‘God of chaos’ asteroid to pass close to Earth in 2029
Near-Earth asteroid Apophis is a potentially hazardous asteroid that will safely pass close to Earth on April 13, 2029. It will come about 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) from our planet’s surface — closer than the distance of many satellites in geosynchronous orbit (about 22,236 miles, or 36,000 kilometers, in altitude). (NASA)
(NEW YORK) — A rare asteroid will soon be visible to the naked eye in a rare celestial event, according to astronomers.
Asteroid 99942 Apophis – named after the Egyptian deity of chaos, darkness and fire – is expected to safely pass close to Earth on April 13, 2029, according to NASA.
The asteroid will pass within roughly 20,000 miles of Earth – nearly 12 times closer than the moon’s average distance from Earth, and closer than many satellites in geosynchronous orbit – making it one one of the closest approaches ever recorded for an object if its size and a “very rare event,” according to NASA.
The approach will be visible to observers on the ground in the Eastern Hemisphere, weather permitting, according to NASA. It will be close enough that sky-watchers won’t need a telescope or binoculars to see it, astronomers say.
When Apophis was first discovered in 2004, it was labeled a potentially hazardous asteroid because of the possibility that it could impact Earth in 2029, 2036 or 2068, according to NASA.
After closely tracking the asteroid and its orbit using optical telescopes and ground-based radar, astronomers are now confident that there is no risk of Apophis impacting Earth for at least 100 years.
The Earth’s gravitational pull could change the asteroid’s orbit around the sun as it passes in 2029, making the orbit slightly larger or the orbital period slightly longer, but the risk of impact with Earth will remain the same, NASA says. Its close passage will also afford astronomers around the world the opportunity to learn more about the asteroid.
Apophis is the Greek name for the Egyptian god known as Apep. The name was proposed by the astronomers who discovered the asteroid: Roy Tucker, David Tholen and Fabrizio Bernardi of the Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona.
The asteroid is a relic of the early solar system from about 4.6 billion years ago, made of leftover raw material that was never part of a planet or moon, according to NASA. Though its exact size and shape is unknown, it has a mean diameter of about 1,115 feet and a long axis of at least 1,480 feet.
Apophis’ surface is weathered due to eons of exposure to space weather, including solar wind and cosmic rays, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Observatories around the world and in space will observe the asteroid’s historic approach to Earth in order to better understand its physical properties.
NASA has redirected a spacecraft to rendezvous with Apophis shortly after its close approach in 2029, while the European Space Agency is sending a spacecraft to study it.
When the April 2029 flyby occurs, Apophis will become a member of the “Apollo” group, the family of asteroids that cross Earth’s orbit but that themselves have orbits around the sun that are wider than the Earth’s, according to the ESA.
In this May 15, 2025, file photo, Nerdeen Kiswani speaks at a Nakba day protest in Brooklyn, New York. (Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images, FILE)
(NEW YORK) — The NYPD and the FBI said they have disrupted an alleged plot to kill a Palestinian activist, according to law enforcement officials and unsealed court documents.
Authorities arrested Alexander Heifler in Hoboken on Thursday night on charges of unlawfully possessing and unlawfully making firearms. He is also accused of plotting to “go after” activist Nerdeen Kiswani, co-founder of Within Our Lifetime, who is an organizer of many of the pro-Palestinian protests in New York City.
Kiswani is not identified by name in the criminal complaint, but she posted on social media the FBI informed her she was the alleged target.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich.) — A suspect is dead after a shooting and vehicle ramming incident at a synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
No injuries have been confirmed, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said.
Preliminary information is that this was an intentional vehicle ramming, sources briefed on the investigation told ABC News.
According to the sources, the driver was seen steering around security bollards, and caused a fire when colliding the car into the building’s front doors.
The suspect was then engaged by synagogue security, the sheriff said.
The Michigan State Police said it’s urging residents to stay away from the area and said police are increasing patrols at other places of worship in the area.
The Jewish Federation of Detroit said in a statement, “We are aware of an active security incident at Temple Israel. Law enforcement are responding. Our Jewish agencies are currently in precautionary lockdown.”
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement, “This is heartbreaking. Michigan’s Jewish community should be able to live and practice their faith in peace.”
“I am hoping for everyone’s safety,” she added.
In New York City, the NYPD said it’s continuing to deploy officers to synagogues and other Jewish institutions “out of an abundance of caution.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
A sign marks the location of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) headquarters building on April 30, 2025, in Washington, DC. J. David Ake/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Three million pages from the Justice Department’s files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are being released to the public today, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a press briefing Friday.
Blanche said the release, which follows the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, will include 2,000 videos and 180,000 images related to the Epstein case.
Blanche said in total there were 6 million documents, but due to the presence of child sexual abuse material and victim rights obligations, not all documents are being made public in the current release.
Several categories of pages were withheld from the release due to their sensitive nature, Blanche said. These items include personally identifying information of the victims, victims’ medical files, images depicting child pornography, information related to ongoing cases, and any images depicting death or abuse.
Attorneys for hundreds of Epstein survivors tell ABC News that names and identifying information of numerous victims appear unredacted in this latest disclosure, including several women whose names have never before been publicly associated with the case.
“We are getting constant calls for victims because their names, despite them never coming forward, being completely unknown to the public, have all just been released for public consumption,” attorney Brad Edwards, who has represented Epstein victims for more than 20 years, said in a telephone interview with ABC News. “It’s literally thousands of mistakes.”
ABC News has independently confirmed numerous instances of victims’ names appearing in documents included in the latest release.
Shortly after the new material appeared on Friday morning, Edwards said he and his law partner, Brittany Henderson, began receiving calls from clients.
“We contacted DOJ immediately, who has asked us to flag each of the documents where victim names appear unredacted, and they will pull them down,” Edwards said. “It’s an impossible job. The easy job would be for the DOJ to type in all the victims’ names, hit redact like they promised to do, then release them. “
“They’re trying to fix it, but I said, ‘The solution is take the thing down for now,'” Edwards said. “There’s no other remedy to this. It just runs the risk of causing so much more harm unless they take it down first, then fix the problem and put it back up.
ABC News reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
Blanche also pushed back on the notion that the Justice Department might have protected President Donald Trump from his name appearing in the files.
“We comply with the act, and there is no ‘protect President Trump.’ We didn’t protect or not protect anybody,” Blanche told ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas. “I mean, I think that there’s a hunger or a thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied by the review of these documents. And there’s nothing I can do about that.”
Blanche said there was “no oversight” by the White House about what the material showed.
He added that if there was evidence in the files that others had abused victims, the DOJ would pursue charges against them.
One document in Friday’s release is a chart showing connections between Epstein and various employees and associates. Many are redacted — but the faces of several remain visible, including Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate Jean Luc Brunel, and Epstein’s lawyer, accountant, and assistant. The chart is followed by a list of individuals broken into three categories: Day of Arrest, Week of Arrest, and Weeks following arrest.
This ties in with internal DOJ communications released earlier that showed a plan to contact potential witnesses following Epstein’s arrest. There are eight persons who are listed in the accompanying spreadsheet as “suspected co-conspirators,” including Maxwell, Brunel, and Epstein’s assistant Leslie Groff. Two of those designated as “suspected co-conspirators” are also identified also as victims.
Groff has never been charged with a crime and said in a statement to ABC News in 2020 that she “never knowingly booked travel for anyone under the age of 18, and had no knowledge of the alleged illegal activity whatsoever.”
An internal FBI document produced created in August 2019, five days after Epstein’s death, shows nine persons listed as family and associates of Epstein, including eight labeled as “co-conspirators,” most with their names and faces redacted with the exception of Maxwell and Brunel. This points to potential continued interest in pursuing further charges after the death of Epstein. In his statement announcing Epstein’s death, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said “our investigation of the conduct charged in the Indictment — which included a conspiracy count — remains ongoing” Maxwell is the only other person to be charged related to Epstein’s crimes.
Among the other new documents released is what appears to be part of the original indictment against Epstein in his 2005 criminal case in Florida. The 100-page charging document contains information on 58 out the 60 charges against Epstein for his behavior towards six alleged victims. This document had never been made public.
Epstein ending up being offered a plea to reduced charges and was offered a non-prosecution agreement, in a deal that was highly controversial.
As of Friday afternoon, the DOJ had uploaded three “data sets” to its public website. Just one of those sets includes, by ABC News’ count, over 300,000 items.
A team of 500 attorneys from the Justice Department worked around the clock to review and redact material, Blanche said at his press briefing.
Friday’s tranche is the latest in a series of Epstein file releases that began last month in response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which passed Congress overwhelmingly and was signed into law by Trump on Nov. 19. The act gave the Justice Department 30 days to make publicly available all unclassified records pertaining to investigations and prosecutions of Epstein and his convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
The bill contains several exceptions that allow for withholding or redacting records, notably to protect the privacy of Epstein’s victims.
Prior to Friday’s release, the DOJ had posted to its online Epstein library roughly 12,000 documents totaling about 125,000 pages — just a small fraction of the millions of records the department has been reviewing.
Those materials included a record of a complaint to the FBI filed in 1996, years before the disgraced financier was first investigated for child sex abuse. The documents also included new details about the government’s investigation into potential accomplices as well as thousands of photographs of Epstein’s New York and U.S. Virgin Islands properties that were searched by the FBI after Epstein’s arrest in 2019.
The initial release of the files also contained numerous old photos of Epstein traveling with former President Bill Clinton, including pictures of Clinton lounging in a jacuzzi and one of him swimming with Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence after her 2021 conviction for sex trafficking of minors and other offenses.
The images, which were released without any context or background information, contained little information related to Trump, leading a spokesperson for Clinton to accuse the DOJ of selectively disclosing the pictures to imply wrongdoing on the part of Clinton where he said there is none.
“The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton,” Angel Urena said. “This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be.”
In an interview with ABC News on the day of the initial release, Blanche said that every document that mentions Trump will eventually be released, “assuming it’s consistent with the law.”
“There’s no effort to hold anything back because there’s the name Donald J. Trump or anybody else’s name,” Blanche said.
Both Trump and Clinton have denied all wrongdoing and have denied having any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.
Federal prosecutors have indicated in recent court filings that hundreds of government lawyers have spent weeks reviewing “several millions of pages” of materials — including documents, audio and video files — in preparation for disclosure to the public.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act came after the Trump administration faced months of blowback from its announcement last July that they would be releasing no additional Epstein files, after several top officials — including FBI Director Kash Patel and former Deputy Director Dan Bongino — had, prior to joining the administration, accused the government of shielding information regarding the Epstein case.
The files released thus far have yet to show evidence of wrongdoing on the part of famous, powerful men, against the expectations of many of those who pushed for the files’ release.
Epstein owned two private islands in the Virgin Islands and large properties in New York City, New Mexico and Palm Beach, Florida, where he came under investigation for allegedly luring minor girls to his seaside home for massages that turned sexual. He served 13 months of an 18-month sentence for sex crimes charges after reaching a controversial non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami.
In 2019, prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York indicted Epstein on charges that he “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls at his homes in Manhattan, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida, among other locations,” using cash payments to recruit a “vast network of underage victims,” some of whom were as young as 14 years old.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial.
