(RICHMOND, Va.) — A giant statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was removed in Richmond, Virginia, Wednesday, more than a year after the order from Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam.
The 12-ton, six-story monument on Monument Avenue, erected in the state capital in 1890, was deconstructed nearly one week after the Supreme Court of Virginia cleared the way for the removal following several legal battles.
Northam ordered the removal of the state-owned statue in June 2020, amid nationwide protests against symbols of racism and oppression that erupted following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis while in police custody.
“This is an important step in showing who we are and what we value as a Commonwealth,” Northam said in a statement.
Last week, the Supreme Court of Virginia denied or dissolved injunctive relief sought in two lawsuits challenging the statue’s removal — one filed by a descendant of the former owners of the land where the monument stands, the other by several owners and a trustee of property in the area’s historic district — allowing the state to move forward with its plans.
The removal is “extremely complex,” the state’s Department of General Services said, requiring “coordination with multiple entities to ensure the safety of everyone involved.” The removal process began Tuesday evening with crews installing protective fencing on the streets near the monument.
On Thursday, crews will remove plaques from the base of the monument. The 40-foot granite pedestal will remain for now, with its future still to be determined, the state said.
The statue itself will be held “in secure storage at a state-owned facility until a decision is made as to its disposition,” the state said.
This is the sixth and final Confederate statue to be removed from Monument Avenue.
“We are taking an important step this week to embrace the righteous cause and put the ‘Lost Cause’ behind us,” Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said in a statement. “Richmond is no longer the capital of the Confederacy. We are a diverse, open and welcoming city, and our symbols need to reflect this reality.”
Last year, the busts of Lee and eight other Confederate leaders were removed from the Old House Chamber in the Virginia State Capitol building in Richmond. The Fairfax County School Board has also changed the name of the Robert E. Lee High School in Springfield to the John R. Lewis High School, in honor of the late Georgia congressman and civil rights leader.
A great-great-great-nephew of Lee has previously said that taking down Confederate symbols in public spaces is a “no brainer.”
“I see them as idolatries,” Rev. Robert Lee IV told ABC News last year. “They have been created into idols of white supremacy and racism.”
Over 160 Confederate symbols were renamed or removed from public spaces in 2020, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
(NEW YORK) — The United States is facing a COVID-19 surge this summer as the more contagious delta variant spreads.
More than 650,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.5 million people have died from the disease worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Just 62.3% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Sep 08, 6:02 am
US surpasses 40 million cases and 650,000 deaths
The United States has recorded more than 40 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and over 650,000 deaths from the disease since the start of the pandemic, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
The U.S. surpassed the grim milestones on Tuesday, as the highly contagious delta variant continued to spread across the nation. The U.S. has reported more COVID-19 cases and deaths than any other country in the world.
Sep 07, 9:56 pm
Pediatric cases reach highest point of pandemic
The U.S. reported 251,781 COVID-19 cases among kids during the week ending Sept. 2 — the highest week of pediatric cases since the pandemic began, according to the weekly report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
After declining in the early summer, new cases among kids are rising “exponentially,” the organizations wrote, with the weekly figure now standing nearly 300 times higher than it was in June, when just 8,400 pediatric cases were reported over the span of one week.
Last week children represented 26.8% of all reported COVID-19 cases. Regionally, the South had the highest number pediatric cases, accounting for approximately 140,000 of last week’s cases.
The rate of pediatric hospital admissions per 100,000 people is also at one of its highest points of the pandemic, up by 600% since the 4th of July, according to federal data.
Severe illness due to COVID-19 remains “uncommon” among children, the two organizations wrote in the report. According to the nearly two dozen states which reported pediatric hospitalizations, 0.1%-1.9% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in hospitalization. Similarly, in states which reported virus-related deaths by age, 0.00%-0.03% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death.
However, the AAP and CHA warned that there is an urgent need to collect more data on the long-term consequences of the pandemic on children, “including ways the virus may harm the long-term physical health of infected children, as well as its emotional and mental health effects.”
About 37.7% of children ages 12 to 15 and 46.4% of adolescents ages 16 to 17 have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
Sep 07, 9:50 pm
About 1 in every 500 Americans has died from COVID
The country’s daily death average continues to surge, now standing at more than 1,100 deaths reported a day. This marks the nation’s highest average in nearly six months.
On Tuesday, the death toll crossed 650,000 Americans lost to the virus, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, meaning that 1 in every 504 Americans has died from the virus.
The U.S. COVID death toll is now more than 218 times higher than the number of lives lost during the U.S. attacks on Sept. 11. It is also rapidly approaching the total number of American deaths that were recorded during the 1918 influenza pandemic.
Prior to the Labor Day holiday, the U.S. daily case average stood around 150,000 cases a day. About a year ago, around Labor Day, the country was averaging about 38,000 new cases a day.
Sep 07, 6:36 pm
Tucson pauses vaccine mandate for city employees following AG legal threat
Tucson, Arizona, officials announced a pause on the city’s policy to require its public employees to receive a COVID-19 vaccine after Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich called it illegal and threatened to cut funding if the city went through with the plan.
Tuscon City Manager Michael Ortega said in a statement the city council is evaluating the mandate’s legal position.
“Until we have a better understanding of our legal position in relation to today’s report, I have instructed staff to pause on the implementation of the policy,” he said.
Brnovich said Tuscon’s rule violated Gov. Doug Ducey’s July executive order that banned any state or local office from requiring their staff get a vaccine against the coronavirus or any vaccine that has only received an emergency order.
“COVID-19 vaccinations should be a choice, not a government mandate,” he said in a statement.
Tucson Mayor Regina Romero said in a statement that the attorney general was “prioritizing his political ambitions over his responsibility to objectively interpret the law.”
As of Tuesday, over 606,000 residents in Pima County, Arizona, the county that includes Tucson, have had one COVID-19 shot, according to the Pima County Health Department. That represents roughly 56.7% of the county’s 1.07 million population, according to the U.S. Census numbers.
The county has recorded more than 4,000 new cases since Aug. 5, according to health department data.
Sep 07, 5:57 pm
Idaho hospital officials plead with public to get vaccinated as they run out of beds
Idaho hospital officials are pleading for the public to get vaccinated and take COVID-19 warnings seriously after the state declared a crisis in its standards of care.
Kootenai Health, a northern Idaho hospital, currently has 113 patients with COVID-19, an increase from the 90 patients they had last week, officials said. Administrators had to set up 22 beds in a conference room to deal with the influx of patients.
Dr. Robert Scoggins the chief of staff at Kootenai Health, said the hospital was not built for a pandemic this size. Currently, 39 patients are in the intensive care units and 19 are on ventilators, all on high levels of oxygen, he said.
The hospital said it could see as many as 140 patients in the coming weeks.
“The message that I’d like to send out to people is that we’re near the limit that we can handle in this facility,” Scoggins said in a news conference. “We’ve done a lot of things to expand our care to take care of more patients, but it keeps growing. If we had everyone in the community vaccinated, we would not be in this position.”
-ABC News’ Flor Tolentino and Nicholas Kerr
Sep 07, 4:00 pm
Louisiana hospital reports significant decline in number of patients
In hard-hit Louisiana, the Ochsner Health System is seeing a significant decline in COVID-19 patients, now down to 530 — dropping by nearly 250 patients in the last week, hospital CEO and president Warner Thomas said.
But in the wake of deadly Hurricane Ida, releasing patients from hospitals has been difficult, as some patients have no homes to return to, he said.
Sep 07, 3:30 pm
Oregon hospitals ‘scrambling’ with cases, hospitalizations ‘hovering at or near pandemic highs’
Hospitals in Oregon are “scrambling” to stay afloat with cases and hospitalizations “hovering at or near pandemic highs,” the state epidemiologist, Dean Sidelinger, said at COVID-19 briefing Tuesday.
Oregon saw 16,252 new cases in its most recent weekly report – which is 13 times higher than the reported cases for the week ending July 4, Sidelinger said.
Hospitalizations and intensive care unit admissions are “alarmingly high” and hospitals are at a “saturation point” where they aren’t “able to provide care to everyone arriving at their door,” Sidelinger warned.
Sep 07, 3:08 pm
Former NBA player on 10th day in ICU
Former Phoenix Suns and Los Angeles Lakers player Cedric Ceballos, 52, tweeted that he’s on his 10th day in the ICU battling COVID-19.
On my 10th day in ICU, COVID-19 is officially kicking my but, I am asking ALL family, friends , prayer warriors healers for your prayers and well wish for my recovery.
If I have done and anything to you in the past , allow me to publicly apologize.
My fight is not done…..
Thx pic.twitter.com/r9QZBpfmEI
Military medical personnel head to Idaho, Arkansas, Alabama
About 60 military medical personnel are heading in three, 20-person teams to Arkansas, Alabama and Idaho to help treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients following a request from FEMA, the U.S. Army North said.
The personnel, including doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists, were sent to hospitals in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Ozark, Alabama; and Little Rock, Arkansas.
Six teams had previously been dispatched to six other hospitals: three in Louisiana, two in Mississippi and one in Dothan, Alabama.
Sep 07, 1:43 pm
Crisis Standards of Care enacted as ‘last resort’ at 10 Idaho hospital systems
A Crisis Standards of Care plan has been enacted at 10 hospital systems in Idaho, which is only done as a “last resort,” Dave Jeppesen, director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, said in a statement Tuesday.
The hospitals were chosen due to their “severe” shortages in beds and staffing as a result of a “massive increase” in COVID-19 hospitalizations, state officials said.
Crisis Standards of Care “means we have exhausted our resources to the point that our healthcare systems are unable to provide the treatment and care we expect,” Jeppesen said. “This is a decision I was fervently hoping to avoid.”
“When crisis standards of care are in effect, people who need medical care may experience care that is different from what they expect,” state officials said. “For example, patients admitted to the hospital may find that hospital beds are not available or are in repurposed rooms (such as a conference room) or that needed equipment is not available.”
Sep 07, 12:37 pm
75% of American adults have had at least 1 vaccine dose
Seventy-five percent of U.S. adults have now had at least one vaccine dose, Cyrus Shahpar, the White House’s COVID-19 data director, tweeted Tuesday.
Sunday-Tuesday just in: +1.51M doses reported administered over Saturday’s total, including 681K newly vaccinated and 105K additional doses. As usual, lower reporting over the holiday weekend. Just hit 75% of adults with at least one dose!
Sixty-four percent of U.S. adults are fully vaccinated, according to CDC data.
Sep 07, 10:36 am
Biden to layout administration’s strategy to combat delta
President Joe Biden on Thursday will deliver remarks on his plan to stop the spread of the delta variant and to boost vaccinations, the White House confirmed Tuesday.
Biden “will lay out a six-pronged strategy … working across the public and private sectors,” a White House official said.
On Friday, while addressing August’s disappointing jobs report, Biden said, “there’s no question the delta variant is why today’s jobs report isn’t stronger. … Next week, I’ll lay out the next steps that are going to — we’re going to need to combat the delta variant, to address some of those fears and concerns.”
Part of the strategy Biden referenced Friday is to ask states and local governments to consider using federal funding to extend unemployment benefits in hard-hit areas.
“I want to talk about how we’ll further protect our schools, our businesses, our economy, and our families from the threat of delta,” Biden said Friday. “As we continue to fight the delta variant, the American Rescue Plan we passed continues to support families, businesses and communities. Even as some of the benefits that were provided are set to expire next week, states have the option to extend those benefits and the federal resources from the Rescue Plan to do so.”
Sep 07, 7:05 am
3rd person dies in Japan after receiving contaminated Moderna vaccine
A third person has died in Japan after receiving a dose from one of three batches of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine that have since been recalled due to contamination, according to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
The 49-year-old man died on Aug. 12, one day after getting his second shot of the two-dose vaccine. His only known health issue was an allergy to buckwheat, the Japanese health ministry said in a statement Monday.
Two other men, aged 30 and 38, also died in August within days of getting their second Moderna shot. In all three cases, the men received doses from a batch manufactured in the same production line as another lot from which some unused vials were reported to contain foreign substances at multiple inoculation sites in Japan.
The deaths remain under investigation, and the Japanese health ministry said it has yet to establish any casual relationship with the vaccine.
The contaminated lot and two adjacent batches were suspended from use by the Japanese health ministry last month, pending an investigation. Moderna and its Japanese distribution partner Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. ultimately recalled the three lots, containing about 1.63 million doses, after an investigation confirmed the foreign matter to be high-grade stainless steel from manufacturing equipment.
The Japanese health ministry said that, based on the companies’ analysis, it is unlikely the stainless steel contaminants pose any additional health risk.
Moderna and Takeda have yet to release statements on the third fatality, but the companies have previously said there is currently no evidence that the other two deaths were caused by the vaccine.
(GUANTANAMO BAY) — After over 560 days of delay, the drawn-out pretrial proceedings of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other detainees accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks got underway again on Tuesday. But it took only a matter of hours for the hearing to run into yet another speed bump.
Mohammed, the alleged architect of the terror plot, along with Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ammar al-Baluchi and Mustafa al Hawsawi, filed into the courtroom of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base’s “Camp Justice,” which hosts the military commissions, for the first time since the pandemic sidelined the military court.
Seated with their defense teams, the men talked amongst each other and appeared engaged in their cases. Mohammed, known in recent years for his vibrantly colored facial hair, sported a bright orange beard along with thick black glasses. Some of the other defendants wore paramilitary attire.
Each detainee spoke out only once during the hearing, affirming that they understood their rights. Mohammed answered “yes,” speaking in English. Bin al-Shibh also responded in English, while the other three men communicated through translators.
While Mohammed has a reputation for courtroom outbursts, in a twist, it was the judge who became the central focus of the day’s hearing.
As part of his debut on the bench in the proceedings, Col. Matthew McCall — who was named to preside over the case last month — conducted a review of his qualifications, opening himself up for questions from the prosecution and the defense.
One of Mohammed’s attorneys, Gary Sowards, latched on to McCall’s circuitous route to his appointment. McCall was initially selected to oversee the trial last year, but withdrew after prosecutors objected, citing his lack of experience. He was reinstated after completing two years as a military judge, meeting the minimum requirement for the war court.
Sowards questioned McCall on whether the prosecution’s complaints had resulted in undue influence over the judiciary, resulting in his temporary removal from the case. The defense argued that this allowed for another judge to step in and — after a prolonged legal fight — authorize the destruction of a CIA black site, a secret international prison where terror suspects were subjected to “enhanced interrogation tactics” like waterboarding, which many human rights organizations consider to be torture.
During the questioning, McCall remained level, describing the situation as legally ambiguous in his estimation, but went along with the withdrawal to avoid complicating an already very complicated case.
“Why create an appellate issue? There are other judges who could do this case,” he said.
But moments later, the prosecution interrupted, informing the bench of a newly issued Military Commission Review on the exact topic of discussion. It determined that McCall could preside, but that all of the decisions he made before clocking two years of experience would be undone — leaving only the ruling on the destruction of the black site in place.
McCall dismissed the court several hours ahead of schedule to allow both sides to regroup and strategize.
But James Connell, a civilian death penalty attorney representing al-Baluchi, needed little time to process the information.
“One of the most important issues in the case is how the torture of these men is going to ultimately affect the trial and trials mean evidence,” Connell told reporters on the base. “The intentional destruction of evidence takes away from the defense and really the American people, information about what actually happened.”
Connell said the defense plans to appeal the order, but lamented yet another delay in a trial that’s dragged on for nearly a decade.
“This order is one more example of why this process takes so long, because each issue has to be separately litigated,” he continued. “Things come up in this military commission that never come up anywhere else. Where else in the world does the Pentagon issue an order telling a judge how to decide a case? It just doesn’t happen anywhere else except here at Guantanamo.”
(NEW YORK) — The United States is facing a COVID-19 surge this summer as the more contagious delta variant spreads.
More than 649,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.5 million people have died from the disease worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Just 62% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Sep 07, 5:57 pm
Idaho hospital officials plead with public to get vaccinated as they run out of beds
Idaho hospital officials are pleading for the public to get vaccinated and take COVID-19 warnings seriously after the state declared a crisis in its standards of care.
Kootenai Health, a northern Idaho hospital, currently has 113 patients with COVID-19, an increase from the 90 patients they had last week, officials said. Administrators had to set up 22 beds in a conference room to deal with the influx of patients.
Dr. Robert Scoggins the chief of staff at Kootenai Health, said the hospital was not built for a pandemic this size. Currently, 39 patients are in the intensive care units and 19 are on ventilators, all on high levels of oxygen, he said.
The hospital said it could see as many as 140 patients in the coming weeks.
“The message that I’d like to send out to people is that we’re near the limit that we can handle in this facility,” Scoggins said in a news conference. “We’ve done a lot of things to expand our care to take care of more patients, but it keeps growing. If we had everyone in the community vaccinated, we would not be in this position.”
-ABC News’ Flor Tolentino and Nicholas Kerr
Sep 07, 4:00 pm
Louisiana hospital reports significant decline in number of patients
In hard-hit Louisiana, the Ochsner Health System is seeing a significant decline in COVID-19 patients, now down to 530 — dropping by nearly 250 patients in the last week, hospital CEO and president Warner Thomas said.
But in the wake of deadly Hurricane Ida, releasing patients from hospitals has been difficult, as some patients have no homes to return to, he said.
Sep 07, 3:30 pm
Oregon hospitals ‘scrambling’ with cases, hospitalizations ‘hovering at or near pandemic highs’
Hospitals in Oregon are “scrambling” to stay afloat with cases and hospitalizations “hovering at or near pandemic highs,” the state epidemiologist, Dean Sidelinger, said at COVID-19 briefing Tuesday.
Oregon saw 16,252 new cases in its most recent weekly report – which is 13 times higher than the reported cases for the week ending July 4, Sidelinger said.
Hospitalizations and intensive care unit admissions are “alarmingly high” and hospitals are at a “saturation point” where they aren’t “able to provide care to everyone arriving at their door,” Sidelinger warned.
Sep 07, 3:08 pm
Former NBA player on 10th day in ICU
Former Phoenix Suns and Los Angeles Lakers player Cedric Ceballos, 52, tweeted that he’s on his 10th day in the ICU battling COVID-19.
On my 10th day in ICU, COVID-19 is officially kicking my but, I am asking ALL family, friends , prayer warriors healers for your prayers and well wish for my recovery.
If I have done and anything to you in the past , allow me to publicly apologize.
My fight is not done…..
Thx pic.twitter.com/r9QZBpfmEI
Military medical personnel head to Idaho, Arkansas, Alabama
About 60 military medical personnel are heading in three, 20-person teams to Arkansas, Alabama and Idaho to help treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients following a request from FEMA, the U.S. Army North said.
The personnel, including doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists, were sent to hospitals in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Ozark, Alabama; and Little Rock, Arkansas.
Six teams had previously been dispatched to six other hospitals: three in Louisiana, two in Mississippi and one in Dothan, Alabama.
Sep 07, 1:43 pm
Crisis Standards of Care enacted as ‘last resort’ at 10 Idaho hospital systems
A Crisis Standards of Care plan has been enacted at 10 hospital systems in Idaho, which is only done as a “last resort,” Dave Jeppesen, director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, said in a statement Tuesday.
The hospitals were chosen due to their “severe” shortages in beds and staffing as a result of a “massive increase” in COVID-19 hospitalizations, state officials said.
Crisis Standards of Care “means we have exhausted our resources to the point that our healthcare systems are unable to provide the treatment and care we expect,” Jeppesen said. “This is a decision I was fervently hoping to avoid.”
“When crisis standards of care are in effect, people who need medical care may experience care that is different from what they expect,” state officials said. “For example, patients admitted to the hospital may find that hospital beds are not available or are in repurposed rooms (such as a conference room) or that needed equipment is not available.”
Sep 07, 12:37 pm
75% of American adults have had at least 1 vaccine dose
Seventy-five percent of U.S. adults have now had at least one vaccine dose, Cyrus Shahpar, the White House’s COVID-19 data director, tweeted Tuesday.
Sunday-Tuesday just in: +1.51M doses reported administered over Saturday’s total, including 681K newly vaccinated and 105K additional doses. As usual, lower reporting over the holiday weekend. Just hit 75% of adults with at least one dose!
Sixty-four percent of U.S. adults are fully vaccinated, according to CDC data.
Sep 07, 10:36 am
Biden to layout administration’s strategy to combat delta
President Joe Biden on Thursday will deliver remarks on his plan to stop the spread of the delta variant and to boost vaccinations, the White House confirmed Tuesday.
Biden “will lay out a six-pronged strategy … working across the public and private sectors,” a White House official said.
On Friday, while addressing August’s disappointing jobs report, Biden said, “there’s no question the delta variant is why today’s jobs report isn’t stronger. … Next week, I’ll lay out the next steps that are going to — we’re going to need to combat the delta variant, to address some of those fears and concerns.”
Part of the strategy Biden referenced Friday is to ask states and local governments to consider using federal funding to extend unemployment benefits in hard-hit areas.
“I want to talk about how we’ll further protect our schools, our businesses, our economy, and our families from the threat of delta,” Biden said Friday. “As we continue to fight the delta variant, the American Rescue Plan we passed continues to support families, businesses and communities. Even as some of the benefits that were provided are set to expire next week, states have the option to extend those benefits and the federal resources from the Rescue Plan to do so.”
Sep 07, 7:05 am
3rd person dies in Japan after receiving contaminated Moderna vaccine
A third person has died in Japan after receiving a dose from one of three batches of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine that have since been recalled due to contamination, according to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
The 49-year-old man died on Aug. 12, one day after getting his second shot of the two-dose vaccine. His only known health issue was an allergy to buckwheat, the Japanese health ministry said in a statement Monday.
Two other men, aged 30 and 38, also died in August within days of getting their second Moderna shot. In all three cases, the men received doses from a batch manufactured in the same production line as another lot from which some unused vials were reported to contain foreign substances at multiple inoculation sites in Japan.
The deaths remain under investigation, and the Japanese health ministry said it has yet to establish any casual relationship with the vaccine.
The contaminated lot and two adjacent batches were suspended from use by the Japanese health ministry last month, pending an investigation. Moderna and its Japanese distribution partner Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. ultimately recalled the three lots, containing about 1.63 million doses, after an investigation confirmed the foreign matter to be high-grade stainless steel from manufacturing equipment.
The Japanese health ministry said that, based on the companies’ analysis, it is unlikely the stainless steel contaminants pose any additional health risk.
Moderna and Takeda have yet to release statements on the third fatality, but the companies have previously said there is currently no evidence that the other two deaths were caused by the vaccine.
(WASHINGTON) — There are a “small number” of U.S. citizens in the northern Afghan city Mazar-e-Sharif who have been unable to evacuate on chartered flights, Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed Tuesday, but he said the Taliban had grounded the aircraft because others manifested for these flights did not have valid travel documents.
The chartered flights for approximately 600 people have been held at Mazar-e-Sharif’s airport for over a week now, according to sources who helped organize them, with at least 19 U.S. citizens waiting in the city to board and flee Afghanistan.
A top Republican lawmaker said Sunday these Americans and at-risk Afghans were essentially being held hostage by the Taliban – something that Blinken dismissed Tuesday.
The Taliban have publicly said they will allow safe passage for those who want to leave, but without international flights yet and with overland journeys dangerous, it’s been intensely difficult for those that were left behind by President Joe Biden’s evacuation operations.
Among them are at least 100 U.S. citizens, Blinken said Tuesday, adding that the State Department has been “in direct contact with virtually all of them. We have case-management teams assigned to them to make sure that those who want to leave can in fact do so.”
Four of those Americans were able to evacuate over land to a neighboring country, a senior State Department official confirmed to ABC News Monday, saying the department helped facilitate their travel.
The Taliban were aware and did not impede their transit, the official added. They declined to say which country the family of four arrived in, but said local U.S. embassy officials met them at the border and said they were in “good condition.”
Hours later, however, Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, who served as former President Donald Trump’s White House doctor, accused the State Department of “lying,” saying the agency “didn’t do a damn thing for these people for 12 days except almost get them killed repeatedly.”
“This is an attempt to save face by the administration for the Americans they left behind. This is a woman with three children from age 15 all the way down to two-years-old, and they did nothing to try to expedite this,” Curt Mills, a U.S. Army veteran and Trump appointee at the Pentagon, told Fox News. “It’s like we carried the ball to the 99-and-a-half yard line, and them taking it that last half yard and being like, ‘Look what we did.'”
The State Department declined to comment in response.
But Blinken said Tuesday the agency has been “working around the clock with NGOs, with members of Congress, and advocacy groups” and “conducting a great deal of diplomacy on this,” including with Taliban leaders.
That includes with the NGO Ascend, a Washington-based nonprofit dedicated to empowering women and girls through mountain climbing. Its CEO Marina LeGree told ABC News Sunday that its Afghan members are “among hundreds of individuals — including some American citizens — who have been blocked by the Taliban from leaving Mazar-e-Sharif by charter plane for six days” at that point — now going on eight.
Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, went further, telling Fox News Sunday that the Taliban had created a “hostage situation where they’re not going to allow American citizens to leave until they get full recognition from the United States of America.”
Blinken confirmed the State Department had identified “a relatively small number of Americans” in Mazar-e-Sharif with families trying to evacuate, but he denied there was “any hostage-like situation” or anyone held on aircraft or at the airport.
“It’s my understanding that the Taliban has not denied exit to anyone holding a valid document, but they have said that those without valid documents at this point can’t leave – but because all of these people are grouped together, that’s meant that flights have not been allowed to go,” he added.
Some critics have rejected that, saying the Biden administration must do more to get these flights off the ground and help these U.S. citizens and vulnerable Afghans. But Blinken said while they’re “doing all we can to clear any roadblocks… to make sure that charter flights carrying Americans or others to whom we have a special responsibility can depart Afghanistan safely,” the U.S. has limited ability to help.
“Without personnel on the ground, we can’t verify the accuracy of manifests, the identities of passengers, flight plans, or aviation security protocols, so this is a challenge, but one we are determined to work through,” he said Tuesday in Qatar, visiting with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to thank the Qatari government for its help hosting tens of thousands of evacuees.
Qatari teams have flown into Kabul late last week to make repairs at the international airport and negotiate with the Taliban to reopen it securely. Speaking alongside Blinken and Austin, Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told reporters the airport had resumed chartered flights for aid groups and United Nations officials, including the top U.N. aid official Martin Griffiths who visited and met with Taliban leaders Sunday.
“We are about to get everything operational very soon,” Al Thani added, saying negotiations were ongoing with the Taliban to ensure the airport’s management and security — less than two weeks after ISIS-K, the terror group’s branch in Afghanistan, said it attacked a gate and killed at least 182 people, including 13 U.S. service members.
(LA.) — The nation is still grappling with the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, which made landfall Aug. 29 and knocked out power to more than 1 million in Louisiana.
At least 69 people have died due to the storm — which hit Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane — as well as the devastation it left across eight states
In Louisiana, 13 have died due to the storm’s wrath. In the Northeast, at least 52 have died.
President Joe Biden will survey the damage of Ida’s remnants in New York and New Jersey on Tuesday.
“Just days after visiting Louisiana to see the damage from the storm there, President Biden will also highlight how one in three Americans live in counties that have been impacted by severe weather events in recent months,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. “Just over the summer, 100 million Americans have been impacted by extreme weather, obviously in the Northeast, out West with wildfires, and then in the Gulf Coast.”
Biden has touted the extreme weather as a critical reason why Congress should pass his infrastructure package.
Recovery efforts continue in the South, where 60% of the 948,000 Entergy utility customers who lost power finally had it restored, the company said Tuesday.
In Louisiana, 54% of customers who lost power have had lights return, but 322,000 remain with outages, and in New Orleans, 73% of customers who lost power had it restored and 55,000 customers remain in the dark, Entergy said.
A team of 26,000 workers are restoring downed and damaged power lines. However, some hard-hit areas including Lafourche Parish and Plaquemines Parish aren’t forecast to have power restored until Sept. 29, according to the company’s estimation.
In Louisiana and Mississippi, 30,679 poles, 36,469 spans of wire and 5,959 transformers were damaged or destroyed — that’s more than Katrina, Ike, Delta and Zeta combined.
Access to water remains a major problem in the state, with boil water advisories still in place in the parishes of Jefferson, Lafourche, St. Charles, St. Tammany, St. John the Baptist, Plaquemines and Tangipahoa.
More rain will is forecast to come down in Louisiana, further inundating the already saturated soil, with temperatures in the upper 80s, according to the National Weather Service.
Tuesday marks the last day for locals to evacuate to Ida shelters in northern Louisiana. Locals in need of shelter can go to one of eight pick-up locations for bus transportation.
About 14,000 people in Lafourche Parish were left homeless after Ida razed through and destroyed 75% of structures there.
“We are working feverishly, as hard as we can to get all people what they need to keep their lives going and to rebuild our community,” Lafourche Parish President Archie Chaisson said to CNN on Monday.
Nursing home deaths are also a mounting concern in the state.
Among those who died in Louisiana, seven were nursing home residents who were transferred to a warehouse in Independence and later died. Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry has opened an investigation into the deaths. The Louisiana Health Department is also investigating nursing homes that transferred patients there and ordered all of them to shut down Saturday. Only five of the seven deaths were confirmed by the state to be storm-related.
On Saturday, during wellness checks at eight New Orleans facilities, five nursing home residents were found dead, the city said in a news release. None of those have been confirmed to be storm-related. In response, the city determined all eight facilities were “unfit” and evacuated nearly 600 residents to hospitals and shelters.
Also in Louisiana, at least four people have died and 141 were treated in hospitals for carbon monoxide poisoning in the wake of Ida, according to the Louisiana Department of Health, prompting officials to urge the public for safe generator use.
Officials advise placing generators at least 20 feet away from a home and assure all air entry points near the unit and home are properly sealed.
(LA.) — The nation is still grappling with the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, which made landfall Aug. 29 and knocked out power to more than 1 million in Louisiana.
At least 71 people have died due to the storm — which hit Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane — as well as the devastation it left across eight states
In Louisiana, 15 have died due to the storm’s wrath. The Louisiana Health Department confirmed two more storm-related deaths Tuesday in St. Tammany Parish: a 68-year-old man who fell off a roof while making repairs to damage caused by Ida and a 71-year-old man who died due to a lack of oxygen during an extended power outage.
In the Northeast, at least 52 have died. The Harrison Police Department in Westchester County, New York, confirmed on Monday the recovery of a woman’s body who went missing during last week’s flooding.
President Joe Biden will survey the damage of Ida’s remnants in New York and New Jersey on Tuesday.
“Just days after visiting Louisiana to see the damage from the storm there, President Biden will also highlight how one in three Americans live in counties that have been impacted by severe weather events in recent months,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. “Just over the summer, 100 million Americans have been impacted by extreme weather, obviously in the Northeast, out West with wildfires, and then in the Gulf Coast.”
Biden has touted the extreme weather as a critical reason why Congress should pass his infrastructure package.
Recovery efforts continue in the South, where 60% of the 948,000 Entergy utility customers who lost power finally had it restored, the company said Tuesday.
In Louisiana, 54% of customers who lost power have had lights return, but 322,000 remain with outages, and in New Orleans, 73% of customers who lost power had it restored and 55,000 customers remain in the dark, Entergy said.
A team of 26,000 workers are restoring downed and damaged power lines. However, some hard-hit areas including Lafourche Parish and Plaquemines Parish aren’t forecast to have power restored until Sept. 29, according to the company’s estimation.
In Louisiana and Mississippi, 30,679 poles, 36,469 spans of wire and 5,959 transformers were damaged or destroyed — that’s more than Katrina, Ike, Delta and Zeta combined.
Access to water remains a major problem in the state, with boil water advisories still in place in the parishes of Jefferson, Lafourche, St. Charles, St. Tammany, St. John the Baptist, Plaquemines and Tangipahoa.
More rain will is forecast to come down in Louisiana, further inundating the already saturated soil, with temperatures in the upper 80s, according to the National Weather Service.
Tuesday marks the last day for locals to evacuate to Ida shelters in northern Louisiana. Locals in need of shelter can go to one of eight pick-up locations for bus transportation.
About 14,000 people in Lafourche Parish were left homeless after Ida razed through and destroyed 75% of structures there.
“We are working feverishly, as hard as we can to get all people what they need to keep their lives going and to rebuild our community,” Lafourche Parish President Archie Chaisson said to CNN on Monday.
Nursing home deaths are also a mounting concern in the state.
Among those who died in Louisiana, seven were nursing home residents who were transferred to a warehouse in Independence and later died. Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry has opened an investigation into the deaths. The Louisiana Health Department is also investigating nursing homes that transferred patients there and ordered all of them to shut down Saturday. Only five of the seven deaths were confirmed by the state to be storm-related.
On Saturday, during wellness checks at eight New Orleans facilities, five nursing home residents were found dead, the city said in a news release. None of those have been confirmed to be storm-related. In response, the city determined all eight facilities were “unfit” and evacuated nearly 600 residents to hospitals and shelters.
Also in Louisiana, at least four people have died and 141 were treated in hospitals for carbon monoxide poisoning in the wake of Ida, according to the Louisiana Department of Health, prompting officials to urge the public for safe generator use.
Officials advise placing generators at least 20 feet away from a home and assure all air entry points near the unit and home are properly sealed.
(WASHINGTON) — Howard University canceled classes on Tuesday after it was hit with a ransomware attack, the Washington, D.C., the school said in a statement.
The HBCU said it has been working to fully address the incident and restore operations “but please consider that remediation, after an incident of this kind, is a long haul – not an overnight solution.”
Officials said the physical campus will be open to essential staff, but campus WiFi will be down.
“This is a highly dynamic situation, and it is our priority to protect all sensitive personal, research and clinical data,” the university said. “We are in contact with the FBI and the D.C. city government, and we are installing additional safety measures to further protect the University’s and your personal data from any criminal ciphering.”
The FBI has not responded to an ABC News request for comment, and neither the university nor law enforcement has identified who is behind the attack.
Howard said there has been no evidence that personal data has been stolen – but it is continuing to work with partners to find out what exactly happened.
Last week, the FBI and the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned companies to be vigilant and on alert for ransomware attacks over the Labor Day weekend.
The agencies noted that the past two major cyber attacks have occurred over a holiday weekend – noting that, leading into the Mother’s Day weekend, the Colonial Pipeline was hacked, over Memorial Day weekend meat supplier JBS was hacked and over the Fourth of July weekend IT management company Kaseya was hacked.
The FBI and CISA noted in 2020 they received 791,790 complaints about targeting which is a record, and they are seeing the trend continue in 2021.
From January to July 31, 2021, the FBI has received 2,084 ransomware complaints with over $16.8M in losses, a 62% increase in reporting and 20% increase in reported losses compared to the same time frame in 2020.
“The destructive impact of ransomware continues to evolve beyond encryption of IT assets. Cyber criminals have increasingly targeted large, lucrative organizations and providers of critical services with the expectation of higher value ransoms and increased likelihood of payments,” the notice released Aug. 31 said. “Cyber criminals have also increasingly coupled initial encryption of data with a secondary form of extortion, in which they threaten to publicly name affected victims and release sensitive or proprietary data exfiltrated 1 This number includes only those victims who have provided information to IC3 before encryption, to further encourage payment of ransom.”
(NEW YORK) — President Joe Biden on Tuesday continued his tour of damage caused by Hurricane Ida, traveling to New York and New Jersey to see first-hand the devastation the massive storm inflicted on the Northeast.
The president will reprise his role as consoler in chief, meeting with local leaders to get a briefing on the damage to the area, and touring a neighborhood in Manville, New Jersey, before heading to Queens in New York to tour the damage there, and deliver remarks.
“He will receive an update on recovery efforts and underscore the commitment to providing the federal government’s full support for communities impacted by the storm,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki previewed.
“He’ll also meet with families and first responders to hear firsthand about the devastation,” she added.
Biden will be joined by FEMA Administrator Criswell, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, and members of New York and New Jersey’s congressional delegations. While on the ground, the president will make the case for his $1 trillion infrastructure bill that recently passed the Senate with bipartisan support, in addition to a $3.5 trillion social spending bill that comprises his ‘build back better’ agenda — arguing that the extreme weather events affecting the country highlight the need for major investments.
“The average cost of extreme weather are getting bigger, and no one is immune from climate change. That’s what you’ll hear him talk about in his remarks today, as well as his belief, based on a lot of data and studies, that every dollar that we invest saves $6 down the road in these communities as we’re preparing for extreme weather events,” Psaki told reporters on the way to New Jersey Tuesday.
“He’ll also make the case as to why this is the reason, one of the reasons, as we’re looking at these extreme weather events around the country, that it’s so imperative we act on addressing the climate crisis and investing in — addressing those through his Build Back Better agenda, which is working its way through Congress.”
Tuesday’s trip follows the president’s trip to Louisiana’s gulf coast Friday where Hurricane Ida made landfall, where he made similar arguments for his policy proposals currently working their way through Congress.
“Things are changing so drastically in terms of the environment,” the president said Friday. “We’ve already crossed certain thresholds. We can’t build back a road, a highway, a bridge or anything to what it was before. I mean, you got to build back to what it is now, what’s needed now.”
The White House has continued to highlight the federal response to the devastating storm that has claimed the lives of at least 68 people across 8 states. Over the weekend, President Biden approved emergency declarations for New York and New Jersey to provide federal aid to the recovery efforts in impacted areas.
“This was a historic storm, deadly. Tragically the loss of 27 lives, four still missing, small businesses, and roadways, and in some cases schools. First responders were extraordinarily heroic, but there is a significant loss associated with this storm. We’ll do all that we can in the state, but we need the federal government in a big way,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said in an interview with CBS News on Sunday.
(NEW YORK) — The United States is facing a COVID-19 surge this summer as the more contagious delta variant spreads.
More than 649,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.5 million people have died from the disease worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Just 62% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Sep 07, 7:05 am
3rd person dies in Japan after receiving contaminated Moderna vaccine
A third person has died in Japan after receiving a dose from one of three batches of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine that have since been recalled due to contamination, according to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
The 49-year-old man died on Aug. 12, one day after getting his second shot of the two-dose vaccine. His only known health issue was an allergy to buckwheat, the Japanese health ministry said in a statement Monday.
Two other men, aged 30 and 38, also died in August within days of getting their second Moderna shot. In all three cases, the men received doses from a batch manufactured in the same production line as another lot from which some unused vials were reported to contain foreign substances at multiple inoculation sites in Japan.
The deaths remain under investigation, and the Japanese health ministry said it has yet to establish any casual relationship with the vaccine.
The contaminated lot and two adjacent batches were suspended from use by the Japanese health ministry last month, pending an investigation. Moderna and its Japanese distribution partner Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. ultimately recalled the three lots, containing about 1.63 million doses, after an investigation confirmed the foreign matter to be high-grade stainless steel from manufacturing equipment.
The Japanese health ministry said that, based on the companies’ analysis, it is unlikely the stainless steel contaminants pose any additional health risk.
Moderna and Takeda have yet to release statements on the third fatality, but the companies have previously said there is currently no evidence that the other two deaths were caused by the vaccine.
