(WASHINGTON) — The nation’s top law enforcement officials announced on Monday the seizure of approximately $6 million in ransom payments and new criminal charges against a Ukrainian national and Russian national alleged to have deployed the REvil ransomware that infected more than 1,000 companies and public organizations around the globe this summer.
Yaroslav Vasinskyi, a Ukrainian national arrested last month in Poland, and Yevgeniy Polyanin, a Russian national who remains at large, face charges of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. Vasinskyi was charged in connection with his alleged role in carrying out the devastating July 4 ransomware attack against the software firm Kaseya, which in turn affected hundreds of companies within the U.S.
Together, the U.S. Treasury Department said the two men “are part of a cybercriminal group that has engaged in ransomware activities and received more than $200 million in ransom payments paid in Bitcoin and Monero.” It is announcing sanctions against the two men as well.
Charging documents unsealed Monday morning also accuse Vainskyi of conducting approximately 2,500 ransomware attacks and demanding approximately $767 million in ransom, $2.3 million of which was eventually paid.
There is no lawyer listed for Vasinskyi or Polyanin.
“Our message today is clear: The United States, together with our allies, will do everything in our power to identify the perpetrators of ransomware attacks, to bring them to justice and to recover the funds they have stolen from the American people,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco lauded Kaseya for calling the FBI and Department of Justice and asking for help in finding the alleged criminals.
“As we’ve shown time and time again, we’re still going to pursue them, disrupt them and hold them accountable,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said.
Garland said REvil ransomware has been deployed on approximately 175,000 computers worldwide with at least $200 million paid in ransom.
REvil was also behind the May attack on meat supplier JBS, which paid $11 million in ransom to unlock its systems.
The State Department is is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information that helps identify or locate the leaders of the cybercriminal group known as REvil or Sodinokibi.
The U.S. is also offering up to $5 million for information that leads to the arrest or conviction of any individual involved in a REvil ransomware attack.
In June, the Justice Department announced it had successfully seized millions of dollars in cryptocurrency Colonial Pipeline paid to the cyber criminal group DarkSide following the attack that led the pipeline to briefly shut down its operations.
ABC News’ Connor Finnegan contributed to this report.
(HOUSTON) — All eight of the victims have been identified in the deadly stage surge at the Astroworld Festival concert.
23-year-old Arturo Sanchez, an attendee, said his heart literally stopped as he was trampled by the crowd, and he believed he was going to die himself.
Bruised and battered, Sanchez told ABC News from his hospital bed on Sunday about the panic and chaos that erupted during the opening song of rapper Travis Scott’s performance.
He said that as soon as Scott began to sing, the crowd surged forward, knocking him off balance and causing him to fall to the ground near the front of the stage.
“I was on the floor screaming for help and trying to reach for people’s hands so they could see me and no one could see me,” Sanchez said. “I just kind of accepted the fact that I was going to die and I did for a little bit. My heart stopped, apparently.”
Sanchez said doctors told him he suffered a heart attack and had briefly flatlined.
He said he remembered a large man falling on him and sitting on his chest as he struggled to breathe and then passed out.
Sanchez said a registered nurse attending the concert performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on him and helped get him to an ambulance.
“She saved my life, honestly,” Sanchez said.
Last victim identified
The medical examiner was able to identify the last of the eight victims who died on Sunday after asking for the public’s help in identifying the man.
Oscar Acosta confirmed to ABC station KTRK in Houston that his son, Axel Acosta, died at Memorial Hermann Hospital. He said his son traveled from Washington to see Scott perform.
Acosta identified his son after the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences released a post-mortem photo of the 6-foot-2, nearly 500-pound man, and asked the public for help in identifying him.
Axel Acosta, 21, was among the concertgoers killed when throngs in the estimated crowd of 50,000 packed into NRG Park — which is next to NRG Stadium, home of the Houston Texans NFL football team — suddenly surged toward the stage, authorities said. Another 25 people were injured, one just 10 years old, officials said.
Five other people killed were identified by either their families or the schools they attended.
‘An innocent young soul’
Danish Baig, 27, of Dallas was killed while trying to save his fiancee, Olivia Swingle, who had fallen and was reportedly about to be trampled by concert-goers pushing forward, his brother Basil Baig told ABC News.
“He was an innocent young soul who would always put others before him,” Basil Baig said in a statement. “He was a hardworking man who loved his family and took care of us. He was there in a heartbeat for anything. He always had a solution to everything.”
Basil Baig said in a Facebook post that he also was at the concert, promoted and organized by Live Nation, and described it as being “poorly” managed and supervised. He alleged that Scott provoked the crowd to move toward the stage.
“Travis Scott and his team and everyone associated in the event should and will be held responsible,” Basil Baig said in his statement to ABC News.
In videos Scott posted on Instagram Saturday, he said he tried to spot people in the crowd having physical problems and paused during the show to try to get help to fans that appeared in need.
“I could just never imagine the severity of the situation,” Scott said in one of the videos.
In a separate statement, Live Nation said, “We will continue working to provide as much information and assistance as possible to the local authorities as they investigate the situation.”
The youngest victim
The youngest victim who died was 14-year-old John Hilgert, a freshman at Memorial High School in Houston, according to a letter the school’s principal sent to parents.
“Our hearts go out to the student’s family and to his friends and our staff at Memorial,” principal Lisa Weir wrote in the letter. “This is a terrible loss, and the entire MHS family is grieving today.”
One victim had passion for dance
Also killed was 16-year-old Brianna Rodriguez, a junior at Heights High School in Houston, her aunt, Iris Rodriguez, told ABC News.
Iris Rodriguez said her niece had a passion for dance.
“Now she’s dancing her way to heaven’s pearly gates,” the Rodriguez family wrote on a GoFundMe page that included a series of photos of Brianna.
College senior dies
Franco Patiño, 21, a senior at the University of Dayton in Ohio, was identified by the school as one of the concertgoers killed.
In a letter addressed to members of the university’s campus community, the school’s president, Eric Spina, said Patiño was from Naperville, Illinois, and was majoring in mechanical engineering technology with a minor in human movement biomechanics.
Patiño was also a member of Alpha Psi Lambda, a Hispanic-interest fraternity, and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, Spina wrote. Patiño had been working in an engineering coop program in Mason, Ohio, according to Spina.
‘Huge hole in our lives’
The family of Jacob “Jake” E. Jurinek said in a statement Sunday that he was among those killed. Jurinek was a junior at Southern Illinois University and was majoring in art and media, his family said.
“We are all devastated and are left with a huge hole in our lives,” said Jurinek’s father, Ron Jurinek.
Rodolfo Pena, 23, from Laredo, Texas, and Madison Dubiski, 23, from Cypress, Texas were also killed.
Bedlam ensues
The concert bedlam unfolded around 9:30 p.m. local time Friday when the “the crowd began to compress toward the front of the stage,” Houston Fire Chief Sam Peña told reporters during a news conference Friday night.
“That caused some panic, and it started causing some injuries,” Peña said.
At least 13 people injured remain hospitalized, including five under the age of 18, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner told reporters during a briefing.
As of Sunday night, at least one lawsuit has been filed against Scott.
What triggered the surge is under investigation by the Houston Police Department. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he has ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety to make state resources available to support the investigation.
Scott has history of issues at concerts
Problems have previously occurred at other Travis Scott concerts. In 2015, the rapper was arrested on charges of inciting a crowd to jump barriers at a Lollapalooza concert in Chicago. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and paid a fine, according to officials.
In 2017, Scott was arrested again after he invited more people to come closer to the stage, prompting fans at the Walmart Music Pavilion in Rogers, Arkansas, to breach barricades and overrun security. In that case, he also pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct and paid a fine.
Prior to the fatal surge at Scott’s concert on Friday night, some 300 people had been treated throughout the day at the music festival by on-site medical personnel, authorities said. There were “many instances” where they had to administer Narcan, which is used to treat a narcotic overdose, said Peña, who did not have an exact number.
Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said that during the pandemonium, a private security guard working at the festival was possibly injected in the neck with drugs as he was attempting to grab or restrain someone.
“When he was examined, he went unconscious,” Finner said during a Saturday afternoon briefing. “(Medical staff) administered Narcan. He was revived, and the medical staff did notice a prick that was similar to a prick that you would get if someone was trying to inject.”
ABC News’ Meredith Deliso, Jenna Harrison, Kendall Coughlin, Darren Reynolds and Marcus Moore
(NEW YORK) — To help educate kids about the COVID-19 vaccine and encourage them to get it, Big Bird from “Sesame Street” announced that he just got the shot and is feeling great about it.
“I got the COVID-19 vaccine today!” Big Bird tweeted over the weekend, breaking a months-long hiatus on the social media site. “My wing is feeling a little sore, but it’ll give my body an extra protective boost that keeps me and others healthy.”
The beloved character also revealed something he recently found out, which is “I’ve been getting vaccines since I was a little bird. I had no idea!”
Big Bird’s vaccination announcement received a shout-out from President Joe Biden, who replied, “Good on ya, @BigBird. Getting vaccinated is the best way to keep your whole neighborhood safe.”
While the character has been entertaining kids for decades, Big Bird is technically 6 years old, which means he recently became eligible for the Pfizer vaccine. The vaccine was authorized for kids ages 5 to 11 by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week. Shots are now being administered to children of that age group.
For those who may be puzzled as to why the “Sesame Street” character has joined the ongoing conversation about pediatric vaccinations, Big Bird has, historically, been the go-to muppet on vaccine PSAs.
In 1972, the giant yellow canary spoke about the importance of getting the measles vaccine, according to a resurfaced video shared by Muppet Wiki in a Twitter thread.
(NEW YORK) — This report is a part of “Rethinking Gun Violence,” an ABC News series examining the level of gun violence in the U.S. — and what can be done about it.
Paul Kemp, a founding board member and the president of Gun Owners for Responsible Ownership, has been a gun owner for most of his life.
He grew up in Michigan and owns a hunting rifle, a couple of handguns and a .22-caliber rifle.
He also said he was taught about gun safety growing up and thought he had a good understanding of the gun laws in the country.
But when his brother-in-law, Steve Forsyth, a youth sports coach and father of two, was shot and killed by a man armed with an AR-15 style rifle in 2012, “I realized how misinformed I was,” he said.
Kemp said he had “no idea that we had such a patchwork of gun laws around the country.” While he noted the National Firearms Act, first enacted in 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the Brady Law, which amended the GCA in 1993, there is a “a lot of latitude for very weak gun laws in states,” he said.
Watch ABC News Live on Mondays at 3 p.m. to hear more about gun violence from experts during roundtable discussions. And check back tomorrow, when we look at Chicago’s violence disruptors and how they try to bring peace.
The U.S. is awash in guns, with nearly 400 million in the United States, according to a 2018 report from the Small Arms Survey, a Switzerland-based global research project.
And gun violence has been rising in the past several years (gun deaths are up 56% from 2014-2020, and injuries increased 73% in the same time period, according to Gun Violence Archive).
Many people who own firearms agree that violence is a problem — but fundamentally disagree as to why, leaving the debate at an impasse.
So, ABC News interviewed some gun owners to get their perspective on potential solutions to the spate of gun violence plaguing the country. Their perspectives represent slices of the highly charged debate that plays out at the national level between advocates, legislators and groups such as the NRA.
Here’s what they had to say:
Safe storage
The shooter at the Clackamas Town Center Mall in Oregon killed Forsyth and 54-year-old hospice nurse Cindy Yuille with a Stag Arms AR-15 rifle that he had taken from a friend, who had purchased the gun legally but left it loaded and unsecured in his house, the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office public information officer told Kemp.
He said one of his first thoughts was, “Well, doesn’t Oregon have a safe storage gun law?” The officer told him no.
“I said, ‘You’re telling me that guy who owned that gun faces no consequences?’ and he said, ‘That’s correct.'”
There are 11 states in the U.S. that have some form of safe storage law on the books, according to the Giffords Law Center, a gun violence prevention organization. Massachusetts was the first state to require all firearms be locked up while not in use; Oregon became the second this summer when Gov. Kate Brown signed the Cindy Yuille and Steve Forsyth Act into law, named to honor the two who died in the shooting.
Safe storage laws generally require that a weapon must be stored unloaded, in a locked container or with a trigger lock, a device that goes over a firearm’s trigger and can be locked and unlocked using a key or numerical combination. While Massachusetts and Oregon enacted these rules for all gun owners, regulations in some states, such as Colorado and California, only apply these laws to gun owners who live with a person who is legally prohibited from possessing a firearm.
The punishments vary. In Colorado, it’s a fine and/or up to a year in jail. In Oregon, it’s a maximum $500 fine, which can rise to $2,000 if a minor obtains a firearm as a result of unsecured storage.
Approximately 4.6 million children in the United States live in a home where a firearm is stored loaded and unlocked, according to a national survey conducted by Harvard Injury Control Research Center in 2015. Safe storage could prevent up to a third of suicide and unintentional firearm deaths, a 2019 study published in JAMA Pediatrics found.
And safe storage regulations are popular.
In a 2019 report from the American Public Media Research Lab, more than three-quarters of the 1,000 Americans surveyed said they support mandating locked gun storage.
Universal background checks — including for private sales
Shannon Flores said her family currently owns somewhere around 37 guns at last count. Flores owns a Springfield XD-S handgun. Her wife, Scarlett, is a gun collector and hunter and has multiple kinds of firearms. Plus they have some .22 caliber rifles that their 9-year-old twins use for “plinking” — or practicing shooting clay pigeons, cans and hay bales.
Like Kemp, Flores emphasizes the importance of safe storage.
She said most of her family’s guns came with a gun lock when they purchased them, they have gun safes for the rifles, small safes for the handguns and Flores’ handgun also has a biometric lock.
But Flores, a Texas-based organizer for Giffords’ Gun Owners for Safety, also pointed to universal background checks — a system that would require all gun buyers to go through the National Instant Criminal Background Check (NICS) before purchasing a firearm — as a potential solution to curb gun trafficking and help prevent people who are prohibited from owning firearms from obtaining them.
Between November 1998 and September 2021, there have been just over 2 million denials out of more than 400 million federal background checks, according to a report from NICS, though this does not account for denials that may have happened due to a state background check. About half the time, FBI data shows, the reason for denial is because a person was previously convicted of a crime.
When combined with data from states that conduct background checks for point-of-contact sales, more than 300,000 people were stopped from buying a gun illegally in 2020, according to FBI data, raising the rate of barred would-be firearm purchasers from 0.6% to 0.8% over the past two years.
But those numbers only account for licensed gun dealers. Under federal law, unlicensed sellers — such as gun shows or private sales — aren’t required to perform background checks. Fourteen states and Washington, D.C., have laws closing this loophole, according to Giffords Law Center, but a majority do not.
Under the concept of universal background checks, the idea is that no matter where someone buys a gun — at a store, a gun show or through a friend or online — they would have to go through a background check via a nationwide database.
For instance, when Scarlett Flores sold a gun to a friend, they headed over to a local gun range in Houston that holds a FFL — a federal firearms license — and could serve as the point of transfer.
“She explains to clerk that she wants to sell a weapon. There’s an exchange of IDs, it goes through the system, small fee like $15, system is updated to prove this weapon was transferred and there’s a background check that goes with that,” Shannon Flores said.
This not only provides a background check of the purchaser, but it also documents that Scarlett no longer owns that gun and records the name of who now does.
Like safe storage laws, universal background check requirements have been popular in recent years: 89% of Americans support background checks for all gun purchases, including private and gun show sales, according to a 2019 ABC News/Washington Post poll.
Conversations about gun violence — and the ineffectiveness of gun laws — often reference Chicago, where there are restrictive regulations but a significant level of violence. Many people committing crimes with guns, some argue, obtain firearms illegally, so universal background checks wouldn’t make a difference.
According to the Department of Justice’s 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, 43% of people who used a gun in a crime obtained the firearm off the street or in the underground market, 25% got it from an individual, either from a friend or family member or as a gift, 10% purchased the firearm at a retail source like a gun store or pawn shop, 6% stole it and 17% obtained it in some “other” way such as finding it at the scene or the gun was brought by someone else.
But Shannon Flores said having a patchwork of gun laws across the 50 states “makes it really easy to traffic guns” along what’s sometimes called the Iron Pipeline — a route from the South, where gun laws are fairly relaxed, up the East Coast, where gun laws are more restrictive.
“I was one of them, the way I used to think about gun violence and crime in cities … The gun violence makes news all the time,” Kemp said. But then he began “looking into things,” he said. “Everybody says Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, but Wisconsin right next to them has some of weakest gun laws, and Indiana has some of the weakest gun laws … they feed firearms into Chicago.”
According to a 2017 report from the City of Chicago, 60% of guns that are recovered after being used in crimes come from out of state, especially from Indiana.
“Guns that are trafficked between states nearly always originate from states without strong background check laws,” Rob Wilcox, the federal legal director for Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit gun control advocacy organization, told ABC News.
In May, three Army service members stationed at Fort Campbell, on the border of Tennessee and Kentucky, were charged with the illegal purchase and transfer of dozens of firearms to Chicago. An investigation — which began after Chicago police responded to a mass shooting incident and found five firearms at the scene from the Clarksville, Tennessee area — found that the three soldiers had purchased more than 90 guns from federally licensed dealers in the region, most within five months.
Teaching responsibility
Some gun advocates say that regulation is beside the point and that what is needed instead is proper education.
John Harris, a lawyer and the executive director of the Tennessee Firearms Association, a gun rights advocacy group, argued that for decades, guns were not a “prohibited concept that was demonized.”
Teaching firearms safety in school could be something to consider, he said, “so there is an appreciation that firearms are not some video game entertainment item, but that they are useful — but potentially dangerous — items that you have to know how to use, know how to respect and only use respectfully.”
Some schools do teach gun safety. Utah lawmakers recently passed a bill creating a program to provide a firearm safety course in public schools. Both the Connecticut State Department of Education and the Virginia Board of Education have published guides for schools to develop lessons on firearm safety.
Shannon Flores, said her 9-year-old children, who use .22 caliber rifles for sport, have grown up around guns just like she did.
“We have conversations with them regularly about guns and lethality,” she said. “My kids have gone hunting with my wife … I grew up hunting, too, so I grew up seeing what a bullet can do to a living organism.”
Flores acknowledged that not all children grow up hunting or around guns at all. She pointed to a recent gun safety resource in her state called “Keep Em Safe, Texas.” The campaign has materials on safe storage and offers presentations for both adult and child audiences, but since the campaign was just launched in October 2020 there is no data yet as to its efficacy.
“As gun owners, we have to be the ones sending the message” when it comes to teaching gun safety to children who don’t learn about guns the way she did, Flores said. “Not everyone has the opportunity to explore guns in same manner.”
In Oregon, Kemp worked with a pediatrician to create a script for doctors and nurses to talk to teens and their parents about firearms and safety.
The National Rifle Association also has a program called the Eddie Eagle GunSafe program to prevent firearm accidents among children. It aims to teach kids that if they find a firearm, to stop, don’t touch it, run away and tell a grown-up.
Studies over the years have shown that teaching gun safety to children is generally ineffective in preventing accidental injuries or in reducing children’s interest in playing with guns.
“The most effective way to prevent unintentional gun injuries, suicide and homicide to children and adolescents, research shows, is the absence of guns from homes and communities,” according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, which also notes that if a family does still keep guns in the home, then they should be store “locked and unloaded, with ammunition locked separately.”
What happens now?
Despite an acknowledgement that the level of gun violence in the United States is much, much higher than it should be, there’s not agreement among all gun owners when it comes to what to do about it.
Many gun owners support what Flores called “reasonable regulations.” The 2019 American Public Media Research Lab report showed more than two-thirds of gun owners supported safe storage laws. A 2019 ABC News/Washington Post poll found eight in 10 people in gun households supported universal background checks.
But there is still a population of gun owners who don’t see any legislative path forward.
The NRA has been waging a battle against numerous gun control efforts for decades, especially when it comes to legislation — and its message has an effect.
A 2018 study from Monmouth University showed that 78% of gun owners who are not NRA members supported background checks for all firearms purchases. That dropped to 69% of NRA members.
“They just became a lot more militant about their stance on things,” Kemp argued. “They have been incredibly effective communicators with their group, and their members are highly motivated and very vocal.”
The organization also has the NRA Civil Defense Fund, which according to its website, offers “legal and financial assistance to select individuals and organizations defending their right to keep and bear arms.”
The NRA Civil Defense Fund currently has ongoing litigation in 20 states.
Harris, who said he feels the Second Amendment gives Americans the “individual God-given right to possess any weapon they may have a use or need for, for political or self-defense purposes,” said there’s nothing he understands about gun control advocates’ position.
This is a position largely echoed by the NRA.
Attitudes about gun control laws have changed in the U.S., even in the past couple of years.
In a ABC News/Washington Post poll earlier this year, 50% percent of Americans said they would prioritize enacting new gun violence laws, while 43% prefer a focus on protecting the right to own guns.
The level of support is down from 57% after the mass school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018.
It is also unclear if proposed measures such as universal background checks have maintained their overwhelming popularity as measured in 2019.
This fundamental divide has resulted in gridlock at the national level, even with mass shootings on the rise as well as homicides and other gun violence.
In Flores’ view, gun owners, who understand guns and how they work, need to come together with organizations such as Giffords’ Gun Owners for Safety or Kemp’s Gun Owners for Responsible Ownership to come up with laws they can agree on — and get politicians on board, too.
“The argument that gun safety laws won’t make a difference is moot, because to not try anything is just to continue the bloodshed,” she said.
ABC News’ Marlene Lenthang contributed to this report.
“It’s been such a long time,” Cierra Chub said Monday on “Good Morning America.” “Each [of my kids] came up to visit once, but it’s not the same.”
Cierra Chubb, of South Carolina, was hospitalized with COVID-19 in July, while she was around 37 weeks pregnant.
Just two days after she was admitted to the hospital, she had to undergo an emergency cesarean section because her pregnancy was in distress.
She delivered her third child, a son named Myles, on July 26, two weeks before his due date.
While Myles was born healthy, Cierra Chubb’s condition quickly deteriorated after his birth. She was put on a ventilator and then an ECMO machine, on which she stayed for nearly 30 days, according to her husband, Jamal Chubb, who became the sole caregiver for their three children and documented his wife’s journey on TikTok.
“It’s just one of those things where you’re living life and then all of a sudden everything feels like it’s collapsing,” Jamal Chubb said on “GMA.” “At first I started sharing the story on Tiktok just because I wanted to update people because I kept getting a lot of text messages, and then it grew from updating to informing people on what I’m seeing with COVID firsthand and encouraging people to get vaccinated.”
“It kind of took on a life of its own,” he said, adding that his family has received “so many prayers” from people around the world.
In what Jamal Chubb described as “truly a miracle,” his wife’s condition began to improve over the past two months.
Cierra Chubb, who was not vaccinated when she was diagnosed with COVID-19, was able to walk out of the hospital on Oct. 27. She was cheered on by medical staff who lined the hallways to say goodbye.
“I had been there so long that I’d gotten to know the nursing staff and the respiratory specialists very well, but I wasn’t expecting that there were going to be that many people invested in my wellness,” she said. “It was incredible.”
Her recovery continued at a rehabilitation center — where she relearned everything from walking to writing — until Monday, when she was able to go home.
“I’ve been crying in the car all morning on the way up here,” Jamal Chubb said of his final drive from the family’s home to the rehabilitation center. “It is just surreal that this is the last time I’ll have to make this drive and she’ll be home with our family.”
He said his wife’s last words before she was put on a ventilator were, ‘I’m coming back to my family,’ and he put those words on his own social media so he could use them as motivation.
“That’s the hope I held onto as you progressed,” Jamal Chubb said to his wife. “It gave me hope every day to read it because that’s what I knew you wanted to do, you wanted to come back.”
Cierra Chubb said she was amazed at how her husband stepped up as a single dad to their three children, ages 7, 2 and nearly 4 months.
“Raising kids by yourself is just taxing,” she said. “When you get married, you are never expecting to have to do that part on your own, it’s a partnership and Jamal and I have always shared things equally.”
“He’s a very involved dad so I think this jump for him versus maybe your average guy wasn’t that big, but with me being sick on top of it, has to have been exhausting to say the least,” she said. “He’s been a rock star the entire time.”
(NASHVILLE, Tenn.) — Police are hailing a Nashville, Tennessee, pastor as a hero after he tackled a gunman at the church altar.
Dezire Baganda, 26, was sitting at the front of the Nashville Light Mission Pentecostal Church on Sunday when he allegedly took out a gun and headed to the altar where the pastor was praying with congregants, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said.
Surveillance video showed the suspect waving the gun and pointing it at worshippers. Police said Baganda told everyone to get up.
The pastor quickly tackled Baganda, police said, and several church members jumped in to help take away the gun.
No shots were fired, police said.
“The heroic actions of a local pastor and several of his parishioners saved a church from further violence,” police said in a statement.
Baganda was not a church member but had been to services there before, according to the pastor.
Baganda is charged with 15 counts of felony aggravated assault, police said, adding that more counts are expected.
(NEW YORK) — Pamela Wilson, a second grade teacher in Washington state, has been an educator for 18 years.
This year, amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic that has disrupted three consecutive school years, Wilson said she is facing a level of burnout she never has before.
“I sit in my car and don’t want to go in,” Wilson told “Good Morning America.” “It’s not because of my students, it’s because of the broken system around them that’s been magnified by the pandemic.”
“The system is broken and we see that it’s broken, but everyone tries to go on like it’s normal,” she said.
Wilson, a public school teacher, said her school has a shortage of full-time teachers as well as a shortage of substitute teachers, which means teachers like herself are burdened with no time off and no time for planning, leading to 12-hour workdays.
“This is my passion and I love my job, but I’m struggling this year, wondering, if this is the new normal, can I do this job anymore?” said Wilson. “I keep waiting for it to get better and it gets worse.”
Charity Turpeau, the 2021-22 middle school teacher of the year in her Louisiana school district, said she too has never seen burnout among teachers at this level in her 16 years of teaching.
“I absolutely love what I do, but lately with the workload, demands from the state, pandemic restrictions, and lack of pay I feel as if I am doing less of what I love, which is teaching,” she said. “The paycheck does not match the amount of workload we are given and the overtime we work to try and complete it all.”
Schools across the country have faced a shortage of teachers in recent years, mainly due to low pay and stressful working conditions. The burnout among teachers this year though, amid the ongoing pandemic, has led to a shortage that teachers like Wilson describe as “unbearable to the system.”
Brittni, who asked that her last name not be used, quit her job as a kindergarten teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, this September, a few weeks into the school year.
“I was very overwhelmed with lots of responsibility and little support and long hours,” she said. “I don’t think people understand how hard it is to be a teacher,” she said. “We all love kids, that’s why we do it, but we have to have some kind of respect and some kind of support to keep it going.”
The state of Florida opened the school year with a shortage of 5,000 teachers, a number that by October had slightly increased, according to a spokesperson for the Florida Education Association.
And school districts across the country are reporting a triple whammy of not only a shortage of teachers but also substitutes and school support staff, like bus drivers.
“It’s just not teachers, but staff in general — custodial staff, support staff, administrative staff,” said Dr. Mark P. Holtzman, superintendent of McKeesport Area School District in Pennsylvania, which educates more than 3,000 students. “It’s been a gradual problem and obviously, the pandemic has not impacted it positively.”
Holtzman said his district, which employs around 300 teachers, has been hit hard by veteran teachers choosing to retire and a lack of new teachers entering the field.
“Now it has kind of hit the wall where we’re struggling to fill slots with quality candidates, and substitute teachers don’t exist, so trying to fill classrooms is almost impossible,” he said.
With a lack of substitute teachers to fill the holes, full-time teachers are being asked to do the impossible, teachers and advocates say.
“The burden of the workload has doubled and tripled,” said Katherine Bishop, a teacher for 23 years and current president of the Oklahoma Education Association. “Teachers don’t even have their preparation time anymore. They’re covering classes or taking double the students, and we’re still in a pandemic, teachers, kids, and support professionals are still getting sick.”
Added Turpeau, “Teachers are getting overwhelmed and they’re leaving, and teachers that are staying on are taking on additional challenges. They add stuff on us, and when they add one thing, they take away 15 minutes of our time.”
However, it remains unclear whether Congress will pass paid family leave, a measure that was promised by President Joe Biden on the 2020 campaign trail.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Wednesday that she would include four weeks of paid family leave and medical leave into the $1.85 trillion social spending bill. The decision came just days after the measure was put on the chopping block when top Democrats failed to come to a compromise with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).
While Manchin has not explicitly said he will oppose a plan with paid family leave included, he has expressed concerns about the cost of the program and disapproved of its placement in the reconciliation bill.
“I just think it’s the wrong place to put it because it is a social expansion,” Manchin told reporters on Nov. 3, adding it would mean “getting in more debt and basically putting more programs that we can’t pay for that we are having problems with now.”
Manchin’s concerns come as education advocates in his own home state of West Virginia urge him to pass federal paid leave.
“The sooner that we can tackle this and address this issue, the better,” said Dale Lee, president of the West Virginia Educators Association. “The conditions are only going to get worse with the mental stress that has been put on educators this year. More and more people are either going to retire or leave the profession altogether. We can’t fill the positions that we have right now. Almost every county in West Virginia has a teacher shortage, and every county has a substitute shortage because you don’t have enough subs on any given day to fill in for the educators that are out,” Lee added.
Teneshia Moore, a Southfield, Michigan, middle school science teacher, told ABC News that she would like Manchin and other lawmakers to consider how federal paid leave would dramatically impact the lives of educators like herself, who continued to have little recourse during the demanding times of the pandemic.
“I would ask him [Manchin] to put himself in our shoes,” Moore said. “Think about how it affects people that are here in the trenches. He has paid leave, what’s wrong with teachers having paid leave? What would be wrong with teachers having the same thing that he has.”
With 12 days of annual paid leave, Moore said she relied on her rollover sick days after not taking time off from previous years so she could care for her family members who were infected with COVID-19.
“I had to take care of my mother. She had COVID twice during the initial phase [of the pandemic]. I lost an aunt to COVID. I lost a stepfather to COVID,” she said. “I had to take care of all those people and I literally dwindled my sick days down to little or nothing.”
Erin Castillo, a high school teacher in Fremont, California, said her school started the year short 40 teachers, which has caused her workload to nearly triple.
She gets two paid personal days off per year, along with 10 sick days, but no paid maternity leave.
“If I need maternity leave, then that’s coming out of my sick leave, so often teachers are all saving those up for maternity leave so they can get paid, which means they’re left with two paid days off,” she said. “That’s really hard for teachers to get through.”
Describing the workload she and other teachers are facing this year, Castillo said, “I think it’s beyond the typical teacher burnout that people talk about. I describe it as trying to come up for air and there’s no chance to catch your breath because more and more just keeps coming at you.”
Shortage likely to continue without support, experts say
Education experts including Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, say they worry what will happen to the education system long-term if teachers are not supported now.
A study conducted by the AFT with the Rand Corp. earlier this year found one in four teachers were considering leaving their job by the end of the school year. Teachers were also more likely to report experiencing frequent job-related stress and symptoms of depression than the general population, according to the study.
“What COVID has done is exacerbated all the inequalities and the inequities [of education], but teachers will always attempt to do what’s asked of them, which covers up some of the inequalities and some of the inequities,” said Weingarten. “We need to give them the conditions in which they can teach and kids can learn if we’re serious about having kids not only survive past COVID, but get their mojo back and thrive.”
Kim Anderson, executive director of the National Education Association, says the solution needs to start with better pay for teachers and go beyond that to offer better working conditions and more autonomy and respect for teachers.
“Delivering a world-class public education to every single student in America requires more than short-term Band-Aids,” she said. “It requires a unified, non-politicized, authentic attempt to address the reinforcement of and transformation of one of the most important institutions in our country, and that is our public education system.”
Anderson pointed to a survey of NEA members conducted in June, before the start of this school year, that found nearly one in three educators said the pandemic was likely to make them leave the profession earlier than expected.
She said now more than ever, America’s education system needs more investments in teacher recruitment, preparation, support and compensation.
“We need mentoring and professional learning communities that are led by educators, for all educators. We need strategic partnerships with teacher preparation programs for new educators, as well,” she said. “We need teacher residency programs within school districts to build a long-term pipeline.”
Nieka Richard, a California teacher who went viral when she posted on TikTok about quitting her role, said she wants people to know how important teachers are and warns what may happen if teachers aren’t supported.
“If teachers are stretched really thin, then the education cannot be as robust as it should be,” said Richard. “And we as a country are going toward even more detrimental times because people are not properly educated and it starts in the classroom. It starts with the teachers.”
ABC News’ Kaila Nichols contributed to this report.
(HENRY COUNTY, Ga.) — Investigators in Georgia and NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal are offering a $30,000 reward for any information regarding a suspect who shot and wounded a police officer last week.
Henry County Police Officer Paramhans Desai, 38, was responding to a domestic disturbance on Thursday and was attempting to make an arrest, the Henry County Police Department said in a statement. Jordan Jackson, 22, of McDonough, Georgia, allegedly shot Desai and fled the scene in a 2016 Honda Civic, according to the police.
Desai was taken to Grady Medical Center and was listed in critical, but stable condition Sunday, the police said. Desai, who is married and has two children, has been with the Henry County PD for two years and previously worked for the Georgia Department of Corrections and DeKalb County Police, the police said.
On Sunday, a reward for information on Jackson’s whereabouts was announced and the money came from several sources.
The Harris County Sheriff’s office and the U.S. Marshals Office each offered $10,000, Crime Stoppers Atlanta offered $5,000, the Henry County PD said.
O’Neal, who lives in Henry County and is an honorary deputy in Clayton County, Georgia, also offered $5,000.
Anyone with tips can call Crime Stoppers Atlanta at 800-597-TIPS (8477).
(NEW YORK) — Three Ivy League school campuses issued temporary evacuations Sunday afternoon after receiving bomb threats.
The incidents at Cornell, Columbia and Brown universities came two days after a similar threat took place at Yale University Friday.
The New York Police Department was called to Columbia’s campus around 2:30 p.m. and students and visitors were told to avoid the area, the school said on Twitter. About two hours later, the school announced that the threats “were deemed not credible by the NYPD and the campus buildings have been cleared for reoccupancy.”
Brown University’s officials said in a statement that officers were called in after a bomb threat was made over the phone. Then, at around 5:45 p.m., the school announced that investigators found no evidence of a credible threat.
“Buildings that had been evacuated are now reopened, and university operations have resumed as normal,” the school said in a statement.
Cornell University officials said a security perimeter was put into place around 4:10 p.m. as officers investigated the threats. Around 7:34, the school said there was no credible threat and reopened the campus.
“We are relieved to report that this threat appears to have been a hoax. A cruel hoax; but, thankfully, just a hoax,” Cornell representatives said in a statement.
Police closed down Yale’s campus and some local businesses for over four hours before they gave an all clear, ABC affiliate WTNH reported.
Police officers were still investigated the threats at Cornell and Brown Sunday evening.
Later Sunday night, the NYPD tweeted that the ordeal at Columbia was a “swatting incident,” and they will continue to investigate.
No devices have been found at any of the schools and investigators have not made any arrests.
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 754,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
Just 68.3% 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:
Nov 08, 8:52 am
US reopens borders to vaccinated travelers
The U.S. reopened borders to vaccinated travelers on Monday after 20 months of being closed to many countries, including the United Kingdom, Brazil, China, India, South Africa and most of Europe.
In January, as the vaccine was distributed on both sides of the Atlantic, the ban was kept in place, with the Biden administration stating concerns about the delta variant.
On Oct. 20, the Biden administration announced it was lifting the ban on vaccinated travelers.
The ban, which only applies to vaccinated travelers, still excludes many countries where the vaccine is not yet easily available or recognized by the U.S.
Nov 08, 8:04 am
Global COVID-19 cases top 250 million in under 2 years
The worldwide number of people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 surpassed 250 million on Monday, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University.
The United States, India and Brazil account for about a third of the recorded cases, Johns Hopkins data shows.
The grim milestone came as some countries in Eastern Europe, including Russia, Ukraine and Greece, grapple with record levels of newly reported cases.
The pandemic began less than two years ago after the virus was first detected in Wuhan, China, in December 2019.
Nov 08, 6:46 am
Biden administration urges schools to provide COVID-19 shots, info
The Biden administration sent letters to superintendents and principals across the United States on Monday, urging them to set up COVID-19 vaccination clinics inside their elementary schools.
“Parents rely on their children’s teachers, principals, school nurses, and other school personnel to help keep their students safe and healthy every school year,” U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona wrote in the letters. “We need your help now more than ever to continue to protect our communities and our children.”
They also asked the school leaders to distribute information “from trusted sources” about COVID-19 vaccines to all families with children ages 5 to 11, and to host community engagements with parents in partnership with local pediatricians and “other trusted medical voices” in the community.
“The communications you issue — in languages accessible to your parents — will be critical in helping families learn more about the vaccine,” Becerra and Cardona wrote.
The letters went out on the same day that first lady Jill Biden and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy plan to visit an elementary school in McLean, Virginia, that was used as one of the first sites in the country to begin administering the polio vaccine in 1954.
School officials would not be responsible for handling COVID-19 vaccines or giving shots to students. Instead, they would partner with a local vaccine provider already administering shots, such as a pharmacy or community health clinic.
The schools would be allowed to use federal dollars through the American Rescue Plan to offset any costs with providing the space and organizing the vaccine drive.
