“Devastating” wildfires in Texas have prompted a disaster declaration for dozens of counties and evacuation orders in parts of the Texas Panhandle.
Gov. Greg Abbott declared a disaster declaration for 60 counties on Tuesday due to “widespread wildfire activity throughout the state.”
The declaration will ensure that fire response resources are quickly deployed to “areas in the Texas Panhandle being impacted by devastating wildfires,” Abbott said in a statement Tuesday.
According to an internal situation report from DHS/CISA, the “wildfires in northern Texas and western Oklahoma prompted a precautionary evacuation of non-essential personnel at the Pantex Nuclear Weapons Plant in Amarillo, TX. All special materials are safe and unaffected. There are no reported impacts to early voting in either state.”
“The Pantex Nuclear Weapons Plant in Carson County evacuated all nonessential personnel and paused operations until further notice due to the ongoing wildfires,” according to the report obtained by ABC News. “All weapons and special materials are safe and unaffected. The facility is approximately 13 miles from the Windy Deuce Fire.”
Additionally, the agency reports “the Smokehouse Creek fire crossed into northwestern Oklahoma, resulting in a hospital and nursing home evacuation in Shattuck, OK. Several state and local highways are also affected by the fires.”
The Texas A&M Forest Service had said it responded to 13 wildfires on Monday, with conditions on Tuesday ideal for more wildfire activity.
“Several large wildfires ignited under warm, dry and windy conditions across the Texas Panhandle,” the agency said on social media earlier Tuesday. “Today, strong winds will likely impact these wildfires and the potential for new ignitions remains.”
Fires continued to impact mainly the central and eastern portions of the Panhandles on Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.
Among the blazes, the Smokehouse Creek Fire in Hutchinson County has burned 250,000 acres and is 0% contained as of Tuesday evening, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service. There was “extreme fire behavior” associated with the wildfire on Tuesday, with wind gusts up to 60 mph and flames as high as 20 feet in grass, a spokesperson for the agency told ABC News.
The Windy Deuce Fire in Moore County has burned an estimated 38,000 acres and was 20% contained as of Tuesday evening, fire officials said.
“Fire behavior continues to be very active under the influence of high winds,” the Texas A&M Forest Service said on social media.
More than 40 houses were damaged in Fritch, a city located in Hutchinson and Moore counties, since Monday, the city said. Parts of the city have been evacuated.
Mandatory evacuations are in effect for several towns and communities in the Amarillo region, including Skellytown, Wheeler, Allison and Briscoe, the National Weather Service said Tuesday evening. Voluntary evacuations are in effect for Pampa, it said.
Abbott warned that the wildfires could grow in the coming days as high temperatures and windy conditions continue.
“Texans are urged to limit activities that could create sparks and take precautions to keep their loved ones safe,” he said.
ABC News’ Josh Margolin contributed to this report.
(SITKA, Alaska) — Tad Fujioka always had great problem-solving skills. After studying and working as an engineer, he left the field 14 years ago to become a troll fisherman based in Sitka, Alaska.
“If you’re good at solving problems in one environment, that translates directly to another environment,” he told ABC News, adding that there are other benefits to the job. “I love the freedom to follow my instincts, I don’t have to report to a boss, I love being out on the water in a beautiful country.”
Today he’s the chairman of the Seafood Producers Cooperative in Sitka, Alaska, and supports his family by troll fishing on his 31-foot boat, the Sakura. One of the most important types of fish he reels in is king salmon — the largest and most expensive species of salmon in the Pacific.
But now, Fujioka is facing a new problem. The fish, which are also known as Chinook, are vital to the state’s rural economy but are also the primary prey for a group of starving orcas in the Salish Sea known as the southern residents. It’s a recipe for disaster that has Southeast Alaska’s troll fishery caught at the heart of a legal showdown that could potentially stop the king salmon harvest in an effort to help the endangered killer whales.
The case is still working its way through the courts, and has left the small communities on both sides of the issue waiting on a result that will impact their culture, economy and way of life.
“To lose access to the king salmon resource would have turned a marginally poor season into a disastrous season,” said Fujioka, who estimates that these fish accounted for two thirds of his income. “It has a direct effect on rural southeast Alaska.”
In 2019 the federal government acknowledged that Southeast Alaska’s limits for king salmon troll fishing didn’t allow for enough fish to migrate south to southern resident territory.
A year later, the Wild Fish Conservancy, a conservation group in Washington State, filed a lawsuit against the government alleging that it had violated environmental law by continuing to allow the king salmon troll fishery to operate. The government did have a plan to introduce hatchery fish to mitigate the damage, but had not proven that it would be successful and leave enough for the whales.
“If we keep doing what we’re doing, these populations will eventually not exist, and these whales may not exist,” Emma Helverson, executive director of the Wild Fish Conservancy, told ABC News.
In May 2023 a judge ruled in the WFC’s favor, and granted its request to close the fishery while the government determines if a harvest can continue without harming the orcas. But a circuit court panel later reversed this decision, citing a potentially “disastrous” economic impact, after hearing from the Alaska Trollers Association and other parties.
“There’s this perception that Alaska is catching all of their fish — we are viewed as ‘big, bad Alaska,'” said Dani Evenson, of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. “We all share the responsibility of conservation, but people like to point fingers. Everybody wants a silver bullet.”
King salmon is vital to small communities in Alaska King salmon trolling, which is a style of fishing involving small boats and individual fishing lines dragged through the water, has an estimated economic impact of $85 million in Southeast Alaska. In 2022, king salmon caught in Southeast Alaska were valued at just over $16 million, according to data from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
In cities like Craig, which has just over 1,000 residents, many families rely on the fishing industry — even the mayor is a commercial troller. He told ABC News the city’s population could decrease by half if king salmon fishing were halted indefinitely. He was also keen to counteract campaigns for consumers to stop eating the fish.
“You’re going to break a bunch of fishermen. You’re going to destroy some communities in Alaska. You’re going to put a bunch of kids out of work or out of school,” he said. “Is that what you want to do by not eating king salmon?”
Julie Yates, who lives in Craig, worked alongside her father on his troll boat for years before becoming a commercial fisherman.
“It’s been the dream to follow in his footsteps and continue this,” said Yates, who has also been teaching her son Bear about the family business and is concerned about the uncertainty the lawsuit has brought.
“It’s hard to even think about what the future looks like,” she said.
The salmon also serves as a food source for locals, which is especially valuable as grocery prices continue to increase. A 2023 report named Alaska the fifth most expensive state in the U.S. in terms of cost of living.
Members of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, for whom king salmon is a traditional food, have also weighed in on the lawsuit, filing an Amicus brief in October last year.
“Salmon — a foundational food source for Southeast Alaska Indigenous communities—are particularly revered. Trolling for Chinook salmon is a traditional, respectful, and sustainable method of harvesting this culturally significant food,” the brief reads, adding that the groups “do not support blunt measures that place the heaviest burdens on the Indigenous people who depend on the Chinook troll industry for both their individual and community wellbeing.”
Clinton Cook Sr., President of the Craig Tribal Association, who was involved in filing the brief, said it’s a common misconception that people in Alaska prioritize industry over the environment.
“That’s about as wrong as it gets,” he said. “We’re the indigenous people of the southeast, we’ve been here for generations. We’re stewards of the land and the water — that’s been our history for thousands of years.”
“We’ve always protected our environment, our fish are sacred to us,” he added. “When people try to take that away, it’s not ok.”
Fates of chinook salmon and orca whales are intertwined Decades ago Chinook were able to survive in the wild for more than nine years, which allowed them to grow to larger than 100 pounds. Today they reach less than a third of that size on average, and their population is decreasing. The total amount being caught or returning to rivers in the Salish Sea has fallen from just over 800,000 in the 1980s to just over 400,000 in 2018, according to data from the Pacific Salmon Commission. Two species of Chinook are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
This is a problem for the ocean’s ecosystem as a whole, but specifically for the southern resident killer whales, officials said. A group of 74 whales made up of three pods whose territory usually extends from the waters around Vancouver Island to the Salish Sea. They have been dubbed “icons of the West coast.”
The whales evolved over hundreds of years to feed specifically on Chinook salmon. After losing a large amount of their population to marine parks in the 1970s and 1980s, and were listed as endangered in 2005. Today they face a multitude of challenges including high levels of toxins in their water and increased noise from boat traffic — both of which are exacerbated by the fact that their primary prey is rapidly declining.
Biologists estimate that 69% of pregnancies among the southern residents fail, largely due to a lack of food.
“They are basically in a constant state of hunger the southern residents go and there’s one fish that they’re trying to share between three or four family members,” said Deborah Giles, science and research director of Wild Orca, who has spent decades studying the whales. “Just in one whale’s lifetime, we have completely changed their ability to survive.”
Whale watching communities need healthy salmon population Meanwhile, 640 miles southeast, the livelihood of another small island community depends on the ocean as well — but in a different way. Friday Harbor, Washington, is a town of about 2,500 people in the picturesque San Juan islands, where whale watching represents 13% of total employment in the region and brings in half a million visitors every year, officials said.
“It’s one of the peak life experiences to see whales in the wild, especially out here,” said Jeff Friedman, a marine naturalist and owner of a whale watching company based in Friday Harbor, noting the island has people coming from as far away as Australia and Europe to see the southern residents and other groups of whales. “Obviously our businesses are dependent on that, as well as the hotels and restaurants and other island businesses that people support when they’re out here.”
These whales are particularly beloved among tourists and residents.
“The southern residents are probably the best known population here,” Amy Nesler, Communications and Stewardship Manager at the San Juan Islands Visitors Bureau, told ABC News. “We end up with newspaper articles every time they have a new calf, or we’ll have a memorial of the ones we lose in a year.”
They used to be a common site on whale watching tours, but have become much more rare in recent years.
“We don’t see them in the inland waters like we used to, because they don’t have salmon,” Friedman said, noting that he and other operators follow a strict set of guidelines prohibiting boats from getting too close to the group to prevent damage from boat noise.
“We have impacted their world,” he said. “I think it gives us not just a sense of responsibility, but a desire to do something right for them and make sure they have the environment to thrive.”
(WASHINGTON) — Federal and international law enforcement are warning of Russian cyber actors using “compromised” internet routers for cyber operations.
Russian state-sponsored hackers are exploiting Ubiquiti EdgeRouters and using their default credentials to break into them, the FBI and its international partners warned in a cyber alert dated Feb. 27.
“The U.S. Department of Justice, including the FBI, and international partners recently disrupted a GRU botnet consisting of such routers,” the alert says. “However, owners of relevant devices should take the remedial actions described below to ensure the long-term success of the disruption effort and to identify and remediate any similar compromises.”
The FBI says the routers are very popular for consumers and cyber criminals alike.
The Russian cyber actors, who are known collectively as APT28, have exploited various industries, including aerospace and defense, education, energy and utilities, governments, hospitality, manufacturing, oil and gas, retail, technology and transportation, according to officials.
Targeted countries have included Czech Republic, Italy, Lithuania, Jordan, Montenegro, Poland, Slovakia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates and the U.S., the alert said.
It is believed APT28 is the primary Russian group hacking into the routers, but there are other Russian groups as well.
“Additionally, the actors have strategically targeted many individuals in Ukraine,” the alert says.
The FBI urges consumers to update the devices as soon as they get them in order to not be compromised.
“Ubiquiti EdgeRouters have a user-friendly, Linux-based operating system that makes them popular for both consumers and malicious cyber actors. EdgeRouters are often shipped with default credentials and limited to no firewall protections to accommodate wireless internet service providers (WISPs). Additionally, EdgeRouters do not automatically update firmware unless a consumer configures them to do so,” the alert says.
“In summary, with root access to compromised Ubiquiti EdgeRouters, APT28 actors have unfettered access to Linux-based operating systems to install tooling and to obfuscate their identity while conducting malicious campaigns.”
A Ubiquiti representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
(GAZA) — For the last 25 years, pediatrician Dr. John Kahler has participated in humanitarian aid missions around the world from Syria to Haiti to Tanzania.
Despite providing medical services for years, Kahler said treating people in Gaza amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war is incomparable to the work he’s done in other areas.
“This is just by far the worst situation I’ve ever seen,” he told ABC News. “The desperation is just beyond belief. All the children I saw were sick. All the children I saw were living in the cold, irrespective of whether intended or not.”
As the humanitarian crisis in Gaza grows, aid workers from several organizations have been deployed to help those in the strip and the surrounding area.
Medical staff who have returned from deployments spoke with ABC News about the poor hygiene conditions and inadequate water supply that have led to the spread of infections and diseases, children being disproportionately affected and often seemingly small injuries proving fatal.
Children suffering from breathing problems, intestinal infections Since the early days of the conflict, women and children have borne the brunt both in mass casualties and in reduced access to health services, according to multiple United Nations agencies.
Kahler is a co-founder of the nonprofit MedGlobal, which has been conducting aid missions in Gaza. At the organization’s clinic in the southern city of Rafah, Kahler said staff saw 600 to 700 patients a day, about 200 of whom were children, mostly under 6 months old.
He said there were outbreaks of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) that often led to a wheezing illness called bronchiolitis in the youngest patients. He also saw children with breathing problems due to smoke, because fire is the only form of heating for many families living in tents.
“One hundred percent of the children under 6 months of age had a diarrheal illness,” he said. “The vast majority of those children had significant diaper dermatitis and you say ‘diaper dermatitis’ and it sounds relatively benign. But, in this particular situation, with no Pampers access, no clean water access, no hygiene access, In the cold, it can be a very, very difficult situation to deal with.”
His co-worker, Dr. Zaher Sahloul, president and co-founder of MedGlobal and a critical care specialist in Chicago, said he recalled a few children who came into the clinic, one being a 4-year-old girl name Lama.
According to Sahloul, Lama had been living in a tent with 15 other members of her family and had bloody diarrhea. He said Kahler examined her and gave her oral rehydration fluids, which improved her condition.
“Unfortunately, among innocent civilians, especially children, the impact of the war on children is probably something that we haven’t seen, I haven’t seen, in any other place.”
Lack of aid and poor hygiene
Amy Leah Potter, nursing activity manager for the Doctors Without Borders or Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) emergency team in Gaza, said some of the biggest issues she saw during her month-long deployment were poor hygiene conditions and inadequate water and sanitation.
“The hygiene conditions are deplorable, through no fault of the population,” she told ABC News. “It’s overcrowded, multiple people living in tents; there is no running water, there’s no proper drainage.”
These conditions often lead to sicknesses including gastrointestinal illnesses and skin infections, Potter said.
Potter estimated at the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, where she crossed into Gaza, there were about 2,000 aid trucks lined up to enter Gaza, but with only about 100 entering per day and some periods with no aid entering at all.
Israel, supported by Egypt, has restricted the movement of goods and people in and out of Gaza since Hamas came to power in 2007. The restrictions have tightened since the war began with Israel saying it is trying to limit Hamas’ access to weapons, officials said.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said Israel does not provide enough authorization to deliver sufficient aid and, even when it does give authorization, the fighting makes it difficult to deliver aid.
“This is a desert so there’s no fresh water,” Potter said. “You have to get it from water distribution points, which are just trucks that drive up and then people queue for several hours to try and get water. But if you queue for water, that means you’re probably missing the queue for medicine that day or the queue for food. So you kind of have to make decisions.”
Temperatures in Gaza are also extremely cold. Potter said she was wearing four layers at a time during her first two weeks there. However, most families do not have as many clothes and sleep in poorly constructed tents, exposing themselves to the elements and the risk of smoke inhalation or injuries from the fires used to keep themselves warm.
“Every day it got worse and worse and worse, more and more tents,” Potter said. “When I first came, there were no tents on the beach, because the winds are so strong, you wouldn’t want to put a tent there. By the end [of the month-long deployment], the beach was full. There’s nowhere to put anybody.”
Treating injuries with limited supplies
Dr. Chandra Hassan, a general surgeon in Chicago who volunteers with MedGlobal, worked in Rafah as well as Khan Younis, another city in southern Gaza.
He said he saw many patients with chronic diseases who didn’t have access to medicine. This included diabetic patients who couldn’t get access to insulin and dialysis patients, who usually get dialysis three times a week but were getting dialysis once or twice a week at most.
Staff are often left to treat patients with few supplies and little to no room, Hassan said. One patient Hasan said he remembers very well was a pregnant woman who visited the clinic. Pregnant women and new mothers in Gaza in particular have been facing life-threatening challenges to accessing safe care, putting their health and the health of their babies at risk.
“We saw a six-month pregnant woman, completely dehydrated, and we were resuscitating her on a cold floor,” he told ABC News. “There is no bed, no mattress, nothing. She came to the emergency room because most of the other services are not available.”
Hassan said workers gave her fluids, checked her vital signs and after she reported feeling better, she was discharged. He doesn’t know what happened to her after she left the clinic.
He said he saw many patients with injuries from the war. Many of these wounds were small, about two- or three-millimeters long, but because resources are limited and people are often not able to seek care right away, they caused massive damage and proved sometimes fatal.
“These kind of innocent-looking wounds from these missiles could prove deadly,” he said in reference to one such patient who Hassan said initially received wound care for his injuries. He came back two days later, his condition having worsened and went into cardiac arrest and died.
“In a normal situation, they would have scanned him, admitted him, observed him. So, a lot of these kinds of injuries from the explosions, they are they are deadly immediately or they have bad consequences even with surgery, or sometimes just the delay is too much. It proves to be fatal,” Hassan said.
‘No safe place exists’
Nearly every aid worker interviewed by ABC News mentioned that, in past global conflicts, affected populations have been able to leave.
“In most situations, people who are fleeing conflict are able to seek safety and protection, maybe within their own country or maybe outside of their country,” Dr. Paul Spiegel, director of the Center for Humanitarian Health at Johns Hopkins University, told ABC News. He spent a month in Cairo supporting the UNRWA’s Gaza response. “But in this situation, that so far has not been the case.”
In January, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would not consider the war over until the Philadelphi Corridor, an 8.7-mile-long narrow strip of land that consists of the border area between Gaza and Egypt, was closed.
Earlier this month Netanyahu said that his government was working on a plan to evacuate people from the city of Rafah in anticipation of an expected ground operation there and despite continued concerns about the ground assault from Israel’s allies.
Sahloul and Hassan said that in their past work in Syria and Ukraine, refugees were either able to flee to neighboring countries or move to safer regions within their own country but, in Gaza, they say there is no safe place.
“When you’re wounded, you need good nutrition, you need good rest to recover,” Hassan said. “You need a safe place. None of that exists.”
They added that many Gazans cannot safely seek shelter at hospitals and health care settings because they have been attacked, a violation of international humanitarian law.
Israel has said it has not conducted targeted attacks against hospitals and claims Hamas misuses hospitals — operating inside and underneath them in tunnels and using them as command centers as well as to store weapons. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has released videos it claims are evidence of Hamas operations. Hamas denies the accusations.
Both Sahloul and Hassan worked in the partially operating hospitals in Rafah, such as Nasser Hospital, and said they did not see any evidence of Hamas operations.
“We have not seen any signs of militarization, any suspects, any guns in the hospital … we have not seen any tunnels,” Sahloul said. “There might be some truth to what the IDF are saying, but we have not witnessed it. And people in the hospitals should not be punished.”
Fears of a ‘complete collapse’
Since the Hamas terrorist group’s surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, more than 29,600 have been killed in Gaza and more than 69,000 others injured, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health. In Israel, at least 1,200 people have been killed, according to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.
Israeli officials said 576 IDF soldiers have been killed, including 237 since the ground operations in Gaza began.
Additionally, there are about 134 hostages still believed to be in captivity in Gaza, 130 of them related to the current war and four related to the 2014 conflict. Of the 134, at least 32 are believed to be dead, according to the IDF and the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.
Potter said she believes conditions in Gaza will only further deteriorate and the number of deaths will increase unless a cease-fire is agreed to.
“We’re not even putting a dent in what’s needed,” Potter said. “If we don’t get [more] aid into the country, if the invasion into Rafah continues, and there’s one and a half million people, there’s nowhere left to go. There’s nothing left to do.”
“It is just trying to survive. It’s like it’s a boat with a hole in it and this isn’t the time to fix the boat. This is the time to just bail the water as fast as you can, but they’ve been bailing for months, with no end in sight. And eventually, there’s going to be a complete collapse,” she continued.
(NEW YORK) — Just days after the untimely death of Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl who became world famous after escaping from his vandalized enclosure at New York City’s Central Park Zoo, fans and politicians are proposing ideas to preserve his legacy, including erecting a statue in honor of the fugitive fowl.
A Change.org petition had already garnered more than 2,300 signatures as of Tuesday, calling on the city and park officials to create a permanent memorial of the beloved apex predator near one of his favorite Central Park trees.
“I think the legacy of Flaco is he turned a lot of people into bird enthusiasts. He turned a lot of people onto the joy of looking around, viewing the city not as just a concrete jungle,” Manhattan resident Brandon Borror-Chappell, who along with his friend, Mike Hubbard, started the Change.org petition on Sunday, told ABC News.
Hubbard noted that the only other statue honoring a famous real-life animal is the bronze sculpture of Balto, the Alaskan sled dog who in 1925 became a national cause célèbre for leading a team of mushers on the last leg of a 700-mile trek through a blizzard to deliver vaccine to Nome, Alaska, where a diphtheria outbreak was threatening the population.
Unlike Flaco, Balto had no previous connection to New York City other than attending the unveiling ceremony of his statue.
“This is a uniquely New York story,” the 34-year-old Hubbard said of Flaco’s yearlong saga, which captured worldwide attention. “I just think it could only happen here. It was so crazy, funny, it was huge, it was inspiring. It had like a dangerous edge to it. That could only happen here.”
Borror-Cappell, 33, who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan near Central Park, said Flaco inspired scores of New Yorkers like no other animal before him with the resilience he showed in his quest to live as a free bird.
“He was confined for 13 years and yet when he became his natural self, there was something in him that was unchanged by that confinement,” Borror-Cappell said. “It was so cool to see him figure out how to be an owl.”
Borror-Cappell said that if the statue doesn’t pan out, he still has mementos of Flaco he’ll cherish forever — rodent bones he found in pellets regurgitated by Flaco and found beneath one of the bird’s favorite trees in the North Woods of Central Park.
“I brought them home and I bleached them in peroxide a couple of times, and now I have a collection of little white rat bones that are hygienic and were in the real Flaco’s belly and coughed up in his pellet.”
Flaco died Friday evening after apparently colliding with a building on West 89th Street in Manhattan, according to a statement from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which runs the Central Park Zoo. Residents of the building reported the downed owl to the Wild Bird Fund (WBF), which quickly responded, but Flaco was nonresponsive and declared dead shortly afterward.
The initial findings from a necropsy performed Saturday are consistent with death due to “acute traumatic injury,” WCS officials said.
Two local elected leaders are also trying to preserve Flaco’s legacy with a renewed push for two pieces of legislation to increase protections for birds in New York. One of the bills, the Bird Safe Buildings Act, is being renamed the FLACO Act, also a clever acronym for “Feathered Lives Also Count.”
The FLACO Act would require any new or significantly altered state buildings to incorporate bird-friendly designs, particularly in their windows. Backers of the bill say that nearly 250,000 birds in New York City die each year from collisions with buildings.
A second piece of legislation, the Dark Skies Protection Act, would protect migrating birds from becoming disoriented by bright lights in New York by requiring most non-essential outdoor lighting be covered by an external shield, be motion-activated, or be turned off between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m.
“I’m gutted at the death of Flaco the owl, who delighted countless New Yorkers through his presence in Central Park,” state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who introduced the FLACO ACT, said in a statement.
Hoylman-Sigal, whose district includes the west side of Manhattan, added, “By renaming our legislation to require state-owned buildings to incorporate bird-friendly designs, we’ll not only honor this magnificent creature, but hopefully inspire our legislative colleagues to pass both the FLACO Act and the Dark Skies Protection Act.”
Meanwhile, volunteers scrambled Tuesday ahead of a rainstorm to collect artifacts left at a memorial for Flaco in Central Park.
“We want to preserve the letters and photos, and even paintings that people have left behind in honor of Flaco,” David Barrett, the creator and manager of Manhattan Bird Alert, the go-to New York bird watchers’ social media site boasting more than 91,000 followers on X (formally known as Twitter), told ABC News. “This is something we’ll want to remember, the time that brought people together in the love of Flaco.”
The zoo officials said the vandal who, on the evening of Feb. 2, 2023, cut open the stainless steel mesh of Flaco’s enclosure, enabling the owl to bolt into the wilds of the concrete jungle, is ultimately responsible for his death.
“The vandal who damaged Flaco’s exhibit jeopardized the safety of the bird and is ultimately responsible for his death. We are still hopeful that the NYPD, which is investigating the vandalism, will ultimately make an arrest,” the WCS said in a statement.
(MONTGOMERY, AL.) — Alabama state lawmakers introduced three new bills that aim to protect IVF treatments amid intense backlash over a state Supreme Court decision that caused several providers to halt IVF treatment last week. The bills would allow providers who have halted care to resume treatments as soon as the bills become law.
The high court issued a ruling that embryos are children earlier this month, raising questions about potential civil and criminal liability over the mishandling of embryos outside the womb, even if unintentional. The decision has prompted outrage from physicians and patients whose care was halted or delayed until providers receive clarity.
Since the decision was issued, three of the state’s seven IVF providers have stopped providing the treatment, including University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital, the biggest hospital system in the state. The hospital also announced that it would suspend the transfer of embryos after it was unable to identify shipping companies that are “able and willing” to transport embryos.
The new bills come as Resolve, a national fertility association, announced that “hundreds” of Alabamians are expected to head to the State House on Wednesday, calling action that would protect IVF treatment, according to a statement from the group.
Proposed bills
One of the bills would provide “civil and criminal immunity” to anyone providing goods and services related to in vitro fertilization.
“No action, suit, or criminal prosecution shall be brought or maintained against any individual or entity providing goods or services related to in vitro fertilization except for an act or omission that is both intentional and not arising from or related to IVF services,” the bill says.
The legislation has received support from Republican Gov. Kay Ivey.
“As I said last week, in Alabama, we work to foster a culture of life, and that certainly includes IVF. The Alabama Legislature is working diligently to address this so we can ensure we are protecting IVF and life itself. I look forward to following the legislative process and anticipate I will have a bill at my desk to sign as quickly as the Legislature can get it to me, while also ensuring they have enough time to get it done right,” Ivey said in a statement to ABC News Tuesday.
Last week, state Democrats introduced another bill that says, “Any fertilized human egg or human embryo that exists outside of a human uterus is not considered an unborn child or human being,” according to the bill.
“Any fertilized human egg or human embryo that exists in any form outside of the uterus of a human body shall not, under any circumstances, be considered an unborn child, a minor child, a natural person, or any other term that connotes a human being,” the bill states.
The state Supreme Court’s ruling came as part of a civil lawsuit filed by couples whose embryos were destroyed when someone walked into an IVF clinic and dropped them. The couples filed a wrongful death suit — under a state statute called the Wrongful Death of a Minor — against the clinic, but a lower court threw out the case.
The state Supreme Court then reversed that decision earlier this month.
Could legislation allow IVF treatment to resume?
The Democrat’s proposed bill, HB225, aims to turn back the clock to before the Alabama Supreme Court issued its decision, Joanne Rosen, an attorney and professor at Johns Hopkins University who focuses on reproductive health laws, told ABC News.
With clinics signaling their eagerness to resume care for their patients, Rosen says it is likely providers could resume IVF treatments if either of the proposed bills are passed into law. However, Rosen foresees a potential complication in enacting legislation to protect IVF due to how the state Supreme Court interpreted and expanded the reach of Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor statute.
The court’s decision had drawn on a 2018 state constitution amendment called the Sanctity of Unborn Life Amendment. The constitutional amendment added “a provision that says it’s the state policy to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children,” according to Rosen.
“Nothing in that constitutional amendment specifically says that the sanctity of life and the rights of unborn children extends to in vitro embryos, but the Alabama Supreme Court interpreted that constitutional amendment as protecting the sanctity of unborn life, whether it is in utero or whether it is in vitro,” Rosen said.
“I think that it is a very far-fetched argument because the Constitution itself does not define what was meant by the ‘sanctity of unborn life’ for the rights of unborn children, and that would be really an unprecedented interpretation of that sanctity of life amendment,” Rosen said.
In relying on the state constitution in its decision, the court could potentially throw out new laws that are not in line with that interpretation, making it difficult for lawmakers to pass a new bill that would protect IVF. Any new legislation to protect IVF could likely end up before the courts again, since new laws don’t put an end to potential lawsuits, Rosen said.
“If that interpretation of the Alabama constitution is correct, then it would supersede any Alabama statute that attempts to say we are not providing this protection to in vitro embryos,” Rosen said.
“If it were to be that meaning, then state-level legislation wouldn’t be able to override it, because the Constitution is the supreme law that is used — laws have to comply with the Constitution,” Rosen said.
(NEW ORLEANS) — A convicted felon who escaped custody on Sunday after pepper spraying his transporting deputy and stealing her car was captured in New Orleans on Tuesday, authorities said.
Leon Ruffin, 51, who had been in custody on a second-degree murder charge, was found at a hotel in New Orleans East, with the help of New Orleans Police and the U.S. Marshals Service, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto said in a media briefing Tuesday.
At about 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, Ruffin was taken into custody at the hotel without incident, said Lopinto.
Search warrants are currently being conducted at the hotel. Authorities believe that Ruffin spent most of his time at the hotel during his escape.
Lopinto said he expects to arrest others for allegedly assisting Ruffin during the past few days.
Lopinto said that Ruffin will now face additional charges, including assaulting a police officer.
Ruffin was arrested in July 2023 and was in custody at the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center, authorities said. Since his arrest he had been treated for multiple injuries and was wheelchair-bound with a boot on his leg, the sheriff said.
Shortly before 1 p.m. on Sunday, Ruffin allegedly faked a seizure and fell out of his wheelchair, Lopinto said. He was transported to Ochsner Medical Center’s West Bank campus.
Ruffin was discharged nearly five hours later after a series of tests and put in the back of a sheriff’s vehicle inside a cage to head back to the correctional center, the sheriff said.
As a deputy started driving away from the hospital, Ruffin claimed that his boot was stuck under the cage, causing him pain, according to the sheriff. The deputy stopped the vehicle to check to see if she could fix the boot. As she opened the back, Ruffin pepper sprayed her, removed his boot and stole the vehicle, according to Lopinto. He was not handcuffed or shackled at the time due to his injuries, the sheriff said.
“She treated somebody with compassion that doesn’t deserve compassion, to be honest with you,” Lopinto said during a press briefing earlier Tuesday, adding that they believe he was “milking” his leg injury.
The deputy fired multiple shots as Ruffin was driving away, but there is no indication that he was hit, the sheriff said.
The vehicle was found two and a half hours later, according to Lopinto.
It was unclear where the suspect obtained the pepper spray, authorities previously said. The deputy still had her pepper spray, taser and weapon following his escape.
(WASHINGTON) — Hunter Biden will come face to face this week with the Republicans lawmakers he once accused of trying to kill him to harm his father’s political career in a highly anticipated face-off that could be a pivotal moment for the sputtering GOP-led impeachment inquiry.
Members of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees will interview President Joe Biden’s son on Wednesday during a closed-door session on Capitol Hill.
Republicans hope to elicit revelations that could justify moving forward with their inquiry, whose credibility suffered a blow with the recent indictment of an ex-FBI source who is accused of falsifying the allegations of bribery involving both Bidens that were once a central tenet of the GOP impeachment narrative.
Hunter Biden, who in January abruptly relented his efforts to testify at an open hearing, will likely continue to deny his father had an involvement in his overseas business endeavors. The president has forcefully denied having any role in his son’s work life.
Republicans are also expected to ask him about the ethical implications of his art career and his relationship with Kevin Morris, his friend, attorney, and patron.
But Hunter Biden might otherwise be limited in what he can tell the committee about any matters related to the two federal criminal indictments he faces, a person familiar with his preparations told ABC News.
Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty to tax-related charges in California and gun-related crimes in Delaware.
Wednesday’s hearing will come after months of public and private wrangling over the nature and extent of Hunter Biden’s cooperation with a congressional subpoena, which Oversight Chairman James Comer and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan first issued in November 2023.
Hunter Biden appeared on Capitol Hill not once, but twice, to challenge Republicans to allow him to testify in public. Republicans declined his overtures, arguing that his initial testimony should take place behind closed doors, as they say is done with all other witnesses. Comer at one point threatened to hold him in contempt of Congress.
Hunter Biden ultimately acquiesced. But a person familiar with the matter said his legal team negotiated conditions for the interview that satisfied their concern that Republicans on the panel would cherry-pick or mischaracterize his testimony.
Notably, the committees agreed to share a transcript of the complete interview to Democrats and Republicans on the committees simultaneously — and subsequently made public as quickly as possible — and that his interview would not be videotaped.
The committees have already interviewed scores of witnesses and reviewed thousands of bank records belonging to Hunter Biden and his uncle, James Biden, who last week told lawmakers that the president had no involvement in the family’s business dealings.
At least nine other key witnesses interviewed as part of the impeachment probe have shared similar exculpatory accounts that undercut key tenets of Republicans’ accusations against the president.
Republicans are nonetheless expected to press Hunter Biden on his role in allegedly selling the Biden “brand” to score lucrative business deals abroad; his proclivity to invoke his family name in business negotiations; and whether any of the millions of dollars he earned from foreign business entities benefitted his father personally.
Those claims are central to Republicans’ accusations against President Biden, even though no concrete evidence has emerged to suggest the president made policy decisions based on his son’s business dealings when he was vice president or at other times or accepted any payments through family members.
Even so, some witnesses have testified that Joe Biden had a more active role in his son’s work than he or the White House have otherwise acknowledged, even if those interactions did not amount to direct financial involvement.
Devon Archer, a former business associate of Hunter and James Biden, said Joe Biden attended at least two dinners with their foreign business partners, although “nothing of material was discussed.”
Archer, who sat with Hunter Biden on the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm, also testified that Hunter Biden would often put his father on speakerphone while in the presence of business associates, but said those discussions were often about the weather and other benign subjects.
Notably, Archer said he was not aware of any wrongdoing by Joe Biden.
For his part, Hunter Biden has acknowledged at least one instance in which he and his father discussed his business activities. In an interview with the New Yorker in 2019, Hunter Biden recalled a conversation they had about his appointment to the board of directors of Burisma: “Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do,'” Hunter Biden recalled.
In a statement Tuesday, Comer said the Republican probe will continue — despite Wednesday’s outcome.
“Our committees have the opportunity to depose Hunter Biden, a key witness in our impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden, about this record of evidence,” he said. “This deposition is not the conclusion of the impeachment inquiry. There are more subpoenas and witness interviews to come. We will continue to follow the facts to inform legislative reforms to federal ethics laws and determine whether articles of impeachment are warranted.”
Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(WESTON, Fla.) — The seventh case of measles linked to an outbreak at a Florida elementary school was confirmed by Health officials Tuesday.
Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) said it was informed by the Florida Department of Health – Broward of the additional case at Mantatee Bay Elementary in Weston, which is 20 miles west of Fort Lauderdale.
The infected patient has not physically been on campus since Feb. 15, and the district and school are continuing to work with the health department regarding the confirmed cases, according to a statement from the school district.
Dr. Peter Licata, superintendent for BCPS, said in an update on Tuesday that no other schools in the district have been impacted by measles cases.
“We are continuing to do daily cleaning on school busses and the facility above and beyond our normal cleaning,” he said. “We do have additional vaccination opportunities, which are available online, and we want to thank the administration and the teachers and all the staff at Manatee Bay for their continued dedication to the school whereas we had, as of this morning, only 82 students absent. Form a week ago, we were up to 220, I believe, 219.”
The initial case was confirmed earlier this month in a third-grade student with no travel history. However, it is unclear which grades the other infected students are in as well as other identifying information about them, including age, sex and race/ethnicity.
BCPS did not immediately reply to ABC News’ request for comment.
Currently, Florida has a total of 10 confirmed measles cases with nine confirmed in Broward County and one confirmed in Polk County, according to the Florida Department of Health.
This year, there have been at least 35 measles cases reported in 15 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, meaning the disease “is no longer constantly present in this country.” The dip in routine childhood vaccinations in recent years — as well as travelers bringing measles into the country — has resulted in outbreaks.
The first measles vaccine, a single-dose vaccine, was introduced in the U.S. in 1963. In the decade prior, there were three to four million cases annually, which led to 48,000 hospitalizations and 400 to 500 deaths.
The current two-dose measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine recommended by the CDC is 93% effective after one dose and 97% effective after two doses.
ABC News’ Youri Benadjaoud contributed to this report.
(NASHVILLE, Tenn.) — The Covenant School, which was the site of a 2023 mass shooting, received a bomb threat on Monday, according to a Nashville Police Department spokesperson.
“Yesterday an employee of Covenant School received an emailed bomb threat. We cleared the site, with assistance from a THP (Tennessee Highway Patrol) bomb dog. Our Specialized Investigations Division detectives are working with the FBI to investigate the origin of the threat,” according to a Metropolitan Nashville Police Department spokesperson.
The school referred ABC News to law enforcement when requested for comment regarding the bomb threat.
In March of 2023, Covenant School in Nashville, a private pre-k to sixth grade Christian school, was the site of a mass shooting that killed three students and three employees including the head of school.
The shooter was identified by police as 28-year-old Audrey Hale, who law enforcement said once attended the school.
A police spokesperson told ABC News in March 2023, that Hale was assigned female at birth and pointed to a social media account linked to Hale that included use of the pronouns he/him.
It was the deadliest school shooting in Tennessee history.
