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Sean Duffy warns air travel is 'only going to get worse' as Thanksgiving approaches

admin - Latest News - November 9, 2025
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Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned Sunday that air travel will worsen before the holidays as the U.S. enters the third day of federally mandated flight reductions.“It’s only going to get worse,” Duffy told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.



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Oct. 31, 2025, 5:30 PM EDTBy Tim StellohFor John Diebel, she’s the suspect who got away.Diebel, a retired detective, spent more than a decade investigating the brutal murder of Steven Schwartz, a wealthy doctor whose 2014 death shook Florida’s Gulf coast. In his first interview about the case, Diebel recalled that the investigation was one of the most extensive of his nearly 50 years in law enforcement — one filled with unexpected turns and dead ends that led detectives far from the doctor’s sprawling mansion northeast of Tampa. Retired dectective, John Diebel who has spent more than a decade investigating the death of Steven Schwartz.DatelineYet in the end, Diebel’s investigation for the Tarpon Springs Police Department produced a single conviction for a crime far less serious than murder. And it did not yield criminal charges for a person who Diebel believes is responsible for the killing: Schwartz’s wife, Rebecca Schwartz.“It’s like the one case where you didn’t get the suspect that you knew in your heart that she committed a murder,” Diebel told “Dateline.” “You just didn’t have enough for the state attorney’s office to go forward with prosecution.” For more on the case, tune in to “The Death of Dr. Schwartz” on “Dateline” at 9 ET/8 CT tonight.DATELINE FRIDAY SNEAK PEEK: The Death of Dr. Schwartz01:55While Rebecca, 65, has never been criminally charged in the case, a jury in civil court — where the standard of evidence is lower than in criminal proceedings — found her liable this year for intentionally killing her husband or participating in his death. That decision, made in response to a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Steven’s family, included a judgment that required Rebecca to pay the doctor’s family nearly $200 million in damages.Lawyers for Steven’s family accused her of killing him over a possible divorce — a move that would have cut her off from the fortune he’d made as a doctor specializing in kidney disease. Steven Schwartz.DatelineAfter Steven’s death, Rebecca — who earlier in life pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $7,000 from a Mothers Against Drunk Driving chapter that she led — became the beneficiary of an estate that an attorney for Steven’s family estimated at more than $30 million. She moved the money into hard-to-track limited liability companies, according to the family’s legal team. To date, the lawyers have frozen roughly $6 million to $10 million of her assets, one of the attorneys, Wil Florin, told “Dateline.”Rebecca declined to speak to “Dateline.” In a deposition in the civil case, she invoked her right against self-incrimination and declined to answer when attorneys for Steven’s family pressed her about whether she participated in his death. She did the same when she was asked about her previous conviction. In a separate deposition last year, she said she was worth $10,000 and had transferred almost everything she owned into trusts controlled by her two sons. Her attorney, Rohom Khonsari, said there was no evidence supporting the claim that Steven wanted to divorce her. Nor was there any physical evidence linking her to the crime, Khonsari said. A staged burglary and a dead body On the evening of May 28, 2014, Rebecca dialed 911 and reported a robbery at the family’s 8,000-square-foot home in Tarpon Springs, northeast of Tampa. Jewelry, cash and her husband’s watches were gone, according to audio of the 911 call, and she told the dispatcher she hadn’t seen Steven since that morning, when she left at 8:30 and he was in bed reading a newspaper.“He’s a physician, so I don’t know where he is, actually,” she said. “One of the hospitals, I assume.” Steven Schwartz and his wife, Rebecca Schwartz.DatelineAs investigators searched the house, they found watch boxes scattered across a bedroom floor and drawers yanked from cabinets. At the bottom of a set of stairs, they found Steven’s body in a pool of blood, Diebel recalled. He was 74.He’d been shot twice — once in the head, once in the neck — with what Diebel believed was a small-caliber gun. He had a large laceration across his neck, Diebel said, and an autopsy showed his spine had been fractured — an injury he appeared to have sustained during a fall down the stairs. Investigators discovered that a crucial part of the home’s elaborate security system — a DVR — was missing, as was a large knife in a butcher block in the kitchen, Diebel said. Neither would ever be found. Nor would authorities find the gun used to shoot him.Diebel came to believe the burglary scene was staged. While the drawers had been pulled out, he said, it didn’t appear that anyone had actually rifled through them. And the jewelry and watch boxes looked like they’d just been dropped on the floor. The effort, he said, seemed designed to make the crime look like a “burglary gone bad.”A crime scene photo of the drawers pulled out during the alleged burglary of the Schwartz home.DatelineDiebel also came to believe that someone close to the Schwartzes was probably responsible for the doctor’s death. He based that suspicion on the location of the missing recording equipment — it was hidden in a closet, above the garage — and on the family’s two large dogs: Rebecca told police they’d been locked all day inside the same bedroom that had been burglarized. Those clues led Diebel to believe the person was familiar with the home’s layout and knew the pets.Shortly after the death, investigators interviewed Rebecca, who called her husband her “best bud” — they’d been married for four years but a couple for far longer — and provided an account of her whereabouts on May 28, a video of the interview shows. That account included receipts, Diebel said. When police shared their theory about who was likely to have been responsible for her husband’s killing, she responded: “You think you can find who did this?”An investigator responded in the affirmative.Fingerprints lifted from the security system and elsewhere at the crime scene provided what initially seemed like a promising lead. They matched those of Rebecca’s oldest son from a previous marriage, Diebel said, prompting Diebel to travel with a team of investigators to a small town north of Madison, Wisconsin, where the son owned a Verizon shop.They showed up at his workplace unannounced, Diebel said, and questioned him about where he’d been on May 28. It turned out he’d been nowhere near Tarpon Springs. “He had gone to the doctor’s with his wife,” Diebel said. “She was pregnant at the time.”Diebel also ruled out a startling revelation from the doctor’s past that emerged after his death. As a 21-year-old college student in New Mexico, he robbed a doctor of $400 — then fatally shot him. Steven pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life in prison but granted a full pardon a decade later.While shocking — Steven had kept the crime a secret from his children — Diebel believed it had no connection to his death. It had happened in 1961, more than a half-century before, Diebel said, and the doctor had transformed into a model citizen“This was a completely different man,” Diebel said. Finally, a breakthrough in the case Nearly a year passed before DNA delivered the case’s first breakthrough. The samples were taken from two spots on Steven’s clothes — inside a pocket where he usually kept a wad of cash, Diebel said, and a section of his shirt that appeared crumpled.It wasn’t the strongest DNA match — Diebel said there had been significant contamination at the scene because of the amount of blood — but the analysis led to an unexpected person: Leo Stragaj, a man who’d worked for the Schwartzes for years doing remodeling and property maintenance. Two weeks after the killing, Stragaj, 48, provided authorities with the genetic sample they used to compare with the DNA collected at the scene. In a recorded interview obtained by “Dateline,” he told authorities that he had no idea who was behind Steven’s death but wanted to help however he could.“That guy took care of my everything,” said Stragaj, an Albanian national who first came to the United States in 2000. “He supported my family in Albania.”Stragaj provided an account of his whereabouts on May 28 — he said he’d been working on a house all day — and authorities verified it, Diebel said. But after they obtained the DNA sample, police arrested him on a first-degree murder charge and confronted him with the new finding. He initially disputed the evidence, saying that he was being framed and that there was no way it was his, according to a video of the interview. Anton Stragaj’s mug shot in Tarpon Springs, Fla.DatelineBut after an hour and a half, Stragaj provided a far different account. In the interview, he said that Rebecca had asked him to stop by their house early May 28 to pick up her purse and that when he did, he found Steven’s body in a pool of blood.Stragaj said he grabbed the doctor and shook him — “just to see if he’s OK,” he said in the interview. He retrieved Rebecca’s bag, which he said contained jewelry boxes and a knife, and left.Upon returning the purse, he started screaming at Rebecca and demanding to know why she killed her husband, Stragaj told “Dateline.” She at first said nothing, then responded, “I know you know why I did it,” Stragaj said. (Stragaj provided a similar account during a deposition in the civil case when he was questioned by an attorney for Steven’s family.) In an interview with “Dateline,” Stragaj said he didn’t go to the police for two reasons: He feared being deported and worried Rebecca wouldn’t pay him the tens of thousands of dollars he said she owed him from an investment they’d made together.Not calling the police that day, he said, was the biggest mistake of his life.In 2021, after six years in the Pinellas County Jail awaiting trial, Stragaj accepted a deal from prosecutors — a guilty plea to a lower-level felony, accessory after the fact. A few months later, he was deported to Albania.Detective’s lingering doubts Diebel said he doesn’t believe Stragaj stumbled onto the murder scene. He believes Stragaj was directly involved in the doctor’s killing and could still answer a series of unresolved questions, including what happened to the missing DVR. In the “Dateline” interview, Stragaj maintained his innocence and said he had nothing to do with killing Steven.Because of Stragaj’s repeated lies, Diebel said, his account of what happened on May 28 wasn’t considered credible evidence against Rebecca. And in the decade-plus that he spent investigating the murder, Diebel said, he uncovered no evidence that would hold up in a criminal trial.Diebel said that before he retired this year, he tried everything he could — and had other agencies review his work to see whether there was something he missed. More witnesses came forward, he said, but nothing they provided was enough.Even though he’d never been able to prove it, Diebel believed a theory of the killing that was similar to that presented in the civil case — that Steven was murdered after he told his wife he planned to end their relationship. Diebel said he was glad there had been some measure of justice for Steven’s family with the civil judgment. And even though the investigation he shepherded for years was officially closed weeks after the jury delivered that judgment, he was hopeful new evidence could someday resurrect the criminal probe.“I just would encourage anybody if you know anything, no matter how small, if you have not talked with a detective or the police department about this, please come forward,” he said. “’Cause you never know what information that you have might be the link that we need to put things together.”Tim StellohTim Stelloh is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.Meade Jorgensen and Robert Buchanan contributed.
October 15, 2025
Oct. 15, 2025, 2:00 PM EDTBy Matt BradleyCAESAREA, Israel — Ten years ago this week, two Palestinian attackers boarded a bus in Jerusalem and shot, beat and stabbed Israeli American educator Richard Lakin to death along with two others before police killed one of the militants and injured and arrested the other.The surviving assailant, Bilal Abu Ghanem, was freed in February from his three consecutive life sentences for murder as part of the last Israeli ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas.That’s when his son, Micah Avni, had to watch his father’s murderer go free.“It feels like I’ve been betrayed by my country,” Avni, 56, said the day before Hamas exchanged 24 Israeli hostages for about 2,000 Palestinian detainees and prisoners, including 250 serving life sentences for serious crimes including terrorism. Bilal Abu Ghanem, in 2016.Ahman Gharabli / AFP via Getty Images fileAvni’s anguish and anger have now merged with a larger collective, shared by many Israelis whose loved ones were killed or maimed in terror attacks and who must now watch the perpetrators walk free as part of the latest ceasefire negotiated by the Trump administration.Their torment hasn’t just punctured the euphoria surrounding last week’s agreement — it very nearly halted the deal and could still frustrate its full implementation.Two far-right political parties in Israel’s government cited the release of 250 convicts as their reason for voting against President Donald Trump’s ceasefire and hostage release plan.“Alongside this joy, it is absolutely forbidden to ignore the question of the price: the release of thousands of terrorists,” said Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right minister of national security and leader of the Otzma Yehudit party, in a statement explaining his party’s opposition. “These are terrorists whose past experience proves that they will return to terrorism and their art of working to murder Jews.”While Ben-Gvir and others refer to thousands of “terrorists” released, 250 of those released were convicted of serious crimes.Most of the rest of the more than 1,700 people let go, among them doctors, nurses and journalists, had been held without charge. These detainees were not involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and were held under a controversial practice called administrative detention, which allows Israel to detain people for an indefinite period of time without ever charging them. More than 20 minors were on the list.For Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, the releases were cause for celebrations. Prisoners and detainees who returned to Gaza rode on the tops of buses through crowds of well-wishers.Families wait outside the Ramallah Cultural Palace for the Palestinian prisoners to be released on Monday.Daniele Hamamdjian / NBC NewsIn the West Bank, families waited for the released prisoners outside the Ramallah Cultural Palace in the Palestinians’ provisional capital. Some women and young girls arrived in traditional Palestinian dresses. Many refused to speak to the gathered press: Israel’s military, they said, had called them and warned them not speak to the media.The prisoners’ families said they had seen others being re-arrested in the past and didn’t want to gamble on the convicts’ hard-won freedom.“For Israel, any Palestinian is a terrorist,” said the uncle of one of the released Palestinians, who refused to give his name, “even if they didn’t do anything.”Palestinian relatives mourn at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.Khames Alrefi / Anadolu via Getty ImagesIn addition, there is the collective pain of nearly 2 million in Gaza who have endured Israel’s two-year war against Hamas. There is little hope among Palestinians that anybody will be held responsible for the tens of thousands of innocent civilians killed by Israeli fire, along with those maimed in attacks.Israel has accused Hamas of operating in civilian areas, thus necessitating attacks that endanger noncombatants. In November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, whom Israel said it had killed, over alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes.Israel has forcefully rejected the allegations, and Netanyahu’s office branded the decision “antisemitic,” rejecting them as “absurd and false” and condemning the ICC as a “biased and discriminatory political body.”Tinged with sadnessPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged many Israelis’ public pain in comments on Sunday night.“Tomorrow, our sons will return to their borders,” he said. “This is a historic event that is tinged with sadness over the release of murderers — and joy over the return of kidnapped people.”Under President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for ending the fighting, Hamas fighters who lay down their weapons would be spared any punishment — a condition that has also raised grave reservations among many Israelis, including Netanyahu, who had hoped to see Hamas destroyed.Rachel Goldberg-Polin, an American Israeli whose son, Hersh, was kidnapped on Oct. 7 and then killed by Hamas last year, said she’s rejected the feelings of anger that come with grief.Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, parents of Hersh, in Jerusalem in October 2024.Dmitry Solovyov / NBC News“Nothing can bring Hersh back,” she said in an interview last week. “I tend to look at this in a very zoomed-out way. I don’t have this fiery venomous anger that I think wouldn’t serve me in any purpose.”Avni, who opposed this week’s deal, said he worries that the released convicts will simply return to the battlefield or engage in terrorism against Israelis.“Obviously, every single Jewish person wants to get the hostages back,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that strategically trading thousands of terrorists for 20 lives makes sense.”Avni has advocated executing terrorists as a way to remove prisoner exchanges from the negotiating table. Israeli law allows for capital punishment, but only for treason and “crimes against humanity.” The death sentence has been used only twice in Israeli history.In the hours after his father’s murder, Avni admits that he considered taking matters into his own hands. Both Lakin and Abu Ghanem were taken to the same ward in the same Jerusalem hospital after the attack.The scene of the Jerusalem bus attack on Oct. 13, 2015, that resulted in Richard Lakin’s death.Kobi Gideon / Getty Images fileZaka volunteers and security forces inspect the scene after the bus attack that left Lakin and two other civilians dead.Gali Tibbon / AFP via Getty Images fileThe two men were treated only yards apart. Lakin died, but his killer survived.“I think I would have jumped on him and done something but he had police standing there,” Avni said. “I remember thinking to myself, you know, you’ll go to jail for life, and you’ve got responsibilities.”Recounting the cruel irony of his father’s killing still brings tears to Avni’s eyes. His father had been a peace-loving school principal who advocated for racially integrated education, had marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and participated in the anti-segregation “Freedom Riders” movement during the 1960s.The family moved to Israel when Avni was 15 years old.“He was a big believer in coexistence. I wish everybody could be like that, but they’re not,” Avni said of his father. “It was an innocent world view.”Richard Lakin, his grandchild, and his son, Micah Avni.Family handoutMatt Bradley reported from Caesarea, and Daniele Hamamdjian from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Matt BradleyMatt Bradley is an international correspondent for NBC News based in Israel.Daniele Hamamdjian contributed.
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