declines across the United States during the 21st century,” counted 12.6 million butterflies, analyzed 76,957 surveys and partnered with 35 monitoring programs to examine buttery population trends from 2000 to 2020.
Total butterfly abundance decreased across the U.S. by 1.3% annually, leading to a cumulative 22% decline, the study said.
Approximately 107 butterfly species declined by more than 50% in the last 20 years, whereas only 3% increased, the study said. But, that actually is not a shock to researchers, since the declines are common across species, whereas increases are rare, the study said.
“Over the two-decade study period, 33% of individual butterfly species showed significantly declining trends in abundance,” the study said.
The dip in butterfly population was seen across the country, but the Southwest was hit the hardest, which is “consistent with other findings that butterflies are disproportionately declining in arid and hot climates,” the study said.
The reason for this significant drop in butterfly populations is due to several factors, one being rising temperatures and changing climates, according to the study.
“With climate change, butterfly species in North America may find the southern limits of their ranges becoming too warm while the northern limits of their range become more hospitable,” the study said.
Other threats to this insect include habitat loss and pesticide use, the study said.
Researchers said there is a potential to increase the butterfly population through “habitat restoration, species-specific interventions and reducing pesticide use.”
Overall, researchers said this population study serves as an “urgent need to protect butterflies from further losses.”
“Expansive efforts in conservation planning and action for insects could prevent widespread future losses and create and maintain the environments in which butterflies and other at-risk species can thrive,” the study said.
Monarch butterflies, for instance, are one example of a thriving species.
The population of monarch butterflies nearly doubled in population in 2024-25 versus 2023-24, according to a survey released Thursday by the World Wildlife Fund in Mexico and Mexico’s National Commission of Protected Natural Areas. However, the population is still significantly below the long-term average.
This year, monarchs covered 4.42 acres, up from 2.22 acres the year before, the survey said. This increase in monarchs is directly related to improved weather conditions in 2024, but “climatic variations” in the insect’s breeding areas of Canada and the U.S. as well as insecticide pose a looming threat for the winged creature.
(NEW YORK) — The Justice Department on Friday put three federal prosecutors in Manhattan on leave, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Two of the prosecutors — Andrew Rohrbach and Celia Cohen — worked on the prosecution of New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
Rohrbach also worked on the successful prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, former crypto executive Sam Bankman-Fried and lawyer Michael Avenatti.
Cohen worked on multiple mob cases and prosecutions of violent street gangs.
The third individual placed on leave — a member of the office’s civil division — posted about Elon Musk and Ed Martin, a leader of the Stop the Steal movement and President Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., the sources said.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment.
The Justice Department moved to dismiss corruption charges against Adams, prompting the resignations of several prosecutors in New York and Washington, including Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, who accused the mayor and the Justice Department of negotiating a quid pro quo.
(WASHINGTON) — Firings at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will have reverberating impacts on how meteorologists across the country forecast the weather, according to experts.
Last week, many NOAA employees took to social media to announce that they had been terminated after weeks of uncertainty as the Trump administration continues to make cuts at federal agencies. But the widespread firings of meteorologists who make safety determinations based on upcoming weather and climate conditions could be detrimental to the government’s ability to protect Americans in times of disaster, experts told ABC News.
NOAA and the National Weather Service (NWS), which is a part of NOAA, are responsible for both routine and extreme weather forecasting nationwide – tracking hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, tsunamis and other potentially life-threatening events. The union representing staffers at NOAA and the NWS told ABC News in an emailed statement that 586 probationary employees were terminated from NOAA on Feb. 27, with 108 of those cuts coming from the NWS.
The National Weather Service was already short-staffed ahead of the cuts, with more than 600 vacancies at the start of 2025, National Weather Service Employees Organization General Counsel Richard Hirn said in the statement. In addition, 500 employees, including 172 NWS employees, accepted a deferred resignation and began their administrative leave the next day.
“Which means that hundreds of operational personnel who usually staff the 122 NWS forecast offices, 13 River Forecast Centers, and two tsunami warning centers will disappear overnight,” Hirn told ABC News.
It’s unclear whether there will be sufficient staffing left at any number of regional forecast offices to continue 24/7 operations, Hirn said, adding that “there are only a dozen or so forecasters assigned to each office when fully staffed.”
The NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory announced on Feb. 27 that the office’s communication services would “be taking an indefinite hiatus” due to a reduction in staff.
In addition, the loss of satellite operators at the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Maryland, and the Wallops Island Command and Data Acquisition Station in Wallops Island, Virginia, could impact the ability of the NWS to track and maintain the weather data used to forecast and provide severe weather warnings, Hirn said.
Many essential functions, such as satellite information, weather and its effect on airplane engine health, come from these offices, said Craig McLean, former NOAA director of research, during a news conference last Friday.
“Leaving NOAA understaffed will inevitably lead to additional chaos and confusion beyond what we’ve had over the last several weeks and is going to be a negative impact on people’s lives,” McClean said.
The cuts will lead to significant consequences for weather forecasting accuracy, sea navigation, the fishing industry and air safety, Democrats and former NOAA leadership officials said in a news conference the Friday after last week’s dismissals. Officials also expect an early termination of leases on a portion of the 620 facilities run by NOAA across the country.
“All of NOAA’s mission responsibilities have been impacted – every office in NOAA,” Rick Spinrad, former NOAA administrator, said during the news conference. “Every office in NOAA was hit by these indiscriminate, misguided, ill-informed terminations.”
The terminations come as the U.S. heads into tornado season, with hurricane season not too far behind, Spinrad said. Seasonal outlooks will be impacted in addition to the immediate weather forecasting products, Spinrad added.
“Musk and his fake officials, the DOGE tech bros, have been rummaging through our most sensitive data without authority in violation of the law for weeks now,” House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman, D-Calif., said in a statement. “And this has come with sweeping, indiscriminate layoffs of nonpartisan public servants. Park rangers, firefighters, scientists – all of these people, whose purpose is to serve everyday Americans, have had the rug pulled out from under them. And we will all be worse off for it.”
Among the fired scientists were a researcher at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey; a NWS meteorologist in Anchorage, Alaska; a physical scientist with the National Centers for Environmental Prediction; and the meteorologist in charge at the NWS Louisville office, according to posts to social media.
Hirn said the union was aware of up to an additional 800 probationary NOAA employees could soon be terminated following the initial dismissals. Those additional cuts do not yet appear to have happened.
In a statement to ABC News, NOAA and the NWS declined to comment on or confirm the staffing cuts, saying that the agency does not comment on personnel matters, but NOAA National Press Officer for Weather Susan Buchanan emphasized the agency’s ongoing commitment to meteorology.
“NOAA remains dedicated to its mission, providing timely information, research, and resources that serve the American public and ensure our nation’s environmental and economic resilience,” Buchanan said. “We continue to provide weather information, forecasts and warnings pursuant to our public safety mission.”
On Monday, demonstrators gathered outside of NOAA headquarters in Washington, D.C. to protest the employee dismissals.
“NOAA workers across the country are really kind of tense and waiting to hear what may happen,” Sarah Cooley, former head of NOAA’s ocean acidification program, told ABC News during the protest.
Tom Di Liberto, an ousted public affairs specialist and climate scientist with NOAA, told ABC News that his job before he was dismissed was to help communicate to the public exactly what NOAA does.
“If you ever wondered what the weather was like outside, if you’ve ever been to the ocean, you’re interacting with NOAA,” Di Liberto said. “If you ever looked at temperature on your phone, that’s probably NOAA data coming to you. Every aspect of everything we do outside is related to what NOAA does, which is why this is such a dangerous thing. You’re playing games with potentially lifesaving information to go out to people, or making that harder to get out the people.”
ABC News’ Matthew Glasser, Cheyenne Haslett, Daniel Manzo, Daniel Peck and Ginger Zee contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Last July, a prosecutor in California sent a letter to Elon Musk’s SpaceX with an urgent message: The company’s internet satellite dishes are being used by criminal organizations in so-called “scam compounds” across Southeast Asia.
Starlink, which was developed by SpaceX in 2019, provides internet to remote locations, and the company’s satellite systems have been used in war-torn Ukraine, in hospitals in Gaza, and in areas affected by hurricanes.
But over the last several years, according to international officials and intergovernmental organizations, authorities have found Starlink satellite dishes being used in criminally run scam centers, where users perpetrate illegal online schemes to defraud people.
Anti-scam advocates like Erin West, the former deputy district attorney for Santa Clara County, California, have been increasingly calling on companies with links to scam centers to help them locate and dismantle the criminal groups that run scam compounds.
“The thing about Starlink is, it is a satellite, it’s covering specific areas,” said West, who sent the letter to Starlink. “And when we can point out that some of those locations are known scam centers, then I want Starlink to turn off the service.”
West and the Santa Clara DA’s office told ABC News that SpaceX never responded to their letter.
ABC News has previously reported on the growing rise of scam compounds in Southeast Asia, Africa and South America, where hundreds of thousands of people are reported to be trafficked and forced to target people in the U.S. and Europe.
According to the FBI, victims of cryptocurrency scams linked to the compounds reported $3.9 billion in estimated losses in 2023.
A report published by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime in October found that Chinese organized crime groups have found ways around “existing security protocols in order to access the remote high-speed internet connectivity made possible” by Starlink’s technology.
“Several recent incidents relating to the use of false base stations and Starlink satellite dishes have been reported by law enforcement authorities in Mekong countries over past years,” the report said.
SpaceX representatives did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
According to officials and the UNODC, online vendors are selling Starlink devices to cyber-enabled fraud operations in remote areas where scam compounds are located.
“In the future, Starlink will reach a transmission capacity of 200G! Come and enjoy a set of Starlink equipment exclusive to you,” said an advertisement posted last week on a Telegram chat that ABC News reviewed.
Benedikt Hofmann, the Deputy Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific for UNODC, who reviewed the Telegram chat, said there are many vendors specifically advertising Starlink access as a “solution for online scam operators” on Telegram-based markets.
Anti-scam groups and intergovernmental organizations have been looking into the Telegram chats as part of their effort to locate and dismantle the scam compounds.
The use of Starlink satellite devices by criminal organizations was first reported by Wired.
Hofmann told ABC News that “Starlink is a growing concern.”
“We’ve seen increasing cases of devices being seized en route to Myanmar, usually coming from other parts of the region where they can be legally purchased,” Hofmann said. “There is a clear link to the scam industry.”
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images, FILE
(WASHINGTON) Hunter Biden may have his freedom, but the son of former President Joe Biden now finds himself mired in debt, without a permanent home, and the target of ongoing attacks from the current president, Donald Trump, and his allies on Capitol Hill, according to a court filing.
In court papers filed Wednesday, Hunter Biden asked a federal judge to dismiss his lawsuit against online provocateur Garrett Ziegler because he “does not have the financial resources to continue litigating this case.”
Amid lagging sales of his art and his memoir, the younger Biden remains “several million dollars” in debt after fighting multiple federal criminal cases, claiming in an affidavit that he only sold one painting for $36,000 since late 2023, after selling 27 paintings in the previous couple of years at an average price of nearly $55,000.
“Given the positive feedback and reviews of my artwork and memoir, I was expecting to obtain paid speaking engagements and paid appearances, but that has not happened,” Hunter Biden wrote Wednesday.
He said that his “lack of financial resources has been exacerbated by the fires in the Pacific Palisades in early January, which has rendered my rental house unlivable for an extended period of time and, like many others in that situation, I am having difficulty in finding a new permanent place to live.”
A person close to Hunter Biden told ABC News that his rental did not burn down, but that immense damage to the surrounding properties had limited his access to his residence.
The affidavit chronicles a series of hardships since his father’s departure from office. Weeks before Trump’s inauguration, then-President Biden pardoned his son shortly before two federal judges were scheduled to sentence him for a pair of criminal convictions in Delaware and California, for which he faced the possibility of substantial prison time.
Hunter Biden has acknowledged taking out millions of dollars in loans from Kevin Morris, a Hollywood attorney who largely bankrolled Hunter Biden’s legal defense over the past five years. In congressional testimony last year, Morris said he expected Hunter Biden to repay those loans beginning in 2025, though it was not clear from the affidavit whether those loan repayments have begun.
Hunter Biden and his legal team are evaluating whether to continue litigating a handful of other lawsuits he filed in recent years against purveyors of his infamous laptop on a “case by case basis,” Hunter Biden wrote in Wednesday’s filing. Ziegler did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
One of those suits targets Patrick Byrne, the founder of Overstock.com and an avid supporter of President Trump. Hunter Biden sued Byrne in late 2023 for defamation for falsely accused Hunter Biden of trying to bribe Iran while his father was president — a claim that Hunter Biden said has subjected him to “harassment, intimidation, and harm.” Byrne has fought the defamation claim in court.
The trail in the case has been repeatedly delayed amid a protracted dispute over depositions from Byrne and an FBI agent that has thrown a wrench into the proceedings.
Byrne’s attorneys claim in court papers that Byrne fled to Dubai after he was told by U.S. officials “that the Venezuelan government has a $25,000,000 bounty on his head,” and said he preferred a deposition over Zoom “out of concern for his personal safety.” The parties ultimately agreed to a remote deposition in December that was expected to span seven hours over the course of three days, though it was unclear from the court docket when exactly the deposition occurred.
In court filings as part of that case, Hunter Biden has echoed his claims of financial hardship. He claimed that because of Byrne’s defamatory statements, he has suffered “lost economic opportunities” to the tune of nearly half a million dollars, citing lost memoir sales, lost art sales, and lost speaking opportunities.
Hunter Biden’s legal team has also subpoenaed the FBI, demanding testimony and documents from an agent whom Byrne claimed on social media could corroborate Byrne’s allegations against the younger Biden. But the FBI has so far rebuffed those efforts, and on Monday the Justice Department filed a motion in federal court in Washington, D.C., urging a federal judge there to quash the subpoena.
Meanwhile, Hunter Biden remains squarely on the minds of Trump and his loyalists in Congress. As one of his first acts in office, Trump signed an executive order revoking security clearances for 51 former intelligence officials who signed a letter asserting that the emergence of data from Hunter Biden’s laptop in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election bore similarities to prior Russian misinformation operations.
During a heated Oval Office confrontation between Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last week, Trump repeatedly invoked Hunter Biden’s name as part of a lengthy diatribe about the Russia investigation led by Robert Mueller:
And on Tuesday, two top Republican lawmakers invited IRS whistleblowers who revealed details of Hunter Biden’s tax filings as guests at Trump’s Joint Address to Congress.
The person close to Hunter Biden told ABC News that the former president’s son will continue pursuing his art career and plans to devote himself to initiatives meant to help people struggling with addiction. And despite the sentiments in his affidavit, Hunter Biden remains in “a good place to rebuild his life,” the person said.
(CALIFORNIA) — A California man and his dog were rescued on Wednesday after spending the night trapped in a crushed pickup truck along a highway in the northern part of the state, according to the California Highway Patrol.
At approximately 10:03 a.m. Wednesday, a motorist traveling along Highway 89 — three miles north of Calpine, California — called 911 after passing by the wreckage, “but was unsure if anyone was in the vehicle,” the Sierra County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement Wednesday evening.
Since police were not certain of the condition of the driver, paramedics, the local fire department and California Highway Patrol accompanied a sheriff’s deputy to the scene, officials said.
Upon arrival, first responders found the pickup truck approximately “30 feet down the hillside along Highway 89,” the sheriff’s office said.
Inside the vehicle, authorities found “one single occupant and a dog,” the sheriff’s office said.
The driver told officials he “crashed the day before around 2 p.m. and had spent the night in the truck,” even admitting to officials that “he just wasn’t paying attention and went off the road,” according to highway patrol.
The Sierra County Fire Department contacted the U.S. Forest Service and Graeagle Fire for assistance in extracting the driver from the wreckage, the sheriff’s department said.
After an hour of “meticulous work,” the driver was removed from the vehicle and taken to the hospital with “moderate injuries,” the sheriff’s office said.
“It was a pleasure working with Sierra County Fire — Calpine in the successful extrication of a complicated situation. Wishing the patient a full and speedy recovery,” Graeagle Fire Department said in a statement on Wednesday.
The dog appeared to not have any injuries and is currently “being cared for by a friend of the driver,” the sheriff’s office said.
Upon investigation, authorities said they believe the driver had been trapped inside the car for neatly 22 hours before being discovered by the motorist.
The cause of the crash is currently being investigated by the California Highway Patrol.
After this situation, California Highway Patrol urged people to remember “the responsibility we all have to each other when operating these rolling hunks of metal,” the agency said in a statement.
(BOSTON) — Police in Boston are searching for two suspects who allegedly posed as city workers in an armed home invasion.
The Boston Police Department released images of the unknown male suspects, who are accused of attempted robbery and burglary, according to the incident report.
The incident occurred at an apartment in the Dorchester neighborhood on Monday afternoon, police said.
“The suspects allegedly posed as city workers to gain entry into an elderly victim’s residence, where they restrained the victim, placed duct tape over their mouth, and brandished a black firearm,” the Boston Police Department said in an alert on Wednesday.
The suspects knocked on the victim’s door and forced their way in after he opened it, according to the incident report. One of the suspects was wearing a neon yellow construction worker jacket and white hard hat at the time, police said.
Once inside, one of the suspects attempted to tie the victim’s ankles together with a clear plastic bag while the other attempted to place duct tape over his mouth, according to the incident report.
When the victim broke free of the plastic bag, one of the suspects “brandished a black firearm and pointed it directly at his head,” the incident report stated.
The suspect also threw a fan at the victim after the victim pushed him to the side of a bed during a struggle, according to the incident report.
Both suspects ultimately fled the apartment, according to the incident report.
The victim sustained bruising on both of his hands and wrists, light bruising on his face and several cuts on his right ear, according to the incident report. He declined medical assistance from Boston EMS, preferring to go to his own doctor, the report stated.
Security camera footage showed the two suspects entering the apartment building at about 4:24 p.m. Monday and going to the door of the apartment, then exiting from a rear staircase at approximately 4:30 p.m., according to the incident report.
Both suspects were wearing black masks, police said. One of the suspects was also wearing a red knit Red Sox hat, police said.
Anyone with information is asked to call 1-800-494-TIPS.
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge in Minnesota has found MyPillow CEO and Trump ally Mike Lindell in contempt of court for failing to provide discovery and financial documents in the defamation case brought by voting machine company Smartmatic.
Smartmatic sued Lindell for defamation in 2022, alleging that he lied about the company’s role in the 2020 presidential election for his own financial gain.
In a filing on Thursday, Judge Jeffrey M. Bryan said Lindell failed to produce analytics data for his company’s website and financial records to show Lindell’s financial condition for the years 2022 and 2023.
“If Defendants do not comply, Smartmatic is invited to bring another motion for an order to show cause or to seek further relief,” Judge Bryan wrote.
Lindell told ABC News he was not aware of the judge’s order.
“We will not stop until we have paper ballots counted and we’re going to melt down all the voting machines and turn them into prison bars,” Lindell said.
Lindell was one of the leading promoters of false 2020 election fraud claims. He continues to spread false election claims including calling for the ban of voting machines.
