Media Spin Master

The family of Saniyya Dennis, a Buffalo State College sophomore who’s been missing for over a week, pleaded with authorities and the public to help them in their search.

Dennis, 19, was last seen on April 24 leaving her residence hall around 11:30 p.m., according to University Police. Investigators later revealed that Dennis’ phone pinged off of a cell tower near Niagara Falls State Park around 1:23 a.m. April 25.

University Police first reported her disappearance on Wednesday and posted her picture on its website and social media pages.

During a news conference Friday, Dennis’ family criticized police for not moving fast enough and stalling a search party. The family told reporters that they were alerted by one of Dennis’ friends that she may have gotten on a bus to Niagara Park.

Just before the news conference ended, the police acknowledged they had security video from the bus depot that showed Dennis and they were only able to get her cellphone records on April 27.

“Why does it take so long to get subpoenas to cellphone records? Why does it take so long to get video footage of buses? If this was somebody else’s kid, I think it would’ve happened like this,” Calvin Byrd, Dennis’s father, said at the news conference.

Buffalo State College Police Chief Peter Carey, told reporters that a K-9 search took place Friday afternoon and due to weather conditions they could not fly a helicopter to help with the search.

“Understandably, emotions are high right now, but I want to be clear that our department will not rest until Saniyya is found. Buffalo State remains in close consultation with and is supporting the Dennis family,” Carey said in a statement this weekend.

In the meantime, volunteers, friends and family have formed search parties to help find Dennis. Julia Stevens, who is part of the activist group, Allies for Black Justice, led a search party Friday and distributed posters around the area of the park where the cellphone ping took place.

“We want to make sure that her face is everywhere,” Stevens told ABC Buffalo affiliate WKBW, “that everywhere you go in Niagara Falls you know to look out for this girl.”

University Police said it is working with the family and several other agencies in its search, including the City of Niagara Falls Police, Erie County Sheriff’s Office and Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority (NFTA) Police.

Dennis, who is from the Bronx, is described as 5 feet, 3 inches tall, approximately 125 pounds, and has black hair and brown eyes.

Anyone with information that may be of assistance to the investigation is asked to contact Buffalo State’s University Police Department at (716) 878-6333 or police@buffalostate.edu. Information can also be shared through the University Police anonymous tip line at (716) 878-3166, or by calling the NYS Missing Person’s Clearinghouse at (800) 346-3543, police said.

Three people have died after a crowded “smuggling vessel” hit a reef and capsized off the coast of San Diego on Sunday, officials said.

The U.S. Coast Guard said Monday that it has suspended its response after searching for survivors overnight.

Thirty-two people have been accounted for, the Coast Guard said. Twenty-nine people are alive, of which, five were taken to the hospital, with one of the five in critical condition, the Coast Guard said Monday.

The Coast Guard originally reported four deaths, but has since amended the number to three fatalities.

The crash took place shortly before 10 a.m. Sunday, when a call came in from a commercial vessel that reported there was another boat in trouble near Point Loma leading into San Diego Bay, according to Rick Romero of the San Diego Lifeguard Services. The vessel hit a reef and broke, said James Gartland, the lifeguard chief for the city of San Diego.

“There are people in the water drowning, getting sucked by currents, people on shore,” Romero told reporters at a news conference.

Some survivors were suffering from “hypothermia and injuries from the vessel breaking,” Romero said.

Weather conditions, which caused the boat to break apart, also hindered the rescue efforts, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation. There were seven-foot swells, low clouds and some rain.

Jeff Stephenson, a Border Patrol agent, told reporters that the boat was a smuggling vessel, and the likely operator was in custody.

“Smugglers don’t care about the people, they only care about their pockets,” Stephenson told reporters.

The cause is under investigation, according to the Coast Guard. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection is investigating the crash since it took place in federal waters.

ABC News’ Chris Barry, Michelle Mendez and Sarah Hermina contributed to this report.

On Wednesday, somewhere over the Pacific, a woman who didn’t know she was pregnant gave birth to a baby boy.

Lavinia “Lavi” Mounga was flying from Salt Lake City to Honolulu on April 28 for a vacation when she gave birth to her son, Raymond.

He arrived early at just 29 weeks gestation.

Luckily, a doctor from Hawaii and three neonatal intensive care unit nurses from North Kansas City Hospital were also on board the almost seven-hour Delta flight to help Mounga deliver her baby.

“We were about halfway through the flight, and we heard someone call out for medical help,” North Kansas City Hospital NICU Nurse Lani Bamfield said in a release. “I went to see what was going on and see her there holding a baby in her hands, and it’s little.”

Bamfield and the other neonatal nurses cared for Mounga and Raymond for three hours until the flight landed in Honolulu. They were then transported to Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu.

“I don’t know how a patient gets so lucky as to have three neonatal intensive care nurses onboard the same flight when she is in emergency labor, but that was the situation we were in,” Hawaii Pacific Health family medicine physician Dr. Dale Glenn, who was on board the flight, said in a statement. “The great thing about this was the teamwork. Everybody jumped in together, and everyone helped out.”

He described how challenging it was to care for both patients in such a small confined space like an airplane. They also had to improvise on tools, using shoelaces to tie and cut the umbilical cord and an Apple Watch to monitor the baby’s heart rate.

Glenn and the team of nurses visited with Mounga and Raymond at the hospital two days after the surprise birth.

“We all just teared up,” North Kansas City Hospital NICU Nurse Mimi Ho said in the hospital release. “She called us family and said we’re all his aunties, and it was so great to see them.”

Mounga has since been discharged, but Raymond will remain in the NICU until he’s ready to go home, according to Hawaii Pacific Health.

A worker who had been fired from the Duck Creek Kitchen + Bar in Wisconsin returned to the restaurant where he allegedly killed two employees and wounded a third, authorities said.

About 50 people were eating in the restaurant in Ashwaubenon, near Green Bay, at the time of Saturday evening’s shooting, Brown County Sheriff Todd Delain said at a news conference Monday.

The restaurant is located inside a Radisson Hotel connected to the Oneida Casino. Several hundred people were within the complex at the time, including hotel guests, restaurant patrons, casino guests and people at a wedding in the banquet hall, Delain said.

After the suspect walked into the Duck Creek Kitchen + Bar, he headed toward a waiter station — which is open to the public — and allegedly shot and killed two employees at close range with a 9mm handgun, Delain said.

The slain employees were identified as Ian Simpson, 32, and Jacob Bartel, 35, Delain said.

The suspect then left the restaurant and went outside the complex where he allegedly shot a third restaurant employee, 28-year-old Daniel Mulligan, Delain said.

Mulligan is in serious but stable condition at a Milwaukee hospital, Delain said.

The lone suspect, identified as 62-year-old Bruce Pofahl, was shot and killed by police outside of the complex, near a parking structure, and pronounced dead at the scene, Delain said.

The suspect was fired from the restaurant earlier this year and was forbidden from entering the property, Delain said.

“This is not a random act,” Delain said. “We believe it was targeted.”

A specific motive is not clear, Delain said.

Oneida Nation said in a statement, “Our heartfelt condolences are extended to all the loved ones of the victims. We are reaching out to provide all necessary services of counseling for all our employees.”

Radisson Hotel Group Americas said in a statement, “We are working closely with the leadership, operations and security teams at the hotel as well as with members of the Oneida Nation to provide support. We salute the brave first responders on the scene for their heroic efforts. Our hearts are broken for the families of the victims and this community and we are doing everything we can to support them during this difficult time.”

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, the sister of Spc. Vanessa Guillén spoke about the family’s reaction to a new investigation by the U.S. Army that confirmed their long-standing suspicions that a supervisor sexually harassed the soldier before she was murdered last year.

The report said leaders in Vanessa Guillén’s unit at Fort Hood, Texas, did not take appropriate action after she stepped forward to report the two incidents of harassment.

Twenty-one soldiers have since been reprimanded or disciplined as a result of their handling of Vanessa Guillén’s case.

Mayra Guillén said her family is relieved that the Army finally backed their claims and that some disciplinary action has been taken.

Still, the report did not name the supervisor who harassed Vanessa Guillén.

Mayra Guillén said her family feels the Army needs to do more to hold those responsible for her sister’s harassment accountable.

“The Army keeps trying to protect this name and I want to understand why,” she said of Vanessa Guillén’s harasser. “Why not just try to take a step forward, admit that you were wrong, fix it and make yourself look better so, the nation could trust you again.”

Army Spc. Aaron Robinson is believed to have murdered Vanessa Guillén on April 22, 2020, the day she disappeared from the base, according to authorities. Robinson died by suicide on June 30, 2020, as police closed in on him.

The Army’s report found “no credible evidence to conclude Spc. Robinson sexually harassed Spc. Guillén or that they had any relationship outside of their work setting.”

Natalie Khawam, an attorney representing the Guillén family, told ABC News that the day the report came out, the family was devastated. She blasted the Army for failing to take Vanessa Guillén’s claims seriously in the first place and for not keeping an eye on Robinson when he was under suspicion for her disappearance.

“People reported it, she reported it to her fellow soldiers, and yet it all fell on deaf ears,” Khawam said.

Since the incident took place, the Army has taken measures to make sure nothing like it happens again.

Last December, the Army fired or suspended 14 officers and enlisted soldiers at Fort Hood, including two generals, following an independent panel’s investigation into the command climate at the base.

Six of the soldiers relieved of their duties in December were among the 21 soldiers who received administrative punishments as a result of the investigation released on Friday.

Mayra Guillén said the family is still struggling to process Vanessa Guillén’s death, but they are also committed to changing the system. Mayra Guillén has joined Congress members and other activists to push for the passage of the “I Am Vanessa Guillen Act.”

The legislation would create an independent system where service members would be able to safely report sexual misconduct cases without fear of retaliation. It would also move prosecution decisions out of the hands of the chain of command and make sexual harassment a punishable crime under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Khawam told ABC News that the bill is slated to be re-introduced to Congress this month.

Mayra Guillén said the family hopes that her sister’s death can push the U.S. government to address sexual harassment in the armed services

“We’re still looking to work very hard on this so we can put an end to it and not have what happened to Vanessa happen to anyone else ever again,” she said.

ABC’s Jim Ryan reports for ABC News Radio:

ABC News’ Luis Martinez contributed to this report.

NEW YORK — New York City’s subway will begin rolling all night again and capacity restrictions for most types of businesses will end statewide in mid-May as COVID-19 infection rates continues to decline, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday.

City subway service will return to 24-hour operation on May 17 after being closed for cleaning during overnight hours since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic last year, the Democratic governor said.

Capacity restrictions on businesses — including restaurants, offices, beauty salons, gyms — will be lifted in New York and its neighboring states of New Jersey and Connecticut on May 19, Cuomo said.

Businesses in New York will still be required to operate in a way that guarantees that unvaccinated people can keep 6 feet of social distancing space, even after the occupancy limits go away, the governor said.

New York City’s subways, famous for all-night operation, were shut down between 1 to 5 a.m. on April 30, 2020, so trains and stations could be disinfected. The change was also intended to make it easier to remove homeless people from trains where many had been spending the night. The overnight closure was scaled back to 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. in February.

Cuomo’s announcement came the day after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called for the resumption of around-the-clock subway service.

“The city that never sleeps is slowly — but surely — living up to its name again and waking up from the COVID-19 pandemic, but so should the subway system, and ASAP,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, said at a news conference Sunday.

The decision to close the subways for cleaning was made a year ago when scientists placed greater weight on surface contamination as a vector of coronavirus infection than they do now.

Speaking at his New York City office near Grand Central Terminal, Cuomo said cleaning the system is still important though “not as urgent as they said it was initially.”

Cuomo, who controls the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that runs city subways and buses, said standards of cleanliness should remain high when the overnight closure ends. “You’re trying to build confidence for people to get back on the subways,” he said. “I want to know the subway is going to be clean.”

A total of 23 reported tornadoes have struck across 4 states — 18 of them in Mississippi, one in Louisiana, two in Nebraska and one in Colorado.

A rare tornado emergency was issued overnight for Tupelo, Mississippi, where the most damage is reported this morning.

“Damage has been reported in the City of Tupelo. Emergency crews are currently assessing the degree of damage,” the City of Tupelo Mayor’s Office said in a statement released late on Sunday night. “Please do not get out and drive. It is dangerous—-there are reports that power lines are down in the roads. We will update you as soon as we know the extent of damage. Prayers that all are safe, and please keep our crews and first responders in your prayers also.”

Law enforcement also reported seeing extensive residential damage in the area of the Elvis Presley Museum area although the scope of the damage is not yet known.

Elsewhere, there was a total of 84 damaging storm reports including damaging winds and large hail from Colorado to Wisconsin with severe winds as high as 93 mph in Colorado.

Later on Monday, a new storm is coming out of the Rockies and will bring a new severe weather threat from the Plains to the Midwest and from Texas to Ohio.

Damaging winds and large hail will be the biggest threat but a few tornadoes could be possible from Oklahoma to Arkansas, western Kentucky, southern Illinois and up into Indiana.

This same storm moves into the Gulf Coast and the Southeast on Tuesday with more severe weather expected from Louisiana to West Virginia.

The biggest threat, however, will be damaging winds and large hail with more potential for a few tornadoes from Louisiana to Mississippi and into Alabama and Tennessee.

Amid ongoing protests over the fatal shooting of Andrew Brown Jr. by North Carolina sheriff’s deputies, loved ones and supporters of the 42-year-old Black man marched on Sunday afternoon to a museum for a public viewing of his body and memorial service.

The memorial service and public viewing for Brown, who died in a hail of gunfire outside his home on April 21, began at about 3 p.m. at the Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.

The Rev. Greg Drumwright, a civil rights activist in Elizabeth City, led Brown’s family on a march to the memorial service.

“Elizabeth City is really standing tall in this moment,” Drumwright told ABC station WTVD in Raleigh-Durham.

Relatives and friends of Brown, a father of seven, gathered earlier Sunday at Horton’s Funeral Home and Cremations Chapel for a private viewing.

Brown’s invitation-only funeral service is scheduled to be held at noon Monday at the Fountain of Life Church in Elizabeth City. The Rev. Al Sharpton is scheduled to give the eulogy.

Sunday marks the 11th straight day of mostly peaceful protests over the death of Brown in Elizabeth City, where the mayor has imposed a nightly curfew and declared a state of emergency over fears the demonstrations could turn violent.

Pasquotank County Sheriff Tommy Wooten issued a statement Sunday asking protesters to remain peaceful.

“I and the entire Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office fully support the right to peacefully protest and assemble,” Wooten wrote. “The tragic death of Andrew Brown Jr. has deeply impacted many people in our community. This weekend, we ask that everyone respect the family and those mourning. We also ask that everyone respect the hardworking families in Pasquotank County who run small businesses and employ so many in our community.”

Wooten warned that protesters will not be permitted to block intersections and highways or put themselves and others in danger.

“We hope protests this weekend are peaceful; however, we are prepared to ensure the safety of our community in the event of unlawful disruptions,” Wooten wrote.

Protesters have joined Brown’s family in calling on the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office to publicly release all video it has of the shooting, including body camera and patrol car dashcam footage.

Brown’s son, Khalil Ferebee, other family members and one of their lawyers were allowed to view a 20-second body camera clip of the shooting last week at the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Department. Ferebee said the video showed his father being “executed” as he tried to drive away from his home as deputies opened fire on him.

An independent autopsy commissioned by the family showed Brown was shot five times in the incident, including a fatal shot that hit him in the back of his head at the base of his neck, attorneys for the family said at a news conference last week.

During a court hearing on Wednesday, Pasquotank County Superior Court Judge Jeff Foster rejected a request from the local sheriff and multiple media outlets to immediately release the body camera videos that show sheriff’s deputies fatally shooting Brown. The ruling came after Pasquotank County District Attorney Andrew Womble told Foster that the release of the video now could jeopardize an investigation of the shooting by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.

While Brown was unarmed when he was shot, Womble said during the court hearing that Brown’s car drove toward law enforcement officers and allegedly made contact with deputies twice before shots could be heard on the the video footage of the shooting.

The shooting unfolded around 8:30 a.m. on April 21 when deputies from Pasquotank and Dare counties went to Brown’s home to attempt to serve an arrest warrant on Brown that stemmed from a felony drug investigation, officials said.

Seven Pasquotank County Sheriff’s deputies were initially placed on paid administrative leave.

Wooten on Thursday identified the three deputies who fired shots at Brown as Investigator Daniel Meads, Deputy Sheriff II Robert Morgan and Cpl. Aaron Lewellyn. Wooten said the three deputies remain on leave, while the four others who didn’t fire their weapons in the incident were reinstated to active duty.

As in-person experiences, such as shopping and going out to eat, were halted for a significant amount of time during the pandemic, small businesses had to find ways to survive.

“We were gearing up to offer wine tastings, cocktail making and cooking classes in people’s homes, but when the pandemic hit, it upended our entire business model and plans,” Michael Wolkon, co-founder of Night Inn, told ABC News. “So then we started in June of 2020 offering virtual wine tastings to individual groups at home, as well as corporate clients who wanted to do virtual happy hours across the entire country.”

Night Inn, founded by Wolkon, Rena Ogura and Ryan Lane also turned these virtual tastings into a way to give back to an industry that was so badly hit by the pandemic by hiring bartenders and sommeliers who were laid off.

“They’re really excited about this opportunity to completely work on their own time and make an additional income stream,” Wolkon said.

More importantly, they found that their virtual experiences were giving people the togetherness they longed for as they were separated for months.

“We love the idea and the feeling of community that you can have just by being in a private space with the people you care about,” Ogura said. “What the online model demonstrated to us and what we’ve heard from our guests is that this has been one of the very few ways in which they’ve felt truly connected and truly together with their families.”

“We have our professional from California talking to people in New York,” Lane added. “And that family in New York has cousins out in Denver, and it brings everyone together just from one sitting. It was one of the hidden gems from virtual that we discovered.”

Night Inn continues to help industry professionals like restaurateurs, bartenders and sommeliers as they plan to expand to in-person tastings and experiences with a COVID-19 protocol set in place.

Jeanette Mulvey, editor-in-chief of CO—, a publication by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said she has seen this trend happen over time with online and e-commerce sites.

“The pandemic has allowed many small businesses to shift from local-only to serving a national audience. I’ve seen this over and over again where businesses — out of necessity — moved to e-commerce and grew a national customer base,” Mulvey told ABC News.

Eliza Blank, founder and CEO of The Sill, a plant delivery business that also offers educational workshops, never expected something like the pandemic to happen. She knew adjustments needed to be made from how she initially founded the business in 2012, she said, and felt she needed to utilize its online space more to build a sense of a community that the pandemic had taken away.

Blank moved The Sill’s workshops online, and she found that people were “craving a connection over something that was a shared experience.”

“We were able to offer this community not only the plant products that they needed and craved, but the platform to then connect with each other and have that shared experience when so many of us became socially distanced and weren’t really engaging socially in real life,” Blank told ABC News.

“The upside of the online experience is that you are able to connect with people who you wouldn’t naturally connect with,” Blank added. “Whether it was to beautify their space, to nurture or take care of something, to bring the outdoors in or, quite frankly, just like as a hobby, people were using this as a way to also cope with all the spare time we had in quarantine.”

Even as things slowly return to normal, the businesses are still working to find more ways to innovate, and they also plan to maintain the changes they had to make in order to keep their businesses alive.

“The pandemic forced businesses to innovate and evolve more quickly than they normally would,” Mulvey said, “but those that did it successfully will come out with more robust and resilient businesses.”

LONDON — An American businessman with a penchant for loud suits. The actor with an “anti-woke” agenda. YouTubers with ironic campaigns. An intergalactic “space politician” who wears a trash can on his head. The incumbent Mayor of London Sadiq Khan is seeking re-election against 19 other candidates in a vote on May 6, and it is fair to say the field of prospective mayors is the weirdest, as well as the largest, the U.K. capital has ever seen.

Khan, representing the Labour Party, which is in opposition to Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in the central government, is well known for his clashes with former President Trump and marshalling the city through a number of devastating terrorist attacks. He is set to be comfortably re-elected — if recent polling is to be believed — with Khan promising to “renew, rebuild and refresh London” in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic should he win another term.

His main rival, the Conservative Shaun Bailey, is polling only 28%, compared to Khan’s 41%, according to the most recent polls. Bailey has attacked Khan’s record on housing and combatting crime but has consistently lagged behind the incumbent mayor in opinion polls and has a record of making controversial statements compared to Khan’s more conciliatory public messaging.

Elsewhere, however, the field of candidates from outside Britain’s mainstream political parties looks increasingly bizarre.

The most successful of those is the YouTuber Nico Omilana, who boasts 3.3 million subscribers and 1.7 million Instagram followers. Standing as an Independent candidate with no party affiliation, Omilana told the BBC he has “more knowledge, strength and integrity than any other candidate” and that the “system was broken for young people.”

Polling at 5%, according to ITV, Omilana may just meet the threshold of enough votes to get his £10,000 ($13,900) deposit back, which candidates are required to put down in order to stand.

He is joined by fellow YouTuber Max Fosh, with 419,000 subscribers, who is running to “just to get more votes” than Laurence Fox, an actor running on an anti-lockdown, “anti-woke” ticket.

Fox made headlines in the U.K. in January 2020 when he denied that the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, had been a victim of racism in the media and regaled against being called a “white privileged male” in a controversial appearance on the current affairs program Question Time.

Since then he has formed his own political party, lamented social distancing restrictions and is campaigning on promises to never return the capital to lockdown and “reclaim your freedom to speak.” Like Fosh, he is at 1% in the opinion polls.

Also standing is “Count Binface” — a satirical candidate who has been a fixture of the last few election cycles, having stood against Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the 2019 general election. Prior to that, he stood against former Prime Minister Theresa May as “Lord Buckhethead,” but was forced to rebrand due to copyright issues.

“I am standing in the 2021 Elections in the Earth Capital, London, to bring voters a touch of intergalactic class and some ingenious policies that will PUT LONDON ON THE MAP,” according to his website. One of his manifesto commitments is for “loud snacks to be banned in theaters.”

Then, there is representation originating from across the Atlantic in the form of Brian Rose, an American businessman who has lived in London for the past 21 years. He claims to have put “seven figures” of his own cash into his campaign, and has placed several bets on himself to win the mayoralty.

“The first thing you need is awareness, if they don’t know who you are, then they can’t engage with your policy,” Rose told ABC News in a recent interview. “So I always joke they come for the suit, they stay for the policies, and then they show up on May 6.”

“I think we’re going to shock a lot of people with the amount of support we have from Londoners,” he added.

The eccentricities of U.K. politics are in full swing as Khan looks favorite to win the vote and London’s Mayor for the next three years, even if Count Binface believes he is “more qualified” than the other candidates.