Man charged after allegedly throwing Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home
(SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.) — A Texas man has been charged with traveling to California to allegedly throw a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman‘s house, according to court records unsealed on Monday.
The suspect, Daniel Moreno-Gama, was allegedly caught on video surveillance outside the CEO’s home in San Francisco, according to court records.
Around 4 a.m. Friday, the suspect allegedly “threw an incendiary destructive device” at Altman’s house, which sparked a fire on an exterior gate, San Francisco police said. No one was injured, police said.
The suspect was arrested about an hour later outside OpenAI’s headquarters, where he was allegedly threatening to burn down the building, according to police.
Moreno-Gama, who allegedly had kerosene in his backpack, was seen trying to hit the building’s glass with a chair, according to court documents.
Federal prosecutors said they also found a document in which Moreno-Gama allegedly expressed anti-AI-executive sentiments.
He allegedly had a list of names and addresses of apparent board members and chief executive officers of AI companies and investors.
“MORENO-GAMA stated he “killed /attempted to kill” Victim-1,” court documents said. “MORENO-GAMA also wrote, ‘Also if I am going to advocate for others to kill and commit crimes, then I must lead by example and show that I am fully sincere in my message.'”
In a separate incident, two people have been arrested for allegedly firing shots at Altman’s house on Sunday morning, police said.
The first full Moon of the spring on March 3, 2026. (Photo by Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — It’s been 100 years since the 1st modern rocket launched. Humans are heading back to the moon
The experiment lasted only two and a half seconds, but it ignited a century of space exploration that sent humans to low Earth orbit and eventually to the moon.
On March 16, 1926, Robert H. Goddard launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket on a snowy farm in Massachusetts. Historians say that Goddard’s 10-foot rocket would pave the way for the modern machines that do everything from putting satellites in orbit to sending humans to the International Space Station and beyond.
“His unlocking of that ability to use liquid fuel really just sets the stage for any other country around the world that is launching rockets,” Ed Stewart, a curator at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, told ABC News. “It all comes back down to March 16 in 1926 because he was the one that proved that it could be done and then actually did it.” The rocket was the first of its kind, powered by liquid propellant rather than gunpowder or other solid fuels used by most rockets at the time, according to NASA. The rocket flew for less than three seconds and reached an altitude of about 41 feet.
While scientists overseas had already been experimenting with rocketry in places like Russia and Germany, according to historical documents, it was Goddard’s 1919 paper, “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes,” that made the physicist’s discovery famous worldwide, explained Stewart.
“It caught the attention of people all around the world, even people that were doing some experimentation with rockets and liquid fuels and things like that in other parts of the world,” Stewart said.
The paper suggested that rockets could one day travel to the moon and caught the attention of the Smithsonian Institution, which invested money in rocket research.
“I think the breakthrough was, first of all, that Goddard had this dream of getting a rocket ship off the surface of the Earth,” said Charles “Chuck” Agosta, a physics professor at Goddard’s alma mater, Clark University. “And then, of course, the dream was to go to Mars.”
Other scientists, like Hermann Oberth of Germany, later built on Goddard’s theory, and that progress eventually contributed to the development of the V-2 rocket, Stewart noted. And eventually, rockets based on Goddard’s pioneering work led to sending astronauts into space and to the moon.
Goddard earned his master’s and doctorate in physics at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, before returning to teach at the school in 1914. He eventually served as director of the physics department for two decades.
Today, faculty at Clark say his legacy still looms large on campus.
Goddard once used a bicycle wheel to show funding agencies how gyroscopes could help steer rockets in space. Today, Agosta uses that same wheel to teach his students about angular momentum.
Despite his legacy, Goddard’s breakthrough didn’t immediately capture the public’s imagination. Stewart says that when the first liquid-fueled rocket launched, space travel was still widely viewed as science fiction by many.
“I do think that at the time it was still so far-fetched that even once he proved that the basic version of the technology would work, people still were thinking of it more as a novelty,” Stewart said.
Much of what we know about those early experiments comes from Goddard’s wife, Esther Christine Kisk Goddard, a photographer from Worcester, Mass. She documented many of the tests, leaving behind footage that offers a window into the creation of the world’s first modern rockets.
According to NASA, Goddard created and launched more than 35 rockets throughout his lifetime. It was because of his pioneering work in modern rocketry that, in May 1959, NASA renamed its first spaceflight complex to the “Goddard Space Flight Center.”
The center is home to missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, scheduled to launch as early as fall 2026.
The global return to the moon and beyond
During his initial launch tests, Goddard fueled his rocket with gasoline and liquid oxygen, according to the Roswell Museum in New Mexico, where the physicist spent part of his career. Today’s modern rockets no longer use gasoline, opting for other fuels such as liquid hydrogen, liquid methane and refined kerosene along with liquid oxygen, which acts as an oxidizer.
On the 100th anniversary of Goddard’s discovery, the United States is on the cusp of sending the first astronauts to the moon since 1972 as part of the Artemis II mission. The 10-day trip will send four astronauts around the far side of the moon in NASA’s Orion spacecraft, launched into orbit by the most powerful rocket ever to send people into space. A rocket that may never have come to fruition had Goddard not experimented on that faithful day in 1926.
What could the next 100 years of rocket technology bring?
“I’m pretty confident that in a hundred years, we’re going to be all over space,” Agosta said.
Considering the thousands of airplanes in our own skies every day, he says it’s “inevitable” and that we’ll “at least be in the planets close to us” by the next century.
NYPD officers help rescue an injured bald eagle on the Hudson River in New York, Feb. 17, 2026. (NYPD)
(NEW YORK) — While surveying ice during a training exercise on the Hudson River on Tuesday, a New York City police officer with the department’s Harbor Unit spotted something unusual.
“Last week, when it was cold, a lot of stuff was getting stuck in the ice, whether it was a float, a buoy, but it looked different,” Officer Michael Russo told reporters on Wednesday. “I could see this white head from a distance. So I said, let’s get a little closer. I said, it looks like an eagle. And turns out it was an American bald eagle.”
Russo, a 16-year veteran of the NYPD’s Harbor Unit, said officers have rescued distressed boaters, sick cruise ship passengers and animals such as dogs while patrolling the city’s waterways. Though a bald eagle was a first.
The injured bird was screeching, wet and bloody, and as the boat approached, it didn’t leave the ice it was floating on, officers said.
Officers said they consulted with the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation to see if they should retrieve the bird, and once given the go-ahead, looked up how to safely do that.
“As we got closer, we put a plan together,” Russo said. “We used a catch noose to kind of subdue its wings from flapping and its claws.”
Another officer, Sgt. Michael Amello, then put a cloth over the bird’s head, to help keep it calm, and got it on board the boat.
“Once we did that, it really didn’t give us a hard time,” Russo said. “I think it kind of knew that we were trying to help it.”
The officers were worried about the bird’s large talons throughout the rescue.
“They don’t really train you for, you know, handling a bald eagle, but we made it work,” Amello told reporters. “It was impressive and kind of scary at the same time, being that close to a bald eagle. The talons were pretty long. But it came on, didn’t put up much of a fight. It was compliant.”
The officers kept the bird on board until they were able to meet with personnel from the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation.
“It’s an impressive creature. Even in its state, we were kind of taken back by how big it is and just the way it is, and the beauty of it,” Det. Nicholas Martin with the NYPD Harbor Unit told reporters. “It was impressive, to say the least.”
The bald eagle has since been brought to a sanctuary in New Jersey and was reported to be in stable condition, officers said.
The Raptor Trust, a wild bird rehabilitation center in Millington, New Jersey, said Wednesday that the bird is in their care and is “currently in very serious condition.”
“We are doing our best to keep the bird stable, and should it improve, we will do further diagnostics, x-rays and blood work to help determine a course of action going forward,” the center said in a statement.
: Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell listens to a question during a Principles of Economics class at Harvard University on March 30, 2026 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Photo by Sophie Park/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Justice is dropping its criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, ending a standoff that threatened to delay the confirmation of Powell’s successor at the central bank, District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Friday.
Senior DOJ officials have contacted senators in recent days, including Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who sits on the Senate Banking Committee, informing them of the plan to drop the probe and refer the matter regarding alleged cost overruns at the Fed’s Washington headquarters to the bank’s internal watchdog, sources told ABC News.
The Fed’s independent inspector general conducted an audit of the building renovation costs in 2021 and Powell had already asked the watchdog to take a fresh look at the $2.5 billion project last year.
“This morning the Inspector General for the Federal Reserve has been asked to scrutinize the building costs overruns — in the billions of dollars — that have been borne by taxpayers,” Pirro write on X Friday. “I expect a comprehensive report in short order and am confident the outcome will assist in resolving, once and for all, the questions that led this office to issue subpoenas.”
“Accordingly, I have directed my office to close our investigation as the IG undertakes this inquiry,” Pirro wrote. “Note well, however, that I will not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so.”
Powell’s term ends next month, but he said in March that he would stay in the position until President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Fed, Kevin Warsh, is confirmed.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai, in a statement to ABC News, said “American taxpayers deserve answers about the Federal Reserve’s fiscal mismanagement, and the Office of the Inspector General’s more powerful authorities best position it to get to the bottom of the matter.”
Desai added the administration remains certain that the Senate will “swiftly confirm” Warsh.
A spokesperson for the Federal Reserve declined to comment. Reached by ABC News, a spokesperson for Tillis also declined to comment.
Pirro had been insistent that her investigation of alleged cost overruns at the Fed would continue despite a ruling last month from D.C. District Judge James Boasberg that tossed out subpoenas she had sent to Powell.
“This investigation continues. I am in the legal lane. There are others who are in the political lane. I don’t intersect those two lanes,” Pirro said in a news conference on Wednesday.
“I am going forward,” Pirro said. “We are appealing the decision of Judge Boasberg — the idea that a judge can stand at the door of a grand jury and tell a prosecutor you’re not allowed to go in when the United States Supreme Court has said you can go into a grand jury based on rumors and suspicion, is an order that we think must be appealed, and we are continuing in this investigation.”
At the time of Boasberg’s ruling, Tillis urged Pirro not to continue with her investigation.
“We all know how this is going to end and the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office should save itself further embarrassment and move on,” Tillis said in a post on X moments after the decision was made public in March. “Appealing the ruling will only delay the confirmation of Kevin Warsh as the next Fed Chair.”
It is not immediately clear if prosecutors will seek to drop their appeal of Boasberg’s order as a result of the directive to close the probe into Powell.
In a video message in January, Powell revealed the investigation and called it an attempt by the Trump administration to put political pressure on the Fed to lower interest rates.
An end to the DOJ’s investigation is expected to pave the path for Kevin Warsh to get confirmed through the Senate. Tillis told ABC News on Tuesday he supports Warsh as the nominee but will not advance his nomination until the DOJ’s probe is dropped.
Tillis first announced in January that he would block nominees in opposition to the investigation, which he has branded as “bogus.”
“If there were any remaining doubt whether advisers within the Trump Administration are actively pushing to end the independence of the Federal Reserve, there should now be none. It is now the independence and credibility of the Department of Justice that are in question,” Tillis said in a January statement. “I will oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed — including the upcoming Fed Chair vacancy — until this legal matter is fully resolved.”
Tillis’ blockade has proved difficult for Senate Republican leadership to work around because of his position on the narrowly divided Senate Banking Committee. His opposition, paired with that of all Democrats on the panel, has made it impossible for Warsh to advance out of the committee to a vote on the full Senate floor.
