tonight tens of millions of Americans bracing for a new wave of winter storms and the potential impact on the holiday travel Rush the TSA considering security changes after a second stowaway on a Delta flight and late today news that veteran sports caster Greg Gumble has passed away first that dangerous winter weather taking aim at more than 50 million people from coast to coast dramatic images of multiple tornadoes touching down just outside Houston people seen running for cover oh my God more than 3 ft of snow expected in the Rockies and a wet weekend along the I95 Corridor freezing rain and icy conditions expected in the Northeast our weather team tracking what this could mean for New Year's Eve plans tonight new security concerns after that second stowaway incident on a Delta flight the TSA now saying it's working to add more physical barriers around ticketing checkpoints this as airports are packed Nationwide during one of the busiest travel weeks of the Year hundreds of flights delay the public Clash over immigration policy playing out online between Elon Musk V ramaswami and some of president-elect Trump's staunchest supporters plus breaking news about Tik Tock and what the Trump team has just asked the US Supreme Court to do the CDC revealing a concerning new mutation of the bird flu and what health officials say about how this could impact the spread of the virus new details emerging about that deadly Christmas Day plane crash overseas a Survivor described desing what he witnessed before the crash new video of New York prison officers beating an inmate while he appears to be restrained who later died the Attorney General launching an investigation a fire at one of the most iconic Christmas markets in the country a booth Up in Flames and it's your chance to be a billionaire tonight long lines across the country for the Mega Millions jackpot reaching $1. 2 billion from ABC News world headquarters in New York this is World News Tonight with David mure good evening thanks for joining us on this Friday I'm W Johnson in for David We Begin tonight with more than 50 million people bracing for dangerous weather from coast to coast during one of the busiest travel periods of the holiday season these dramatic images here of multiple tornadoes touching down just outside of Houston people running for safety at least five tornadoes tearing through Texas those storms causing significant damage now marching to the Northeast bringing freezing rain and Ice to parts of the I95 Corridor including Hartford and Boston that weather threatening millions of Travelers hitting the roads and flying this weekend what it could mean for your New Year's Eve plants we'll have the forecast in just a moment but first ABC zorin Shaw leads us off from Los Angeles less than 24 hours after multiple tornadoes touching down across Southeast Texas forcing people to scramble to to safety oh my God the South bracing for another round of dangerous severe weather as Millions hit the road today this holiday travel season watch as this powerful twister knocks over a postal van that same neighborhood in southwest Houston badly damaged the side of this home exposed the roof nearly ripped off that is just one of the coast to coast storms sweeping across the country out west snow and high Avalanche danger in Colorado officials expect heavy snow up to to 3 ft and intense winds out west could trigger dangerous Avalanche conditions tonight urging people to stay off the roads in the back country from tonight until Monday in California a high surf advisory in LA county and Malibu remains large waves up to 8 fet High slamming the coastline just days after scenes like this boats in a harbor tossed around like toys or this dramatic incident the WARF in Santa Cruz collapsing after a Relentless barrage of power ful waves brought it down along the coast officials warning people of high tide minor coastal flooding and urging people to stay away from the water which an important reminder zaren Shaw thank you let's get right to meteorologist Greg Dutra from our Chicago station WLS with us in New York tonight and Greg those severe storms are moving East and more on the way yeah that's right with the hits keep on coming especially for the West Coast where yet again the atmospheric River developing and determining that they're going to get another couple rounds of rain over the next few days three total rounds of rain Northern California Southern Oregon seeing up to 10 in of rain High Surf warnings from San Francisco to LA and feet of snow in the Rockies that's prompting a rare four out of five Avalanche danger even down below Tree Line further east the weekend Bringing In A Renewed threat of tornadoes unfortunately it looks like Saturday a little bit farther off to the West than Sunday across the Southeastern us and it is not done there not to be left out the Northeast has seven states with winter weather alerts out for freezing rain for tomorrow morning dangerous driving on all the major thoroughfares 80 90 95 and almost the entirety of i87 and we are not done there with unfortunately it looks like another separate system will move in right around New Year's Eve and soak those revelers in Time Square back to you wi all right we'll have to plan accordingly Greg Dutra thanks so much we appreciate it now to the new airport security concerns amid the holiday travel Rush the TSA now working to add more barriers around ticketing checkpoint points this coming just days after a second person was caught boarding a Delta flight without a ticket in less than a month and tonight what we've learned about where that stowaway was trying to hide here's ABC's Perry Russa tonight new details on the case of a second person boarding a plane without a ticket police in Seattle finding the stow away in an airport bathroom after Delta Airlines turned the plane around on the tarmac and removed all passengers investigators say it happened on Christmas Eve on a Delta Airlines flight headed from Seattle to Honolulu a spokesperson for Delta says their employees followed procedures tonight TSA says it's working to add more physical barriers around ticketing checkpoints airport officials say the stowaway was properly screened at a TSA checkpoint got through without a boarding pass then boarded the plane without showing a ticket but this has got to stop because there is a very definite security risk in having people get a board without a ticket meanwhile tonight hundreds of flights delayed up and down the country As Americans pack the skies in the middle of the holiday travel Rush airports in Atlanta Chicago and Dallas hard as hit by delays we were on a flight to Dallas Fort Worth it got cancell uh for bad weather Triple A says 90% of Travelers are driving to their destinations a busy part of Interstate 80 in northern New Jersey west of New York City closed after the sinkhole opened up consuming an entire Lane emergency repairs ongoing officials say the sinkhole is 40 ft wide 40 ft deep created by the collapse of a old M shaft wh all right Perry russom thank you to politics now in the very public Clash of trump allies over immigration policy Elon Musk and B ramaswami among those urging the new Administration to embrace skilled foreign workers but it's sparking backlash from other Trump supporters and late today news about Tik Tock and what the Trump team has just requested here's ABC's White House correspondent Mary Alice Parks tonight some of president-elect Donald Trump's staunchest supporters at at odds with each other over his immigration agenda American jobs for American citizen workers this is a scam a total scam and we got to have a Throwdown let's have it now the debate sparked by some of Trump's anti-immigration loyalists taking aim at his Silicon Valley supporters including some who have advocated for a Visa program for highly skilled foreign workers the billionaire Elon Musk the South African board entrepreneur behind t and SpaceX said companies face a dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America businessman V ramaswami also defending the Visas ramaswami saying our American culture has venerated mediocrity over Excellence for way too long the H1B Visa program allows thousands of foreign workers into the US to work for us companies for up to six years in fields like technology and Medicine former presidential candidate Nikki Haley among those pushing back against ramaswami we should be investing and prioritizing Americans not foreign workers in his first term Trump criticized the Visa program and suspended it completely in 2020 during the pandemic Mary Alice Parks is traveling with the president elect in Mary Alice Trump's team just moments ago making that news about Tik Tok asking the Supreme Court to delay the law Banning the app yeah wa that's right the bipartisan law to ban the app is set to go into effect on January 19th the day before Trump is inaugurated but now the Trump team has formally asked the court to delay that deadline to try to give the incoming president time to negotiate a resolution to both save the platform and address the National Security concerns with something to watch in the weeks ahead Mary Alice thank you next tonight a potentially troubling new development about the bird flu the CDC reporting that the virus mutated inside a severely ill patient in the US which could make the disease easier to spread but no Transmissions other people have been reported and the CDC says the risk to the general public remains low here's ABC's fil lip off tonight the Centers for Disease Control finding potentially concerning new mutations in the bird flu from a patient recently hospitalized with a serious case of the virus the CDC found that this version of the virus had additional mutations that made it attach to Upper Airway cells more easily hinting in a better ability to infect people that being said this was only found in the individual that was sick and there's no reason to believe that this version of the virus is spread more broadly but the agency making it clear that the risk to the general public has not changed and remains low the CDC has confirmed at least 65 cases of bird flu in people in the US this year they're monitoring more than 10,000 exposures but they've only tested 530 what does that mean that means we're not testing enough and we know from other viruses that a lot of the spread can be asymptomatic for now the greatest risk may be to animals earlier this week the death of a house cat in Oregon prompting a pet food company to voluntarily recall a batch of its raw frozen pet food that tested positive for the virus there's no reason to believe that this version of the virus is spread more broadly in the population and we have yet to see any person-to-person transmission which is a good sign that we've still have this virus under control and officials in California have actually issued a state of emergency over the bird flu at dairy farms and are asking people to void raw dairy products withit Phil lip off for us tonight thank you turning overseas now and survivors of that horrific Christmas Day plane crash speaking publicly for the first time and the investigation continues amid growing questions about whether a Russian anti-aircraft system accidentally shot down the plane in Kazakhstan ABC's ANZ latera with late details tonight survivors of the Christmas Day crash of aeran Airlines flight 8243 in in Kazakhstan speaking out with questions swirling about whether Russian anti-aircraft systems may have accidentally shot the plane down killing dozens this man saying he heard a loud bang as the plane approached gry I already realized that it was all over he says I decided I should fill my last minutes now his account appearing to line up with what an aeri crew member recovering at a hospital in Baku told us saying he heard three thuds over grne and notice shortly after that he had been injured in the left arm he says I don't know what touched me I just looked and saw blood but our conversation was cut short excuse me I have to turn my phone off he says they're not allowing me to speak us officials acknowledging the possibility an air defense system caused the crash but other experts already more convinced lieutenant colonel friedrick kogo was a ballistics expert on the investigation that determined Malaysian Airlines flight mh17 was shot down by Russian forces in Ukraine in 2014 he says he has no doubt flight 8243 was also fired upon and so this is the typical pattern that you would see from an uh from a warhead exploding in vicinity of the fuselage and Whit fly Dubai now joining several other airlines including Israel's Flagship carrier l in suspending their flights to Russia which andz de CA thank you back here in the US new video released just hours ago showing the disturbing beating of a New York inmate Robert Brooks was handcuffed when the incident took place earlier this month the New York State Attorney General is now investigating we want to warn you this video is disturbing here's ABC's Morgan Norwood tonight disturbing police body camera video shows Corrections Officers at an Upstate New York prison beating a handcuffed inmate for 15 minutes the day he was transferred into their facility in the video from multiple body cameras released today by New York State Attorney General Leticia James you can see officers choking punching and kicking 43-year-old Robert Brooks in the face torso and genitals on December 9th as two sergeants and a nurse simply watch and never intervene according to a deposition by an investigator as attorney general you have my word that we will use every possible tool available to us to investigate this death thoroughly and swiftly it happened at the Mory Correctional Facility in UDA about 50 Mi east of Syracuse use Brooks was pronounced dead the next day at a nearby hospital a preliminary autopsy ruling Brooks death a homicide caused by aixia due to neck compression New York Governor Kathy hokel ordering the termination of 14 prison staffers including bystanders Brooks was serving a 12-year prison sentence for stabbing his girlfriend in 2017 an attorney for his family telling ABC News in part MrBrooks was fatally violently beaten by a group of officers whose job was to keep him safe he deserved to live and tonight the family attorney also saying the motive for this case is unclear in fact she calls it incomprehensible with Morgan Norwood with those late developments thank you we turn now to the economy and mortgage rates Rising again this week reaching a five Monon high and new data is showing that on average it's 35% more expensive to buy a house than rent here's ABC's Elizabeth schy tonight with mortgage rates at a femon high aspir iring home buyers are bracing for another challenging housing market in 2025 new data from Real Estate firm CBRE finds on average in the US it's 35% more expensive to buy a house than to rent a new apartment lease costs on average $2,200 per month while a monthly mortgage payment on a new home is close to 3,000 okay so this is it this is it 30-year-old Christen Holmes in Maryland was on the house hunt for 3 years while paying rent it feels like my own you know saving up enough for a down payment on a fixer upper firsttime home buyers like Kristen accounting for just 24% of all home sales in the past year an all-time low why do you think you were able to successfully buy a house at age 30 I think um the first thing is having a plan each month saving a little bit more and also um working with lenders and understanding what goes behind buying a home is is what led me to it the average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage is now 6. 85% and rates are expected to stay in that 6% range next year Whit frustrating news for home buyers all right Elizabeth schy thank you there's still much more ahead on World News Tonight this Friday fire breaking out at one of the most iconic Christmas markets in the US and the passing of Veteran sports caster Greg Gumble next tonight a fire breaking out at one of the most iconic Christmas markets in the Country Flame shooting from a booth at New York's Bryant Park this morning fortunately this happened before the market opened no one was hurt the cause now under investigation another Christmas Market fire happened at nearby Herold Square earlier this month when we come back the mega million's jackpot over $1.
2 billion your last chance to buy a ticket to the index now we're saying goodbye to a well-known figure in the World of Sports casting Greg gumble's family and CBS Sports releasing a statement saying he has passed away after a courageous battle with cancer and his iconic voice will never be forgotten his career spanning more than 50 years in the broadcast business he was 78 years old turning now to the lottery fever sweeping the country you only have a few hours left for a chance to become a billionaire the Mega Millions jackpot now over $1. 2 billion the next drawing tonight at 11:00 p. m.
