Google Maps to rename Gulf of Mexico, Denali for US users
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(NEW YORK) — Google announced Tuesday that it plans to update the names of two major geographical landmarks in accordance with an executive order from President Donald Trump.
The tech giant said in an X post it plans to update the name of Alaska’s Denali mountain to Mt. McKinley and the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
“We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources,” Google said in the X post.
Google said in the thread of posts that it uses the U.S. Geological Survey’s Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) database to determine the names.
“Also longstanding practice: When official names vary between countries, Maps users see their official local name. Everyone in the rest of the world sees both names. That applies here too,” Google added in another post.
This comes after Trump signed an executive order on Inauguration Day that ordered the name Mt. McKinley be reinstated and the Gulf of Mexico be renamed.
“A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and we will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs. President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent,” Trump said during his inaugural address.
The move was met with some resistance, even from Trump’s own party. In an X post on Jan. 20, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said that she “strongly” disagreed with Trump’s decision.
“Our nation’s tallest mountain, which has been called Denali for thousands of years, must continue to be known by the rightful name bestowed by Alaska’s Koyukon Athabascans, who have stewarded the land since time immemorial,” Murkowski said.
(WASHINGTON) — Natalya Gudin and her husband, Alexandr Kirsanov, who coached two young figure skaters aboard American Airlines Flight 5342, had a choice to make before the plane took off: Who would go and who would stay.
The couple decided Kirsanov would fly to Wichita, Kansas, to accompany their skaters at the National Development Camp for figure skating, Gudin told ABC News in an interview.
On Wednesday night, the Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet and Black Hawk helicopter both crashed into the icy Potomac River after colliding in midair, launching a desperate overnight search and rescue mission. No survivors are expected, officials said.
“I lost everything. I lost my husband. I lost my students. I lost my friends,” Gudin said.
The last time she spoke to her husband was on Wednesday afternoon, when Kirsanov was at the gate at the Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport.
“It’s time for boarding,” Gudin said her husband told her on the phone. They were supposed to talk again when he landed at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Virginia.
That call never came.
Instead, Gudin said she heard from the mother of one of the other figure skaters aboard the flight that there was a crash. Gudin said they should “immediately go to D.C.”
Just before 9 p.m., while on its final approach to the airport, the regional jet carrying 60 passengers and four crew members collided midair with a U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter with three people aboard. Dive teams and other first responders worked through the night in the frigid waters of the Potomac River, where the aircraft had crashed.
Gudin said she stayed up through the night, hoping for good news.
But by Thursday morning, she learned her husband and their students had likely died. Officials said on Thursday that what began as a rescue rescue mission had become a recovery mission.
Authorities had recovered 30 bodies from the jet and one body from the helicopter as of Thursday afternoon, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz told ABC News. D.C. Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly said they do not expect any survivors.
On Thursday afternoon, Gudin was at a hotel in Virginia waiting for more information about Kirsanov’s remains.
“I need my husband back,” Gudin said. “I need his body back.”
(NEW YORK) — Mayor Eric Adams of New York City will limit his public schedule this week, as he undergoes “routine” medical tests during a series of doctors’ appointments, an aide said.
“Over the last few days, Mayor Adams hasn’t been feeling his best,” Fabien Levy, the mayor’s spokesperson, said on social media late Sunday.
Levy asked for privacy for the mayor’s personal matters. Adams’ office “will continue to communicate in the unlikely event he is unable to fully discharge his duties on any particular day,” Levy said.
“New Yorkers can rest assured that their local government will continue to deliver for them every day as our committed workforce at City Hall, and more than 300,000 employees at dozens of city agencies, continue to show up on the most important issues,” Levy said.
Adams, 64, is expected to stand trial on federal corruption charges in April.
He was indicted in September and charged with five criminal counts, including wire fraud, bribery and solicitation of contribution from a foreign national. He pleaded not guilty.
Adams meet with President-elect Donald Trump prior to his inauguration earlier this month, according to his office.
“President Trump and I had a productive conversation about New York’s needs and what’s best for our city, and how the federal government can play a more helpful role in improving the lives of New Yorkers,” Adams said in a statement.
Adams said he and Trump “did not discuss my legal case.”
ABC News’ Claire Brinberg contributed to this report.
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(NEW YORK) — During the final Mass at the All Saints Parish in Buffalo, New York, on a warm Sunday in July, the priests encouraged the few parishioners who came to take comfort in holy scripture.
“For everything, there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven,” the passage read.
On Earth, many parishes are accepting that it’s time to sell their properties. As the person leading renewal and development for the Diocese of Buffalo, Father Bryan Zielenieski is one of many religious leaders across America who have closed houses of worship in recent years.
“We essentially went to half of what we used to back in the early 2000s,” he told ABC News. “We lost about 100 parishes.”
Zielenieski expects he’ll need to shut down another 70 churches in what the Diocese is calling its “road to renewal.” It’s a very biblical name for the challenge facing churches: People just aren’t going as much as they used to.
On average, more than half of the diocese’s churches today are baptizing fewer than one person a month, and 59% of them are spending more than they take in, Zielenieski noted.
“It’s my job and role to not just pray about the situation, but to then look at the hard data and say, where does the church need to move?” he told ABC News.
In the late 1940s, nearly 80% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue, mosque or temple, according to Gallup. Today, just 45% say the same, the analytics company noted, and only 32% say that they worship God in a house of prayer once a week.
In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, America was losing as many as 1,000 churches a year.
Some former churches are being converted for businesses or residential use. One old Methodist church in Atlanta, which was down to about 60 members when it closed, was sold to a luxury real estate developer seven years ago. Now, it’s become a series of 3,000-square-foot condos.
Some of the oldest churches in the world have even turned into bars and nightclubs.
However, another Atlanta church is taking a different route. Pastor Jasmine Smothers is saving the city’s First United Methodist church from closing with what she says is a “God-sized” plan.
The most profitable thing they own is their land, and she’s using it to build more than 300 apartments in the high-rent city — most of which will become affordable housing.
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Pastor Jasmine Smothers says developing residential property on the church’s land will help them stay open. Via ABC News
“It’s literally going to change the landscape of Atlanta in more ways than one,” she told ABC News.
Smothers said the project will give the church the resources to help people and to continue its ministries.
“In the words of one of my friends, this ain’t your great grandma’s church,” she said.
At Calcium Church outside Syracuse, New York, Pastor Milton LaSalle recently acknowledged to his small-town church that, after 171 years, they’re in financial trouble. On a good Sunday, LaSalle has 35 regular members — most of them are in the sunset of their lives. The church hasn’t been forced to close or sell it’s land, the pastor says.
“The aging of the church here, of course, is seen all over America. That makes it harder in a lot of ways. For instance, we lost five of our members last year to death,” he told ABC News.
LaSalle said he’s confident Calcium Church will be able to stay open, but noted that they’ve had to make cutbacks.
They still hold clothing and school supply giveaways, parishioners told ABC News. Parishioner Jeannetta LaSalle expressed the importance of the church in her life, saying that her fellow churchgoers are like family.
“It gives me purpose to get up in the morning,” she told ABC News.
In Buffalo, Father Zielenieski also noted how people turn to the church for comfort in times of crisis, like in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
“There’s a sociological principle or idea out there that when times are good, people forget God,” he said. “When times are challenging, they go to God first.”
However, Zielenieski highlights the danger of taking the church for granted.
“We’ve never asked the question, how is it going to be there and how is that going to stay?” he said.
The sale of the All Saints Church in Buffalo will close in the coming weeks. The priests told ABC News they have language in the deal that prevents the new owners from turning it into a place that encourages people to sin.
