Dali, who previously was convicted in Brooklyn federal court of being a stowaway on a Delta Air Lines flight out of New York’s JFK Airport to Paris, allegedly snuck onto a United flight at New Jersey’s Newark airport on Wednesday night, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
The United flight landed in Milan and she is now in Italian custody, sources said.
United said in a statement, “Safety and security are our highest priorities. We are investigating this incident and working with the appropriate authorities.”
In November 2024, Dali went through security at JFK Airport, walked onto a Delta plane without a boarding pass and hid in the plane bathroom for several hours, according to prosecutors. When a flight attendant noticed, Dali faked vomiting to excuse her lengthy time in the bathroom, according to prosecutors.
After Dali was brought back from France to New York to face charges, she was released from custody. Dali allegedly cut off her ankle monitor and traveled to Buffalo, New York, where she tried to cross over the Peace Bridge into Canada.
In July 2025, the Russian citizen and U.S. permanent resident was sentenced to time served for the New York-to-Paris flight.
Dali told the judge she snuck onto the flight to seek treatment because she said the U.S. military had poisoned her.
“My actions were directed toward only one purpose: to save my life,” Dali said through a Russian interpreter.
Two days before Dali stowed away on the Paris flight, she allegedly accessed a secure area of the departures terminal at Bradley International Airport in Connecticut, prosecutors said. Earlier in 2024, customs agents found Dali hiding in a bathroom in a secure area of the Miami International Airport, prosecutors said.
Stephen Miller, deputy White House chief of staff for policy, walks on the South Lawn of the White House after arriving on Marine One in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. US President Donald Trump threw his support behind a legislative proposal that would expand sales of higher-ethanol E15 gasoline as he looked to build support for his economic record with a crowd that included farmers in Iowa. (Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Over the weekend, the former chief of staff of the Justice Department — who was one of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s top advisers during her first seven months on the job — issued a public call for lawyers who “support President Trump” to join the Justice Department’s ranks.
In a post on X, the former chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, seemed to suggest he could help such applicants become career federal prosecutors — who by law are supposed to be apolitical.
“DM me,” Mizelle wrote, referring to direct messages sent privately to him. “We need good prosecutors.”
Forty minutes later, one of President Donald Trump’s top policy advisers, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, reposted Mizelle’s message, adding, “Patriots needed.” And then on Monday, the current U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Jason Reding Quinones, also reposted Mizelle’s message, saying, “We are hiring!”
There are political appointees within the Justice Department, including certain leaders based in Washington and the U.S. attorneys who oversee offices around the country — but the assistant U.S. attorneys, or AUSAs, who investigate and prosecute cases in those offices are supposed to be nonpolitical and nonpartisan.
Appearing on a conservative podcast on Monday, Mizelle said he has received “hundreds and hundreds of inquiries already” from lawyers looking to become AUSAs. But his posting, and the subsequent promotion of it by current senior government officials, has roiled some former federal prosecutors on both sides of the political spectrum.
“We shouldn’t have a favorite politician in the Justice Department; we should have a favorite document, and that’s the Constitution,” former prosecutor Perry Carbone told ABC News.
Carbone, who spent more than three decades as a federal prosecutor and until May was the chief of the criminal division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, said that Mizelle’s post has “generated a lot of discussion” among former federal prosecutors, who are concerned about its implications.
“It’s dangerous,” he said of what the post could mean. “The day that Department of Justice lawyers are hired based on loyalty to a person … is the day the rest of us should get very nervous.”
He said the message in Mizelle’s post — and the reposts by Reding Quinones and Miller — “flatly contradict” federal laws and regulations pertaining to the hiring of career federal employees.
He cited federal laws, including the Civil Service Reform Act, that specifically prohibit favoring or discriminating against applicants for federal civil-service jobs based on their “political affiliation.”
“The law is very clear,” Carbone said.
He also cited the Justice Department’s own manual, which says, “All personnel decisions regarding career positions in the Department must be made without regard to the applicant’s or occupant’s partisan affiliation.”
“Efforts to influence personnel decisions concerning career positions on partisan grounds should be reported to the Deputy Attorney General,” the manual states.
Andy McCarthy, a conservative commentator and frequent Trump critic who himself served as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York for nearly two decades, also blasted Mizelle’s post.
“If support for [the current] president is now a condition of enforcing federal law, Congress should defund DOJ. DOJ should only exist if it’s nonpartisan. Too dangerous to liberty otherwise,” McCarthy wrote.
“If AG Garland’s office had posted this, MAGA & GOP would be calling for impeachment,” he added, referring to Merrick Garland, the Biden administration’s attorney general.
Appearing on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast Monday, Mizelle defended his post, saying that Article II of the Constitution explicitly states that “all executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States,” so “any time an executive branch officer is using executive power — an AUSA indicting somebody or … bringing criminal evidence against somebody — all of that is executive power that’s included.”
Mizelle said that when he was working for Bondi last year, his “job as chief of staff” was to “root out a lot of this stuff,” so, “On Day 1 we dismissed about 100 people who we thought were working against Donald J. Trump,” and then “thousands” more left.
“That’s how government should work. It should work that if you can’t follow the wishes of the duly elected president of the United States, then you need to leave. And all we’re looking for now are people who want to follow his agenda,” Mizelle said.
But Carbone said he rejects Mizelle’s analysis of the Constitution and the work of federal prosecutors under changing administrations. While policies may change, prosecutors “have to exercise independent professional judgment, not political obedience,” he said.
That’s underscored by a 2008 report from the Justice Department’s inspector general, who launched an investigation at the time into allegations that the Justice Department under President George W. Bush had been improperly using political affiliations to screen candidates for an apolitical summer internship program and a program that hired recent law graduates without prior legal experience.
In his report, the inspector general noted that “both DOJ policy and civil service law prohibit discrimination in hiring for DOJ career positions on the basis of political affiliations,” and said courts have considered “political affiliation” to include “commonality of political purpose, partisan activity, and political support.”
After his office’s investigation, the inspector general concluded that two political appointees in the department “took political or ideological affiliations into account in deselecting candidates in violation of Department policy and federal law.”
As for Mizelle’s recent post, Carbone said it is “just another symptom” afflicting a Justice Department that “has been building this reputation of independence for 50 years, since Watergate, and now here we are in a place where we’ve taken a giant step back.”
Mark Rotert, an AUSA in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago during the 1980s and 1990s, who was also on his office’s hiring committee, agreed, calling Mizelle’s post “disgraceful.”
“It never would have occurred to us to explore what the candidate’s views were about the president, or what kind of job the president is doing,” Rotert said of his time on the hiring committee. “Partisan politics were never considered a relevant or even an appropriate discussion point.”
Carbone also said that while Mizelle may not work at the Justice Department anymore, the boost it received from Miller, a senior White House official, and Reding Quinones, a U.S. attorney, shows how connected Mizelle still is — or at the least how his message “is supported by high-level people in the Justice Department.”
Mizelle’s post comes as the Justice Department faces increasing pressure over its handling of a wide array of politically charged matters, including firing prosecutors and investigators who were involved in previous Trump-related investigations; filing federal charges against or otherwise investigating many of President Trump’s political enemies; failing to initially investigate the officer who fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis last month; and most recently last week’s FBI seizure of ballots and other records related to the 2020 election from an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia.
A Justice Department spokesman did not respond to a message from ABC News seeking comment. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida also did not respond to a message seeking comment from ABC News.
(LONDON)– It is one thing to make a New Year’s resolution. It is, however, a very different thing to be able to keep it.
Every year they are made with the best of intentions — with the hope and desire to become a better version of ourselves — so why is it that millions of people make New Year’s resolutions knowing the odds of them ever following through with them are minimal?
Jasper Rook Williams — fitness expert, online coach and owner of JRW Fitness — has made a successful career so far working with hundreds of clients around the world on improving their nutrition, training and lifestyle calibration. He has a good idea why.
“The goals, if sometimes a little ambitious, are rarely the problem and they are all set with best intentions,” Rook Williams tells ABC News. “The issue is there’s rarely enough thought put into the approach. People have high ambitions hinging on mostly unrealistic and unsustainable methods. Rather than just thinking ‘I’ll eat salads and join a gym’, people need to prioritize achievable routines, sustainability and lifestyle changes from a broader and more holistic perspective.”
According to research, Rook Williams isn’t wrong. The failure rate for New Year’s resolutions is said to be an estimated 80% with most people losing their resolve and motivation just weeks later in mid-February, according to U.S News and World Report.
“Changing your habits is very difficult, including finding the right moment to make a change,” Bas Verplanken, professor of social psychology at the University of Bath, said in a report released by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in 2017. “Changing from December 31st to January 1st is not a dramatic discontinuity. Many resolutions are made on December 31st, and go down the drain on January 2nd.”
Psychologically speaking, the beginning of a new year is often viewed as a seminal moment — a time to reflect on the previous year and look ahead to the new one. But this doesn’t necessarily translate to immediate change and action just because of timing.
“Anything worthwhile is never without obstacle” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the top three New Year’s resolutions made each year are living healthier (23%), personal improvement or happiness (21%) and losing weight (20%), according to a report published by Statista in Nov. 2022.
“A great question to ask yourself when starting out is “does this feel sustainable?” Rook Williams explains to ABC News. “If you can’t keep up the routine then you definitely won’t keep the results.”
One of the things that Rook Williams has found leads to people maintaining their success is when people have — or are given — a sense of accountability.
“You have to bear in mind that creating new habits is hard and progress for anything worthwhile is never linear,” he said. “There will be times when either you want to stop or results seem to have stopped and that can be hard to deal with. That’s when having someone to guide you can keep you accountable can be invaluable in the process of change.”
Ultimately, to successfully make a change for the better, it comes down to striking the right balance, according to Rook Williams.
“In the case of fitness, it’s not just the food or training or wider lifestyle that will create the change but all three of these things working together,” he continued. “They’re not mutually exclusive. Lacking motivation is common and, in my experience, is something that comes when you don’t have a plan. Whether you hire a professional or not, just removing the guesswork and gaining a sense of direction always helps the individual on their path to success.”
“Motivation is temporary” One of the biggest obstacles to maintaining resolutions, particularly when it comes to fitness objectives, is to choose goals that are both achievable and sustainable.
An estimated 12% of all new gym memberships per year occur in January, according to a study done by IHRSA, the fitness industry’s only global trade association that represents health clubs worldwide. Another study indicates that four out of every five people who join the gym in January will actually quit within five months.
“Motivation is temporary for everyone,” says Rook Williams. “So the best thing you can do is use that time to create the habits and routines needed to see you through once it wanes. And it will wane. It always does. The classic thing new gym starters do in the new year is go from zero to 100 mph … They want to go from not working out at all and eating what they want to training five, six, seven days a week and eating like a rabbit. This just sets them up for failure because it’s just not realistic.”
One of the biggest reasons why Rook Williams’ clients often succeed when it comes to setting goals is the focus on maintaining a healthy outlook every day and “saying no to short-termism.”
“Being new at something and hoping to be perfect straight away is a sure fire way to give up on anything very quickly,” Rook Williams explains. “Be sure to cut yourself some slack. If you planned to train three days one week but only managed two, that doesn’t make you a failure. It’s still two more than you were doing before, so just wipe the slate clean and try it again without holding on to guilt or punishing yourself.”
“Everyone falls off the horse at some point, even the pros,” Rook Williams continued. “What’s important is how quickly you dust yourself off and get back to work. Those who make it do this right away. But those who let one mistake spill over into more mistakes are the ones who are most likely to give up and start again next year.”
“Never just one solution” No matter what resolution you may make in the New Year, for Rook Williams, success is all about perspective and making changes in incremental ways that suit your lifestyle rather than completely disrupting it.
“There is never just one solution to a problem, whatever that problem might be,” he continued. “Your goal might be set in stone, but how you achieve it shouldn’t be. Don’t get married to just one method. Finding sustainable success is all about finding the method that is easiest and most maintainable for you.”
Unrealistic expectations and the dangers of expecting to get it right the first time are one of the main things that Rook Williams warns his clients about.
“With so much conflicting information out there and each of us having our own unique goals, schedules and responsibilities, the chance of getting your nutritional approach spot on when going alone immediately is incredibly slim,” Rook Williams explains. “Even if it is working, it might not be sustainable so be prepared for a period involving a lot of trial and error.”
For Rook Williams this was a huge reason why he became a coach in the first place. “It took me ages to piece it all together and, once I had, I wanted to help others do the same and in far less time.”
Research actually backs this up. According to a 2012 study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Weight and Eating Disorders Program, 65% of dieters return to their pre-diet weight within three years and only 5% of people who lose weight on a restrictive diet, such as a liquid or no-carb, manage to keep the weight off — just one out of every 20 dieters.
“Carbs are tasty, alcohol can be fun, food is for eating and going without all these things forever is, for most people, totally unrealistic. When you think about it logically like that, it’s no surprise the majority of people fail to keep off the weight they lose.”
Ultimately, making any major change in your life requires more than just the desire to do so. It requires a goal, determination and a willingness to learn all mixed with a heavy dose of reality and a well-constructed approach to change.
“If you have a day where you feel like you can’t be bothered with anything, remember you are running your own race,” Rook Williams explains. “Success isn’t made by being perfect everyday but by doing your best everyday, whatever that looks like to you. What I have learned myself — and what I have really seen leads people to success — is if you have good habits and routines in place that you have created over time, that’s what is going to get you to where you want to be.”
Said Rook Williams: “It’s not just the food or training or wider lifestyle that will create the change but all three of these things. They’re all connected.”
Bitter Cold – Tuesday AM Wind Chills Map. ABC News
(NEW YORK) — A brutal arctic blast is bringing dangerously low temperatures to the Plains and Midwest before it invades the Northeast.
On Monday morning, the wind chill — what temperature it feels like — plunged to minus 30 degrees in Minneapolis; minus 27 degrees in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; minus 22 degrees in Chicago; and minus 22 degrees in Green Bay, Wisconsin. In the Windy City, wind gusts could hit 35 mph.
The cold even reached Florida on Monday. Wind chills dropped to the 20s in North Florida and hovered around 32 degrees in Central Florida.
On Tuesday morning, the freezing cold will continue in the Midwest, with the wind chill forecast to hit minus 12 degrees in Minneapolis; minus 8 in Chicago and Detroit; and minus 13 in Cleveland, Ohio.
The dangerous temperatures will also arrive in the Northeast on Tuesday. The wind chill is forecast to drop to minus 12 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; 5 degrees in New York City and Philadelphia; 7 degrees in Washington, D.C.; and minus 9 in Buffalo, New York.
The Arctic blast will also bring lake effect snow through Wednesday. Six to 12 inches is possible from western Michigan to Buffalo, New York.
