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By Tim Stelloh and Tangni NoriegaAuthorities in Atlanta said they averted a tragedy Monday after a man’s family told police that he was headed to the city’s airport to “shoot it up.”Police found an AR-15 assault rifle with 27 rounds of ammunition in the man’s truck, which was parked outside ​​Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, according to the city’s police chief, Darin Schierbaum.“There were 27 rounds that could have been fired from this weapon inside the airport,” Schierbaum told reporters.Billy Cagle, 49, was arrested on suspicion of terroristic threats, criminal attempt to commit aggravated assault and firearms charges, the police department said.Atlanta Police found an AR-15 assault rifle with 27 rounds of ammunition in Billy Jo Cagle’s truck, which was parked outside ​​Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.Atlanta Police DepartmentIt wasn’t immediately clear if he has a lawyer to speak on his behalf.Schierbaum said investigators are working to identify a possible motive. Officials said Cagle has “mental challenges” but declined to provide additional details.In a Facebook post Sunday, Cagle wrote: “I told my kids if anything happens to me sue, they can get 50-100 million.”Relatives of Cagle’s did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Cagle’s family alerted police in Cartersville, northwest of Atlanta, that he was allegedly livestreaming his plans on social media, Schierbaum said.”He was headed to the airport, in their words, ‘to shoot it up,’ and the family stated that he was in possession of an assault rifle,” Schierbaum said. “What we didn’t know is that Mr. Cagle had already arrived at the airport.”Security video showed Cagle entering the airport’s busy south terminal at 9:29 a.m., the chief said — 11 minutes before police in Cartersville alerted authorities in Atlanta. He appeared “very interested” in the TSA check-in area, Schierbaum said.Officers found Cagle at 9:54 a.m. and took him into custody, according to the chief. He was unarmed at the time.Police searched Cagle’s Chevrolet flatbed and found the assault rifle with 27 rounds.”See something, say Something did work,” Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens told reporters. “We are standing here talking about a tragedy averted, versus us standing here telling you about 27-plus lives that were lost or injured the world’s busiest airport.”Tim StellohTim Stelloh is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.Tangni NoriegaTangni Noriega is an assignment editor for NBC News.

- Latest News - October 20, 2025

Authorities in Atlanta said they averted a tragedy Monday after a man’s family told police that he was headed to the city’s airport to “shoot it up.”Police found an AR-15.

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Oct. 20, 2025, 4:27 PM EDTBy Ryan J. Reilly and Chloe AtkinsWASHINGTON — Former FBI Director James Comey on Monday filed motions seeking the dismissal of the criminal charges brought against him, arguing that the lawyer President Donald Trump named to prosecute him, Lindsey Halligan, wasn’t properly appointed and that the case was politically motivated. Comey’s team argued that the indictment arose from “multiple glaring constitutional violations and an egregious abuse of power by the federal government” and that the “bedrock principles of due process and equal protection have long ensured that government officials may not use courts to punish and imprison their perceived personal and political enemies.”Halligan, a former insurance lawyer who is now interim head of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, was “defectively appointed to her office as an interim U.S. Attorney,” Comey’s attorneys argued, adding that her appointment “violated the congressionally designed and constitutionally compelled means for the Attorney General to appoint an official as interim U.S. Attorney.”Comey’s team went on to argue that, “because no properly appointed Executive Branch official sought and obtained the indictment, the indictment is equally a nullity.”Trump calls for prosecution of rivals, flanked by DOJ and FBI chiefs10:14Comey, one of several Trump critics targeted by the Justice Department this year, has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, which focus on congressional testimony in 2020 when he stood by previous testimony he gave in 2017 regarding the authorization of leaks to the media when he was head of the FBI.One of Comey’s exhibits submitted Monday is a 60-page filing with statements that Comey and Trump have made about each other.The defense further argued that the Justice Department had maintained high standards of ethics for decades and only brought cases when they were supported by the facts and that law, and that the charges against Comey were a “sharp departure” from that tradition.“Ample objective evidence — much of which comes directly from government officials’ own public statements and admissions — establishes that the government’s animus toward Mr. Comey led directly to this vindictive and selective prosecution,” Comey’s team wrote.His attorneys also referenced the president’s September social media post in which he called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute his political foes. His attorneys said that, “Less than 48 hours after President Trump’s post, Ms. Halligan was sworn in as interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Ms. Halligan was a special assistant to the President and White House official.”Halligan’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday’s filings.Comey’s attorneys noted that Halligan, who previously worked as a personal lawyer for Trump, lacked prosecutorial experience, adding that “no other prosecutor from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia participated in the grand jury presentation. Ms. Halligan presented the grand jury with a three-count indictment.”“Ms. Halligan’s unlawful appointment tainted the structural integrity of the grand jury process. Absent Ms. Halligan’s unlawful title, she would not have been able to enter the grand jury room, let alone present and sign an indictment,” they wrote.Ryan J. ReillyRyan J. Reilly is a justice reporter for NBC News.Chloe AtkinsChloe Atkins reports for the NBC News National Security and Law Unit, based in New York.

- Latest News - October 20, 2025

Former FBI Director James Comey on Monday filed motions seeking the dismissal of criminal charges against him, arguing Lindsey Halligan wasn’t properly appointed and that the case was politically motivated.

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Oct. 20, 2025, 3:37 PM EDT / Updated Oct. 20, 2025, 4:19 PM EDTBy Dareh Gregorian and Gary GrumbachA federal appeals court ruling on Monday will allow the Trump administration to send National Guard troops into Oregon against the state’s wishes, hitting pause on a lower court’s order that had barred the deployment.”After considering the record at this preliminary stage, we conclude that it is likely that the President lawfully exercised his statutory authority,” the panel of 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges wrote in a 2-1 ruling. Justice Department attorneys had argued in a court filing that U.S. District Judge Karen Immergut’s ruling temporarily halting the deployment “improperly impinges on the Commander in Chief’s supervision of military operations, countermands a military directive to officers in the field, and endangers federal personnel and property.” Hundreds of cyclists strip down for anti-ICE protests in Portland01:05Immergut, a Trump nominee, said in her order that it appeared the president was acting in bad faith with exaggerated claims of violence in the city, including that it was “war ravaged” with “ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa” and “crazy people” who “try to burn down buildings, including federal buildings” every night.”The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts,” the judge wrote.The two appeals court judges — also Trump nominees — said the president’s position was entitled to more deference. “Rather than reviewing the President’s determination with great deference, the district court substituted its own determination of the relevant facts and circumstances. That approach is error,” the opinion by Judges Ryan D. Nelson and Bridget S. Bade said. “Even if the President may exaggerate the extent of the problem on social media, this does not change that other facts provide a colorable basis to support the statutory requirements,” they wrote.The dissenting judge, Susan P. Graber, ripped her colleagues’ ruling.”Given Portland protesters’ well-known penchant for wearing chicken suits, inflatable frog costumes, or nothing at all when expressing their disagreement with the methods employed by ICE, observers may be tempted to view the majority’s ruling, which accepts the government’s characterization of Portland as a war zone, as merely absurd,” Graber wrote.The ruling, she wrote, “is not merely absurd. It erodes core constitutional principles including sovereign States’ control over their States’ militias and the people’s First Amendment rights to assemble and to object to the government’s policies and actions.”Immergut, the lower court judge, had found that while there had been some protests that turned violent back in June, federal and state law enforcement now seem to have the situation well in hand. “On September 26, the eve of the President’s directive, law enforcement ‘observed approximately 8-15 people at any given time out front of ICE. Mostly sitting in lawn chairs and walking around. Energy was low, minimal activity,’” Immergut’s order noted.During a hearing before the 9th Circuit earlier this month, a lawyer for the Justice Department argued the mobilization was necessary. He said federal officials were repeatedly forced to call in backup to combat chaos outside the immigration processing facility in the city, and that protesters had blocked cars, spit on authorities and in one instance lit a fire outside the facility.”These are violent people,” DOJ attorney Eric McArthur told the panel. The Trump-appointed judges indicated during the hearing that they believed that the state and the lower court judge were not showing enough deference to the president’s decision making. “It just seems a little counterintuitive to me that the City of Portland can come in and say no, you need to do it differently,” Judge Ryan D. Nelson, one of the Trump nominees, said.The 9th Circuit blocked a similar restraining order this year involving National Guard troops in Los Angeles and held then that the president’s judgment about whether troops are needed should get “a great level of deference.”Immergut referenced the California decision in her ruling, but added that “’a great level of deference’ is not equivalent to ignoring the facts on the ground.”The appeals court ruling only gives the green light to Oregon National Guard troops being deployed. The judge issued a separate restraining order barring National Guard troops from other states being sent into Portland, which the government has yet to appeal.The majority decision said that order would meet the same fate because Immergut used the same legal reasoning. At the hearing last week, McArthur said the administration would ask the judge to reconsider that order if the appeals court ruled in its favor on the Oregon troops. A federal judge in Chicago last week issued a temporary restraining order barring National Guard troops from being deployed there. The administration is appealing that order as well.Dareh GregorianDareh Gregorian is a politics reporter for NBC News.Gary GrumbachGary Grumbach is an NBC News legal affairs reporter, based in Washington, D.C.

- Latest News - October 20, 2025

A federal appeals court ruling on Monday will allow the Trump administration to send National Guard troops into Oregon against the state’s wishes, hitting pause on a lower court’s order.

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Oct. 20, 2025, 1:45 PM EDTBy David CoxPeople with a leading cause of blindness were able to read again thanks to a tiny wireless chip implanted in the back of the eye and specialized augmented glasses, according to study results published Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The trial involved 38 European patients, all of whom had an advanced stage of dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) known as geographic atrophy. There is no cure for AMD, which is driven by changes in a part of the retina called the macula and caused by inflammation and a build-up of waste. The photoreceptor cells in the macula are responsible for producing sharp, detailed and colored vision. When the disease has progressed to the geographic atrophy stage, these cells deteriorate and die, and people lose their central vision — meaning that an object straight ahead may appear blurry or covered up with a dark blotch. Roughly 22 million people in the U.S. have AMD, and about 1 million have geographic atrophy, according to the American Macular Degeneration Foundation.In the study, the participants, who had an average age of 79, were fitted with the “PRIMA device,” a system meant to replicate vision. Patients wear augmented reality glasses embedded with a camera that captures their visual field. What the camera “sees” is transmitted to the chip implanted in their eye in the form of infrared light. The chip converts the light into an electrical current, which stimulates the remaining healthy cells in the macula in a realistic way, enabling signals these cells send to be interpreted by the brain as vision. An image processor, which the user must carry, lets patients zoom in and magnify the images they see, which appear in black and white.The image on the right shows what the camera sends to the user’s implanted microchip.Science Corporation With the help of the PRIMA device, 80% of the 32 patients who returned for a reassessment one year after the chip implantation had achieved clinically meaningful visual improvements. Patients did experience side effects, predominantly related to the surgical procedure: The study reported that 26 serious adverse events occurred in 19 of the patients, ranging from elevated blood pressure in the eye to an accumulation of blood around the retina. The majority of the adverse events resolved within two months of the implantation. “It’s the first ever therapeutic approach that has led to an improvement in visual function in this group of patients,” said Dr. Frank Holz, the trial’s lead investigator and chair of the department of ophthalmology at the University Hospital of Bonn in Germany. “Late-stage age-related macular degeneration is a dismal disease. Patients are no longer capable of reading, driving a car, watching TV or even recognizing faces. So [these results] are a game-changer in my mind.”One patient, Sheila Irvine, 70, who was fitted with the PRIMA device at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, said in a statement provided by the hospital that her life before receiving the implant was akin to “having two black discs in my eyes, with the outside distorted.” A self-described “avid bookworm” before losing her vision, Irvine said she was now able to do crosswords and read prescriptions.Dr. Sunir Garg, professor of ophthalmology at the retina service of Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, who was not involved in the study, said the results represent a breakthrough for patients with geographic atrophy. All doctors have been able to offer, he said, are visual aids, like magnifiers, and emotional support.“Even with new medical therapies, the best that we can do is slow it down,” said Garg, who works with several drugmakers involved in treatments for AMD, including Apellis Pharmaceuticals, the maker of pegcetacoplan. That drug, which slows the progression of geographic atrophy, was recently approved in the U.S. and must be injected into the eye every 1 to 2 months. “We can’t stop it, and we can’t do anything to bring back lost vision.” An actor wearing the PRIMA system glasses.Science CorporationDr. Demetrios Vavvas, director of the retina service at Mass Eye and Ear in Boston, who was also not involved in the study, said that the PRIMA system is not without limitations. Vavvas noted that the surgery required to implant the chip in the eye requires a high level of surgical skill and is not without risk. “You have to lift the retina off its normal position to implant this device, which increases the atrophy,” said Vavvas, who is a consultant to Sumitomo Pharmaceuticals, a company working on stem cell therapies for patients with other forms of vision loss. Vavvas said it was important to note that the device isn’t restoring normal vision, as patients were only able to see in black and white rather than color, and the trial participants had to undergo a significant amount of training in order to learn how to see with the PRIMA device. He also said that it wasn’t clear whether the enhancements in visual ability had significantly improved the patients’ quality of life.But at the same time, Vavvas was also optimistic about its future potential, describing the current iteration of PRIMA as a key stepping stone in the field of vision restoration. “Think of this device as the pre-release iPhone,” he said. “The limitations are clear. We shouldn’t oversell that the quality of life really improved. But there were certain [visual] tasks at which the patients were clearly better. So it shows to us that there is potential in this approach. It is still in some ways, a prototype. They’re working on iterations of this device that will be better.”New upgrades to the PRIMA device could be coming in the next couple of years. The PRIMA system was invented by Stanford University ophthalmology professor Daniel Palanker and is being developed by the California-based neural engineering company Science Corporation.Palanker said technical improvements are being made to increase the number of pixels in the chip from 400 to 10,000. The new chips have already been tested in rats, and the upgraded chips are being manufactured for future human trials. With the aid of the camera’s zoom function, Palanker said that this could theoretically enable patients to achieve 20/20 visual resolution.The microchip shown next to a penny.Science Corporation“We are also working on next generation software that will allow patients to perceive not just black-and-white text, but also grey-scale natural images, such as faces,” Palanker said.Palanker suggested that the technology could be trialed in other retinal diseases that cause blindness, such as Stargardt disease, which has similar symptoms to age-related macular degeneration but is genetic and usually affects younger people. Garg and Vavvas are eager to see larger trials that provide more details about how the device improves patients’ ability to function on a day-to-day basis. Vavvas suggested that future trials should include a control arm to understand the extent to which the device yields real-world benefits, for example compared to existing electronic magnifiers. “Is it something that is good enough for patients to say, ‘Well, I’ve regained my independence because I can now do my credit card bills myself, stamp and address my envelopes myself, and look at grocery store labels?’” Garg said. “Those kinds of practical things I would like to know more about.”“This is a chronic disease that you will have for life, so we need more than one year of follow-up to see other risks, other problems,” Vavvas said. “Does that signal of efficacy that we see at 12 months, remain two years later?”While Vavvas said he would not call the device a complete panacea for blindness, the study showed that brain-computer interfaces can represent an important approach to tackling different kinds of severe visual impairment. “As the iterations of this device become better and better, it could become a real solution for a cohort of patients,” he said. David CoxDavid Cox is a freelance journalist focusing on all aspects of health, from fitness and nutrition to infectious diseases and future medicines. Prior to becoming a full-time journalist, he was a neuroscientist attempting to understand how and why the brain goes wrong.

- Latest News - October 20, 2025

People with a leading cause of blindness were able to read again thanks to a tiny wireless chip implanted in the back of the eye and specialized augmented glasses, according.

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Oct. 20, 2025, 12:33 PM EDTBy Rebecca CohenThe news is out and the internet is thrilled: Colman Domingo will voice the Cowardly Lion in “Wicked: For Good.” “Wicked” director Jon M. Chu teased the news in a Thursday interview with Deadline, saying that it will be “wild” when the actor who is voicing the part — a major Hollywood star, per Chu — steps on the red carpet. But the news was instead revealed Monday, when the “Wicked” movie Instagram account posted a video of Domingo playing with and surrounded by a number of stuffed toy lions. “See you in Oz,” Domingo says in the video with a wink. Users on social media spent the weekend speculating who might be playing the part, with rumors centering on former late-night host and musical theater actor James Corden. When the news was announced Monday, those same users celebrated the casting — and the fact that the role didn’t go to Corden. “James Corden isn’t the lion in wicked! We won,” one X user posted. In order to book Domingo in the part originally made famous by Bert Lahr in the 1939 film adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz,” Chu told Deadline he sent the “Sing Sing” actor a direct message on Instagram. “I was like, ‘It’s not a ton of lines, but maybe you have a little time. I know you’re busy. I’ll come to you,'” Chu recalled saying in the message, according to Deadline. Chu said Domingo responded “‘Why the f— not, let’s go!’ And then we went ahead and recorded the lines.”Domingo joins an already star-studded cast, including Ariana Grande as Glinda, Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero. “Wicked: For Good,” the second in a two-part series, releases in theaters on Nov. 21. It will continue the story told in last year’s “Wicked.” The film is produced and will be distributed by Universal Pictures, which is owned by NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News.Rebecca CohenRebecca Cohen is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.

- Latest News - October 20, 2025

The news is out and the internet is thrilled: Colman Domingo will voice the Cowardly Lion in “Wicked: For Good.”

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