Explosion Destroys Fertility Clinic In Palm Springs, At Least 1 Dead
A large explosion destroyed a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California on Saturday and killed at least one person.
Firefighters responded to the scene at American Reproductive Centers at around 11 a.m. The explosion could be heard by people in at least a 2-mile radius, The Desert Sun reported.
Lt. William Hutchinson with the Palm Springs Police Department told the publication there appears to be at least one fatality. A law enforcement source also told NBC News that one person has died.
Photos and video of the scene posted to social media show rubble and debris scattered around and the wall of the building blown out.
The clinic, which opened in 2006, is a full-service fertility center and in vitro fertilization lab, according to its website. Reviews of the clinic on Google are overwhelmingly positive, with several people praising the clinic for helping them start families.
The clinic was closed Saturday and it's unclear if the building was targeted.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Fugitive dad accused of killing his 3 daughters googled ‘how to relocate to Canada' before vanishing, affidavit reveals
A 32-year-old Army veteran accused of murdering his three young daughters in rural Washington State had searched the internet a few days earlier for information on how to quietly slip across the border into Canada, according to a U.S. Marshals Service affidavit obtained first by The Independent. Authorities began searching last Friday for sisters Paityn Decker, 9; Evelyn Decker, 8; and Olivia Decker, 5, after they didn't return from a scheduled visitation with dad Travis Caleb Decker. On Monday afternoon, Decker's 2017 GMC Sierra pickup was found near the Rock Island Campground in Chelan County, Washington. The bodies of all three girls were found about 75 to 100 yards away, their wrists zip-tied and a bag over each of their heads, apparently suffocated, police said. Decker, however, was nowhere to be found. Over the next two days, investigators 'obtained and served multiple search warrants for records contained in Decker's Google accounts,' the Marshals' affidavit states. 'I reviewed the Google-provided records containing some of the Google searches that occurred on 05/26/2025 using Decker's Google account,' Deputy U.S. Marshal Keegan Stanley wrote. 'These Google searches included the following: 'how does a person move to canada,' 'how to relocate to canada' … and 'jobs canada.' After the above-listed Google searches, he visited the site 'Find a job - The affidavit notes that the children's remains were found 'relatively close to the Canadian border and approximately 11 miles from the Pacific Crest Trail, a well-established trail that leads directly to Canada.' Decker, who is now wanted on three counts each of first-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping, has 'training in navigation, woodland/mountainous terrain, long distance movements, survival and numerous other disciplines needed to be able to flee,' the affidavit goes on. He is also facing an additional federal charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. 'Prior to the above alleged crimes, Decker frequently recreated in outdoor, woodland and mountainous areas throughout the Eastern District of Washington and surrounding states,' it says. 'Amongst other outdoorsman activities, Decker frequently engaged in hiking, camping, survival skill practice, hunting and even lived off the grid in the backwoods for approximately 2.5 months on one occasion.' The affidavit points out that the charges against Decker 'are all very serious violent felonies which all carry significant prison sentences if convicted,' and that 'those facing significant prison sentences have a propensity' to flee. In the aftermath of the triple homicide, a 'very public national campaign to locate Decker,' was launched, and 'it is publicly known there is a warrant for his arrest,' the affidavit states. Attorney Arianna Cozart, who represents Decker's ex, Whitney, said Thursday that there had been 'no red flags' leading up to the death of the three girls. At the same time Decker reportedly struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder and was unable to access sufficient resources to deal with it. 'He had some mental health issues and some instability in his life that really led to the restrictions as far as overnight visitation or him taking them out of the area, but other than that, he loved those girls very much and him and Whitney were able to communicate on a regular basis, not just as co-parents, but as friends,' Cozart told ABC News. Cozart did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. A GoFundMe campaign set up four days ago by a longtime friend of Whitney Decker has so far raised more than $1 million. In it, organizer Amy Edwards, the music director of a local Shakespeare program who taught the Decker children, said their 'joy touched so many.' 'Their loss is unimaginable, but the compassion we've received from this community and beyond has brought light into this darkness,' the GoFundMe page tells prospective donors. 'Thank you for continuing to hold Whitney close in your hearts. Your support is not only helping her through this tragedy, it's also carrying forward the love and spirit her daughters brought into the world.' Decker's current location is unknown, the Marshals' affidavit says. Authorities have asked anyone who lives in a remote area of Chelan, Kittitas, King, Snohomish, and Okanogan counties to lock all of their doors, secure any sheds or outbuildings, and leave their window blinds open and outside lights on. 'Due to safety concerns do not attempt to contact or approach Decker,' the Chelan County Sheriff's Office said in a news release. Decker is white, 5-feet, 8-inches tall and190 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. He was last seen wearing a light-colored shirt and dark shorts. Anyone with information about his whereabouts is asked to call 911 or submit an online tip to the Chelan County Sheriff's Office.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Trump says he has no evidence to justify his unprecedented Biden investigation
Late Wednesday, Donald Trump broke new ground, directing the Justice Department to launch a wide-ranging investigation into Joe Biden and officials in the Democrat's administration, based on Republican conspiracy theories about the former president's mental health. It was an unprecedented move: An incumbent American president had never before publicly ordered a federal probe of his predecessor. There was a degree of irony to the circumstances. After his defeat in the 2020 election, Trump spent years insisting that Biden had ordered an investigation into him — an odd conspiracy theory for which there is literally no evidence. As of this week, it's Trump who's doing exactly what he falsely accused his predecessor of doing. The day after the incumbent president delivered his directive to Attorney General Pam Bondi, as NBC News reported, a reporter asked Trump a good question. Trump said he does not have evidence to support his claims of illegal autopen use during the Biden administration. Asked by NBC News whether he has uncovered any evidence that anything specific was signed without Biden's knowledge or that someone in the former president's administration acting illegally, Trump said, 'No.' The Republican specifically said, 'No, but I've uncovered, you know, the human mind. I was in a debate with the human mind.' He went on to say, 'So, you know, it's just one of those things.' In other words, as far as Trump is concerned, he debated Biden last year; the Democrat struggled; so the Justice Department should investigate the former president and his team to see if White House aides secretly signed laws, orders, directives and pardons without Biden's knowledge. In this country, federal law enforcement is supposed to launch investigations when presented with evidence of wrongdoing. As of now, however, the Trump administration is less concerned with the existence of evidence and more concerned with a president who believes he's 'uncovered, you know, the human mind.' I can appreciate why this might seem like the latest in a series of head-shaking 'Trump being Trump' stories, but it has a broader significance. A sitting American president, effectively by his own admission, just ordered the attorney general to launch an unprecedented fishing expedition against a former American president because on the basis of a flubbed debate performance. What's more, this week's White House offensive marked the third time in three months that Trump has ordered baseless investigations into Americans he perceives as political foes. The story was soon eclipsed by dozens of other administration controversies, but in April, Trump signed two first-of-their-kind executive orders targeting a pair of officials from his first term who defied him. There was barely a pretense in the orders that the targeted former officials — Christopher Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and Miles Taylor, a former high-ranking Department of Homeland Security official — had done anything wrong. Indeed, the closer one looked at the stated rationales in support of the directives, the more ridiculous they appeared. Nevertheless, the president directed Pam Bondi and the Department of Homeland Security to launch a 'review' into Krebs, while simultaneously ordering DHS to investigate Taylor. A week later, The New York Times' Jonathan Swan reminded White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, 'The president has long said that it would be an abuse of power for a president to direct prosecutors to investigate him. Last week, President Trump explicitly directed the Justice Department to scrutinize Chris Krebs to see if it can find any evidence of criminal wrongdoing. How is that not an abuse of power, to direct the Justice Department to look into an individual, a named individual?' Leavitt struggled badly to defend Trump's move, and for good reason: The directives were indefensible. That did not, however, stop the Republican president from pushing the problem to a new level by going after his immediate predecessor. I can appreciate why the media landscape is crowded, but I continue to believe this should be more than a one-day story. Trump — who ran on an authoritarian platform, who's trying to concentrate power while expressing indifference to the rule of law — has now ordered three investigations into Americans he doesn't like. He has an enemies list, and he's using the power of the presidency to target people on that list, despite the inconvenient fact that there's no evidence whatsoever of actual wrongdoing. If the pushback is muted, Trump will do what he's always done: assume that he can get away with such an abuse, while preparing to go even further down the same radical and dangerous path. Not to put too fine a point on this, but if the president can sic the Justice Department on his critics and perceived enemies and this isn't seen as a dramatic scandal, who'll be next? How far down his enemies list will he go? I'm reminded anew of J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative legal scholar put on the federal bench by President George H.W. Bush who published a Bluesky thread on the orders against Krebs and Taylor, calling them 'shameful' and 'constitutionally corrupt' and accused Trump of 'palpably unconstitutional conduct.' The more routine this becomes, the greater the severity of the offense. This post updates our related earlier coverage. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Opinion - Progressives push anti-Israel activism, are surprised by antisemitic violence that follows
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is running for cover. After the horrific attack on Jews in Boulder, Colo., the Minnesota representative issued the kind of bland statement meant to deflect blame, posting this on X: 'I'm holding the victims and families in Boulder, Colorado in my heart. Violence against anyone is never acceptable. We must reject hatred and harm in all its forms.' As some noted, it took nearly 24 hours for Omar to issue even that statement, which notably failed to mention that the victims were Jews and the suspect is an Egyptian Muslim who attacked them while shouting 'Free Palestine.' A video has now surfaced in which the accused assailant ranted about his faith, saying 'Allahu Akbar.' After he firebombed a group of Jews, he told investigators he wanted to 'kill all Zionist people.' One of the victims, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor, asked NBC News, 'What the hell is going on in our country?' It's a question everyone should be asking. Here's part of the answer: It is a very easy hop from college students intimidating Jewish students and chanting about Intifada and a Muslim man trying to murder Jews. It is similarly but a short leap from Omar, who applauded anti-Israel student protesters at Columbia University for being 'brave and patriotic,' voted against an antisemitism resolution in the U.S. House and suggested to aggrieved people acting out of anger that some Jewish students are just 'pro-genocide.' It is also easy to connect student demonstrations with terrorism. For the first time, a protester at Columbia University — an outsider arrested for hate crimes against Jews — has been linked to Hamas. He won't be the last. In recent months we have witnessed not only the hideous attempt to burn Jews alive in Boulder, but also the firebombing of Jewish Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro's home and the cold-blooded murder of two young Jewish people at the Jewish Capital Museum in Washington. All three suspects expressed anti-Israel sentiments, with the alleged perpetrator of the latter killings shouting 'free, free Palestine' after he shot the victims 21 times. The Anti-Defamation League reports that 2024 saw a record number of antisemitic attacks, up 344 percent over the past five years. This is intolerable. Radicalized students at some of our top schools are part of the problem. Recently, MIT's graduation was marred by a student speaker, Megha Vemuri, who donned the politically symbolic keffiyeh and told the commencement audience, 'We are watching Israel try to wipe out Palestine off the face of the earth, and it is a shame that MIT is a part of it.' She also accused MIT of complicity 'in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.' Writing in the Times of Israel, one alum panned the speech as a 'trite, TikTok-depth graduation speech on a tragic issue of devastating complexity'; she condemned the administration for not informing the audience of myriad programs funded by MIT that improves the lives and futures of Palestinians. MIT's president, Sally Kornbluth, did not defend the university or refute Vemuri's incendiary language; instead, she stepped to the podium and said, 'At MIT, we believe in freedom of expression. But today is about the graduates.' Not, apparently, about the Jewish graduates. A Jew graduating with a Ph.D in cryptography posted on X: 'I finally got my PhD from @MIT, with my 5-year-old twins, my 2-year-old and my parents (children of Holocaust survivors) traveling halfway around the world just to be there. Instead, MIT's student commencement speaker decided it was appropriate to use the moment for hate-filled rhetoric against Israelis and Jews … too many in the crowd erupted with cheers and anger. My kids might not have understood every word, but they felt the fear and hostility. … How could @MIT let this happen? How, indeed. It is not only schools that are allowing anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hatred to spiral out of control; because the fever is being staunchly condemned by the Trump White House, the media has gone mushy. After the Boulder incident, USA Today ran a sob-sister piece about the offspring of the Egyptian man who tried to burn Jews alive with the headline: 'Boulder suspect's daughter dreamed of studying medicine. Now she faces deportation.' After receiving massive blowback, USA Today quietly revised the offensive piece. Increasingly, it is progressives like Omar who are responsible for surging antisemitism. Apologists claim that supporting Palestine and opposing Israel do not constitute antisemitism. Perhaps they would not in in isolation, but the protesters have taken pains to muddy the waters as much as possible. As the New York Times recently noted, 'the sprawling protest movement against the war in Gaza has scrambled efforts to distinguish opposition to the actions of the Israeli government, or even to the state of Israel itself, from hostility to Jews. Critics of the protesters have argued that slogans like 'globalize the Intifada' are thinly veiled calls for violence in any Jewish space.' A rabbi in Boulder was quoted by the Times writing, 'Jews in America have mostly felt the threats of antisemitism from the far right in the form of White Supremacy, yet now many of us have experienced hatred, bigotry and intolerance from progressives, those who many of us have considered friends and allies.' In City Journal, Charles Fain Lehman writes, 'The American radical anti-Israel movement has built the intellectual scaffolding for—and in many cases all but invited—the violence now playing out in places like Boulder. When you call for 'Intifada,' you cannot feign surprise when someone takes that call literally. Whatever your legal right to speak, that is the outcome you invoked.' Lehman is correct: The Intifada is here and must be confronted. Our government must protect free speech criticizing Israel or supporting Palestine, but it must also deploy all resources to punish acts of violence — including on college campuses — before more people get hurt. If it were blacks or Asians under attack, we would not have to defend efforts to stave off hate crimes. Jews should be afforded the same protections. Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim and Company. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
