Why invasive spotted lanternflies are thriving in the US
Spotted lanternflies stand on a railing next to the Hudson River as the sun sets on the skyline of New York, Aug. 26, 2023. (Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Scientists are getting a better understanding of why spotted lanternflies, the invasive species wreaking havoc in the Northeast every spring, have been thriving since their invasion into the U.S.
The flying insect, identified by its distinctive spotted wings, originated in Asia and likely arrived in the U.S. around 2014 through a single introduction, after which it began to multiply exponentially, Kristen Winchell, an associate professor of biology at New York University, told ABC News.
Ever since, the lanternflies have swarmed urban regions in the Northeast, while wildlife experts have encouraged people who come across them to squish them immediately to further prevent their spread.
Researchers say they now have a better idea of how the insects have managed to adapt and spread so quickly in the U.S.
New genomic analyses of the insect indicates that the spotted lanternflies likely adapted to urban settings in Shanghai, China – including heat, pollution and pesticides – which is allowing them to thrive in the Northeast U.S. corridor, according to a paper published in The Royal Society journal. The insects showed adaptations in genes associated with stress response, according to the paper.
“They were adapting to thrive in urban environments in the native range, and that primed them then to be successful in whatever the next urban environment they landed in,” said Winchell, who co-authored the paper.
Researchers believe the lanternflies arrived in Berks County, Pennsylvania, in a shipment of stone from South Korea via their native range in urban Shanghai, Fallon Meng, a doctoral candidate at NYU’s Department of Biology, told ABC News.
Their egg masses have easily survived the harsh Northeast winters, so they would have “no problem” surviving in a climate-controlled shipping container, Winchell said.
Lanternflies have been spotted as far north as Boston, Mass., and Providence, R.I., although how much farther north they can survive is yet to be determined, Winchell said.
Spotted lanternflies were able “take over” an unfamiliar ecosystem and a new climate despite the low genetic diversity from the single introduction, Winchell said. They are genetically similar across their 125-mile range in the U.S., the research found.
“The loss of genetic diversity in this population, which should theoretically constrain any sort of adaptation or variation in traits in the invasive environment, should possibly limit their spread,” Winchell said.
The insects have also been known to hitch rides on trains and ferries, as well as humans’ backpacks, Winchell said, adding that researchers expect them to spread west next, toward Chicago.
“The females carry a lot of eggs, and so it just takes one to lay a successful clutch of eggs,” Winchell said.
Spotted lanternflies feed on tree sap using piercing mouthparts. The piercing doesn’t necessarily damage the trees, but their excrement, which is high in sugar, stains the trees and blocks photosynthesis, which eventually suffocates the trees, the researchers said.
Tree of Heaven, an invasive species in the U.S. that’s native to Asia, is their tree of choice, but they have the potential to impact apple orchards, maple trees and vineyards in the Northeast.
They can also sequester toxins from the Tree of Heaven, which makes them toxic to certain animals that may eat them, which in turn negatively impacts the food chain.
Invasive management efforts in cities may be necessary to curb further spread of the spotted lanternfly, according to the paper. In the meantime, researchers said, the the advice to stomp on them when you see then still stands.
Nurses on strike rally outside Gov. Hochul’s midtown office after marching from Grand Central Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The largest nurses strike in New York City history ended this weekend when the last holdouts in the 41-day labor action overwhelmingly voted to ratify a contract and agreed to return to work, officials said.
Around 4,200 members of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) employed by the private New York-Presbyterian system approved on Saturday a contract that includes more than a 12% increase in salaries over the life of the three-year deal.
The nurses and management of the New York-Presbyterian system also agreed to improve enforceable safe staffing standards, boost protection for nurses from workplace violence and, for the first time ever, provide safeguards for employees against artificial intelligence.
The union previously said the hospitals had threatened to cut health care benefits for frontline nurses and roll back safe staffing standards that were won by nurses after a three-day strike in January 2023.
The labor agreement was approved after about 10,500 NYSNA nurses employed by the private Montefiore, Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai Morningside and West hospitals approved a similar contract last week. Some nurses in the system began returning to work on Saturday, officials said.
About 93% of the NYSNA nurses in the New York-Presbyterian system voted to ratify the contract, and about 7% rejected the deal, which was announced on Thursday, according to the union.
Nearly 15,000 nurses in total walked off their jobs on Jan. 12 after declaring a stalemate in negotiations with management for the private hospital systems, making it the largest nurses’ strike in New York City history.
“This is a proud moment for our union,” NYSNA President Nancy Hagans said in a statement. “We are so happy with the wins we achieved, and now the fight to enforce these contracts and hold our employers accountable begins.”
Hagans added, “NYSNA nurses showed what it means to advocate for patients, and this moment will go down in history as a win for our communities, in the fight for healthcare justice, and for the labor movement.”
In a statement Saturday evening, management of NewYork-Presbyterian confirmed the contract had been ratified by the last group of striking nurses.
“We are pleased to share that we have a new ratified contract with the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) and look forward to our nurses’ return to the hospital,” management of the New York-Presbyterian system said. “The new contract reflects our respect for our nurses and the critical role they play as part of our exceptional care teams.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul also expressed relief that the strike was finally over.
“Nurses are the backbone of our health care system. I am grateful that NYSNA has overwhelmingly ratified an agreement with New York Presbyterian recognizing the exceptionally difficult work our nurses do day in and out,” Hochul said in a statement.
The governor added, “Throughout this process, I have made clear that my top priority is protecting patients and providing continuity of care. With these agreements now ratified and nurses going back to work, I am confident we can continue to build on the progress made under this administration.”
Mug shot of Jeffrey Epstein, 2019. (Photo by Kypros/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — More than six years after the infamous financier and sex offender’s arrest on federal sex trafficking charges, the investigation into potential wrongdoing at Jeffrey Epstein’s sprawling hacienda in New Mexico is being reopened, according to a spokesperson for the state’s Justice Department.
In its heyday, Zorro Ranch played host to a who’s who of Epstein’s prominent guests. It also became the site where multiple girls alleged that they were sexually assaulted. Among them: Annie Farmer, who offered key testimony during Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial that she had been sexually abused at 16 years old by Epstein and Maxwell at the ranch in the mid-1990s.
The property, locally dubbed the “Playboy Ranch,” will now get fresh scrutiny over the many allegations of illegal activity on its grounds.
“Upon reviewing information recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice, Attorney General Raúl Torrez has ordered that the criminal investigation into allegations of illegal activity at Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch be reopened,” Lauren Rodriguez, Chief of Staff for the New Mexico Department of Justice, said in a statement to ABC News.
While Epstein’s New York townhouse and his Caribbean island were raided as part of the case against Epstein, records now released by the DOJ indicate federal law enforcement never raided Zorro.
“We have not searched the New Mexico property,” said a Dec. 20, 2019, email from a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York to a lawyer for Epstein’s estate.
New Mexico’s prior investigation was “closed in 2019 at the request of the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York,” according to New Mexico DOJ’s Rodriguez. Lawmakers in New Mexico pushing for the renewed probe have also said there was no record of federal law enforcement searching Zorro.
But now, “revelations outlined in the previously sealed FBI files warrant further examination,” Rodriguez said. “Special agents and prosecutors at the New Mexico Department of Justice will be seeking immediate access to the complete, unredacted federal case file and intend to work collaboratively with our law enforcement partners as well as the Epstein Truth Commission recently established by the New Mexico Legislature.”
“As with any potential criminal matter, we will follow the facts wherever they lead, carefully evaluate jurisdictional considerations, and take appropriate investigative action, including the collection and preservation of any relevant evidence that remains available,” Rodriguez added. “We are moving quickly and deliberately on this issue and will provide updates as appropriate.”
(NEW YORK) — This year began with a deadly New Year’s Day car-ramming terrorist attack in New Orleans and is finishing with a flurry of horrific shootings, including a mass shooting at Brown University, but 2025 is also poised to end with the largest one-year drop in U.S. homicides ever recorded, according to data from cities both large and small.
Based on a sampling of preliminary crime statistics from 550 U.S. law enforcement agencies, the year is expected to end with a roughly 20% decrease in homicides nationwide, Jeff Asher, a national crime analyst, told ABC News.
“So, even taking a conservative view, let’s say its 17% or 16%, you’re still looking at the largest one-year drop ever recorded in 2025,” said Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics and a former crime analyst for the CIA and the New Orleans Police Department.
Experts say crime levels appear “back to normal” after a pandemic surge.
The dramatic drop in homicides surpasses a 15% decline in 2024, which was then the largest decrease on record, according to Asher. In 2023, the number of homicides across the country fell 13% and 6% in 2022, according to the FBI.
The number of homicides nationwide is expected to be the lowest since the FBI began keeping such records in 1960, Asher said.
Asher said his assessment is based on the Real-Time Crime Index, which he founded and is a collection of monthly crime data from 550 law enforcement agencies nationwide.
The FBI’s official annual report on crime isn’t expected to be released until the second quarter of 2026, leaving Asher and other experts to rely on preliminary data from a sampling of law enforcement agencies.
Preliminary data the FBI made public earlier this year showed that homicides across the country fell 18% between September 2024 and August 2025. The FBI data also showed an overall 9% decline in violent crime during the same time period and a 12% reduction in property crime.
“You’ve got places like Detroit, Philadelphia and Baltimore that are on track to have the fewest murders since the 1960s. New Orleans, in spite of the terrorist attack on January 1, is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1970,” Asher said. “San Francisco is on track to see the fewest number of murders since 1940.”
Homicides in Chicago are down 30% this year from 2024, according to crime statistics from the Chicago Police Department (CPD). The number of homicides this year is down 49% since 2021, when the city recorded nearly 800 homicides, the CPD data shows.
And it’s not just homicides that are plummeting to record lows in 2025, according to Asher.
“We’re seeing across-the-board drops in every type of reported crime, which happened in 2024 and we’re seeing again in 2025,” said Asher, adding that aggravated assaults across the country are down 8% this year and motor vehicle theft has fallen 23%.
My son was innocent Despite the plunge in violent crime this year, the perception for some is that crime was rampant at certain points in a number of major cities.
The falling homicide numbers offered little solace to Tamara Tarpinian-Jachym, whose 21-year-old son, Eric Tarpinian-Jachym, was killed on June 30 when he was caught in the crossfire of a shooting in Washington, D.C., less than a mile from the White House.
“You can skew data any way you want,” Tarpinian-Jachym of Massachusetts told ABC News. “I believe that there’s more crime, violent crime, especially in our major cities.”
Three teenagers, including two brothers, were arrested on murder charges and are being prosecuted as adults in federal court in the death of Tarpinian-Jachym’s son, a University of Massachusetts student who, at the time he was killed, was a Congressional intern for Rep. Ron Estes, R-Kan. One of the suspects charged in his death was also charged in a separate homicide of a 17-year-old girl in Washington, D.C.
All three defendants charged in Tarpinian-Jachym’s homicide have pleaded not guilty.
“My son was innocent. Others were innocent victims of this crime. If more people died, it would have been a mass shooting. But my son was the only one who died,” Tarpinian-Jachym said.
Citing her own experience, Tarpinian-Jachym said blanket homicide statistics don’t take into account the suffering of family members like her left to grieve.
“It tears the family apart. You never have inner peace,” Tarpinian-Jachym said. “My heart goes out to all murder victims this year.”
Tarpinian-Jachym told ABC News that she agreed with President Donald Trump’s decision in August to deploy National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., and several other large cities to help combat crime. The decision followed a May 21 shooting at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., that killed two staff members of the Israeli Embassy and came even as crime was already down, according to the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPD) preliminary crime data posted online.
Homicides in Washington, D.C., as of Dec. 30, are down 31% compared to 2024, according to the MPD’s online data.
However, a lawsuit filed against the District of Columbia in 2020 by a former MPD sergeant-turned-whistleblower claimed the MPD routinely “misclassified crimes and that districts compete against each other to get the largest reduction in the crime statistics.” The lawsuit was settled out of court this past August. According to court documents, the District of Columbia agreed to dismiss the case “without any admission of any liability.”
On Dec. 14, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released an interim staff report alleging that its investigation found MPD Chief Pamela A. Smith, who announced this month that she is stepping down, “pressured and at times directed commanders to manipulate crime data in order to maintain the appearance of low crime in the nation’s capital.”
In a Dec. 15 interview with NBC Washington, D.C., station WRC-TV, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser responded, saying, “I don’t see any evidence of that.”
Mass shootings drop in 2025 According to the Gun Violence Archive, a website that tracks shootings across the country, this year is poised to end with mass shootings down 22% from the 503 committed in 2024. The website defines a mass shooting as at least four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including the shooter.
Among the nearly 400 mass shootings across the country this year, two of the most devastating occurred at churches.
On Aug. 27, two children, ages 8 and 10, were killed and 21 people were injured at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis when a 23-year-old shooter opened fire through the windows of the school’s church during a service, police said. The suspect, Robin Westman, whose mother once worked at the church, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said.
On Sept. 28, four people were killed and eight others were injured in a mass shooting at a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chapel in Grand Blanc, Mich., according to the FBI. The suspect, 40-year-old Thomas Sanford of Burton, Mich., allegedly set fire to the chapel after crashing his truck into the building, authorities said.
Sanford, who served as a Marine sergeant and was deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2007, was killed in a shootout with police.
And on Dec. 13, a gunman opened fire in a lecture hall at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, killing two students and injuring nine others. Following a weeklong search, the suspect, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a 48-year-old former Brown graduate student, was found dead at a New Hampshire storage facility from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said.
Neves Valente is also suspected of killing MIT professor Nuno F.G. Laureiro two days after the Brown University shooting, according to federal prosecutors.
‘I’m seeing now that we’re back to normal.’ Despite the string of high-profile killings and attacks this year, Robert Boyce, a retired chief of detectives for the New York Police Department, said the dramatic drop in 2025 homicides is real.
Boyce said that when he retired from the NYPD in 2018, the city had fewer than 300 homicides that year.
But when the COVID pandemic hit in 2020, homicides across the country soared 30%, according to the FBI.
“Courts were being shut down, and schools were being shut down. We couldn’t do our job in the police department like we did in previous years,” said Boyce, adding that the police-involved killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis also led to mistrust of law enforcement and prompted calls to defund police departments.
Homicides in New York City went from 317 in 2019 to 462 in 2020, a 44% increase, according to NYPD crime statistics. Homicides jumped another 4% in 2021 to 488.
During the pandemic, which wasn’t declared over until May 2023, homicides dramatically increased in other major cities.
Chicago recorded 769 homicides in 2020, which was 274 more than the previous year, and jumped to 797 in 2021, according to Chicago Police Department data.
Philadelphia saw a 40% increase in homicides in 2020 compared to 2019, according to Philadelphia Police Department data. In 2021, homicides continued to climb, hitting a record high of 562.
“We fought back. We completely redid our police department to be more narcotics-focused and increased our narcotics division. And we saw the gradual decreases,” Boyce said of the NYPD.
As of Dec. 28, homicides are down in New York City by 21% this year compared to 2024. Earlier this month, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced that in the first 11 months of 2025, the nation’s largest city saw the fewest shooting incidents and shooting victims in recorded history.
Boyce said the NYPD and other law enforcement agencies also worked with federal prosecutors to target gang members, who Boyce said were a major driver of violent crime during the pandemic and continue to be now. The federal government also strengthened partnerships with local police agencies and provided grants to support programs to reduce violent crime.
“I’m seeing now that we’re back to normal. The reset is here. That’s great news,” Boyce said.
Asked if the country is back to pre-pandemic crime levels, Boyce said, “We’re just a little above and not much.”
