PEREIRA, Colombia — Rescue crews and civilians in Colombia painstakingly searched through rubble Tuesday in the hopes of finding survivors trapped under debris after a powerful earthquake left thousands missing in dozens of cities and towns.
The 7.4 magnitude earthquake that hit western Colombia on Monday wreaked havoc, collapsing buildings, buckling roads, crushing cars, and leaving devastated residents to console each other among the wreckage of their homes. Excavators and heavy machinery cleared heavy chunks of concrete, while buckets of rubble were passed hand-to-hand along a line of volunteers.
Rescue crews and volunteers picked through flattened concrete buildings in affected cities, searching for signs of life. They raised their hands to call for silence when they thought they heard someone beneath the piles of debris. At least one woman was retrieved — alive — from the rubble.
Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella said the earthquake killed at least 181 people and left 2,595 more injured. He said at least 195 remained missing, but civilian-run databases suggest that number could be closer to 4,000.
Crews race to find survivors
Authorities said the deaths were concentrated in the cities of Cali, Pereira, Manizales, and Quibdo, but local leaders and families worried about casualties and damage in rural areas, from where very little information has emerged. Aid agencies consider the first 48 to 72 hours crucial for retrieving people alive, though that threshold can be extended if they have access to food and water.
De la Espriella said more than 1,000 homes were destroyed and yet more damaged.
Standing near the remains of his brother’s collapsed apartment building in Pereira, Jairo Vargas said he made the 135-mile drive from Medellin, hoping to find him alive.
“I’m absolutely certain he’s here. Absolutely certain,” Vargas said, adding that his brother’s car was still parked outside. But he fears his sibling did not survive.
“The debris surrounding my brother is soft,” he said, as heavy machinery rumbled nearby. “It’s possible that it’s protecting him, but we can’t hear any noises anymore. I don’t know. I have little hope.”
Colombia’s new president faces his first serious challenge
The earthquake presents the first major test for first-time officeholder de la Espriella, who entered office just days before the natural disaster. The leader, who split the country in recent elections, now seeks to unite Colombia in its disaster response.
That challenge was particularly notable in Choco, the region at the quake’s epicenter. It is one of Colombia’s poorest and most neglected regions, often beset by warring armed groups. Much of Choco is accessible only by boat, through the jungle, or by airplane.
Sterling Palacios, a religious and environmental leader in the region, said Choco’s capital and smaller communities along the Atrato River were devastated. Homes were reduced to rubble and aftershocks continued to rumble, terrifying residents who slept in the streets overnight.
The Colombian Geological Service said it has documented more than 100 less powerful aftershocks since the initial quake.
“There are towns where people have lost everything, where people have died, where homes have been destroyed,” he said. “We don’t have a full panorama of the damage, but we know it’s been massive.”
De la Espriella traveled to Quibdo in Choco on Monday night where he announced he was mobilizing “the entire military and police apparatus,” as well as deploying engineers, rescue workers, and search dogs.
“Choco will never again be the ‘land of the forgotten,’” he said.
Palacios said the government’s response has so far been “concentrated in the capital,” and that authorities were flying the wounded from Quibdo to hospitals in the city of Medellín.
The biggest challenge, he said, remains towns in rural areas only reachable by boat — journeys that can take hours or days. That response is also complicated by a toxic slate of armed groups warring for control who, during the COVID-19 pandemic, blocked healthcare workers from traveling to remote areas.
“It’s a risk and it’s very difficult to predict” what could happen, he said, adding it could take weeks to fully assess the devastation.
Desperate residents seek news of loved ones
Families posted information about missing loved ones on citizen-run websites.
Dana Carolina Zamora posted an image of her missing 60-year-old uncle, Miguel Ángel Zamora, cradling his dog. The farmer was living in a rural area of El Cairo, not far from the quake’s epicenter in San Jose Del Palmar.
Local authorities said 80% of El Cairo, a town of about 7,000 people, was damaged. Zamora said her uncle lived in a traditional house of sticks and mud.
“We are afraid. We hope that is not the case, that he is all right and that it is only a communication failure. But we haven’t heard anything from him,” Zamora said.
Mónica Sánchez, who lives in Pereira, one of the worst-hit cities, said when the quake happened a wall collapsed inside her clothing factory. Sánchez and her 12 employees escaped just in time.
“It was shocking — the city fell down around us,” she said.
On Tuesday, rescue workers pulled a woman alive from the rubble. Diana Troncoso lay on a stretcher, dusty and scraped up, with her eyes closed. Observers burst into applause as she emerged, but search teams raised their hand to call for quiet so they could continue their search for survivors.
Pereira and Cali enforced curfews Monday night to prevent looting, and private vehicles were banned from the roads of Pereira so ambulances, police, and rescue workers were able to navigate what’s left of the roads.
The U.S. State Department has announced it would provide $15.5 million for emergency shelter, food, and other aid. Governments across Latin America have also lined up to help.
“This has been a tragedy for the whole city, for thousands of families,” Pereira Mayor Mauricio Salazar told local media, his voice quavering. “But here we are, and we will continue forward with the hand of God.”
When President Bill Clinton deplaned in Islamabad, the sleight of hand became clear.
A decoy jet with all of the markings of Air Force One touched down in view of the news media, and a Secret Service agent resembling the president emerged. Then, an unmarked plane landed, and the real president disembarked.
It was March 2000, and Susan Page, a White House reporter covering the trip for USA Today, was one of a small group of people who knew about the ruse.
Before the India-to-Pakistan flight, White House officials called Page, then the White House Correspondents’ Association president, and summoned her for an off-the-record conversation. There, White House press and security officials explained the operation, informing her of the president’s location and safety measures in place for journalists on the trip, Page said in messages with the Washington Post.
“They told me about the extraordinary security procedures being taken because of the dangers in flying there, including use of the decoy plane,” she said. “Of course, the dangers threatened the journalists covering the trip as well as President Clinton.”
Page’s briefing, which has not been previously reported, meant at least one journalist in the traveling press corps knew the president would not be aboard Air Force One.
More than 25 years later, the White House faced a similar security dilemma — but handled the press very differently.
On Monday evening, the Post reported on an extraordinary maneuver in which security personnel in Turkey secretly moved President Donald Trump from a plane marked as Air Force One to a smaller, unmarked Air Force plane, using an airport catering truck. The operation, which took place last month, was prompted by a credible Iranian threat to Trump, the Post reported.
As the swap took place, reporters aboard the decoy plane, who were instructed to lower their window shades, were unaware of the president’s maneuver, according to the Post’s reporting.
The incident could further degrade the already-fraught rapport between the Trump White House and the press corps, a relationship marked by name-calling, threats, legal restrictions, and lawsuits from Trump.
Page, now USA Today’s Washington bureau chief, declined to comment on the newly revealed incident but broke a decades-old agreement with the Clinton White House to describe her experience.
“I haven’t spoken about this episode before, because of the off-the-record ground rules of that discussion,” Page said in a text message. “But since more than a quarter-century has passed — and since the ruse became evident as soon as President Clinton disembarked in Pakistan — I think it’s OK for me to relay it now.”
Jacqui Heinrich, current president of the WHCA, declined to comment.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the operation’s impact on the journalists aboard the decoy plane.
“As the President has said recently, there are many enemies of America who have their sights on him, and we use every tool at our disposal to address those threats,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung previously told the Post.
The White House press pool consists of a rotating group of journalists who send reports, photos, and footage of the president’s activities for the entire press corps. This formal system has existed since 1937, though the White House first brought in a pooler in 1881 after President James Garfield was shot. Associated Press reporter Franklin Trusdell sat outside of the president’s room, monitoring his breathing and sharing updates with his colleagues.
The system is designed to ensure that someone from the press is present to observe the president’s movements and activities, giving the public an independent accounting.
Because the press was seemingly in the dark about the operation, Garrett Graff, a journalist and historian, said that the Post’s reporting describes an event that is probably unprecedented in modern presidential history.
“That the White House would lie to the press corps in its entirety about where the president is,” he said. “That’s a new Rubicon that’s being crossed.”
The breach was not merely one of journalistic access, according to Graff. The details of the threat that prompted Trump’s operation are unknown, so it’s impossible to calculate the risks to the press pool. However, the reporters aboard the plane were probably exposed to the very threat that had prompted the extraordinary security measures, Graff said.
“Knowing that this was a series of actions that the White House and the military took precisely because of a threat that they were deeply worried about, it makes it all the more egregious that the press was kept out of the loop,” he added.
Former CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr said that the press fully understands and respects the security requirements of covering the president.
But, she said, “there will be a level of distrust now that we have not seen before … their own lives were potentially at risk without them even knowing it, without them having the option of making a different choice of how to get home.”
Politico reporter Megan Messerly was the print pooler on the day of Trump’s trip. “We are wheels up from Ankara as of 8:43 p.m.,” she reported. “We have been advised to keep our window shades in the press cabin closed. See you on the other side.”
After landing, she wrote that the flight was “uneventful” with “no visitors to the press cabin.”
Hours later, a reporter peppered Trump with questions about whether there was a security threat to Air Force One that warranted the shades being closed, according to Messerly’s pool report.
“Well, I have a threat all the time. I’m number one on their list, before you,” Trump responded. “But if I go, you go. Right? Perhaps someday you want to change professions.” Messerly did not respond to a request for comment.
The disclosure quickly prompted a scramble among White House reporters for more information.
“We (and no doubt every other newsroom in Washington) are asking the White House and sources for more info,” NBC chief White House correspondent Garrett Haake wrote on X.
ABC’s Michelle Stoddart, who was the TV pool producer aboard the flight, sent WHCA members additional details on the trip, following the Post’s reporting.
“Upon arrival to the airport, the events did not seem particularly out of the ordinary to the travel pool,” she wrote. “Our photographer noted that the stairs were quickly pulled away as the press loaded.”
She said that a photographer seated behind her opened a shade on board and was quickly instructed to close it again by a White House staffer who said it was a “request from Secret Service.”
One White House reporter, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly, said that they were outraged to learn about an operation that might have put the press corps in danger.
“When you sign up to work at the White House, even as a civilian, part of your job is to defend the president,” the reporter said. “That’s not my job. I cover the president. Reporters take risks as part of the job, but not on behalf of the president.”
EASTERN UKRAINE — The commander leading Ukraine’s drone war says his country’s recent strikes in Crimea are the first phase of a campaign aimed at rendering the peninsula — illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 — unusable as a staging ground for Russian forces.
Maj. Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, one of Ukraine’s most prominent commanders among a new generation of soldiers, said his forces could strike seven times more military targets in Crimea if the money pledged by Western allies came faster.
“Crimea falls within the key conceptual pillars on the path to ending the war,” Brovdi told the Associated Press in an interview.
Despite that shortfall, Ukraine’s summer campaign in Crimea has already inflicted significant damage: striking rail bridges, oil depots, and power infrastructure to disrupt supply lines and blind Russian air defenses as drones fly in.
Brovdi said his forces are equipped at just 14% of what they would need to carry out the Crimea campaign at full capacity.
A firm believer in numbers since his past life running an international grain trading business, Brovdi joined Ukraine’s territorial defense as a volunteer in the war’s opening days. He rose quickly, commanding one of the country’s most effective drone brigades before being tapped to lead a force with no precedent before this war — Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces.
“It’s not that the production capacity of Ukrainian manufacturers doesn’t allow us to make the necessary quantities” of drones, Brovdi said. “It’s the banal problem of untimely financing, which our partners do allocate, but which moves significantly slower than our plans.”
A lover of the arts
A devoted patron of the arts, Brovdi works in an underground command post that resembles a museum, with pieces of Ukrainian art on display, including by renowned painter Maria Prymachenko — each with small placards noting their titles and a QR code linking to more information. “Please don’t touch the sculpture,” reads a sign beneath one piece.
The artwork sits against a backdrop of dozens of screens streaming live footage from the front, along with real-time data that drives decisions on the battlefield. Soldiers can grab good coffee, pick a book, work out, or rest in sleeping pods — a culture that feels closer to a Silicon Valley office than a war room.
They work around the clock to try to prevent Crimea from functioning as a staging ground for the Russian military, said Brovdi, whose call sign, Magyar, nods to his ethnic Hungarian roots in Zakarpattia, the western Ukrainian region bordering Hungary.
He pointed to one sign of progress — in four recent large-scale Russian missile barrages from the peninsula, only five missiles were launched in total, a drop he credited to the systematic destruction of Russian air defenses there. The AP couldn’t independently verify the claim.
To open that “window” for drones to strike the peninsula without being shot down en masse, his forces destroyed more than 300 air defense assets over recent months — surface-to-air systems, radar stations, electronic warfare equipment.
The window metaphor sends him into a sidetrack about something personal — he loves sleeping with one open, a pleasure he rarely gets anymore as one of Russia’s most hunted men, who spends most of his time in underground bunkers.
Forcing Russia out of Crimea
Much of Russia’s Soviet-era air defense hardware runs on the power grid, which is one of the reasons Crimea’s electrical infrastructure has become a recurring target. Russian soldiers become “blind,” left with just machine guns and rifles, he said. The tactic has also impacted access to power for civilians, and Brovdi said he has twice publicly apologized to Ukrainians living in Crimea for the disruptions.
Wherever Starlink connectivity reaches across Crimea, his forces can now destroy even the most heavily defended target using an average of just three drones, mixing munitions with different characteristics and warheads depending on what’s being hit. He described the strikes as deliberately calibrated — different munitions for a bridge pier than for a fuel truck or a moving train — and said his forces avoid hitting civilian infrastructure.
“Creating conditions that make it impossible for any kind of military capability … to remain there will make Crimea uninteresting … as a military staging ground,” he said.
Ukraine is also working to dismantle Crimea’s role as a naval base — a blow to Russia’s presence near NATO’s borders, he added.
The campaign’s early results have not been made public, Brovdi said. But roughly two weeks into the offensive that began in late June, he said Ukrainian intelligence indicated Russian authorities had ordered all military commands and security services to relocate off the peninsula, along with a covert order to remove secret archives and artworks. The AP could not independently verify the account.
Threats from Russia
Meanwhile, Russia is working to counter Ukraine’s edge. It is installing jamming systems at a scale that will, to some degree, degrade Starlink connectivity, Brovdi said.
Russia is also building its own satellite communications system to rival Starlink, he said. “This is a risk for the entire planet,” Brovdi said, “because a dictatorship will gain access to information across the whole globe.”
He also pointed to other threats facing Ukraine. The concentration of jet-powered Shahed drones, which are much harder for Ukraine to shoot down, has increased 2½ times in recent weeks, he said.
Russia’s military can currently fire a simultaneous salvo of 77 ballistic and cruise missiles, he said, and plans to increase that to 200. That is one of Ukraine’s most vulnerable points, since the country is running short of interceptors for the U.S.-made Patriot — the only system Ukraine has in its arsenal against ballistic missiles — meaning dozens fired by Russia during mass barrages get through and hit their targets.
“Even if they only manage half of that, it will all be flying at us,” Brovdi said. The only way to bring the number down, he said, is by striking every facility involved in producing those missiles — underscoring the importance of Ukraine’s long-range strikes deep inside Russian territory.
Ukraine’s plan for Russia’s Wildberries
Ukraine has increasingly targeted Wildberries, Russia’s largest online marketplace, sometimes described as the country’s answer to Amazon, and Brovdi named it as a target.
“Wildberries is, first of all, a supply platform — it’s the war’s quartermaster,” he said, noting the company runs a dedicated section selling goods for Russia’s military.
At the same time, Brovdi said, the strikes on Wildberries are meant to make ordinary Russians feel the war directly, in hopes the resulting desire to end it could weigh on Russia’s ability to keep fighting.
Brovdi declined to give a timeline for the Wildberries campaign, saying only that the strikes will continue “until it becomes impossible for it to recover quickly.”
“Ultimately, Wildberries is, forgive the expression, a consumer gambling addiction,” he said, arguing that losing access to it — like restrictions on social media — creates an intrusion on one’s personal life that most Russians feel.
“It turned out to be a sensitive sensor of the comfort of Russia’s massive population — people who consider themselves completely untouched by the actions of the aggressor country,” he said.
WASHINGTON — Russia has released an American military veteran who spent more than four years in prison on disputed charges under abusive conditions and was said to be gravely ill and at risk of dying, a group advocating for him said Tuesday.
Robert Gilman was on his way to a U.S. military hospital in Texas, where he will be medically and psychologically assessed and treated, said Eric Lebson, chief strategy officer of Global Reach, a group that’s been working to free him and other American detainees abroad. Gilman’s family has flown to Texas to be with him, including his mother, who was in Russia attempting to see him at a hospital.
Gilman, a 32-year-old teacher detained since 2022, was initially handed a 3½-year sentence when he was convicted of beating a police officer after being taken off a train for causing a disturbance. He later was convicted of attacking a prison inspector during a cell check, beating an investigator, and assaulting a guard, and he was sentenced in October 2024 to eight years and one month. His sentence was extended last year to 10 years after he was found guilty of assaulting prison guards.
Gilman’s sister, Lexie Hudson, credited President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts with bringing about the former Marine’s release.
“There is no other reason that Robert is alive today other than that President Trump heard about the case and took action,” said Hudson, who thanked Markey “for leading our advocacy efforts in Congress.”
“The Russians treated my brother so badly,” Hudson said. ”They hurt him for no reason, other than that he was both an American and a Marine. What did they get out of this? Why did they do this to such a wonderful person?”
The State Department said that Gilman, who had been determined recently to have been wrongfully detained, was released on humanitarian grounds and “was not part of an exchange, and no other concessions were provided.”
“This as a welcome step that we hope leads to the release of Americans unjustly held in Russia, such as wrongful detainee Stephen Hubbard,” it said.
Before Gilman was flown out of Russia, he had been in “a dissociative stupor” for 47 days due to the abuse he has suffered in prison, Lebson said. Gilman had been moved from a prison to a civilian hospital, where he was hooked up to a feeding tube and handcuffed to a bed.
Hospital reports conveyed Gilman’s condition “as dire and life-threatening,” pushing the U.S. government into action and leading to “a unilateral humanitarian release” by Russian officials, Lebson said.
Markey had called on Russia and the U.S. to work together to get the Massachusetts resident released. Gilman was among at least eight Americans who remained in Russian custody after a series of high-profile prisoner exchanges with the U.S. in recent years.
Markey blamed Russia for Gilman’s poor health, saying his return to the U.S. was long overdue.
“It is a tragedy that it took Robert’s near-death condition for his case to receive the attention that it required for his release to be negotiated,” Markey said. “Throughout his detention, Robert was subjected to physical torture, forced medication, and provocations by Russian authorities. There is no doubt that his treatment by Russian authorities is the reason Robert is in this precarious state today.”
The Associated Press was making efforts to get comment from Russian officials on Gilman’s release.
The meeting in the Oval Office between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a diplomatic car crash.
“Your country is in big trouble. You’re not winning,” Trump said, dressing down Zelenskyy in front of the world’s media. “You don’t have the cards.”
The blowup in February 2025, three years into the war, was more than just a heated public exchange: The Ukrainian delegation was asked to leave the White House, and Washington briefly suspended intelligence sharing with Kyiv. In the ensuing months, as Russia made slow but steady gains on the battlefield, Trump warmly welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska and seemed ready to push Ukraine into an unfavorable peace deal, including forcing it to give up territory.
But even as Zelenskyy sat next to Trump, his forces were preparing an operation that would reveal Ukraine’s ability and ambition to take the war to Russia: Months later, drones smuggled into the country attacked Russian bombers, destroying or damaging planes worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Since then, Kyiv has ramped up a campaign of longer-range strikes inside Russia and in areas Moscow has seized, increased production of weapons, targeted Russian air defenses, and hit oil infrastructure and the warehouses of a major retailer in a bid to ensure ordinary Russians feel the impact of the conflict.
In an embarrassment to Putin, Ukrainian drone strikes sent thick plumes of smoke billowing over St. Petersburg shortly before the opening of an international economic forum in June. Concern over Ukraine’s attacks led Russian authorities to scale down the May 9 military parade commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany. Strikes on oil refineries have caused a summer fuel crisis.
By the time Trump and Zelenskyy met at a NATO summit in July, the American president said the Ukrainian leader had “been very effective” in the war. “We’ve actually developed a good relationship,” Trump added.
In the first six months of the year, 1,396 civilians were killed in Ukraine, according to the U.N. Meanwhile, the world body said Russian authorities reported 250 civilians killed in the same period. On Monday, a strike that Ukraine said hit an oil refinery in Russia killed 13 people, according to local officials.
And while Ukraine’s effort appears to have shifted the narrative about the war in Washington, it’s still not clear if it will be able to push Putin toward the negotiating table.
Ukraine’s strikes are aimed at undermining the idea that Russia can afford to “just let this roll,” said Jack Watling, a senior research fellow at the London-based RUSI think tank.
The question of whether it will succeed depends on how much pain Ukraine can exact. “Logically, above a certain threshold, it does work but whether they can reach that threshold is an interesting question” — and one that depends at least partly on factors outside Kyiv’s control, like continued European financial support, he noted.
Ukraine brings the war to Russia
While most of Ukraine’s strikes have a range of less than 200 kilometers (125 miles), its longer-range attacks have increased dramatically this year. It launched three times as many of those strikes in July as it did in January, according to data from ACLED, an independent conflict monitor. Repeatedly hitting deep into Russia has forced its military to stretch air defenses over a larger area.
Many of its strikes have focused on four key categories of targets, according to an Associated Press analysis of hundreds of Ukrainian attacks this year — compiled from statements by Russian officials and state media and the Ukrainian military.
As the Iran war pushed up energy prices, leading the U.S. to ease sanctions on Russian oil, Kyiv ramped up strikes on oil infrastructure to deny the Kremlin revenue from fuel exports and force shortages on ordinary Russians. It is also striking defense manufacturing to damage Russia’s long-term ability to produce weapons, targeting air defenses to clear a path for its own arms, and hitting retail warehouses to bring the effects to ordinary Russians.
— As part of the campaign against oil infrastructure, Kyiv said it hit Russia’s largest oil refinery, more than 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) from Ukraine.
— Kyiv has also targeted defense manufacturing centers. It hit a factory making navigation systems multiple times, including with its own Flamingo missile.
— In July and August, Ukraine struck Wildberries warehouses. Kyiv said the company helps supply the Russian military. Moscow denies that.
— Many of Ukraine’s strikes on Russian air defenses and radar are around Russian-held Crimea and are often carried out with drones.
Maj. Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, the commander leading Ukraine’s drone war, told the AP its strikes in Crimea are also aimed at rendering the peninsula unusable as a staging ground for Russian forces.
Starlink gives Ukraine an advantage — for now
It’s not always clear if Ukraine’s attacks are effective — and some may have resulted in minimal or no damage. In May and June, Ukraine said it hit several satellite, reconnaissance or signals intelligence facilities in Russia, but satellite images analyzed by AP did not show major damage.
Still, Ukraine has one advantage that can help it strip back Russian air defenses and make its drone strikes more precise.
It has access to Elon Musk’s satellite communications service Starlink — which means its operators can control drones in real time in Russian-held Ukrainian territory. Russia has been blocked from using Starlink.
But Russia is also building its own version of Starlink, and is installing jamming systems that hamper Starlink connectivity, Brovdi said.
Ukraine is investing heavily in weapons production
Even before the Oval Office meeting, Ukraine scrambled to invest in new weapons — but that moment was “a real wake-up call,” said a European military official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the front-line situation in detail. It became clear that U.S. support could be stopped “from one day to the next.”
Ukraine doubled down on production, churning out a growing array of weapons in larger numbers and shortening traditional research and production cycles from decades to years or even months.
Even so, Ukraine is still not able to produce as many missiles as it needs. It also took Ukraine time to make systems that could target facilities precisely enough that Kyiv felt comfortable using them to strike deep into Russia, Watling said.
And while Ukraine has begun to resolve navigational issues with its missiles, such as the Flamingo, those weapons are still not as accurate — or as stealthy — as their Western analogues. That often means hundreds of drones must be fired to overwhelm Russian air defenses to allow a missile to get through.
It’s an expensive and time-consuming way to wage war since only 5% to 9% of what Ukraine fires gets past Russian air defenses, according to Watling.
But, although Russia’s weapons are more powerful, Zelenskyy suggested at the NATO summit that Putin is “losing the initiative” in the war as Ukraine has moved the fight from the stalled battlefield to the sky.
Sitting next to Trump at the summit, the Ukrainian leader even cracked a joke, demurring when Trump asked him if he would accept Moscow as a venue for peace talks, as Putin has suggested.
“There are a lot of Ukrainian drones in the air,” Zelenskyy said. ”It would be dangerous.”
It’s possibly the most important job of any Israeli prime minister: maintain good relations with the United States while pushing back on demands seen as undermining Israel’s security.
On Sunday, Netanyahu rejected Trump’s latest plan to advance the stalled ceasefire in Gaza, saying Israel will not withdraw from any of the roughly 60% of the territory it controls until Hamas has been completely disarmed — something the militant group controlling the other 40% has long resisted.
Netanyahu risks angering Trump, who he has repeatedly said is the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House. But even a hint of compromise with Hamas could be fatal for Netanyahu’s reelection in a country deeply traumatized by the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that happened on his watch.
Trump, meanwhile, is under pressure to deliver on his promise of being a global peacemaker as talks with Iran stall and gas prices stay elevated ahead of U.S. congressional elections in November.
Netanyahu: No progress on Gaza ceasefire until Hamas disarms
The Gaza plan announced by Trump last month grew out of his October ceasefire deal, which ended major Israeli military operations there and brought about the release of all remaining hostages but has otherwise largely stalled.
Under the latest agreement, Hamas would gradually give up its weapons while Israeli forces halt their attacks and begin withdrawing from Gaza. Hamas accepted the deal, even as the group linked the surrender of its heaviest weapons to the creation of a Palestinian state, something Israel’s current government and most of its political class adamantly reject.
Netanyahu rejected the plan, saying Israel would not retreat from any of its positions in Gaza until Hamas has been completely disarmed. That would leave other elements of the ceasefire, including the deployment of international forces and any reconstruction of the devastated territory, on hold.
At the same time, the Israeli military seems to have eased off on its strikes on Gaza that have killed over 1,250 people since the ceasefire came into effect, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Israeli media reported that the authority for carrying out strikes has been limited to the army’s chief of staff, apparently in a quiet gesture toward Trump’s ceasefire efforts. The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment.
“We are focused on actions, not rhetoric or politics,” an official with the Board of Peace, the Trump-led entity overseeing the ceasefire, told the Associated Press. “There have been some results on the ground in the last few days,” the official added, including “restraint from strikes” and new Israeli military procedures.
“There is constructive cooperation behind the scenes and our conversations continue,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the ongoing discussions.
Oct. 7 looms over a tough campaign for reelection
In his election campaign, Netanyahu has boasted of Israel’s military achievements in the wars that followed the Oct. 7 attack. Israeli forces have seized territory in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, and launched two major air wars against Iran and its disputed nuclear program.
But the “total victory” Netanyahu promised in Gaza has yet to materialize. Many Israelis blame him for the security failures that led to the initial attack, as well as previous attempts to contain Hamas that at times included allowing Qatar to deliver suitcases filled with cash to Gaza.
Netanyahu’s far-right allies, who will likely be crucial to his Likud party’s ability to form a government after the elections, have welcomed his rejection of the Trump plan.
Trump “wants to see real steps taken toward rehabilitating Gaza, while Netanyahu’s two right-wing partners and the Likud’s faltering election campaign is keeping him from yielding even a millimeter,” wrote Jonathan Lis, the diplomatic correspondent for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.
Ghaith al-Omari, a former Palestinian negotiator who is now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that even if the White House ignores Netanyahu’s rejection of the plan, Trump is still stuck unless he can persuade the Israeli leader to change course.
Hamas is meanwhile winning the “blame game” by appearing to be the more reasonable of the two sides, he said.
Trump’s standing in Israel has fallen
Trump was wildly popular in Israel during his first term, when he lent unprecedented support to Israel’s claims to territory seized in war, including by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.
The trend continued in his second term, as he backed Israel’s actions in Gaza and joined it in bombing Iran. The alliance was particularly beneficial to Netanyahu, whose political future remained uncertain. The prime minister relied on Trump to improve his image at home.
But the allies’ interests diverged last spring, as Israel pressed for further strikes on Iran and against Hezbollah in Lebanon, while Trump looked to wind down the regional conflict in order to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to ease pressure on the world economy.
Since then, Trump has said that he would “likely” endorse Netanyahu ahead of the Israeli election but has not yet given his full backing. And while a formal endorsement from a U.S. president still carries weight in Israel, the rift between the two leaders suggests it could also complicate Netanyahu’s campaign.
“A few months ago, a significant majority of Israelis assumed that when President Trump is making decisions, he’s taking Israeli security interests into account. This is no longer the case,” said Yohanan Plesner, head of the Israel Democracy Institute, a think tank in Jerusalem.
The closeness between Netanyahu and Trump “used to be an asset,” he said, but not anymore.
Netanyahu has defied past U.S. presidents
Netanyahu has a long history of defying U.S. presidents, particularly Democratic ones. During his first term, in the late 1990s, he resisted efforts by President Bill Clinton to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians. He clashed publicly with President Barack Obama over the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
But that approach carries greater risks now, as Israel’s military campaigns have left it increasingly isolated diplomatically and upended its historic support among Democratic voters in the U.S., leaving Trump as one of Israel’s few strong allies.
Netanyahu’s dependence on Trump is “tremendous,” Plesner said, and voters will punish him if he is seen as mismanaging the key relationship.
“If Trump will insist on carrying on, I think Netanyahu will have no choice but to tag along rather than take on the president, since he’s left Israel with very few diplomatic cards to maneuver.”
DAMASCUS, Syria — A Syrian court sentenced ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad along with his younger brother to death in absentia on Tuesday for crimes against humanity and war crimes during Syria’s 14-year conflict that left about half a million people dead.
The sentences at the Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus are the first against Assad or members of his inner circle since the Assad family’s five decades in power came to an end 20 months ago.
“Bashar Assad used state agencies to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity,” said judge Fakhareddine al-Aryan during a court session that was aired live on state TV.
Also sentenced to death in the same case was Assad’s maternal cousin Atef Najib, who was convicted of overseeing a crackdown in the southern province of Daraa that led to the uprising and later the civil war.
Amid tight security, Najib stood inside a cage wearing a prisoner’s uniform as the judge read the sentence. A crowd of people gathered outside the courthouse in central Damascus to hear the verdict.
Assad and his brother Maher fled to Russia after the government’s fall in December 2024 and received political asylum. Syria’s new rulers have asked Russia to hand the Assads over.
Najib, who was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in April 2011, was later detained and is one of the highest-ranking officials to be put on trial.
Najib is a former Syrian army brigadier general who was head of the Political Security Branch in southern Syria’s Daraa province under Assad in 2011.
During his tenure, more than a dozen teenagers who scrawled anti-government graffiti on a school wall in Daraa were arrested and tortured. The case became a catalyst for mass protests against the repressive policies of Assad’s security forces.
The protests were met by a brutal government crackdown and spiraled into a 14-year civil war that ended with Assad’s ouster in a lightning rebel offensive.
Maher Assad was a former commander of the Syrian military’s 4th Armored Division — which Syrian opposition activists have accused of killings, torture, extortion and drug trafficking, in addition to running its own detention centers.
An Iranian assassination threat against President Donald Trump prompted an extraordinary operation last month in which he flew secretly from Turkey on an alternate military aircraft while the White House said he was aboard Air Force One, the Washington Post has learned.
The clandestine mission, which has not been reported previously, was carried out unbeknownst to journalists and some White House staff members who believed they were on the same plane as the president, according to material reviewed by the Post, a U.S. official familiar with the operation, and another person with knowledge of the president’s travel. These people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the matter.
The administration has claimed that Trump departed Turkey on July 8 on the former Air Force One. Trump announced on social media that he would use the “former Air Force One” rather than the plane that flew him there, a newer Boeing 747-8 gifted to the United States by Qatar. The security of the Qatar-provided aircraft has been called into question, and Trump said last month after the trip that it would undergo additional upgrades.
In Ankara, Trump boarded the old Air Force One jumbo jet in view of television cameras. He was secretly shuttled minutes later to a smaller plane — an Air Force C-32A — via an airport catering truck typically used to load meals and other supplies preflight, according to the U.S. official and corroborating material reviewed by the Post. That made Air Force One a “decoy” with media and some White House staff aboard, the official said.
Trump had been in Ankara for a NATO summit with world leaders. The operation occurred a night after U.S. forces renewed military strikes on Iran at Trump’s direction following a breakdown of negotiations between Washington and Tehran to end their monthslong war.
The maneuver meant that Trump’s actual location was concealed from the American public and many senior U.S. officials for hours. Weeks later, it remains unclear how widely the administration has disclosed the operation.
The Post provided the White House with the details from its reporting, along with a list of questions. In response, White House communications director Steven Cheung issued a statement defending the jet gifted by Qatar.
“The new Air Force One is a state-of-the-art aircraft that has been fitted with high-level security protocols that ensure the safety of the President and his staff,” Cheung’s statement said. “As the President has said recently, there are many enemies of America who have their sights on him, and we use every tool at our disposal to address those threats.”
A spokesperson for the Pentagon referred questions to the White House. A Secret Service spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Air Force One sits on the tarmac as President Donald Trump switches planes at U.S. Air Force Base, RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk Eastern England, on his way back to Washington from the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey ,Wednesday, July 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)Alex Brandon
Publicly, the White House has repeated its account that the president left Turkey on the legacy blue-and-white Boeing 747 that served as Air Force One before Trump began using the former Qatari jet.
For decades, it has been rare for U.S. presidents to travel without members of the White House press corps accompanying them in their roles as proxies for the American public. Journalists have traveled into war zones with numerous presidents, including Trump, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush.
In the first hours after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Bush administration officials did not immediately disclose the president’s whereabouts, saying only that he had been taken to an “undisclosed location.” But they did not say he was somewhere he was not, and within hours officials revealed that he had been flown to a military facility in Nebraska.
The Trump operation unfolded quite differently, highlighting the depth of concern that U.S. security officials had about his safety leaving Turkey amid hostilities with Iran. Turkey, a key U.S. ally and member of the NATO military alliance, shares a border with Iran.
A credible threat to Trump involving Iran set the “deception operation” in motion, the U.S. official said. The New York Times and CBS News reported last month that intelligence officials flagged a specific threat of an attack on the president or his jet, triggering additional precautions.
There are decades-old concerns in the U.S. government of Iranian terrorism plots against American officials, including Trump. Those fears have escalated recently as a result of Washington’s role in the killing of Iranian military and political leaders.
The operation, and the Iranian threat, came days after the president began using the newer Boeing 747-8 gifted by Qatar for use as Air Force One. Trump flew to Turkey on that aircraft after the red, white, and blue jet underwent upgrades costing hundreds of millions of dollars. It was fielded by the Air Force in July but lacks some of the defensive countermeasures included in the legacy Air Force One.
To transport the president out of Turkey, U.S. officials relied in part on a technique that has occasionally become public knowledge. One such mission occurred in March 2000, when President Bill Clinton visited Pakistan. With television cameras recording in Islamabad, Clinton disembarked from a plain white jet that followed the blue-and-white Air Force One, clarifying where he had been.
There have been other times in the last 30 years when Air Force One served as a decoy for the president because of a serious threat or because he was flying to a dangerous location, another U.S. official said, declining to elaborate. The legacy jet is highly secure, but also highly visible, so putting the president on an alternate plane instead can be considered safer, that former official said.
Ronald L. Rowe Jr., a former acting director of the Secret Service, said that the president’s protection is paramount and that the details of his movements are shielded for good reason.
“We need to keep the ‘secret’ in Secret Service,” said Rowe, now with the Chertoff Group, a security advisory firm. “The public should know what the president is doing on a daily basis, but when it comes to the methods by which the Secret Service keeps the president safe, that should remain out of public view.”
When Trump first announced that he would leave Turkey on the legacy Air Force One, he touted the decision on social media as an opportunity for U.S. troops stationed in Britain to see the former Qatari aircraft. He would instead take “the former Air Force One” from Turkey for “old time’s sake,” Trump posted.
But that did not happen, according to the material reviewed by the Post and the U.S. official. Numerous people participated in the deception, some unwittingly, and journalists who thought they were traveling with the president aboard the legacy Air Force One were not notified that he had changed aircraft or made aware of the extent of the threat on Air Force One, the U.S. official said.
The new Air Force One jet gifted by Qatar departed Turkey first, early in the evening of July 8. Trump then boarded the legacy blue-and-white Air Force One at dusk, waving goodbye on camera.
To exit that plane without being seen by those uninvolved in the operation, Trump and several aides stepped aboard an airport catering truck, which was elevated planeside using hydraulics and positioned at a door on the opposite side of Air Force One’s entrance, according to the U.S. official and other corroborating material.
Imagery captured by the news media at the Turkish airport shows a staircase on one side of the legacy Air Force One and the catering truck on the other, with its container elevated to the level of the plane. Trump arrived in a limousine, climbed the staircase and waved toward the tarmac as he boarded, video shows.
A few minutes later, as members of the White House press corps boarded near the back of the plane, a man in a suit entered the catering truck’s cab, according to media pool video of the departure process. The container was lowered into the bed of the vehicle, which then pulled away from Air Force One and drove to the smaller C-32A nearby, the video appears to show. The truck is out of view for about 40 seconds when the camera pans away and is briefly hidden while behind the C-32A’s engines.
Catering trucks are parked at Air Force One on the tarmac as the motorcade carrying U.S. President Donald Trump arrives on the tarmac to depart following the NATO summit at Ankara International Airport in Ankara, Turkey, Wednesday, July 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)Alex Brandon
The video shows that the container was lifted to the level of the plane for several minutes. After the container was lowered, a person in a suit stepped out of the truck’s cab, which remained at ground level, and ascended the stairs leading up to the C-32A, disappearing from the camera’s view.
The blue-and-white C-32A, a modified Boeing 757 used to transport U.S. government officials, had been flown to Turkey along with the legacy Air Force One and the former Qatari jet to support the president’s visit, the U.S. official said. Like Air Force One jumbo jets, it is emblazoned with the words “United States of America” and can be used to transport the president or vice president. But it typically does so with the “Air Force One” or “Air Force Two” call sign, not a nondescript moniker.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth boarded the C-32A separately using external stairs, part of an attempt to make the flight appear typical, according to the U.S. official and other materials reviewed by the Post. Hegseth flew with Trump to Britain on the same plane, this person said.
As journalists boarded the legacy Air Force One, White House staff directed them to close their window shades, according to a media pool report.
The New York Times reported last month that the former Qatari jet lacks the defensive capabilities of legacy U.S. presidential transport jets. That report prompted the Trump administration to take the unusual step of issuing subpoenas to several journalists in a bid to learn the identities of their confidential sources.
Administration officials cast the government’s actions against the New York Times as necessary to investigate a national security breach, while the Times described the move as an effort to avoid transparency, intimidate journalists, and scare their sources. The administration later withdrew the subpoenas, acknowledging missteps in the case.
In deflecting criticism of the new jet, the White House also released a statement from the Air Force.
“The aircraft is safe, secure, and equipped with the most advanced technologies necessary to meet requirements of the presidential mission,” the statement said. “Those requirements were carefully crafted to prioritize mission over aesthetics, leaving much of the previous head of state interior layout minimally changed.”
“No risk was taken in security, safety, or mission communications, but the collective team made trades on some of the less commonly used mission sets that Boeing must deliver to support the next 40 years,” the statement added.
Though the 747 jumbo jets that carry the president are commonly referred to as “Air Force One,” the term is technically an air-traffic-control call sign for any plane which the president is aboard.
In this instance, however, the president’s whereabouts were obscured on the C-32A flight to Britain using the nondescript call sign “Reach 18” or “RCH18,” according to a person familiar with the mission and other material reviewed by the Post.
The aviation account “Thenewarea51″ noted the C-32A’s arrival in Britain and its call sign, reporting that night that systems allowing for the aircraft to be easily tracked while in the air had been switched off. “Reach” call signs are often used for personnel transport flights and those that haul military equipment, according those familiar with the mission.
Publicly available flight tracking data shows that the former Qatari jet flew to Britain’s Mildenhall air base while bearing the call sign “SAM 33,” using a common abbreviation for “special air mission.” It landed at Mildenhall at 6:26 p.m. local time on July 8, data shows.
The legacy Air Force One plane carrying White House staff and journalists appeared on radar near Istanbul on its way to Britain, initially with no call sign listed. Despite the president not being aboard, it then took the Air Force One call sign, “AF1,” midflight and arrived at Mildenhall about 10:29 p.m. local time, the tracking data shows. A media pool report that night said the flight was “uneventful” with “no visitors to the press cabin.”
No flight tracker data could be found for the C-32A, but videos posted by the YouTube accounts RankUpAviation and Military Aviation Channel show the former Qatari jet landing, followed by a C-32A hours later at about 10:20 p.m. and the legacy Air Force One several minutes later.
Videos show the legacy Air Force One, after landing, coming to a stop in a place where the C-32A had briefly been parked. The hobbyist videos on YouTube do not show Trump exiting the C-32A or entering the legacy Air Force One, as the stairway entries faced away from the plane spotters’ cameras.
It’s not clear how Trump moved from the C-32A to the legacy Air Force One after landing, but he appeared before television cameras and descended external stairs from the legacy Air Force One about 10:56 p.m., according to a media pool report.
After greeting U.S. service members, the president embarked on the newly gifted Air Force One to travel back to Washington, with staff and press aboard after a transfer from the legacy Air Force One, at about 11:01 p.m. A social media post from the White House that night said that Trump had landed at the British base “aboard the former Air Force One,” and included a picture of the legacy plane.
Aboard the new Air Force One, Trump spoke to journalists for about 15 minutes, highlighting the threat Iran poses but not acknowledging the subterfuge that had occurred earlier.
Asked why reporters had been instructed to lower the window shades on the plane in Turkey, Trump said that it was “because you’re probably on a dangerous flight because of the sleaze bags that we have to deal with.” Trump said that he has a “threat all the time” against his life, and that he is “number one” on Iran’s “list.”
“But if I go, you go. Right?” Trump suggested to reporters. “Perhaps someday you want to change professions.”
Canada put its military on standby Monday to help battle deadly wildfires in British Columbia as a local mayor warned that one of the blazes had wreaked huge destruction on his community. A woman has died and some 20,000 people have fled their homes so far.
For days, scores of wildfires have burned across the province, nearly half of them out of control in hot, windy weather and prolonged drought. Thousands have fled on jammed roads as officials said even more communities could be threatened.
The mayor of Summerland — home to about 12,000 people, which was ordered evacuated on Saturday night along with about 8,000 people in and around nearby Peachland — warned that the affected areas remained too dangerous to enter and that it was impossible to determine the scope of the destruction.
The blaze — known as the Bald Range wildfire — remained out of control after racing toward Summerland and other communities along Okanagan Lake over the weekend.
“It’s going to be quite a bit,” Mayor Doug Holmes said of the expected destruction. “We need to brace ourselves for that bad news when it’s time to go back. Everybody will know somebody who has lost a home.”
Defense Minister David McGuinty said the Canadian Armed Forces were in constant contact with provincial and federal officials and were ready to respond if British Columbia formally requested assistance. The federal government has already approved provincial requests for help with shelter and accommodations.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said an 80-year-old woman died while trying to escape the fire near Summerland. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the death was heartbreaking and that the federal government would continue supporting British Columbia.
The British Columbia Wildfire Service said Monday the fire had grown to about 60 square miles from 53 square miles on Sunday. Officials warned clearer skies and direct sunlight could increase fire activity.
Ravi Parmer, British Columbia Minister of Forests, said 19 helicopters were assigned to the Bald Range wildfire but that its intensity made it impossible to halt the blaze.
“We could have put a thousand more helicopters and a thousand more people on the ground, and it wouldn’t have made a difference,” he said.
British Columbia Wildfire Service information officer Nicole Bonnett said the smoke lingering over the Bald Range fire has reduced visibility, limiting the use of air tankers and water-skimming aircraft.
Bonnett said the blaze has been fueled primarily by extremely dry conditions rather than wind, and grew explosively Friday, reaching 19 square miles within three hours.
Evacuated residents face uncertain prospects for return
Holmes, the Summerland mayor, said there was no timetable for when residents would be able to return as power lines had been downed and hazards at the destroyed or damaged buildings would have to be assessed first. He added that residents would eventually return, likely neighborhood by neighborhood.
“The hard part is going home and seeing the devastation,” he cautioned.
Kyla Gaudiuso, a resident of Faulder, a 215-strong community, said her home was likely destroyed as she had gotten a photo showing the ridge where it stood engulfed in flames.
She described the community’s evacuation as “pandemonium” and said she was now staying with a friend in the town of Penticton.
“It doesn’t really seem real,” she said. “I have to see it to believe it.”
Progress made with Washington state fires
Firefighters in Spokane, Wash., have strengthened containment lines around three destructive blazes in recent days, allowing some evacuated residents to return home.
Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson announced emergency proclamations to help those impacted by the fires at a news conference in Spokane on Monday. He suspended waiting periods for unemployment benefits and prohibited evictions, while the state Department of Licensing and Department of Health will help people who lost important documents get them immediately without charge.
The state is also working on a request to the federal government for a major disaster declaration that would secure more support, he said.
In California, evacuations have been ordered for areas along the famous Big Sur coast as a wildfire burns in the nearby steep, rugged mountains. The Timber Fire in Monterey County started Sunday and had grown to about 2 square miles by midday Monday, according to Cal Fire.
NEW YORK — The driver of a speedboat that capsized in New York Harbor over the weekend, killing a 27-year-old woman and her infant daughter, was charged Monday with causing their deaths through misconduct or neglect.
Manuel Hernandez, 46, of Manville, N.J., wiped his eyes with his hand as he arrived for his initial appearance in Manhattan federal court, his feet shackled. He was not required to enter a plea and was released on $50,000 bail.
Sara Sanchez and her 5-month-old daughter, Antonella Garcia, died after the 22-foot Yamaha AR210 speedboat overturned late Saturday near the Statue of Liberty in an accident authorities blamed on an overcrowded boat, poor decisions by Hernandez, a lack of appropriate licenses, and the failure to put a life vest on a 5-month-old child. Twelve others were rescued and are in stable condition, authorities said.
As Hernandez left the hearing, his court-appointed attorney, Amy Gallicchio, guided him to a waiting vehicle. Both declined to comment.
The vessel was pulled from the water and taken to the New York Police Department’s harbor unit facility on Randall’s Island.
After state charges were lodged against Hernandez over the weekend, prosecutors said Monday that he will be tried in federal court, not state court. He was transferred to federal custody on Sunday.
In a criminal complaint, federal prosecutors brought two charges alleging that Hernandez, as the boat’s pilot and operator, engaged in negligent actions and omissions that caused the capsizing and deaths in a boat that exceeded its maximum capacity of 10 people, with 14 on board.
They said he also knowingly operated the boat with an infant on board without ensuring that the child was wearing a life vest and with the awareness that the boat didn’t have any child- or infant-sized life vests.
The boat tour, which began at 7 p.m. Saturday, was more than three hours into its journey when Hernandez was piloting the boat toward the Statue of Liberty and made a U-turn that brought it into a swell, possibly caused by a larger passing vessel’s wake, according to the complaint.
Hernandez tried to accelerate to pass through the swell, but the swell swamped the bow of his boat and immediately capsized it, prosecutors wrote.
Hernandez told investigators that he had worked for the company on a freelance or contract basis since last year, starting as a limousine driver, they wrote.
He stated that twice recently he used his personal boat, a slightly larger Yamaha AR250, for charter tours organized by Zeus Luxury Rentals Inc., according to the complaint.
He said that on Saturday, he used a friend’s boat because his own needed repairs, but he didn’t tell the friend that he was using it for a charter tour, prosecutors wrote.
Hernandez admitted to investigators that he had never sought the required licensing and claimed he was unaware it was needed, they wrote. He also admitted that he agreed to conduct the tour with the 5-month-old on board despite the vessel not having any child or infant-sized life vests, prosecutors said.
Police Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch said the “tragedy could have been prevented, and now a family is left to grieve the unimaginable loss of a mother and her 5-month-old daughter because of his negligence.”
In a news release, U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said Hernandez flouted federal regulations and maritime safety protocols when he transported paying customers on a commercial boat without appropriate licenses.
“We mourn the tragic drowning deaths of the infant and her mother and urge would-be tour operators and the public to observe all safety protocols for commercial vessels,” he said.
Capt. Doreen McCarthy, the Coast Guard Sector New York commander, credited the rescue of survivors to “heroic, swift actions” by those who responded from various agencies, along with a good Samaritan vessel.
Meanwhile, a GoFundMe campaign that began Sunday to help Andres Garcia pay for the funeral and other expenses for his partner, Sanchez, and their daughter had topped $25,000 by Tuesday afternoon. Garcia was also on the boat when it capsized.
Antonio Russo, general manager at Il Punto Ristorante, said Garcia is an “amazing guy” who has been working long hours each week as a waiter, driver, and food-runner to provide for his family here and in Colombia.
Diego Naranjo, a neighbor of Sanchez in Queens, said he first met her last spring when her son threw a ball into their backyard. After recovering the ball, Naranjo invited her son to play on a trampoline with his children.
“They were really nice people. You can see when a person is noble,” Naranjo said.
He said he last saw Sanchez last Tuesday as she brought groceries into her home. He said he was shocked by the deaths.
