Helicopter crashes into Houston radio tower killing four: Police
Houston Fire Department
(HOUSTON) — A helicopter that crashed into a radio tower in Houston, Texas, Sunday left four people killed, including a child, officials said.
The crash happened at approximately 7:54 p.m. local time, when a private aircraft struck a radio tower in Houston’s Second Ward, Houston police said in a press conference Sunday night.
All four of the individuals killed were aboard the helicopter and no one on the ground was injured in the crash, officials said.
No residences and structures were impacted except for the radio tower, police said, but noted the fire that erupted from the crash spanned two to three blocks.
The location of the crash was cited as the intersection of Engelke Street and N. Ennis Street, just five minutes away from Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros.
Houston Fire Department officials extinguished the fire after the crash.
The crash is being investigated by Houston authorities, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration.
(NEW YORK) — A New York grand jury has indicted disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein on Thursday, prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office said in court.
Weinstein — who is recuperating after emergency heart surgery — was not present, and prosecutors asked the judge to set a date for his arraignment.
Judge Curtis Farber ordered the city corrections department to house Weinstein in the Bellevue Hospital prison ward, if medically necessary.
“Inattention at Rikers carries very real risks. He could find himself again in crisis,” Farber said.
The new indictment remains sealed until arraignment, so the charges are not yet known. As ABC News previously reported, prosecutors presented evidence of three alleged sex assaults from varying time periods that were not part of his previous case.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office previously presented evidence to the grand jury over an alleged sexual assault that occurred sometime in a four-month time period between late 2005 and mid-2006 in a lower Manhattan residential building, according to a transcript of a court hearing last week.
Prosecutors also indicated they were aware of two other potential offenses: a sexual assault in May 2016 in a hotel in Tribeca and a potential sexual assault that occurred at the Tribeca Grand hotel.
Thursday’s hearing was held days after Weinstein was rushed from Rikers Island, where he is being held, to Bellevue Hospital for emergency heart surgery after experiencing chest pains, his representatives told ABC News.
His trial is tentatively scheduled for this fall.
Weinstein has denied any wrongdoing and has said his sexual encounters were consensual.
The indictment comes months after the New York Court of Appeals overturned his 2020 rape conviction.
In a scathing 4-3 opinion in April, the court found the trial judge “erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes.”
The court said that testimony “served no material non-propensity purpose” and “portrayed defendant in a highly prejudicial light.”
Weinstein has also appealed a conviction on sex offenses in Los Angeles. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison there.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — As millions of Americans head to the polls, thunderstorms are forecast from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast, with the potential to cause inconveniences to voters across the country.
The heaviest concentration of rain is expected in Wisconsin, Louisiana, eastern Texas and Arkansas but heavy rain along the Mississippi River and Ohio River valleys could bring flash flooding and approximately 2 inches to 4 inches of rain between Louisiana and southern Indiana.
Meanwhile, heavy snow is forecast in the Rockies from Montana down to Colorado and winter weather alerts have been issued in those regions.
In California, strong winds and dry conditions will create a threat for wildfires from the San Francisco Bay area down to Los Angeles where a red flag warning has been issued.
However, beautiful weather is forecast in the Northeast today, with warm temperatures in the 70s across much of the eastern seaboard and potential record highs from Meridian, Mississippi, all the way to Rochester, New York, with temperatures in the 80s.
The record heat is expected to concentrate in the Northeast on Wednesday with record highs possible for major cities such as Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York City with temperatures close to 80 degrees.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden will travel on Sunday to Florida areas ravaged by the back-to-back hurricanes, and announce federal funding for projects to strengthen the electrical grid, according to the White House.
Biden will be touring St. Petersburg, one of the hardest hit Florida cities from Hurricane Milton last week, and reveal $612 million for six Department of Energy projects in the southeast.
Two of the projects are focused in Florida and provide a combined $94M in federal funds, according to the White House.
Gainesville Regional Utilities will use the funding to help mitigate the effects of increasingly extreme weather in north central Florida, “through storm hardening, as well as faster restoration through deployment of self-healing devices and tools that will enable more efficient and precise dispatching of field teams during outages,” the White House said in a statement.
Switched Source, a private utility technology developer, will work with Florida Power and Light to deploy Phase-EQ, which “optimizes power flow in distribution circuits, will unlock over 200 MW of system capacity, and improve reliability on circuits serving communities that are most susceptible to prolonged outages,” according to the White House.
“These investments are part of the president’s commitment to making long-term investments that protect, enhance, and upgrade our nation’s electric grid, especially in the face of extreme weather events,” the White House said in a statement.
Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday evening. At least 16 people were killed in the storm and over a million remain without power.
Biden has spoken to numerous state and local officials, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who he said was “very cooperative.” When asked if he would meet with DeSantis on Sunday, Biden said yes so long as the governor was available.
