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(SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO) — There is a side of Puerto Rico that many Americans may not know about.

The tropical paradise is best known for its colorful buildings, cobblestone-lined streets, lush forests and sun-drenched beaches. But hidden in plain sight are also signs of a booming industry that has overtaken much of the island for decades.

Manufacturing industries were lured to the island in the1960s and 1970s, after a now-expired federal tax incentive known Section 936 exempted businesses from federal income tax on profits earned by U.S. companies in U.S. territories.

The more businesses came ashore, the more it affected the quality of life for residents on the island, some residents told ABC News.

A town called Barceloneta, located on the island’s north shore, is so synonymous with the pharmaceutical industry that there is a sign that says “Pharmaceutical Town” when you enter, “because there are pharmaceutical companies everywhere,” a resident named Joeli told ABC News. Real estate listings for office buildings tout the municipality as the “preferred Pharmaceutical town of Puerto Rico.”

Puerto Rico accounted for 19.3% of the $66 billion in pharmaceuticals the U.S. exported in 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics.

The island acting as one of the country’s top producers of pharmaceuticals has brought numerous economic benefits for the island and its residents, but it has also come at significant cost, advocates told ABC News.

“Puerto Rico, in many cases, has become kind of an engine of manufacturing drugs that can go directly to the U.S.,” Julio Lopez Varona, the co-chief of campaigns at the Center for Popular Democracy, told ABC News.

The influx of business, in continuation with a government development program touted as “Operation Bootstrap” that began in the 1940s, was supposed to create jobs for locals on the island, Ruth Santiago, an attorney based in Salinas, Puerto Rico, and an environmental health advocate with Earth Justice, told ABC News.

“Puerto Rico, since 1898, has been a colony of the United States. And since then, the U.S. has kind of manipulated Puerto Rico’s economy to benefit the needs and the wants of the U.S.,” Varona said.

In addition, the industrial parks created by the government, which involved multiple plant sites placed in the same area, have had a long history of water violations, Santiago said.

In April 2020, Teva Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients was fined more than $500,000 for alleged Clean Water Act and other environmental violations at its pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in Guayama, Puerto Rico. The plant shut operations after TAPI struggled to come into compliance, Jose Rivera, lead environmental engineer of multimedia permits and compliance branch of the Caribbean Environmental Protection Division, told ABC News.

“After TAPI closed, which was around 2017, we found out that there was also pollution to the groundwater coming from this plant,” Santiago said.

When asked for comment, a representative for Teva Pharmaceuticals, TAPI’s parent company, told ABC News, “While Teva did not admit liability, the Company has resolved all of the claims raised at that time.”

And one mile away is the Fiber Public Supply Wells super fund site, created over 20 years ago and for which six different manufacturing companies were found responsible for the pollution from the solvents that they used, according to Santiago. Because it is so difficult to remove pollutants from groundwater, the EPA says the remediation efforts take a very long time but that monitoring indicates that the pollutants are contained.

The environmental effects from manufacturing activity on the island are expected to require treatment and monitoring for decades to come, the experts said.

But several residents told ABC News that the pharmaceutical and manufacturing industries provide much-needed jobs for locals. The environmental detriments of industry are “part of the deal,” Varona said.

“I have very close friends that have been able to kind of build their lives around pharmaceuticals,” Varona said, “It has been an economic kind of opportunity for, for many people.”
 

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(KANSAS CITY, Mo.) — Ralph Yarl, a 16-year-old teen who was shot by a homeowner after he accidentally arrived at the wrong address to pick up his siblings – may be a victim of “adultification,” according to researchers.

Adultification refers to the racial bias in which people perceive Black children as older and less innocent than white children.

Research has shown that people often perceive young Black males as bigger and more physically threatening than young white males of the same size.

Studies also found that Black children are more likely to be seen as adult-like, less in need of protection, and perceived as angry when they’re not.

This can have devastating consequences, leading to discrimination and even violence against Black children, according to researchers. Several researchers referred to the bias as “dehumanizing” for Black people.

“This country, unfortunately, has a history of dehumanizing the Black body, the Black family and taking away those freedoms that should be enjoyed by everybody,” said Alison Cooke, a statistician at the UCLA-Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, in an interview with ABC News.

Some researchers are speculating how much of a role adultification plays in the perception of Black youth in the aftermath of Yarl’s shooting. They say Black children are not afforded the ability to be a child, make mistakes or be granted the benefit of the doubt.

Yarl was picking up his siblings when he unknowingly arrived at the wrong address, according to officials.

Yarl told police he parked in the driveway, went to the front door, “pressed the doorbell and waited outside the front door,” according to the probable cause statement.

The homeowner, Andrew Lester, an 84-year-old white man, told police he had just laid down in bed when he heard the doorbell ring. Armed with a handgun, Lester told police he approached the front door of his home, which has an interior door and exterior glass door – both of which were locked.

Lester told police he opened the interior door, and saw a Black male “approximately 6 feet tall” pulling on the exterior storm door handle. He stated he believed someone was attempting to break into the house, and “shot twice within a few seconds of opening the door,” the statement read.

Yarl told police “he did not pull on the door.” He told police he was “immediately shot in the head and fell to the ground” and he got up and ran, during which Lester allegedly said “don’t come around here.”

“When I think about what the shooter has said about Ralph, there’s an automatic assumption that he is an intruder,” said T. Elon Dancy, Chief Research Scientist of the Center for Urban Education in the University of Pittsburgh School of Education, in an interview with ABC News.

Dancy says that adultification paints Black children as “someone who was up to no good and is a potential intruder.”

Researchers Cooke and Amy Halberstadt, a psychology professor at North Carolina State University, noted Lester’s reference to Yarl’s size.

Halberstadt’s research found that Black boys are more likely perceived to be larger than white boys, despite no real size differences found between the males in the study.

Lester has been charged with one count of felony assault in the first degree and one felony count of armed criminal action. He is expected to appear in court Wednesday.

The suspect told police “it was the last thing he wanted to do, but he was ‘scared to death’ due to the male’s size,” his own age, and his “inability to defend himself.”

Researchers say these comments bring to mind the findings from a study about Black males being seen as more threatening than same-sized white males.

Yarl’s shooting reminds some of the Trayvon Martin case, which was a catalyst for the early stages of the Black Lives Matter movement

Martin, a 17-year-old Black teen, was fatally shot in 2012 by George Zimmerman, a man who followed Martin during his walk home from the store because, Zimmerman said, he believed Martin was suspicious.

Zimmerman was acquitted on all charges connected to Martin’s death in July 2013 after asserting self defense.

Sybrina Fulton, Martin’s mother, used her platform to remind people that Martin was a child after his death, said Dancy.

Dancy believes Martin’s youth got lost in the trial in which Zimmerman labeled Martin a “punk” and one of “these —holes” in the 911 call he made while following Martin.

Dancy believes those descriptors “are not the ways that we talked about children who are taking a walk to a neighborhood store to get Skittles and something to drink,” which is what Martin was said to have been doing that night.

How adultification impacts Black children

Adultification has a legacy of slavery and represents the perpetuation of racist stereotypes, researchers say.

“We have hundreds and hundreds of years of cultivating racism in our country, and instilling fear among the white population against the Black population,” said Halberstadt in an interview with ABC News.

She continued, “When Blacks were enslaved people, white slave owners had to justify why they had slaves and to justify the chains and harsh consequences – so in that goal, they completely dehumanized people. But they also created a world of fear that we still have today.”

In a University of California, Los Angeles study, it was found that Black children were considered significantly less innocent than children in every age group starting at age 10.

As a result, Black children are 18 times more likely than white children to be criminally sentenced as adults rather than children, according to a study in the Personality and Social Psychology journal.

Black children are also much more likely to be suspended from school and receive harsher punishments for the same infractions than white children, according to research published by the American Psychological Association under the assumptions backed by adultification.

Black youth are also more likely to face police violence if accused of a crime, the UCLA study found.

“Black youth — female and male — are being dehumanized and not afforded the protection that we typically give children in this country,” said Carmen M. Culotta, a research associate at the University of Cincinnati Evaluation Services Center. “It could lead to the perpetration of violence against them because you see black male children and adolescents as a threat.”

The compounding impacts of adultification can impact the community’s education, mental health, safety, overpolicing of Black communities, and more.

Researchers told ABC News that the harmful stereotypes of Black people that perpetuate adultification need to be continuously acknowledged, challenged and dismantled to prevent further instances of Black children being killed for being perceived as a threat.

“In the case of Ralph Yarl, it is proving to us that we still have a long march toward freedom and justice,” said Dancy.

“This isn’t something that should just be a burden of the Black community. It needs to be acknowledged by the white parents,” Cooke said.

She continued, “Everyone who wants to engage in this society should be acknowledging: Where did these biases come from and how can we, in our everyday lives, not act on the bias? How do you take that extra step?”

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(NEW YORK) — A New York City parking garage that partially collapsed on Tuesday will carefully be demolished as investigators search for the cause of the structural collapse that killed one and injured five others, officials said.

More than 50 cars were parked on the roof of the four-story Lower Manhattan building when it collapsed Tuesday afternoon, sending cars plummeting and killing one worker whose body remains trapped in the debris, officials said Wednesday.

Gas tanks and electric vehicles in the debris are complicating the deconstruction process.

“This is an incredibly complex operation,” emergency management commissioner Zach Iscol said during a press briefing Wednesday. “The building is not structurally sound.”

The city is working to “safely demolish” the building while also removing the vehicles, he said.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams confirmed Wednesday that the deceased garage worker, who has not been publicly identified, also remains in the collapsed building.

Four workers were treated at local hospitals following the collapse, while a fifth refused medical treatment, officials said. The New York Fire Department said it appears most if not all of the patients have since been released.

Department of Buildings acting Commissioner Kazimir Vilenchik said the building “pancaked,” and that the ceiling collapsed “all the way to the cellar floor.”

Firefighters went inside the building to search for victims but it was continuing to collapse so they evacuated. A robotic dog and a drone were brought in to continue to search the building. Officials believe that everyone is accounted for and there is no reason to believe this is anything but a structural collapse.

The exact cause of the collapse remains under investigation.

“There’s a thorough investigation that is going to happen with this building. And we’re going to learn from it,” Adams said.

The parking garage, which is owned by 57 Ann Street Realty Association, currently has four active violations, according to records from the New York City Department of Buildings.

The violations that remain open were recorded between 2003 and 2013.

One of the four violations still open is from Nov. 25, 2003, and has a severity status listed as “hazardous.” In the violation details, the department recorded the discovery of cracks in the concrete on the first floor, calling the concrete “defective.”

The company did not immediately respond to a voicemail seeking comment.

ABC News’ Mark Crudele and Victoria Arancio contributed to this report.

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(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) — The Florida Board of Education has voted to expand restrictions on classroom instruction related to sexual orientation and gender identity.

“This amendment prohibits classroom instruction to students in pre-kindergarten through Grade 3 on sexual orientation or gender identity. For Grades 4 through 12, instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity is prohibited unless such instruction is either expressly required by state academic standards … or is part of a reproductive health course or health lesson for which a student’s parent has the option to have his or her student not attend,” according to the amendment.

This rule would build on the Parental Rights in Education law Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in March 2022. The law bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity for students in kindergarten through third grade.

It also states that any instruction on those topics cannot occur “in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards,” according to the legislation.

Critics of these restrictions argue that “everyone has a sexual orientation and a gender identity. It looks like this rule would make it impossible to do much instruction at all,” Laura McGinnis, of the LGBTQ advocacy group PFLAG, previously told ABC News.

The law was dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by critics for aiming to restrict curriculum that includes history, literature and more that touch on LGBTQ identities.

Supporters of the rules argue that “there is no reason for instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity to be part of K-12 public education. Full stop,” according to a spokesperson for DeSantis, who has backed restrictions on education about race, gender identity and sexual orientation and more in his war on “woke.”

Woke is defined by the DeSantis administration as “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them,” according to DeSantis’ general counsel, as reported by The Washington Post.

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(DADEVILLE, Ala.) — Two teenagers have been arrested in connection with a deadly shooting at a birthday party in Alabama over the weekend where four victims were killed and 32 others were injured.

Ty Reik McCullough, 17, and Travis McCullough, 16, have each been charged with four counts of reckless murder. They have both been charged as adults. The suspects were arrested and officially charged on Tuesday.

Four victims are still in the hospital in critical condition.

The shooting took place at a crowded birthday party in the small town of Dadeville, located approximately 60 miles northeast of Montgomery, according to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency.

“Make no mistake, this is Alabama and when you pull out a gun, and you start shooting people, we’re gonna put you in jail,” Alabama Law Enforcement Agency Sgt. Jeremy Burkett said at a press conference Wednesday.

The suspects will have a bond hearing within 72 hours where prosecutors will be asking for no bond, according to Mike Segrest, district attorney for the Fifth Judicial Circuit of Alabama.

Officials said they are still in the early stages of the investigation and more charges will be coming. Officials asked anyone who has information or was present at the shooting to come forward.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Segrest said. “We’re going to make sure every one of those victims has justice and not just the deceased.”

Officials did not reveal whether they have identified a motive for the shooting.

One of the victims killed in the shooting — 18-year-old Philstavious Dowdell — was attending his sister’s 16th birthday party, according to Segrest.

“There were so many kids in this venue and what they saw, they’re victims in this. Their families are victims of this,” Segrest said at a press conference Wednesday.

In addition to Dowdell, the three others killed in the shooting were identified as 23-year-old Corbin Dahmontrey Holston, 19-year-old Marsiah Emmanuel Collins and 17-year-old Shaunkivia Nicole Smith.

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(MEMPHIS, Tenn.) — Tyre Nichols’ mother has sued the city of Memphis and members of the police over his death following a violent traffic stop in the city, court records show.

Nichols, 29, died three days after he was beaten by police during a Jan. 7 traffic stop. Body camera footage of the altercation showed officers striking Nichols repeatedly.

The 139-page, 25-count civil complaint, filed Wednesday in federal court, includes allegations of excessive force and “deliberate indifference to serious medical needs,” and called the traffic stop “unreasonable.”

It also claims the police department failed to properly train its officers, including those in the now-deactivated SCORPION unit that was involved in Nichols’ arrest.

“The City of Memphis, through the Memphis Police Department, maintained a custom of tolerance for SCORPION Officers’ unreasonable search and seizure of individuals, use of excessive force, and the violation of the Fourth Amendment prior to the violation of Tyre Nichols’ constitutional rights and death,” the complaint states.

The lawsuit also claims that Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, suffered emotional distress due to “negligent acts and omissions” by officers following the incident and that police made “false representations” to her regarding her son’s condition.

The complaint, which is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, is demanding a jury trial.

Members of Nichols’ family will be attending a Wednesday afternoon press briefing outside the Circuit Court Clerk’s Office in Memphis to announce the filing, their attorneys said.

ABC News has reached out to the city of Memphis for comment on the pending litigation.

All five officers who were directly involved in the beating have been charged with second-degree murder. The officers all pleaded not guilty in their first court appearance on Feb. 17.

Seven other police officers were terminated following the incident, according to city of Memphis chief legal officer Jennifer Sink.

The incident has also sparked a Department of Justice review of the Memphis Police Department’s use-of-force and de-escalation policies.

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(BOSTON) — The federal magistrate judge overseeing Jack Teixeira’s case granted his request to delay a detention hearing that was scheduled for Wednesday.

Teixeira, the Massachusetts Air National Guardsman charged with leaking national defense information online, sought to postpone the hearing so his attorneys could have more time to address arguments for keeping him in federal custody, according to a court filing.

Teixeira, 21, has been held since his arrest last week on two charges related to the posting online of classified defense information.

The defense’s request to delay came hours before the hearing was scheduled to begin in Boston federal court.

He has been held in custody since his arrest after the FBI said he caused “serious damage to the national security of the United States.” According to a criminal complaint unsealed last week after his arrest, Teixeira “improperly and unlawfully retained and transmitted national defense information to people not authorized to receive it.”

He began posting classified information on Discord in December, according to the complaint.

At first the material appeared as paragraphs of text. Then, when Teixeira allegedly became concerned he could be discovered copying material at work, “he began taking the documents to his residence and photographing them,” the complaint said.

Teixeira has yet to enter a plea to the charges.

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(NEW YORK) — The settlement agreement between Fox and Dominion Voting Systems amounted to a warning shot for other media companies that may spread falsehoods, CEO of Dominion Voting Systems John Poulos said on Wednesday in an exclusive ABC News interview, his first since the settlement.

“I think that it’s a big step forward in democracy if our system can send a signal that if media companies lie — whoever they are or whatever channel they’re on — and they do so knowingly, they will be prepared to pay a very high price,” Poulos told George Stephanopoulos on ABC News’ Good Morning America on Wednesday.

Poulos’ statements came a day after his company reached a settlement agreement in its high-profile defamation suit against Fox.

Fox agreed to a $787.5 million settlement in the suit, which had sought $1.6 billion in damages. The suit had accused Fox News of recklessly airing false election claims and conspiracy theories in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.

“We weren’t ready to settle until all the facts we discovered came to light,” Poulos told ABC News in his first interview since the settlement.

Poulos said he feels they got accountability from Fox with this settlement, pointing to all of the facts that had come to light in the hundreds of private communications that were released as part of the suit, but said the effect on his company has been “devastating.”

“If we could have our company back and undo it, we would have it in a second,” he said.

Poulos said he was not surprised it took so long for Fox to settle, saying, “This was not the case of a media company pursuing the truth and making a mistake — they knew.”

Speaking outside the courtroom on Tuesday after the settlement was announced, Poulos said that Fox had “admitted to telling lies about Dominion,” although it wasn’t immediately clear whether Fox officials had agreed in the settlement to make such an admission.

“Truth matters. Lies have consequences,” Justin Nelson, an attorney for Dominion Voting Systems, said as he announced details of the company’s settlement with Fox News during a press conference following the court’s adjournment.

Fox News said in a statement after the agreement was announced that it was “pleased” to have reach the settlement.

“We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” the statement said. “This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”

Poulos on Wednesday said the lawsuit was “never really about Fox, per se, it was about the media telling the truth.”

Noting the other lawsuits against Trump allies the company is still bringing, Poulos said “We will pursue all of them.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — The settlement agreement between Fox and Dominion Voting Systems amounted to a warning shot for other media companies that may spread falsehoods, CEO of Dominion Voting Systems John Poulos said on Wednesday in an exclusive ABC News interview, his first since the settlement.

“I think that it’s a big step forward in democracy if our system can send a signal that if media companies lie — whoever they are or whatever channel they’re on — and they do so knowingly, they will be prepared to pay a very high price,” Poulos told George Stephanopoulos on ABC News’ Good Morning America on Wednesday.

Poulos’ statements came a day after his company reached a settlement agreement in its high-profile defamation suit against Fox.

Fox agreed to a $787.5 million settlement in the suit, which had sought $1.6 billion in damages. The suit had accused Fox News of recklessly airing false election claims and conspiracy theories in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.

“We weren’t ready to settle until all the facts we discovered came to light,” Poulos told ABC News in his first interview since the settlement.

Poulos said he feels they got accountability from Fox with this settlement, pointing to all of the facts that had come to light in the hundreds of private communications that were released as part of the suit, but said the effect on his company has been “devastating.”

“If we could have our company back and undo it, we would have it in a second,” he said.

Poulos said he was not surprised it took so long for Fox to settle, saying, “This was not the case of a media company pursuing the truth and making a mistake — they knew.”

Speaking outside the courtroom on Tuesday after the settlement was announced, Poulos said that Fox had “admitted to telling lies about Dominion,” although it wasn’t immediately clear whether Fox officials had agreed in the settlement to make such an admission.

“Truth matters. Lies have consequences,” Justin Nelson, an attorney for Dominion Voting Systems, said as he announced details of the company’s settlement with Fox News during a press conference following the court’s adjournment.

Fox News said in a statement after the agreement was announced that it was “pleased” to have reach the settlement.

“We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” the statement said. “This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”

Poulos on Wednesday said the lawsuit was “never really about Fox, per se, it was about the media telling the truth.”

Noting the other lawsuits against Trump allies the company is still bringing, Poulos said “We will pursue all of them.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(BOSTON) — The Massachusetts Air National Guardsman charged with leaking national defense information online is due back in Boston federal court Wednesday for a hearing to determine whether he should remain in federal custody.

Jack Teixeira, 21, “improperly and unlawfully retained and transmitted national defense information to people not authorized to receive it,” according to a criminal complaint unsealed last week after his arrest at home in North Dighton, Massachusetts.

He has been held in custody since his arrest after the FBI said he caused “serious damage to the national security of the United States.” At his initial appearance, Teixeira’s court-appointed attorney from the Federal Defenders of Boston did not object to his detention pending the outcome of Wednesday’s hearing.

Teixeira began posting classified information on Discord in December, according to the complaint.

At first the material appeared as paragraphs of text. Then, when Teixeira allegedly became concerned he could be discovered copying material at work, “he began taking the documents to his residence and photographing them,” the complaint said.

In addition to a detention hearing, Wednesday is also billed as a preliminary hearing, an indication the judge could lay out a progression for the case, including whether it moves from the District of Massachusetts to the Eastern District of Virginia, where it may ultimately be prosecuted since much of what was leaked originated at the Pentagon.

Teixeira has yet to enter a plea to the charges.

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