Suni Lee announces gymnastics return 2 years ahead of LA Olympics
Sunisa Lee prepares to perform her routine during the Artistic Gymnastics, Women’s Balance Beam Final at the Bercy Arena during the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games on August 5th, 2024, in Paris, France. (Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Olympian Suni Lee is officially returning to competitive gymnastics.
The 23-year-old made the announcement in a video shared Tuesday on her Instagram page that featured clips of her from past practice sessions and in competition.
“I know what I’m capable of. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get there,” Lee can be heard saying in a voiceover.
The end of the short video also included a message, which read: “This is more than a comeback, stay tuned.”
USA Gymnastics celebrated Lee’s return in its own Instagram post. “The journey continues! Welcome back, Suni!” the organization captioned the post, re-sharing Lee’s video.
Fellow gymnasts and Olympians also shared excitement for Lee’s big news.
“She’s back!!!!” Jordan Chiles wrote in a comment.
“yesssss,” Hezly Rivera added.
Lee, a two-time Olympian, has won six medals in her Olympic career so far, including two gold medals, one silver medal and three bronze medals. She specializes in the uneven bars and became the first American woman to win two medals in uneven bars at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
When she was honored with the 2025 ESPY for best comeback athlete, Lee gave Dr. Marcia Faustin, co-head team physician for the USA Gymnastics Women’s National Team, a shoutout in her acceptance speech.
“Thank you for guiding me through the toughest moments, reading every scan and report by my side,” Lee said.
Severe weather outlook for Saturday, April 25, 2026. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — A severe weather threat is shifting back to parts of Kansas and Oklahoma on Saturday after damaging winds, hail and tornadoes impacted the region over the past week.
A level 4 of 5 “moderate risk” has been added for southeast Oklahoma, including Ada and McAlester, for the potential for very large hail (larger than baseballs), strong tornadoes, and damaging winds.
A level 3 of 5 “enhanced risk” is up for northeastern Oklahoma and far eastern Arkansas, including Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Broken Bow and Enid, in Oklahoma, and Fort Smith, Arkansas.
Damaging winds and very large hail are the primary threats with these storms, but a few tornadoes, some potentially strong, cannot be ruled out with these storms.
This will be a later day event, with storms not likely to begin firing off until after at least 3:00 p.m. CT. Once storms get going, the atmosphere will be very favorable for discrete storms to intensify across eastern Oklahoma going into the evening hours.
Storms will continue to fire off during the evening up to just after sunset and will continue through the overnight hours across eastern Oklahoma, far northeast Texas and western Arkansas.
Beginning Sunday, a potent storm system will form southeast of the Rockies and swing northeast across the Plains, bringing more severe weather to the Plains on Sunday before the severe weather threat spreads northeast and stretches into the Midwest on Monday.
Almost 50 million Americans will be on alert for severe storms on Sunday or Monday – almost 8 million for Sunday, and almost 40 million for Monday.
For Sunday, a level 3 of 5 “enhanced risk” is up for much of Kansas as well as portions of western Missouri, including Wichita and Kansas City. Tornadoes, some being strong, as well as damaging winds and large hail are all possible with storms in this area.
A level 2 of 5 “slight risk” is also up for parts of northern Texas, northwestern Arkansas, western Missouri, far southwest Iowa, southern Nebraska, most of Oklahoma and much of the remaining areas of Kansas.
Like Saturday, severe storms will likely not begin firing off until the late afternoon. When storms do get going though during the evening, the atmosphere will be favorable for discrete thunderstorms to grow and intensify, producing tornadoes (some possibly strong), damaging winds and large hail.
For Monday, the severe weather threat spreads northeast and stretches from the lower Mississippi River valley up to the Midwest for Monday. A level 3 of 5 “enhanced risk” is up for cities like St. Louis; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Jonesboro, Arkansas; Evansville, Indiana; Paducah, Kentucky; and Rockford, Illinois.
A level 2 of 5 “slight risk” is up for cities like Memphis; Louisville, Kentucky; Chicago; South Bend, Indiana; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Mason City, IIowa.
While there is some uncertainty in exact timing and setup with Monday’s storms, the potential for tornadoes with some being strong, as well as widespread damaging wind gusts, large hail, and spotty flash flooding is increasing for Monday for these areas.
With any discrete supercell thunderstorms that form and maintain themselves in this atmosphere, the “tornadic potential could maximize, with a few long track, particularly damaging tornadoes possible,” according to the NWS Storm Prediction Center.
This will likely be a late afternoon and evening setup regardless, with discrete storms or clusters of storms tracking in a line from Milwaukee and Chicago down to St. Louis and into northern Arkansas around the evening commute on Monday.
These storms will sweep east into the overnight hours, with Indianapolis; Paducah, Kentucky; and Memphis likely seeing storms later in the evening.
This storm system will also bring heavy rain to the central U.S., with some of it possibly falling in a short time with the heaviest storms. Because of this, isolated flash flooding is possible with these storms into the new week.
Heavy rain will also come to the Great Lakes on Monday, which could reinvigorate the flood risk given how saturated the ground still is from the historic rainfall from a few weeks ago combined with rapid snowmelt.
For Tuesday, we can see the severe weather threat shift to parts of the South as this potent system continues to move east. Places like Memphis; Little Rock, Arkansas; Tyler, Texas; Shreveport, Louisiana; and Jackson, Mississippi, will have to watch for potential severe weather later in the day.
Some showers, humidity in the Southeast The drought in the Southeast continues to worsen as two wildfires continue to burn in southeast Georgia.
Some rounds of rain and possibly isolated thunderstorms will move into the region later today and late Monday into Tuesday, with each round bringing around 0.5 to 1 inch of rain.
The rain will not tame the wildfires alone, especially if it doesn’t fall directly where the fires are. If there are any isolated thunderstorms, there is the chance that lightning could ignite additional wildfires in the already dry region.
However, the increased humidities and any rain that does fall on the fires this weekend into early next week will help with controlling ongoing fires and quickly manage any new fires if any should occur.
The rain will not make much of a dent on the drought situation across the region. For example, Georgia needs between 12 and 18 inches of rainfall to end the current drought.
The two notable fires in southeast Georgia, the Pineland Road Fire and the Highway 82 Brantley County Fire, continue to burn.
Meanwhile, the fire threat will be in the southern High Plains this weekend. Parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, as well as the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma are under fire weather alerts this weekend.
In this image released by the Walton County Sheriffs Office, law enforment vehicles are shown at the scene of a stabbing investigation at Walton Middle School in Defuniak, Fla., on March 24, 2026. (Walton County Sheriff’s Office, Florida)
(DEFUNIAK SPRINGS, Fla.) — Two students and one adult were hurt in a stabbing at a middle school in Florida on Tuesday, authorities said.
The incident was reported at 7:22 a.m. at Walton Middle School in DeFuniak Springs, about 45 miles north of Destin, the Walton County Sheriff’s Office said.
At 7:30 a.m., the suspect — a student at the school — was detained one block away, according to the sheriff’s office.
The conditions of the adult and two students were not immediately clear.
The school has canceled classes for the day, the sheriff said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Created by CDC microbiologist Frederick A Murphy, this transmission electron micrograph (TEM) revealed some of the ultrastructural morphology displayed by an Ebola virus virion. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images).
(NEW YORK) — The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday announced new arrival restrictions for flights carrying people who were recently in Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda or South Sudan amid the Ebola outbreak in the region.
All flights — excluding those operated by the Pentagon — departing after 11:59 p.m. ET on Wednesday carrying passengers that were in the named nations within 21 days of attempted entry into the U.S. will be ordered to land at Washington-Dulles Airport in Virginia, the notice said, where “enhanced public health measures are being implemented.”
The Ebola outbreak in the eastern DRC had caused 139 suspected deaths with nearly 600 suspected cases as of Wednesday, according to an update from World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Tedros said cases of Ebola have been reported in several urban areas of the eastern DRC amid the ongoing outbreak, including the major cities of Goma and Bunia, and that at least two cases and one death have been recorded in neighboring Uganda’s capital, Kampala. Cases have also been reported among health workers, according to Ghebreyesus.
At least 51 cases have so far been confirmed in the ongoing outbreak.
The DHS flight restriction notice said that while South Sudan has not reported any confirmed cases in the current outbreak, “It is considered at high risk because of its close border with affected areas in eastern DRC and Uganda, limited healthcare infrastructure and cross-border population movement.”
The outbreak was first detected in the DRC’s northeastern province of Ituri, with cases officially confirmed by the health ministry on May 15. It marked the 17th outbreak of Ebola virus disease in the DRC, which is Africa’s second-largest country and its fourth-most populous nation.
The WHO convened an emergency committee on Tuesday night, following Tedros’ declaration of a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday — one level below a pandemic in the United Nations agency’s alert system.
It was the first time a WHO chief had declared such an emergency before convening the emergency committee. After the meeting, the committee agreed that the outbreak did not meet the criteria of a pandemic emergency, which was applied to the global COVID-19 outbreak.
Anais Legand, the WHO’s technical officer for viral hemorrhagic fevers, said on Wednesday that the Ebola outbreak may have started a couple of months ago and that investigations are ongoing.
“Our priority is really to cut the transmission chain by implementing contact tracing, isolating and caring for all suspects and confirmed cases,” she said.
The current outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, a rare variant of Ebola for which there are no approved vaccines or therapeutics and which requires different diagnostics than other variants. Case fatality rates for previous Bundibugyo outbreaks have ranged from 30% to 50%, according to the WHO.
Among the confirmed cases is an American, Dr. Peter Stafford, who contracted the disease while working in the DRC. Stafford was flown out of the DRC and is now hospitalized in Berlin’s Charité University Hospital.
Matt Allison — the executive director of Serge, the Christian missionary group Stafford works for — told ABC News on Wednesday that the doctor has been receiving monoclonal antibodies during his hospitalization and is “responding quickly.”
Dr. Satish K. Pillai, incident manager for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Ebola response, confirmed at a CDC press conference on Tuesday that genetic testing from this outbreak shows it is similar to the “genetic fingerprints” from outbreaks in 2007 and 2012, meaning there are diagnostic tools available that can detect this strain of Ebola.
Pillai said on Monday that the agency had activated its Emergency Operations Center through its country offices in the DRC and in Uganda, and is deploying technical experts that have been requested from Atlanta headquarters.
The risk to the U.S. general public remains low, Pillai said.
Also on Monday, the CDC introduced entry restrictions on non-U.S. passport holders that had been in Uganda, the DRC or South Sudan in the previous 21 days before attempted entry into the U.S.
ABC News’ Eric M. Strauss, Mary Kekatos and Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.
