Cindy McCain to step down as head of the World Food Programme
Cindy McCain during a panel session at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (Stefan Wermuth/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Cindy McCain will be stepping down as head of the United Nations World Food Programme to focus on her health, the humanitarian organization announced on Thursday.
McCain, 71, suffered a mild stroke in October 2025, according to the organization. She plans to step down as the group’s executive director in three months, it said.
“With a heavy heart, I am announcing my intention to step down as the Executive Director of the World Food Programme,” McCain said in a statement released through the organization. “Serving this incredible organization has been the honor of a lifetime.”
McCain, who is the widow of the late Arizona Sen. John McCain, stepped away for several months following her stroke before returning in early January to the organization’s headquarters in Rome. She said she hoped to complete her five-year term “but my health has not recovered to a level that allows me to fully serve the enormous demands of this job.”
“This is one of the most difficult decisions I have ever had to make,” McCain said. “Over the past three years, we have delivered life-saving and life-changing assistance for millions of the world’s most vulnerable people — and this unwavering commitment will be more important than ever in the years to come.”
McCain has been serving since April 2023 as the executive director of the World Food Programme, which has a presence in more than 120 countries and over 20,000 staff worldwide.
“During her tenure she has driven several unprecedented changes to reform and scale the organization’s abilities including overhauling its global structure, streamlining its operations and processes, scaling innovative digital technologies, and diversifying its public and private partnership efforts,” the World Food Programme said in a press release.
McCain previously served as the U.S. ambassador to the UN Agencies for Food and Agriculture for two years.
U.S. Secret Service agents (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
(GLYNCO, Ga.) — A Secret Service agent in training who previously worked as an analyst with the presidential protection team was arrested this week on charges of felony eavesdropping at the nation’s premiere federal law enforcement training academy.
Police reports from Glynn County, Georgia, said the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center student, Joel Lara Canvasser, secretly filmed his suitemate’s every move with a spy camera hidden in a phone charger. Canvasser allegedly targeted the roommate with a weekslong campaign of harassing text messages written to suggest the roommate was being watched by a stalking stranger who could see into his suite and even the bathroom.
Canvasser was arrested Wednesday and charged with unlawful eavesdropping or surveillance, according to police records. He posted bond of $8,458. Canvasser did not respond to messages seeking comment from ABC News.
Secret Service Deputy Director Matthew Quinn called the charges against Canvasser “deeply troubling.”
“On April 8, disturbing facts involving a Secret Service trainee assigned to a special agent training class at FLETC in Glynco, Georgia, were brought to light,” Quinn said in a statement to ABC News. “An initial investigation by the Secret Service and FLETC led to the individual’s arrest by local authorities. The charges are deeply troubling and raise significant concerns about the individual’s character and fitness to serve. As this matter is now before the courts, we will allow the facts to be presented through the judicial process. We commend the swift actions of Secret Service trainers and FLETC personnel, whose prompt response ensured the matter was quickly brought forward and addressed through appropriate legal channels.”
The agency also confirmed that the incident occurred between Canvasser and his suitemate, also a Secret Service trainee.
Before applying to be a special agent, Canvasser was a civilian employee assigned to the Office of Strategic Information and Intelligence, which monitors and assesses threats to the president and others under Secret Service protection.
Canvasser started with the Secret Service in the fall of 2025, the agency said — but now in addition to the criminal charges he faces, his access to all Secret Service sites and systems has been revoked while his work status and security clearance is suspended.
According to police, Canvasser in March offered his suitemate a phone charger after the roommate’s charger seemed to have disappeared. Canvasser, police said, told the roommate “the cleaning ladies may have taken it.”
Police said the roommate plugged the charger in below the TV, giving the hidden camera a vantage point that had “coverage of the entire room.”
“Roughly a week after [the roommate] plugs in the charger, he begins receiving odd text messages from various numbers. In the beginning he believed they were spam messages, however over time he began to realize whoever was texting him was simultaneously watching him,” the police report said. “At first, he assumed whoever was texting him had compromised his phone,” so he “placed a Band Aid over the camera.”
The roommate sought Canvasser’s help with what he thought was his hacked device, the report said. Canvasser “has a cyber background and is supposedly good with technology which is why [the roommate] had gone to him for help.”
Canvasser told the suitemate he was probably the victim of malware and offered to help reset the phone, according to the report. But afterward, the roommate noticed the refreshed phone had suddenly and automatically connected to Canvasser’s personal WiFi account — something he found “odd,” according to the report.
The roommate’s reprieve from the harassing messages was short-lived, the report said: the texts “made a return” a week later.
“There was a specific instance where [the roommate] was using the bathroom and his phone was in his pocket. When he finished, he checked his phone and saw a message referencing him using the bathroom. It was at this point that [the roommate] realized the individual was not watching him through his phone camera but instead from another device,” according to the report.
Upon examining the borrowed charger, the roommate noticed it had an unusual glint, and “realized it was a camera,” the report said. “When he had pulled it out of the wall, the light hit the device in such a way that made the lens visible.”
Canvasser’s alleged harassing voyeurism did not stop at the surreptitious filming, according to the report: the roommate told police that “during the past month, Mr. Joel has gone into [his] room on multiple occasions while he’s been sleeping at night. For this reason, [the roommate] has been locking his things up in attempts to prevent these events.”
The trainee’s alleged violations of both privacy and the law are another black mark for the agency tasked with protecting top officials, including the president, vice president, their families and foreign dignitaries visiting the U.S.
The Secret Service had faced intense scrutiny since a gunman attempted to assassinate Donald Trump, then a former president running to return to the White House, while he campaigned at a Pennsylvania rally two years ago. That incident, which prompted the ouster of the agency’s director, was called a “historic security failure by the Secret Service” in an independent review by the Department of Homeland Security.
It also comes after a Secret Service agent tasked with protecting former President Barack Obama knowingly breached his duties while trying to woo a love interest and living a double life, according to a memoir from the agent’s ex-girlfriend. That prompted an internal probe once the agency became aware, after which the agent was ultimately fired.
ICE Police and Immigration & Deportation (Douglas Rissing/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The Department of Homeland Security has now picked another state on which to focus its immigration enforcement action: Maine.
On Wednesday, DHS launched “Operation Catch of the Day” — an operation targeting criminal illegal migrants in the state, according to a DHS spokesperson.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
In this June 2, 2019, file photo, a sign marking the spot of the Stonewall National monument is shown in Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York. (Epics via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The National Parks Service (NPS) removed the rainbow flag that sat on a flagpole inside the Stonewall National Monument near Christopher Park in New York City’s Greenwich Village.
The site was designated a national monument by President Barack Obama in June, 2016, becoming the first federal monument dedicated to LGBTQ+ rights.
The communications office for NPS, which is overseen by the Department of the Interior, confirmed the removal of the rainbow flag in a statement to ABC News on Tuesday morning. It said that, under federal guidance, “only the U.S. flag and other congressionally or departmentally authorized flags are flown on NPS-managed flagpoles, with limited exceptions.”
“Any changes to flag displays are made to ensure consistency with that guidance. Stonewall National Monument continues to preserve and interpret the site’s historic significance through exhibits and programs,” the statement continued.
The office of Interior Sec. Doug Burgum reiterated the sentiment in a statement to ABC News on Tuesday, saying that federal policy governing flag displays “has been in place for decades,” and “recent guidance clarifies how that longstanding policy is applied consistently across NPS-managed sites.”
The pride flag inside the monument was permanently installed by NPS in 2021, and was the first pride flag to be flown over federally-funded land.
Steven Love Menendez, a New York-based advocate for LGBTQ+ rights who launched the movement for the permanent pride flag to be installed at the site in 2017, questioned the timing of its removal.
“It’s a targeted attack on the community, right? Because the flag was there. It’s not that they never gave permission for it to be erected. They did give permission for it to be erected, and now they’re using some legal language to try to make an excuse for taking it down,” Menendez said. “Why now? That’s the question the administration needs to answer. Why now? It was already up, and my response is, it’s solely based on hate.”
The Stonewall National Monument is located near the Stonewall Inn, a historic gay bar in the neighborhood that was a safe haven for many in the LGBTQ+ community in the 1960s. The bar was raided by the NYPD in 1969, leading to riots that became known as the Stonewall Uprising, which is credited with kickstarting the modern LGBTQ+ movement. The NYPD publicly apologized for the raid in 2019.
“Stonewall will be our first national monument to tell the story of the struggle for LGBT rights. I believe our national parks should reflect the full story of our country, the richness and diversity and uniquely American spirit that has always defined us. That we are stronger together. That out of many, we are one,” Obama said in 2016.
Menendez said that, during Pride Month in 2017, he got a permit from NPS to install a pride flag inside the monument and his request was granted. Once the month was over, he noted that the flag was taken down. Menendez said he was “very passionate” about people being able to see the pride flag when they visited the monument, so he petitioned NPS in 2017 for the installation of a permanent flag.
According to ABC station in New York City, WABC, NPS was expected to participate in a dedication ceremony for a permanent rainbow flag inside the monument on National Coming Out Day on Oct. 11, 2017. But amid opposition from the Trump administration, NPS withdrew from the ceremony — a move that drew widespread criticism from LGBTQ+ advocates, WABC reported.
At the dedication ceremony, the city of New York flew their own rainbow flag on city land outside the Stonewall National Monument and it wasn’t until 2021 when the Biden administration approved the permanent installation of a pride flag inside the monument on federal land. The city flag has remained in place, but the flag on federal land was removed by NPS this week.
“For me, [the rainbow flag] is a sense of pride and joy and celebration and victory for our community. … This flag represents our victory and our triumphs,” Menendez, who attended the 2017 ceremony, told ABC News on Tuesday. “[Removing] it feels like a slap in the face to the community, you know, a punch in the gut. They’re taking away our symbol of pride.”
The removal of the flag comes after President Donald Trump directed Sec. Burgum in a March 2025 executive order to remove “divisive” and “anti-American” content from museums and national parks.
Asked if the removal of the pride flag was in response to Trump’s order, NPS did not comment.
