Midtown Manhattan blocks evacuated after beams found buckling at construction site: Police
Office buildings tower over midtown Manhattan on October 16, 2025 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Several Midtown Manhattan blocks were evacuated Tuesday morning after construction workers discovered the structure of an office building being converted into residential housing was compromised on the 21st floor, officials said.
New York City Fire Department and Department of Buildings crews went to 235 East 42nd Street, which is one block west of the United Nations headquarters, around 8:11 a.m. after workers “observed structural support beams beginning to buckle,” the NYPD said.
That caused the 21st through 26th floors of the building to start caving under the stress, officials said.
The 37-story commercial building is currently undergoing renovations to convert it into a residential building, according to the DOB. It is one of the largest office-to-apartment conversion projects in city history, officials said.
There were no reported injuries and all construction workers were safely evacuated, according to police.
Other buildings near 235 East 42nd Street were also evacuated, including a nearby Hampton Inn, according to officials.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at an unrelated news conference Tuesday morning that among the evacuated locations was a school with 400 students.
“Our top priority right now is the safety of those who live in this area and those who work in this area. And DOB inspectors and engineers are on site working quickly to secure the site as well as that surrounding area,” he said.
Several nearby streets were closed off as a precaution while building inspectors and FDNY personnel inspected the building.
The police response following a shooting at a hospital in Wilmington, Delaware, June 16, 2026. (WPVI)
(WILMINGTON, Del.) — A 19-year-old man died and another was critically injured in a targeted shooting at a Delaware hospital, police said.
The shooting occurred Tuesday afternoon at a hospital in Wilmington, prompting a lockdown.
The suspect in the shooting — 23-year-old John Wallace-Bey — was taken into custody Tuesday night in Philadelphia, about 40 miles northeast of Wilmington, and is awaiting extradition to Delaware, police said.
Law enforcement officials earlier told ABC News a hospital employee was suspected of shooting two co-workers.
“Our preliminary investigation has determined that this was a targeted, isolated incident,” police said in an update.
The shooting occurred at Wilmington Hospital around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, police said.
Both shooting victims were 19-year-old men, police said. The wounded victim remains hospitalized in critical but stable condition, police said Wednesday.
The name of the victim who died will be released at a later time, police said.
Wallace-Bey faces charges including first-degree murder, first-degree attempted murder, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and carrying a concealed deadly weapon, police said.
Police believe the incident is strictly a workplace shooting, the law enforcement officials said.
“Regardless of what the motive is in this incident might have been, there is never an excuse for violence, and there is never an excuse for gun violence,” Wilmington Police Chief Wilfredo Campos said during a press briefing Tuesday.
The hospital was on lockdown as officers searched the building, though the lockdown has since been lifted, police said Tuesday.
“I want to offer my thoughts and prayers for the employees at Wilmington High Hospital, who I know experienced a terrible day today,” Wilmington Mayor John Carney said during Tuesday’s press briefing. “It’s hard to imagine what they were thinking as they were barricaded in rooms across the hospital as our law enforcement teams went through and cleared each of the floors.”
Carney commended the law enforcement officers who responded for the “bravery that they showed in the face of this unthinkable threat.”
Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer condemned the deadly violence.
“Every Delawarean deserves to feel safe, whether at home, at school, at work, or seeking care at a hospital,” he said at the briefing. “Today is a sobering reminder that no one is immune from the devastation of gun violence.”
Meyer said the incident hit close to home for his family, noting that just minutes earlier, he went with his wife, Dr. Lauren Meyer, an emergency room physician, as she reported to work at the hospital.
“What I saw were heroes going to work in that building, and heroes who were involved in life-saving efforts leaving at the end of their shift,” he said.
Flint Hills, Kansas near Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. (Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — America has lost about half of one of its most prominent and iconic landscapes, and protecting what’s left is key to ensuring healthy ecosystems and biodiversity in the future, experts told ABC News.
The continental U.S. has lost about half of its historic grasslands prior to European settlement, according to a press release from America’s Grasslands Coalition, a network of conservation organizations, researchers and government agencies that aims to restore North America’s native prairie and grassland ecosystems. An estimated 98% of native tall grass prairies has been eradicated, Ryan Sensenig, a grassland ecologist at the University of Notre Dame, told ABC News.
While grasslands are typically associated with the Great Plains, they used to exist in nearly every region of the U.S., Dwayne Estes, co-founder and executive director of the Southeastern Grasslands Institute told ABC News.
Grasslands were common everywhere from the Atlantic coastlines to the Mississippi River and into the Rocky Mountains and the West Coast, according to experts. Regions that are not typically associated with grasslands, including New York, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida, were covered in them, Estes said.
They are part of the very fabric of North America’s natural heritage, “from sea to shining sea,” Patrick Keyser, director of Tennessee’s Center for Native Grasslands, told ABC News.
Grasslands continue to be threatened, experts say
Today, grasslands continue to disappear at an “alarming rate,” the coalition said.
Invasive plant species have infiltrated many of the natural grasslands, said David Wedin, director of the University of Nebraska’s Center for Grassland Studies. And most recently, development of housing, shopping malls and interstate highways — and now data centers — are popping up in areas that would have been grasslands, Keyser said.
Currently, grasslands cover about 1 million square miles in the continental U.S., according to America’s Grasslands Coalition. This includes savannahs and shrublands.
The most prominent pockets of native grasslands that still exist today are in the Flint Hills of Kansas, which contains about 4.5 million acres of grasslands, and the Nebraska Sandhills, which has about 12 million acres of grasslands.
The area of Nebraska is still an intact grassland. Much of the land is privately owned cattle ranches, but there is still a lot of native grassland and species left there, Wedin said.
Central Montana also contains scattered patches of native grasslands, Keyser said.
There are more than 1,000 native grasses that have been documented in the U.S. The two species of dominant native grasslands in the U.S. include the big bluestem, a robust grass that can grow to 10 feet tall and make for “excellent” cattle forage, and the little blue stem, a much smaller plant that is common on sandier, drier soils, Keyser said.
When US grasslands began to vanish
Indigenous communities relied on grasslands to survive, Sensenig said. They would practice prescribed burning to maintain the grasslands and enhance its biodiversity, Sensenig said. Native Americans would use the plant species for basket-weaving and currency and feed on the grazers, such as bison, elk and deer, Sensenig added.
“Eastern Massachusetts was historically dominated by grasslands before European settlement, and in that area people used to eat these things called prairie chickens regularly,” Keyser said, adding that prairie chickens require extensive grassland for their habitat.
Other evidence of grasslands on the East Coast includes thousands of insect and plant species that are tied to grasslands that still exist in the region, Estes said.
Grasslands east of the Mississippi River have been gone for “a very long time,” Estes said.
As early as the 1690s, grasslands began to disappear from places like Philadelphia and Baltimore, even before the nation was founded, Estes said.
In the 1700s and 1800s, pioneers began to clear land where there were fewer trees to create their farms. They tended to prioritize semi-open areas, Keyser said.
“Eastern grasslands were lost so long ago that basically they’ve been erased from society’s collective memory,” Estes said. “They were lost before the camera was invented.”
Grasslands continued to be eradicated as settlers migrated West.
The Transcontinental Railroad later brought settlers into the Great Plains in the 1870s, and gasoline-powered tractors led to widespread plowing of the native grasslands in the region, Keyser said.
“So, consequently, what had been a grassland ecosystem became a cornfield,” Keyser said.
Why grasslands are so important
Grasslands play a vital role in supporting wildlife, storing carbon, sustaining food systems and maintaining ecosystem balance, according to America’s Grasslands Coalition.
Grasslands also store huge amounts of carbon, which helps to regulate the atmosphere, Sensenig said. It is important for soil conservation, water regulation and wildlife habitat, Wedin said.
Grasslands are thought to store 30% of the world’s soil-based carbon — and 80% of that carbon is beneath the ground in the soil, Sensenig said.
Keystone herbivore species such as the American bison, elk and mule deer live in grasslands and help to regulate the rich plant biota for other creatures to thrive, Keyser said. Birds, pollinators and smaller mammals, such as prairie dogs, also depend on the open, grassy ecosystem and assist in maintaining the biodiversity, Estes said.
Grassland ecologists are concerned about the gradual degradation of grasslands due to lack of management and climate change and other changes to the environment, such as intensive modern agriculture, Wedin said.
“These sorts of chronic, low-level threats have a cumulative impact on our grasslands,” Wedin said.
Nearly half of 2,014 Americans surveyed are unfamiliar with grasslands, according to findings released Wednesday by America’s Grasslands Coalition.
Increasing appreciation and awareness of America’s grasslands is key to accelerating conservation action, according to the coalition.
The upcoming 250th birthday of America is an integral time to raise awareness of the importance of grasslands, Ginette Hemley, senior vice president of wildlife conservation at the World Wildlife Fund, said in a statement.
“As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, this is a moment to recognize the landscapes that have shaped the nation,” Hemley said. “From iconic species like bison to the communities that depend on them, grasslands are part of that heritage — and protecting them is part of our shared future.”
Matthew Perry attends the GQ Men of the Year Party 2022 at The West Hollywood EDITION on November 17, 2022 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for GQ)
(NEW YORK) — The woman reportedly known as the “Ketamine Queen” was sentenced to 15 years in prison for providing the drug that killed Matthew Perry.
Jasveen Sangha admitted in a plea agreement to working with another dealer to provide the “Friends” actor with dozens of vials of ketamine, including the dose that led to his fatal overdose in October 2023 at the age of 54.
Sangha pleaded guilty last year to one count of maintaining a drug-involved premises, three counts of distribution of ketamine, and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death or serious bodily injury.
She faced a maximum sentence of 65 years in prison.
She was sentenced in Los Angeles federal court on Wednesday.
Prosecutors said in court filings ahead of Sangha’s sentencing that she should serve 15 years in prison for her “cold callousness and disregard for life,” and that she’s shown little remorse, pointing to recorded jail communications in which, they say, Sangha talked about “obtaining ‘trademarks’ and securing book rights on the events of the case.”
In a sentencing memorandum filed last month, prosecutors said Sangha ran a “high-volume drug trafficking business out of her North Hollywood residence,” where she stored, packaged and distributed drugs, including ketamine and methamphetamine, since at least 2019. Prosecutors said Sangha continued to sell “dangerous drugs” even after learning she had sold ketamine that contributed to the overdose deaths of two men: Perry and, years earlier, Los Angeles resident Cody McLaury. McLaury died hours after Sangha sold him four vials of ketamine in 2019, prosecutors said.
“She didn’t care and kept selling,” prosecutors wrote. “Defendant’s actions show a cold callousness and disregard for life. She chose profits over people, and her actions have caused immense pain to the victims’ families and loved ones.”
Sangha “had the opportunity to stop after realizing the impact of her dealing – but simply chose not to,” which warrants a “significant” sentence, prosecutors also said.
The defense, meanwhile, said Sangha, who has been behind bars since her arrest in August 2024, should receive a sentence of time served due to her “demonstrated rehabilitation.”
“She has maintained sustained and exemplary sobriety, and actively engaged in recovery-oriented and rehabilitative programming while in custody, and has tremendously strong family and community support to facilitate successful reentry and reduce the risk of recidivism,” her attorneys, Mark Geragos and Alexandra Kazarian, wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed last month.
In response to the defense sentencing memorandum, prosecutors continued to argue that Sangha has shown a lack of remorse and claimed she has attempted to minimize the harm she’s caused.
“For example, defendant harmed two overdose victims, but her sentencing briefing does not even mention Cody McLaury and only references Matthew Perry in passing, in the context of defendant attempting to downplay her role in his death and to heap the blame on others,” prosecutors wrote in their response, filed last week.
They also argued that Sangha “expressed a similar lack of remorse in recorded jail communications” – including one on Dec. 25, 2024, during which prosecutors said an individual stated, “We’re gonna sell those book rights,” and Sangha allegedly responded, “Oh I know, the plan is in, the f—— trademark is going down,” according to the filing.
“Even if said in jest, this conversation suggests defendant does not appreciate the severity of her offenses, and instead sees her crimes as a potential future revenue stream,” prosecutors wrote. “It also shows that time in custody has, thus far, failed in getting defendant to adequately reflect upon the grave harms she has caused.”
Geragos has previously said that Sangha “feels horrible.”
“She’s felt horrible from day one,” Geragos told reporters outside the courthouse last year following Sangha’s guilty plea. “This has been a horrendous experience.”
In a victim impact statement filed ahead of the sentencing, Perry’s stepmother, Debbie Perry, said the pain caused by the defendant is “irreversible.”
“Please give this heartless woman the maximum prison sentence so she won’t be able to hurt other families like ours,” she wrote.
In addition to Sangha, four other people were charged and pleaded guilty in connection with Perry’s death: the other dealer, Erik Fleming; Kenneth Iwamasa, Perry’s live-in personal assistant; and two doctors, Mark Chavez and Salvador Plasencia.
Prosecutors said Sangha worked with Fleming to distribute ketamine to Perry, and that in October 2023, they sold the actor 51 vials of ketamine that were provided to Iwamasa.
“Leading up to Perry’s death, Iwamasa repeatedly injected Perry with the ketamine that Sangha supplied to Fleming,” the DOJ said in a press release last year. “Specifically, on October 28, 2023, Iwamasa injected Perry with at least three shots of Sangha’s ketamine, which caused Perry’s death.”
Iwamasa pleaded guilty in August 2024 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death and is scheduled to be sentenced on April 22.
Fleming pleaded guilty in August 2024 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death and is set to be sentenced on April 29.
Chavez and Plasencia have also been convicted for their roles in what prosecutors called a conspiracy to illegally distribute ketamine to Perry.
Chavez, who once ran a ketamine clinic, pleaded guilty in October 2024 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine and was sentenced to eight months home confinement in December 2025.
Plasencia, who briefly treated Perry prior to the actor’s death, pleaded guilty in July 2025 to four counts of distribution of ketamine and was sentenced to 30 months in prison in December 2025.
