The U.S. Secret Service officer who was hit by a car as he rode a motorcycle near the White House on Monday had to wait 14 minutes for a paramedic and ambulance to arrive on the scene, officials say.
The officer needed an advance life support ambulance unit, but the closest available unit was four miles away, the D.C. fire department tells News4.
The first emergency call regarding the crash at 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW came in about 1:25 p.m., records show. The ambulance arrived at 1:40 p.m., and the injured officer was taken to a hospital via helicopter at 1:51 p.m.
A D.C. Fire and EMS spokesman said all 16 advance life support units were operational Monday when the call regarding the officer came in, but the closest available unit was in Upper Northwest D.C., on Georgia Avenue NW.
"DC Fire & EMS always strives to provide the most comprehensive, compassionate and timely care — and we are always working at improving the many aspects of the EMS care FEMS administers in the field," the spokesman said in a statement.
The 911 call center is reviewing the incident, a representative said.
A fire engine was on the scene within 3 minutes of the initial call, but that engine did not have a paramedic on board.
No information on the cause of the crash was released. An update on the officer's condition was unavailable.
The driver of a stolen big rig was taken into custody after leading California Highway Patrol officers on hourslong pursuit on Riverside County freeways Tuesday.
The chase began about 10:30 a.m. in unincorporated Apple Valley, where a sheriff's deputy spotted the stolen truck and attempted to stop the driver.
With a line of CHP cruisers behind him, the driver made his way on the southbound 15 Freeway, eastbound 60 Freeway, eastbound 10 Freeway and eastbound Highway 62, into the high desert.
CHP Officer Brian Alvarez said spike strips would be an unlikely option to stop the truck due its size.
About 1:40 p.m., the driver parked the truck and surrendered. He was taken into custody without incident.
A graphic on the side of the truck indicated the big rig belonged to Advanced Chemical Transport, a hazardous waste management firm.
The owner of firm, Walter Singer, said the truck had been stolen from a Barstow hotel parking lot sometime before 6 a.m. The thief disabled a GPS tracking device, but the company was able to find the truck's location through a second tracking device and notified authorities.
The truck was hauling non-hazardous materials to Nevada, Singer said.
The hacker or hackers who claim to have broken into Democratic Party systems released more documents Tuesday, including what appeared to be the personal cell phone of vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine, NBC News.
"Guccifer 2.0" on Tuesday released over 670 megabytes of documents at a cybersecurity conference in London, NBC News reported.
The work cell phone numbers, personal email addresses and personal cell phone numbers of top Obama White House officials were also included in the cache.
Tim Kaine's title on the spreadsheet of contacts is "Chairman's Office" — which might mean that the document was created from 2009 to 2011, when Kaine was with the Democratic National Committee.
The DNC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, U.S. intelligence officials and other experts suspect Russian involvement.
An e-cigarette explosion at a New Jersey mall left a woman's Louis Vuitton bag smoking, startling a worker and another shopper on the anniversary of September 11.
Surveillance video captured the surprised reaction from everyone in the Sunglass Hut store at the Freehold Raceway Mall as a lithium battery exploded in Mara McInerney’s handbag. Thick, black smoke could be seen pouring out of the high-end purse.
“Terrifying, scary. It sounded like a gunshot. It sounded like a bomb went off,” McInerney said. “It was 9/11. I thought someone had put something in my bag.”
McInerney says she immediately dumped the contents onto the floor. It was then that she discovered her melted personal vaporizer and what was left of the charred battery. Heat from the blast melted holes in her Louis Vuitton Neverfull MM tote, which McInerney says she purchased last November for almost $1,900.
Lithium batteries power a great number of things because they pack a lot of energy into a little package. They are also delicate — a crack, a fray or a defect has the possibility of leading to an explosion like the one that rattled McInerney.
There have been at least two dozen incidents of explosions and fires in personal vaporizers and e-cigarettes between 2009 and 2014. A Long Island man says he was burned when an e-cigarette ignited in his pocket earlier this year. A Queens woman says she was also burned when an e-cigarette exploded.
McInerney says there was no warning. She always stores her vaporizer safely in the pocket of her handbag. She’s just glad her 4-year-old daughter had not been reaching into her purse for a piece of candy at the time her bag blew up.
“It could have exploded in her face,” McInerney said.
No one was reported injured in the eruption.
German drugs and crop chemicals company Bayer will acquire seed firm Monsanto in a $66 billion cash bid, Reuters reported.
Bayer will pay $128 per share, after having increased its takeover offer for the third time. The deal, if approved by regulators, would create a company that controlled with more than a quarter of the combined world market for seeds and pesticides in the farm supplies industry.
The companies agreed on an antitrust break fee of $2 billion and the deal is expected to close by the end of 2017.
A Maine man is facing speeding charges after police said he drove at upwards of 100 mph to rush his father to a hospital after the 68-year-old severely injured himself with a chainsaw.
Dwight Osgood, of Southern Aroostook County, said he was close to death after the accident, according to necn affiliate WCSH. His wife Pamela Osgood says Dwight takes blood thinners, and they worried he might bleed out.
His son, Justin Osgood, drove toward the nearest hospital in Lincoln, which was 24 miles away.
Pamela called 911 enroute to the hospital, and an ambulance was dispatched to wait for them just before downtown Lincoln. But Dwight said he told Justin to keep going and that he was willing to pay his son's fines.
Police stopped the vehicle after it sped through a school zone and downtown area, and then escorted them to the hospital.
Justin Osgood is now facing charges, including driving to endanger. He'll appear in court in November.
It's unclear if he has an attorney.
Super PACs and and other large independent expenditure groups account for most of the outside money flowing into the nine toss-up Senate races nationwide. Here they are with their partisan lean, amount spent in the toss-up races and donors of at least $500,000 each:
Source: Federal Elections Commission
Deep-pocketed Super PACs are pouring tens of millions of dollars into key U.S. Senate races, outspending the candidates themselves in several states, according to an NBC analysis of Federal Elections Commission data.
Since January, Super PACs have spent just over $100 million in nine Senate races that are rated a toss-up by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Those nine races could determine control of the Senate: If Hillary Clinton wins the White House and Democrats flip four seats, the Democrats will control the Senate, with newly elected Vice President Tim Kaine breaking ties.
Those races are in Nevada, where Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid is retiring, and for Republican-held seats in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Super PACs, which can raise unlimited amounts for federal elections but can’t coordinate with candidates, are focusing on four of those key races: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada and New Hampshire. The other races, particularly Illinois and Wisconsin, where Republican incumbents are struggling to survive in Democratic-leaning states, are getting little attention.
“They’re simply allocating to the most competitive races,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “Illinois is wasted money. Pennsylvania is highly competitive, and it’s a very expensive state.”
Republican incumbents Mark Kirk of Illinois and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have been considered dead from the start, Sabato said. That’s why the Super PACs are spending most of their money elsewhere.
“Ohio is supposed to be one of the most competitive races of the cycle so outside groups went in early and have been spending heavily,” said Jennifer Duffy, senior editor at the Cook Political Report. “It has started to taper off as Democrats realize that they are too far behind to win.”
Super PACs have spent $31 million in Pennsylvania this year, most of it for ads trashing one-term Republican Sen. Pat Toomey or his Democratic opponent, Katie McGinty.
That’s five times more than Toomey and McGinty together spent on their own campaigns through June 30.
They’ve spent $29 million in neighboring Ohio – most of that to bury former Democratic congressman Ted Strickland, who is trying to unseat Republican Sen. Rob Portman.
Together Portman and Strickland spent less than $4 million through June 30.
Super PAC money began surging into the Senate contests in April, after Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump locked up the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations. Since then, with the exception of a single $50 million expenditure for Trump in June, most of the Super PAC money generally has flowed into Senate races.
“It isn't unusual that groups didn't start spending (on Senate races) until May,” Duffy said. “That expenditures on Senate races is outpacing the presidential contest is unusual, but not surprising. Once it became clear that Trump was the GOP nominee, a lot of the establishment money went into saving the Senate majority.”
Republicans Super PACs are dominating the spending spree. Through the end of August, Republican-leaning groups spent $67 million supporting GOP candidates and attacking Democrats in the toss-up races. Democratic groups spent $36 million.
They’ve spent most of that money, about $8 of every $10, opposing the enemy rather than supporting friendly candidates.
The office of New York state's top prosecutor has made inquiries into Donald Trump's nonprofit foundation after questions about impropriety, NBC News reported.
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman revealed the inquiry on Tuesday, telling CNN that "we have been concerned that the Trump Foundation may have engaged in some impropriety," although he did not go into detail.
"We've inquired into it and we've had correspondence with them," Schneiderman said. "I didn't make a big deal out of it or hold a press conference. We have been looking into the Trump Foundation to make sure it's complying with the laws governing charities in New York."
In response to the news, Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller released a statement calling Schneiderman "a partisan hack who has turned a blind eye to the Clinton Foundation for years and has endorsed Hillary Clinton for President."
After two weeks of being surrounded by polar bears, five meteorologists were rescued from their weather station on a remote Russian island late Tuesday night.
A research vessel frightened about a dozen polar bears away from the area -- about 2,800 miles from Moscow, on the Izvestiy TSIK Islands -- with its helicopter.
Though the meteorologists had a year's worth of food, they had run out of signal flares to scare away the bears.
Some of the bears were camped right outside of the remote station and had eaten the meteorologists' guard dog.
The rescuers, with Russia's state-run oil firm Rosneft, restocked the station with signal flares and puppies, which will be used to deter bears when they are larger.
The polar bears typically leave the Arctic island in the summer but appeared to be stranded due to the melting ice, in what the supervisor of the station called an indication of climate change.
Eleven members of the Hartford Police Department who were sent to the hospital after being exposed to heroin and fentanyl during a narcotics bust at a house across from Hartford High School Tuesday were back at work on Wednesday, authorities said.
Deputy Chief Brian Foley said the SWAT team executed a search warrant at an apartment on Forest Street in the Asylum Hill neighborhood around 7:30 p.m. and set off flash grenades, which might have sent the powder form of the drug into the air.
"They're basically loud explosions that completely stun anyone in the apartment. Those went off. Unfortunately, when those when off it's believed that aerosolized some of the powders on the table," Foley said. "That powder went airborne and some of the SWAT team members were breathing it in while trying to secure three suspects," Foley said.
Officers soon started feeling light-headed and nauseated, developed sore throats and headaches and began vomiting. All the officers were transported to St. Francis Hospital, where they were treated and then released and returned to duty on Wednesday morning.
During the operation, police seized 50,000 bags of heroin, two handguns and 350 grams of raw heroin and arrested three people, Foley said.
Police said they raided the house just in time to keep the drugs off the streets.
"Within hours, it would have been out and distributed to the dealers in the streets, so we're glad we got it," Foley said.
The investigation is ongoing.
"It's rare that we do see that many bags taken on a hit, but I can tell you we don't think it will stop anything. And now you worry about the violence that will come after because someone lost 50,000 bags of heroin," Foley said.
Ronald Perez, 28, Byron Rivera, 26, and Marcus Tyson, 30, all of Hartford, were taken into custody and arrested on federal charges, including possession with intent to distribute and distribution of more than one kilogram of heroin.
Parents were in shock after learning about all the drugs at a home so close to the school and some said they are nervous about drugs in the area. One mom said she is thinking about finding a new school for her daughter.
Neighbors were surprised as well.
"I'm shocked. I wouldn't think people would do those things close to school," Maizie Balfour, of Hartford, said.
Security staff from Hartford High School have been in touch with police.
A junior linebacker at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who accused of sexual battery and assault on a female student turned himself in Wednesday, NBC News reported.
Allen Artis, 21, was suspended from the football team after his accuser, a fellow student, publicly came forward in a news conference Tuesday.
Delaney Robinson, 19, said the incident occurred this past Valentine's Day. She contacted police, the university and got a rape kit but she became frustrated when the university's investigation appeared to stall.
The Orange County Magistrate's office issued arrest warrants for Artis for misdemeanor assault on a female and misdemeanor sexual battery. Artis was released on a $5,000 bond. Orange County District Attorney Jim Woodall told NBC News on Tuesday that its case was still open pending lab results and further investigation.
Eric Garner's mother said she was "totally, totally outraged" over a report that the NYPD officer who put her son in a chokehold before his death in 2014 made nearly $120,000 in the last fiscal year.
Gwen Carr joined U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and the mother of Ramarley Graham outside One Police Plaza in lower Manhattan Wednesday to lambaste the 20 percent increase in pay that Daniel Pantaleo reportedly received in the two years since Garner's death on July 17, 2014.
Pantaleo was stripped of his badge and gun after Garner's death and has been serving on modified duty for more than two years. He faces departmental charges but not criminal charges for Garner's death, which sparked protests across the country.
"If it was not a police officer, this wouldn't be happening," an incensed Carr said. "If the shoe was on the other foot, if it was me -- with this outrage -- I would have lost my job. i would have gone to jail."
Politico New York reports that Pantaleo made $119,996 in the 2016 fiscal year, which ended on June 30. That represents a $20,000 jump from the year before Garner's death, when his gross earnings were $99,915. In the year between, Politico found that he made $105,061.
"That gives them the incentive to keep doing what they're doing to our children," Carr said. "We want this to stop. We will no longer take this."
The NYPD's incoming top cop, current Chief of Department Jimmy O'Neill, has ordered a review of pay for officers on modified duty, according to a department statement that comes after the pay of Pantaleo and other cops facing discipline was revealed.
The mayor's office has said it supports the new inquiry and added Wednesday that the city's investigation into the handling of Garner's death is almost complete, pending an additional review by federal authorities. A Staten Island grand jury declined to press charges in the case.
Jefferies said Wednesday that "we are still waiting for Pantaleo to be held responsible.
The NYPD's rank-and-file union said in a statement to the Daily News that there's "no justification to prevent police officers on modified duty from working overtime when the department requires."
The Mayor's office
Ford says it will move its entire small car operation from America to Mexico, NBC News reported.
"Over the next two to three years, we will have migrated all of our small car production to Mexico," CEO Mark Fields said at an investor conference in Detroit on Wednedsay, assuring investors that his company maintains a healthy profit margin in its pickup truck and van business.
Many automakers are shifting manufacturing to lower-cost zones as they deal with lower profit margins for small cars. But the move from Ford is likely to set off a firestorm during the U.S. presidential race, where blue-collar jobs and relations with Mexico are contentious topics.
The Chicago White Sox haven’t had a lot to brag about this season, but on Tuesday night they accomplished something that no sports team in the world has ever achieved.
That feat involved some four-legged friends and a dogged determination to succeed, as the White Sox broke the Guinness World Record for most dogs attending a sporting event, according to the venerable institution.
According to the White Sox and Guinness, there were 1,122 dogs at U.S. Cellular Field for the team’s game against the Cleveland Indians on Tuesday night, shattering the world record.
“We received a tremendous turnout for our four-legged friends tonight,” Brooks Boyer, White Sox senior VP of Sales and Marketing, said in a statement Tuesday night. “We are thrilled that the White Sox dog-friendly event has become a storied piece of our tradition, especially as we add a milestone with tonight’s ‘most dogs attending a sporting event’ title through Guinness World Records.”
The White Sox played up the "Bark in the Park" event as a world record attempt, drawing in fans with the promise of a special seating area reserved for owners and their pooches and portable relief and water stations in the outfield concourse.
The successful promotion was paired up with success on the field, as the White Sox blew out the Indians 8-1 in the game.
