Drone updates: No national security risk found after many tips, FBI and other federal agencies say
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(WASHINGTON) — The thousands of drone sightings reported over the last month in Northeastern states don’t appear to be “anything anomalous,” nor do they present a national security or public safety risk, federal officials said in a multiagency statement late Monday.
The FBI has received more than 5,000 tips in the last few weeks about drone sightings in New Jersey and other states, said the statement, which was released jointly by the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Defense.
Those tips have resulted in about 100 leads, with federal investigators supporting state and local officials.
“Having closely examined the technical data and tips from concerned citizens, we assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones,” the joint statement said.
Uncrewed aerial drones have been lighting up the sky at night in New Jersey and nearby states for weeks, since about mid-November, leading to concern from residents and speculation online. Some had demanded answers from local and state officials for answers.
The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have deployed infrared cameras and drone detection technology to ensure the drones flying over the New Jersey and New York area aren’t harmful, according to a law enforcement source. Dozens of agencies have been out daily to find answers and track down any operators acting “illegally or with nefarious intent,” the FBI said recently.
The agencies are also looking at social media and other photos to determine what exactly is in the photos. Most of the photos and video depict manned aircraft, according to a law enforcement source.
But the newly released statement appeared to take a sober view of the mysterious drone sightings, noting that federal official have yet to identify “anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the northeast.”
“That said, we recognize the concern among many communities,” the statement said. “We continue to support state and local authorities with advanced detection technology and support of law enforcement.”
ABC News’ Calvin Milliner, David Brennan, Luke Barr, Meredith Deliso, Luis Martinez, Matt Seyler, Aaron Katersky, Sarah Kolinovsky and Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, for the first time this cycle, will soon hit the campaign trail with former President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton, according to a senior campaign official.
The vice presidential nominee will be out with his party’s former standard bearers this week and next week in an effort to push for early voting in battleground states, ABC News has exclusively learned.
The governor will first rally with Clinton in Durham, North Carolina, on Thursday — the first day of early voting in the critical battleground state. Next Tuesday, Walz will travel to Wisconsin, another battleground, with Obama for the start of early voting in that state.
The joint campaign blitzes come as the Harris-Walz ticket has deployed both former presidents — some of its strongest political assets — headed into the final stretch of the election cycle.
Obama hit the trail for the ticket starting on Oct. 10 and has additional stops planned in the run-up to Election Day, according to the campaign.
His first stop was in battleground Pennsylvania in the Pittsburgh area — a visit where he sternly chided Black men over “excuses” to not vote for Harris, saying he finds them sitting out or voting for former President Donald Trump “not acceptable.”
Obama will also independently hit the campaign trail in the Sun Belt this week, with stops on Friday in Arizona and on Saturday in Nevada — the first days of early voting in the state.
On Sunday and Monday, Clinton made his trail debut with travel across rural communities in Eastern and South Georgia to encourage Georgians to vote early.
Last night, on the eve of early in-person voting in the state, Clinton stumped for the Harris-Walz ticket in battleground Georgia, mounting the stakes of the election and the importance of voting.
“I want you to be happy, and I want you to know that I am here because I believe. I believe, based on my personal knowledge of the job and the candidates, that Kamala Harris will be a fine president,” he said.
“All we gotta do is show up. If we show up, we’ll win,” Clinton added.
The joint principal campaign events also come as Walz himself has made campaign stops related to early voting. The governor campaigned last week in Phoenix and Tucson on the first day of early voting in Arizona.
“I know you’ve started voting here in Arizona. It’s happening across the country. We can make a difference. And I think just the idea of having an administration building on these strong relationships, this is our opportunity to take this to the next level that we need to do,” Walz said at event with tribal leaders in Chandler, Arizona last Wednesday.
ABC News’ Selina Wang, Fritz Farrow, Gabriella Abdul-Hakim and Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report.
(TAMPA, Fla.) — It has been more than 100 years since Florida’s Tampa Bay area – a region especially vulnerable to storm surge and flooding – faced a direct hit by a hurricane.
But Hurricane Milton is now heading straight for Florida’s Gulf Coast, with landfall and a 15-foot storm surge possible in Tampa by late Wednesday night, meaning residents are racing to evacuate ahead of the storm even as they continue to clean up the damage from Hurricane Helene.
Here’s why Hurricane Milton is posing such a threat to the Tampa Bay region:
Why is Tampa susceptible to flooding and storm surge?
The two major surrounding bodies of water – the Gulf of Mexico and surrounding bays – as well as the low-lying coastline make the Tampa Bay area especially susceptible to storm surge, according to experts.
The continental shelf in the Gulf of Mexico extends far offshore, up to 150 miles in some spots, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. When water gets “shoved” onto the coast from tropical systems, it has nowhere to go but onto the land, Marshall Shepherd, director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia and former president of the American Meteorological Society, told ABC News.
Additionally, when it comes to storm surge, it isn’t the strength of the storm that matters, but rather the size, Shepherd noted. That’s because the larger is the storm system, the longer water gets pushed onto shore, according to Josh Dozor, general manager of medical and security assistance at International SOS, a risk mitigation company, and former deputy assistant administrator of FEMA.
“When you have a large storm, it enables the gradual, continuous buildup of storm surge as it approaches,” Dozor told ABC News. ” … That 10 to 15 feet of storm surge could result in 10 to 15 feet over what is normally dry land.”
It isn’t uncommon for rising waters from Hillsborough Bay, which comprises the northeast arm of Tampa Bay, to spill onto Bayshore Boulevard, a scenic waterfront roadway in South Tampa that serves as recreation for residents, as well as a common route for drivers. Bayshore Boulevard flooded ahead of and during Hurricane Helene, when the storm surge was less than is currently forecast for Hurricane Milton.
Hurricane Helene’s impact is still fresh
The Tampa Bay region is nowhere near done with recovery and cleanup from Hurricane Helene, which made landfall Sept. 30 and brought six feet of storm surge to the Tampa area’s coastlines. The storm’s size allowed for that surge to infiltrate homes and businesses along the Gulf Coast from Cedar Key to Fort Meyers – each of which is about two hours north and south of Tampa, respectively – residents told ABC News.
In Dunedin, Florida, located on the Gulf Coast at the northernmost tip of Tampa Bay, mountains of debris still litter the streets and people were still airing out their belongings when evacuation orders for Hurricane Milton were issued, Dunedin resident Candace Allaire, 39, COO of the Crown & Bull restaurant, told ABC News.
While the restaurant’s newly renovated kitchen weathered the brunt of Helene’s damage, the rest of the neighborhood was destroyed, Allaire said. Many homes for Allaire’s family and employees, as well as neighboring restaurants, had four feet of standing water in them for hours as Helene barreled through, she said.
The emotional toll of Helene less than two weeks ago, and Hurricane Ian two years ago, is still pervasive in the community. Rebecca Kuppler, mother to a 4-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter, lost everything in Hurricane Helene. The family had evacuated to Orlando ahead of the storm and heard from neighbors that the water line was rising higher and higher, she told ABC News.
“It’s not stuff,” Kuppler said of the loss. “It’s our home, it’s the memories, it’s the love, the time you put into that, and that’s what’s been really hard.”
The pile of debris outside of Kuppler’s home was still there as the forecasts for Hurricane Milton began, prompting the family to evacuate yet again.
The back-to-back storms are reminiscent of the 2004 hurricane season, when Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne all struck Florida within a six-week period.
“It’s an extreme amount of stress, and if it happens once in a while, I think people can weather it,” Dozor told ABC News. “But when it happens a couple times a year or a couple times every few years, it takes a great toll on people.”
How climate change is increasing the storm risk in the Tampa Bay region
The extreme threat from hurricanes that the Tampa Bay region faces is also likely being influenced by our changing climate.
Human-amplified climate change is the primary cause for present-day rising sea levels, according to a consensus of climate scientists. It’s also triggering more frequent and more intense extreme rainfall events, experts say.
While many factors contribute to the magnitude and impact of storm surge and coastal flooding, average sea levels for many Gulf Coast communities are more than six inches higher today than they were just a few decades ago, data shows.
Human-amplified climate change also likely affected how fast Hurricane Milton intensified as it tracked over the warmer than average waters of the southern Gulf of Mexico, according to researchers. The record-high sea surface temperatures observed in this region over the past two weeks were made up to 400 to 800 times more likely by climate change, according to a rapid attribution analysis by Climate Central.
Warm ocean waters provide the energy hurricanes need to form and intensify. The warmer the water, the more powerful the storms typically are.
While a link has been established between the unusually warm sea surface temperatures and human-caused climate change, it is not yet known to what degree that climate change may have influenced Hurricane Milton’s development.
How Tampa Bay is preparing for the storm
Mandatory evacuations are in place for six counties in Florida, with Tampa at the center of the threat. Airports, businesses and schools from Tampa to Naples, some 170 miles south, are closing in preparation for Milton.
The Tampa area is one of the top five places for evacuations due to potential storm surge, Dozor said. Tampa Mayor Jane Castor issued a dire warning, urging those in the evacuation zones to heed evacuation mandates.
“If you choose to stay in one of the evacuation areas, you are going to die,” Castor said in an interview with CNN Monday night.
While FEMA and emergency management at the state and local levels report that they are adequately prepared for Hurricane Milton, it is incumbent upon residents to follow instructions and get themselves out of harm’s way in a timely manner, Dozor said. In highly populated cities along the Tampa peninsula, like Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater, it is important for people to leave early because of the limited roadways.
“There are a lot of bottlenecks that hinder quick and efficient movement of populations to be able to leave the peninsula of Tampa,” he said.
It appears that residents are heeding the warnings, Dozor noted. Beginning on Monday, standstill traffic could be seen for miles on I-75 and the Sunshine Skyway, the bridge that spans the Tampa Bay, as residents embarked on a mass exodus to safety.
At 4 a.m. on Tuesday, Candace Allaire and her fiancé evacuated north to Destin, in Florida’s panhandle, to ride out the storm. Fuel was hard to come by in preparation of their road trip, she said.
In addition, hotel availability is most major Florida cities to which residents might evacuate – such as Fort Lauderdale, Gainesville and Jacksonville – is already extremely low, Dozor said.
“All the hotels are reserved for people who’ve obviously been evacuated,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — Violent crime decreased by 10.3% in the first six months of 2024, according to newly released preliminary FBI data.
From January to June 2024, the Quarterly Uniform Crime Report found that:
Murder decreased by 22.7%.
Rape decreased by 17.7%.
Robbery decreased by 13.6%.
Aggravated assault decreased by 8.1%.
Property crime decreased by 13.1%.
The preliminary data is based on voluntary submissions from 14,809 of 19,311 law enforcement agencies in the country.
The Midwest saw the largest percentage drop by region, with a 12% drop in violent crime.
Violent crime in 2024, a top issue for voters in the upcoming presidential election, is continuing its downward trend from 2023.
Data released by the FBI last month found that violent crime was down 3% from 2022 to 2023, with murders down 11.6%.
The drop in murders represents the “largest drop” since the agency has been collecting data, an FBI official said of the 2022 to 2023 trend in a call with reporters.
In that period, the report noted that rape decreased by 9.4%, aggravated assault decreased by 2.8%, and robbery decreased by 0.3%.
ABC News’ Jack Date and Luke Barr contributed to this report.
