(WASHINGTON) — James Biden, the president’s younger brother, told lawmakers at a closed-door deposition before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday that the president “has never had any involvement or any direct or indirect financial interest” in his family’s business ventures — a key point Republicans are disputing in their ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
James Biden appeared before the GOP-controlled panel that said it has gathered scores of bank records and witness testimony as part of its effort to further an unproven theory that President Biden improperly supported and benefitted from his family’s overseas business affairs.
James Biden, 74, is a witness at the center of those allegations. During his deposition Wednesday, lawmakers are questioning him for the first time.
During his opening statement, James Biden said he kept business separate from his personal relationship with Joe Biden.
“Because of my intimate knowledge of my brother’s personal integrity and character, as well as my own strong ethics, I have always kept my professional life separate from our close personal relationship,” James Biden said. “I never asked my brother to take any official action on behalf of me, my business associates, or anyone else.”
Republicans have accused the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and, to a lesser extent, James Biden, of serving as conduits for Joe Biden to quietly benefit from their foreign business arrangements — allegations the White House has forcefully denied.
“In every business venture in which I have been involved, I have relied on my own talent, judgment, skill, and personal relationships — and never my status as Joe Biden’s brother,” James Biden said during his opening statements. “Those who have said or thought otherwise were either mistaken, ill informed, or flat-out lying.”
The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin, told reporters that he has not heard anything from James Biden indicating that President Joe Biden had “anything to do with the business ventures of Hunter Biden or James Biden.”
Raskin wouldn’t answer questions from reporters on the specifics of the ongoing interview with James Biden
“I will allow the Republicans to reconstruct for you whatever they’re trying to accomplish, but I can assure you that he has restated our basic understanding … which is that Joe Biden had nothing to do with these business ventures,” Raskin added. “He was not involved in any way and he was not receiving any money from them. He was not a business partner, or a business associate.”
Prior to James Biden’s visit to Capitol Hill Wednesday, several key witnesses interviewed as part of the impeachment probe have shared exculpatory accounts that undercut key tenets of Republicans’ accusations against the president.
Republicans are nonetheless expected to press James Biden on his role in allegedly selling the Biden “brand” and proclivity to invoke his family name in business negotiations, as ABC News has previously reported.
On Wednesday morning, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said the focus of Wednesday’s interview with James Biden will be “the money, the business, the brand.”
Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has separately taken a keen interest in two checks collectively worth $240,000 that James Biden sent his brother, Joe Biden, in 2017 and 2018.
Comer has framed those transactions — which occurred after Biden left the vice presidency and before launching his presidential bid — as evidence that he received “laundered” money from James Biden’s business deals, including one with a Chinese energy firm.
But bank records obtained separately by ABC News indicate they were repayments for loans that Joe Biden had made to his brother around the same time. Images of the physical checks support that conclusion, with each of them characterized in the memo line as a “loan repayment.”
James Biden addressed the two personal checks on Wednesday, saying in his opening statement that they were “short-term loans that I received from Joe when he was a private citizen, and I repaid them within weeks” and that Joe Biden “had no information at all about the source of the funds I used to repay him.”
“The complete explanation is that Joe lent me money, and I repaid him as soon as I had the funds to do so,” James Biden said.
James Biden explained that, at times, “because of the episodic nature of the income from my consulting work, there have been a number of occasions when my personal financial obligations have exceeded our available funds.”
He did not elaborate on how he used the loans from his brother.
After Comer issued a subpoena for James Biden’s testimony last year, his attorney, Paul Fishman, said there was “no justification” for the interview, and reiterated that “Jim Biden has never involved his brother in his business dealings.”
Of the loan repayments, Fishman added at the time that “there is nothing more to those transactions, and there is nothing wrong with them.”
The Republican investigation was dealt a blow last week when special counsel David Weiss filed felony false statement and obstruction charges against a confidential FBI source who accused President Biden and his son of accepting a $10 million bribe from a Ukrainian oligarch — an accusation core to Republicans’ impeachment case that the Justice Department said is false.
Other witnesses — a onetime and tangential business associate of Hunter and James Biden, Tony Bobulinski, and Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer — have supported the committee’s notion that Joe Biden knew more about his family’s business affairs than the president, the White House and other business associates close to the family have let on.
Archer, who collaborated with Hunter Biden on multiple deals, told the committee that while Joe Biden met on a handful of occasions with their foreign business partners and was sometimes put on speakerphone in their presence, none of their discussions extended beyond pleasantries or delved into “commercial business.”
Bobulinski went so far as to suggest that James Biden had created a shell company to protect Joe Biden’s financial stake in the business deal with the Chinese energy company.
“Joe Biden is not on this document. He didn’t sign it,” Bobulinski said in his Feb. 13 interview with the committee. “However, I don’t know if Joe Biden had an ownership [stake in the shell company] … I just know that Jim Biden signed on behalf of it.”
Instead, Bobulinski, whose credibility has been called into question by Democrats after he coordinated with former President Donald Trump’s campaign ahead of the 2020 election, suggested that lawmakers put James Biden “under oath” to reveal “the extent” of Joe Biden’s alleged role.
Hunter Biden, who pleaded not guilty in October to federal gun charges and not guilty last month to tax charges, is expected to appear before the panel on Feb. 28.
ABC News’ Laura Romero contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Nearly three million asthma attacks in children could be prevented by 2050 if the United States transitioned to electric vehicles and clean power, according to a new report published Wednesday.
Researchers from the American Lung Association (ALA) say these goals would also avert millions of other respiratory symptoms and save hundreds of infant lives over the next two-and-a-half decades.
“That [zero-emission] future, it’s really important for lung health, both because emissions from dirty sources of transportation and electricity are harming our lungs right now and also because it’s critical for addressing climate change,” Laura Kate Bender, assistant vice president of Nationwide Healthy Air for the ALA, told ABC News.
Asthma, which is chronic inflammation of the lung airways, affects about 4.6 million children in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Symptoms — including cough, tightness in the chest, shortness of breath and wheezing — led to more than 270,000 emergency department visits and more than 27,000 hospital inpatient stays among children in 2020, the CDC said.
The report looked at the potential impacts if all new passenger cars sold were zero-emission by 2035, all new trucks were zero-emission by 2040 and the electric grid will be powered by clean, non-combustion energy by 2035.
By 2050, the U.S. would prevent up to 2.79 million pediatric asthma attacks and 147,000 pediatric acute bronchitis cases, the study said.
Additionally, there would be 2.67 million pediatric upper respiratory symptoms and 1.87 million pediatric lower respiratory symptoms prevented as well as 508 infant mortality cases.
Bender noted that children are at a greater risk, both from air pollution and from climate change. Their still-developing lungs are more likely to suffer life-long impacts from exposure to air pollution, researchers said.
The report also found that every state in the continental U.S. would see asthma attacks prevented among children with California seeing the biggest drop at more than 440,000.
These potential health benefits are just estimates and made under the assumption that certain wide-ranging climate goals are met, Bender said.
“We would call that ambitious but achievable,” he added. “We know that there’s a lot of progress already being made, both at the federal level and in many key states to get toward these goals.”
She continued, “There’s lots of investment happening across the country, in electricity, in electric vehicle infrastructure, and so we’re using this report to call for more to call for the finalization of strong standards that help us get closer to the zero-emission future.”
Bender said at the federal level, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is close to finalizing two new sets of standards, one that would make future cars and medium-duty vehicles cleaner and one that would make future heavy-duty vehicles, such as trucks and buses, more green.
Additionally, the ALA is encouraging state-level lawmakers to have their states adopt standards to transition to zero-emission vehicles.
“Climate change is a health emergency, but it’s also a health opportunity,” Bender said. “We know that we need to reduce these emissions from vehicles and electricity urgently to address the climate crisis, but it’s also an opportunity because at the same time — as we’re switching away from those sources of greenhouse gas emissions — we also can clean up the other pollution that comes from gas- and diesel-powered vehicles and from fossil fuel fire powered plants. So we really see this as a win-win.”
(NEW YORK) — Boeing has announced it is replacing the head of its 737 Max program as part of a reshuffling of the company in the wake of the much-publicized incident of a door plug blowing out of an Alaska Airlines flight last month.
Katie Ringgold will be replacing Ed Clark – an 18-year veteran of the company – as vice president and general manager of the 737 Max program and Renton site, Boeing said.
The company also announced other leadership changes.
Boeing Commercial Airplanes President Stan Deal said, “I am announcing several leadership changes as we continue driving BCA’s enhanced focus on ensuring that every airplane we deliver meets or exceeds all quality and safety requirements. Our customers demand, and deserve, nothing less.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — Duvan Perez died last summer during his shift working on a Mississippi farm. His 16-year-old body “became entangled” in a poultry processing machine he was cleaning, according to Mar-Jac Poultry, the company that hired him — a gruesome death that federal regulators later called “a preventable, dangerous situation” that no worker should have been in, “let alone a child.”
At the time of Perez’s death the company denied knowing his true age and said it would never knowingly put a minor, or any employee, “in harm’s way.”
According to the Department of Labor, last year 5,800 children were employed in violation of child labor laws, representing an 88% increase since 2019. And of the 955 child labor cases that were investigated and closed by federal regulators in 2023, more than half involved minors employed in violation of hazardous occupation laws.
Advocates say deaths like Duvan Perez’s are an indication that laws protecting children from hazardous work conditions should be strengthened.
“Finding just one child in harm’s way is one too many,” said Jessica Looman, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division Administrator. “The exploitation of child labor is unacceptable, and it’s why the vigorous enforcement of child labor laws continues to be a top priority for the Department.”
But instead of strengthening the child labor laws, several states are working to relax them.
According to the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute, at least 30 states have introduced or passed bills to weaken child labor protections since 2021 — and in nine of those states, legislation has been introduced to expand youth employment in hazardous occupations or workplaces.
In this year alone, 11 states have introduced or taken new action on bills to roll back child labor protections in 2024, according to EPI.
“It is immoral and inappropriate and utterly the wrong decision to roll back child labor law,” said Terri Gerstein, the director of a labor initiative at New York University. “All that weakening and rolling back child labor laws is going to do is create more kids whose fingers and hands, legs are amputated who are killed on the job.”
Regulators have been fighting back, fining companies that violate child labor laws to the tune of millions of dollars. But advocates says those penalties have done little to staunch these preventable fatalities, and many families like Perez’s are turning to lawsuits to hold companies accountable.
‘They did nothing’
Late last month, Perez’s mother, Edilma Perez, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Mar-Jac Poultry, two Mar-Jac employees, and Onin Staffing, the agency that hired Perez.
The lawsuit alleges that Perez was killed due to Mar-Jac ignoring safety regulations, and claims that Onin Staffing was negligent in illegally assigning the 16-year-old to work at the plant. The defendants, the lawsuit claims, “acted intentionally, willfully, wantonly, knowingly, with malice and/or were grossly negligent and in reckless disregard to the rights and the safety of the decedent and others similarly situated.”
The complaint points to an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) safety report released last month that found the poultry processing plant “disregarded safety standards.” The lawsuit alleges that safety records by OSHA reveal the company received citations for incidents that led to two other fatalities, three amputations, and a hospitalized injury due to a fall, over the last three years.
OSHA cited Mar-Jac Poultry with 14 serious and three “other than serious” violations and proposed $212,646 in penalties for Perez’s death. The agency previously cited the company for an incident in 2021 in which an employee who was not a minor suffered fatal injuries while working.
Court records reviewed by ABC News found that the Hattiesburg plant was also sued twice in recent years by people who alleged they had sustained injuries at the plant. One of the lawsuits, filed in December 2022, will go to a jury trial this August. In the other lawsuit filed by a veterinarian for the Department of Agriculture who fell during an inspection, a jury found in favor of the defendant, Mar-Jac Poultry.
“This case was a tragedy that should have never happened,” Jim Reeves, the attorney for Edilma Perez, said of Duvan Perez’s death. “Not only had there been [two] other workers killed at this plant in the last three years, one was in a very similar way.”
“And they had explicit direct warnings from OSHA to correct the problems and per OSHA’s report,” said Reeves.
Mar-Jac Poultry, Onin Staffing and the two employees accused in the lawsuit did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
In a statement released shortly after Perez died, the poultry processing company blamed Onin Staffing for hiring Perez, saying they had no idea he was a minor.
“Mar-Jac MS would never knowingly put any employee, and certainly not a minor, in harm’s way but it appears, at this point in the investigation, that this individual’s age and identity were misrepresented on the paperwork,” the company said.
‘Plausible deniability’
According to the lawsuit, Onin Staffing failed to properly screen workers, including Perez, to ensure they were of the appropriate age, and failed to “take adequate precautions to ensure that Perez was assigned a safe place to work.”
Perez used the identity of a 32-year-old man to obtain the job at the poultry plant.
“This man was obviously 16 working under an ID that said he was almost twice that age,” Reeves told ABC News. “Anyone who was interested in determining his age could see he was not 32 years old.”
“I saw [his] picture,” said Gerstein. “You don’t have to be some kind of forensic analysis person to understand that that was a child.”
Gerstein told ABC News she believes companies can “deflect responsibility” when incidents occur involving businesses they subcontract.
“It gives them plausible deniability, saying, ‘We had no idea this was going on and we’re going to cut our contract with that contractor,’ and to point the finger and deflect responsibility,” said Gerstein.
“But they can really monitor much more extensively the operations of their contractors and staffing agencies and everyone in their supply chain,” Gerstein said. “They can do more due diligence before they contract.”
Holding businesses accountable
In late January, Washington state’s Department of Labor fined a construction company the maximum penalty after a 16-year-old had both legs amputated from injuries sustained while working. In December, a sawmill in Wisconsin was fined $1.4 million after a 16-year-old died last summer while trying to unjam a stick stacker machine. And just last week, a roofing company in Alabama paid penalties after a 15-year-old fell and died at a work site.
With the increase in child labor violations, the Department of Labor issued a bulletin to offices across the country in November, announcing the agency should no longer determine child labor civil penalty assessments on a per-child basis, but instead on a per-violation basis.
Reid Maki, the Child Labor Advocacy Director for the National Consumers League and Child Labor Coalition, said that lawsuits also help hold businesses accountable.
“It’s really hard for families to be compensated for these tragedies without going to court,” Maki told ABC News. “Sometimes it’s really the only option to get good compensation and to create a disincentive for companies to hire illegally.”
The prospect of lawsuits like the one filed by Perez’s mother, Gerstein said, should “be something that should make businesses add additional protections to make sure they don’t commit violations.”
Reeves told ABC News that while cases like this typically settle, Perez’s case “might be the exception.”
“We’re going to demand enough to make this company think twice before they do it again,” Reeves said. “This case may be the exception because the conduct is really so egregious.”
(NEW YORK) — More than four months since Hamas terrorists invaded Israel on Oct. 7, the Israeli military continues its bombardment of the neighboring Gaza Strip.
The conflict, now the deadliest between the warring sides since Israel’s founding in 1948, shows no signs of letting up soon and the brief cease-fire that allowed for over 100 hostages to be freed from Gaza remains a distant memory.
Here’s how the news is developing:
Feb 21, 1:02 PM 8 bodies remain in Nasser Medical Complex among living patients, Gaza Ministry of Health says
Eight patients who died because of a lack of electricity at Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza are still in their beds inside of the hospital among living patients, the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said Wednesday.
The Ministry of Health said the bodies are still in the hospital because Israeli forces refuse to remove them.
The bodies “have begun to swell and show signs of decomposition, posing a danger to other patients,” the Ministry of Health said in a statement.
Israeli authorities denied these claims and said no bodies are still inside Nasser Hospital.
The Israel Defense Forces has been operating inside of Nasser Hospital for the last week. On Monday, the IDF announced its soldiers had arrested 200 suspected Hamas members at Nasser Hospital.
ABC News’ Ellie Kaufman and Camilla Alcini
Feb 21, 8:28 AM Israel considering sending delegation to Egypt for new round of talks, source says
Israel is weighing the possibility of sending a delegation back to Egypt for continued negotiations over a potential cease-fire or hostage deal with Hamas, an Israeli political source told ABC News on Wednesday.
There is some cautious optimism over the latest round of talks in Cairo, the source said.
Egypt, along with Qatar and the United States, has been mediating talks between the warring sides.
Feb 21, 8:14 AM Israel preparing to reopen Karni border crossing to facilitate aid to northern Gaza, source says
Israel is preparing to reopen the Karni border crossing to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into the northern Gaza Strip, an Israeli political source told ABC News on Wednesday.
Israel shuttered the Karni crossing, located on the border between southwestern Israel and northeastern Gaza, when Palestinian militant group Hamas came to power in the enclave in 2007 before permanently closing the crossing in 2011.
Northern Gaza has been isolated by the Israeli military and almost completely cut off from aid for weeks, according to the United Nations.
Feb 21, 7:56 AM UN food agency pauses deliveries to northern Gaza
The World Food Program, the food assistance arm of the United Nations, announced Tuesday that it is pausing deliveries of food aid to the northern Gaza Strip “until conditions are in place that allow for safe distribution.”
The decision came after a WFP convoy heading north from Gaza City was “surrounded by crowds of hungry people close to the Wadi Gaza checkpoint” on Sunday, the agency said. The same convoy faced “complete chaos and violence due to the collapse of civil order” when it tried to resume its journey north on Monday, according to the WFP.
“Several trucks were looted between Khan Yunis and Deir al-Balah and a truck driver was beaten. The remaining flour was spontaneously distributed off the trucks in Gaza City, amidst high tension and explosive anger,” the WFP said in a statement Tuesday. “The decision to pause deliveries to the north of the Gaza Strip has not been taken lightly, as we know it means the situation there will deteriorate further and more people risk dying of hunger.”
An analysis released Monday by the Global Nutrition Cluster, a humanitarian aid partnership led by the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), found that 15.6% of children under the age of 2 are acutely malnourished in northern Gaza, which has been isolated by the Israeli military and almost completely cut off from aid for weeks, compared to 5% in southern Gaza, where most aid enters the war-torn enclave. The acute malnutrition rate across Gaza was less than 1% before the war began last October, according to the report.
Feb 20, 2:21 PM Hostages held in Gaza have received medicine, Qatar says
Qatari officials said hostages held by Hamas in Gaza have received the medication that was part of a deal brokered last month.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said it has asked Qatar for evidence that the medicine was delivered.
“Israel will examine the credibility of the report and will continue to work for the peace of our abductees,” the office said in a statement.
Feb 20, 12:21 PM US draft resolution calls for temporary cease-fire
The U.S. voted against a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire at Wednesday’s United Nations Security Council meeting, The Associated Press reported.
The U.S. was the only nation of the 15 permanent Security Council members to vote against the measure, according to the AP.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said “an unconditional cease-fire without any obligation for Hamas to release hostages” was irresponsible.
“While we cannot support a resolution that would put sensitive negotiations in jeopardy, we look forward to engaging on a text that we believe will address so many of the concerns we all share — a text that can and should be adopted by the council, so that we can have a temporary cease-fire as soon as practicable, based on the formula of all hostages being released,” she said.
The U.S. has been circulating its own draft resolution on Gaza that calls for a temporary cease-fire conditioned on the release of all hostages, while also condemning Hamas for the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war, according to senior administration officials familiar with the matter.
If the proposal were to be adopted by the U.N. Security Council, it would mark the first time the body has formally condemned Hamas’ actions.
The officials say the draft also makes clear “that under current circumstances a major ground offensive into Rafah should not proceed” and that there can be no reduction in territory in the Gaza Strip or any forced displacement of Palestinians, while also calling on Israel “to lift all barriers to the provision of humanitarian assistance, open additional humanitarian routes, and to keep current crossings open.”
The senior officials signaled that American diplomats wouldn’t rush the text to a vote and that they intended on “allowing time for negotiations.”
While hostage talks have sputtered over the past couple of weeks, senior administration officials said they were making some progress.
“The differences between the parties, they have been narrowed. They haven’t been sufficiently narrowed to get us to a deal, but we are still hopeful and we are confident that there is the basis for an agreement between the parties,” one official said.
ABC News’ Shannon Crawford
Feb 20, 11:34 AM US votes against immediate cease-fire
The U.S. voted against a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire at Wednesday’s United Nations Security Council meeting, The Associated Press reported.
The U.S. was the only nation of the 15 permanent Security Council members to vote against the measure, according to the AP.
The U.S. has said an immediate cease-fire could impede the negotiations looking to free hostages and agree to a pause in fighting, the AP said.
Feb 20, 11:07 AM IDF operating inside Al-Amal Hospital
Israeli forces, which already entered Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, are also now operating inside the nearby Al-Amal Hospital, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed to ABC News.
“Al-Amal Hospital is currently under multiple attacks, as Israeli forces have directly targeted the third floor of the hospital, resulting in the burning of two rooms,” and “the hospital’s water lines were targeted,” the Palestine Red Crescent Society said.
Over 8,000 patients were evacuated from the hospital earlier this month, but almost 100 patients still remain inside, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said.
Feb 20, 7:13 AM WHO helps transfer 32 critical patients out of Gaza’s besieged Nasser Hospital
The World Health Organization said Tuesday that it has helped to successfully transfer 32 critically ill patients, including two children, from besieged Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip.
The WHO said its staff led two “life-saving,” “high-risk” missions at the medical complex in Khan Younis on Sunday and Monday, in close partnership with the Palestine Red Crescent Society and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “amid ongoing hostilities and access restrictions.” Staff at Nasser Hospital had requested the transfer of patients after the facility became “non-functional” following an Israeli military raid on Feb. 14 after a weeklong siege, according to the WHO.
“Weak and frail patients were transferred amidst active conflict near the aid convoy,” the WHO said in a statement. “Road conditions hindered the swift movement of ambulances, placing the health of patients at further risk.”
“Nasser Hospital has no electricity or running water, and medical waste and garbage are creating a breeding ground for disease,” the organization added. “WHO staff said the destruction around the hospital was ‘indescribable.’ The area was surrounded by burnt and destroyed buildings, heavy layers of debris, with no stretch of intact road.”
The WHO estimates that 130 sick and injured patients and at least 15 doctors and nurses remain inside Nasser Hospital. As the facility’s intensive care unit was no longer functioning, the only remaining ICU patient was transferred to a different part of the complex where other patients are receiving basic care, according to the WHO.
“WHO fears for the safety and well-being of the patients and health workers remaining in the hospital and warns that further disruption to lifesaving care for the sick and injured would lead to more deaths,” the organization said. “Efforts to facilitate further patient referrals amidst the ongoing hostilities are in process.”
Prior to the missions on Sunday and Monday, the WHO said it “received two consecutive denials to access the hospital for medical assessment, causing delays in urgently needed patient referral.” At least five patients reportedly died in Nasser Hospital’s ICU before any missions or transfers were possible, according to the WHO.
Nasser Hospital is the main medical center serving southern Gaza. Ground troops from the Israel Defense Forces stormed the facility last week, looking for members of Hamas who the IDF alleges have been conducting military operations out of the hospital. Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that governs Gaza and is at war with neighboring Israel, denies the claims.
“The dismantling and degradation of the Nasser Medical Complex is a massive blow to Gaza’s health system,” the WHO said. “Facilities in the south are already operating well beyond maximum capacity and are barely able to receive more patients.”
Feb 20, 5:26 AM Aid groups warn of potential ‘explosion in preventable child deaths’ in Gaza
A new analysis by the Global Nutrition Cluster, a humanitarian aid partnership led by the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, found that 90% of children under the age of 2 in the war-torn Gaza Strip face severe food poverty, meaning they eat two or fewer food groups a day.
The same was true for 95% of pregnant and breastfeeding women in Gaza, according to the report released Monday. And at least 90% of children under 5 are affected by one or more infectious disease, with 70% experiencing diarrhea in the past two weeks, the report said.
In Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where most humanitarian aid enters, 5% of children under 2 are acutely malnourished, compared to more than 15% in northern Gaza, which has been isolated by the Israeli military and almost completely cut off from aid for weeks, the report said. Before war broke out last October between Israel and Gaza’s militant rulers, Hamas, the acute malnutrition rate across the coastal enclave was less than 1%, according to the report.
The report also found that more than 80% of homes in Gaza lack clean and safe water, with the average household having one liter per person per day.
“The Gaza Strip is poised to witness an explosion in preventable child deaths which would compound the already unbearable level of child deaths in Gaza,” Ted Chaiban, deputy executive director for humanitarian action and supply operations at UNICEF, said in a statement. “We’ve been warning for weeks that the Gaza Strip is on the brink of a nutrition crisis. If the conflict doesn’t end now, children’s nutrition will continue to plummet, leading to preventable deaths or health issues which will affect the children of Gaza for the rest of their lives and have potential intergenerational consequences.”
Feb 19, 12:31 PM Gaza’s health ministry accuses IDF of turning Nasser Hospital into ‘military barracks’
Israeli troops have turned Nasser Hospital, the main medical center serving the southern Gaza Strip, into a “military barracks” and are “endangering the lives of patients and medical staff,” according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health.
The health ministry said Monday that patients and medical staff inside Nasser Hospital are now without electricity, water, food, oxygen and treatment capabilities for difficult cases since Israeli ground troops raided the facility in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis last week.
The World Health Organization, which warned on Sunday that Nasser Hospital “is not functional anymore,” said more than 180 patients and 15 doctors and nurses remain inside the hospital.
The WHO said it has evacuated 14 critical patients from the hospital to receive treatment elsewhere.
The Israel Defense Forces alleges that Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that governs Gaza, has been conducting military operations out of Nasser Hospital and other medical centers in the war-torn enclave — claims which Hamas denies.
A new exhibit at The Tenement Museum recreates the home of Joseph and Rachel Moore. CREDIT: ABC News
(NEW YORK) — For years, The Tenement Museum in New York City’s Lower East Side has become a living monument to the stories of 19th and early 20th-century working-class New Yorkers.
The museum is housed in a former tenement building that showcases an interactive learning space with artifacts, exhibits and other programs that have taught visitors the stories of struggle and hard work of immigrant families during that time.
“We had settled on telling the stories of people who actually lived in the building. We’ve scoured public records, census records, city directories,” Laura Lee, the director of training and resources at The Tenement Museum, told ABC News.
That dedicated research led the museum to create a new interactive exhibit in the building that explores the tenement experiences that Black families had to face through the story of a 19th-century couple.
“A Union of Hope: 1869,” recreates the home of Joseph and Rachel Moore, who lived in the Lower East Side in the 1870s, right down to their furniture and even replicas of the food they ate. The exhibit is the first apartment recreation at the museum dedicated to a Black family, according to administrators.
The exhibit also features audio re-enactments of what the free Black community in New York City would have talked about during this time.
Annie Polland, the museum’s president, said the history of the Black community in New York during this time was mostly untold. She noted that the idea behind the exhibit came to be after a visitor looked at old tenement directories on display and noticed there were two listings for a man named Joseph Moore.
One of the Joseph Moore listings had a major distinction, she said.
“Our visitor started asking, ‘Who’s this other Joseph Moore? And what does it mean to have col’d next to their name?'” Polland said. “We would explain that’s a 19th-century term for people of African descent. But then we’re like, ‘well, what would his life be like?'”
The Tenement Museum’s researchers began looking into Moore’s history. Born in New Jersey in 1837, Moore, whose family was not enslaved, lived and experienced one of the biggest transitional moments in American history, according to Lee.
“Slavery was still legal at that time. In his community, there were free Black folks in New Jersey, but also there would have been some enslaved folks, too,” she said.
Lee said that the tenement building that the couple lived in housed a diverse group of families.
“We see a lot of Black and Irish folks creating a family together. So you’ll see households, you’ll see marriages, you’ll see children who are listed as mulatto, which was the term for mixed race at that time,” she said. “I think it’s surprising for people to see these two communities coming together and creating space in the most intimate ways.”
Kojo Senoo, an educator at the Tenement Museum, told ABC News that the Moores worked numerous jobs, including a waiter, coachman and various domestic labor roles, which encapsulated what the labor force looked like for the working class during the late 19th century.
“All of these families essentially come here to this city just to make a better life for their kids, to be able to realize that dream. It’s also with the understanding that a lot of times you have to work together [and] you have to get to know your neighbors. You have to have a community here,” Senoo said.
Lee said she is proud to be able to tell the Moores’ story and showcase a piece of New York’s history that has gone long forgotten.
“To be able to think about how they’re gathering at home and what that home might feel like…I think I’m just really excited to be able to even connect with folks in that way,” she said.
(FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.) — A young girl has died and a boy has been hospitalized after they fell into a hole in the sand at a beach Tuesday at Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Florida.
“Our hearts are heavy in LBTS today after learning two children were trapped in the sand,” the Town of Lauderdale-By-The-Sea said in a statement.
The two children were pulled out of the sand and taken to the hospital, but police later confirmed the girl had died.
Police received a call about two children being trapped in the sand at around 3 p.m.
A witness shared video with Miami ABC affiliate WPLG showing one of the children being rushed away by first responders after being pulled from the hole.
“You saw grown men digging with shovels and buckets and nobody could find her,” a witness told WPLG. “I guess when the wall caved in she may have been laying flat and so maybe it just kind of pancaked her. The dad was able to pull his son out but the daughter was still underneath the sand.”
(NEW YORK) — A discovery on how baleen whales are able to sing under water is giving scientists a better understanding on how noise pollution from shipping activity can alter marine mammal’s ability to communicate — and therefore thrive as a species.
When the ancient ancestors of whales returned to the ocean from land, they developed major adaptations to make vocal communication feasible under water, according to a study published in Nature on Wednesday.
A study into how whales produce their vocals beneath the ocean’s surface found that baleen whales — including the sei, common minke and humpback species — use specialized larynxes to communicate with each other under water.
The larynxes of three baleen whales that were examined were found to have adaptations that allow the animals to create massive air flows back and forth when they breathe in, Coen Elemans, a professor of sound communication and barrier at the University of Southern Denmark and author of the paper, told ABC News. While toothed whales evolved a nasal vocal organ, baleen whales were found to have a specialized structures to allow the production of sound and recycling of air while preventing inhalation of water, the paper found.
Because the frequency in which the whales sing would likely be low — with a maximum frequency of 300 hertz — the communication between baleen whales are likely severely impacted by human activity, as shipping vessels typically create noise between 30 hertz and 300 hertz, according to the paper.
When the noise from the shipping activity is present, it reduces the range in which the whales can communicate, which could then produce stress on the animals, Joy Reidenberg, a professor of anatomy at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, told ABC News.
“We think that this mechanism is an ancestral mechanism that these animals have used to make very low frequency sounds in an environment where sound is the only way of communication and the only way…to find animals that are very far apart,” Elemans said.
Unlike humans, who mainly rely on sight, whales live in a “completely acoustic world,” Sharon Livermore, director of marine conservation at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, told ABC News.
Vessel noise pollution and shipping intensity poses a real threat to large whales, Bekah Lane, a cetacean field research specialist at The Marine Mammal Center, a California-based nonprofit marine animal rescue center, told ABC News.
Research has shown that constant shipping noise can dominate the ocean soundscape and cause stress levels to rise in some species — especially the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, Livermore said.
“under water noise is a pollutant, and it’s an invisible pollutant to the human eye,” she said.
Singing is only one of the sounds that whales make, said Reidenberg, who peer-reviewed the study. It is typically the males that sing, and the performances take place in tropical waters, where they look for mates.
Other forms of communications that whales made are calls — which are different from “singing” — and are especially used by mothers and other whales attempting to communicate with other individual whales, Reidenberg said.
“Their ability to hear and be heard is key to their survival,” Livermore said.
The deaths of five North Atlantic right whales since December has renewed calls for federal shipping regulations. Last week, a coalition of environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit to finalize shipping speed rules proposed in 2022 that would require mariners off the East Coast to slow down in order to reduce the risk of injury or death to the endangered whales.
However, consumer demand to have goods flow across oceans via large ships as quickly as possible adds another layer of complexity to the issue, Lane said.
“We need to think critically about how our consumer choices and purchasing power can have real consequences for marine wildlife,” Lane said.
The day after the lawsuit was filed, another North Atlantic right whale — a juvenile female — was found dead off the coast of Georgia, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Ongoing research efforts coupled with working directly with local harbor safety committees, the maritime industry and government agencies are necessary to find solutions to better protect whales, Lane said.
The researchers hope that technology in the future will allow them to study live whales — a feat nearly impossible at the moment considering how large the animals are. Technology such as a remote operated vehicle that could get close to a whale while it is singing and get ultrasounds would be ideal, Reidenberg said.
“I mean, we can’t put a whale in a CAT scan or an MRI,” she said.
(OWASSO, Okla.) — Investigators in Owasso, Oklahoma, are investigating the death of a nonbinary student one day after a physical altercation with other students.
There are conflicting reports regarding the student’s name and gender identity, and they are believed to be part of the transgender and gender nonconforming community. The student was identified to be 16-year-old Nex Benedict by their mother in an interview with The Independent.
The student’s mother, Sue Benedict, told the news outlet that Nex and another student had gotten in a fight with three older girls in the bathroom. It is not yet clear if their gender identities had a role in the altercation.
Nex had experienced several months of bullying from students, according to Sue Benedict in The Independent.
Police said an Owasso High School student died on Feb. 8, a day after a physical altercation between the student and others at the school took place. Police have not publicly identified the victim.
According to police, the teen and their family reported the altercation at a local hospital, where the student was taken following the incident. A school resource officer responded to the hospital to take the report.
In a statement on the school’s website, school officials said: “Students were in the restroom for less than two minutes and the physical altercation was broken up by other students who were present in the restroom at the time, along with a staff member who was supervising outside of the restroom.”
According to police, the student was rushed back to a hospital the next day, where the student was pronounced dead.
Officials say they are investigating the incident and will be interviewing school staff and students “over the course of the next two weeks.” The findings will then be submitted to the Tulsa County District Attorney’s Office for prosecution review.
Officials say it is not known at this time if the death is related to the incident at the school or not. The department is awaiting an autopsy report and toxicology results.
The State Medical Examiner’s Office will determine a final cause and manner of death.
Nex’s mother told The Independent that they had experience several months of bullying from students, and it followed state legislative policies that targeted the transgender community.
In recent years, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt has signed bills that required students to use bathrooms that match their sex assigned at birth citing safety, banned the use of nonbinary gender markers on IDs, restricted gender-affirming care and banned transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports citing fairness.
In a post on GoFundMe, Sue Benedict added: “We are sorry for not using their name correctly and as parents we were still learning the correct forms. Please do not judge us as Nex was judged, please do not bully us for our ignorance on the subject. Nex gave us that respect and we are sorry in our grief that we overlooked them.”
Local LGBTQ organizations are calling for accountability against those who have promoted anti-transgender rhetoric, which some speculate may have contributed to the attack on Nex and the other student.
“The assault on Nex is an inevitable result of the hateful rhetoric and discriminatory legislation targeting Oklahoma trans youth,” said groups Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the ACLU of Oklahoma in a joint statement.
“We are deeply troubled by reports the school failed to respond appropriately to the altercation that preceded Nex’s death and demand a thorough, open investigation into the matter,” the statement read.
ABC News has reached out to the Owasso school district for comment.
“While we continue to piece together the full story, we wanted to reach out to our community grappling with this horrific harm, and the grief we all share as we reflect on the growing anti-2SLGBTQ+ sentiments our youngest community members are facing more often,” said advocacy group Freedom Oklahoma.
Anti-LGBTQ violence has been on the rise in recent years, according to law enforcement researchers, coinciding with growing anti-LGBTQ sentiment from conservative politicians.
Activists say they hope Nex is remembered for more than their tragic death.
“Nex loved rock music, and often bonded with others over headbanging,” said Freedom Oklahoma in a statement. “Nex was unfailingly kind, and always searched for the best in people.”
(WASHINGTON) — James Biden, the president’s younger brother, is scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday — a high-stakes confrontation months in the making that could mark an inflection point in Republicans’ ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
The GOP-controlled panel says it has gathered scores of bank records and witness testimony as part of its effort to further an unproven theory that President Biden improperly supported and benefitted from his family’s overseas business affairs.
James Biden, 74, is a witness at the center of those allegations. During his closed-door deposition Wednesday, lawmakers will have the opportunity to question him for the first time.
Republicans have accused the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and, to a lesser extent, James Biden, of serving as conduits for Joe Biden to quietly benefit from their foreign business arrangements — allegations the White House has forcefully denied.
In fact, several key witnesses interviewed as part of the probe have shared exculpatory accounts that undercut key tenets of Republicans’ accusations against the president.
Republicans are nonetheless expected to press James Biden on his role in allegedly selling the Biden “brand” and proclivity to invoke his family name in business negotiations, as ABC News has previously reported.
Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has separately taken a keen interest in two checks collectively worth $240,000 that James Biden sent his brother, Joe Biden, in 2017 and 2018.
Comer has framed those transactions — which occurred after Biden left the vice presidency and before launching his presidential bid — as evidence that he received “laundered” money from James Biden’s business deals, including one with a Chinese energy firm.
But bank records obtained separately by ABC News indicate they were repayments for loans that Joe Biden had made to his brother around the same time. Images of the physical checks support that conclusion, with each of them characterized in the memo line as a “loan repayment.”
After Comer issued a subpoena for James Biden’s testimony last year, his attorney, Paul Fishman, said there was “no justification” for the interview, and reiterated that “Jim Biden has never involved his brother in his business dealings.”
Of the loan repayments, Fishman added at the time that “there is nothing more to those transactions, and there is nothing wrong with them.”
The Republican investigation was dealt a blow last week when special counsel David Weiss filed felony false statement and obstruction charges against a confidential FBI source who accused President Biden and his son of accepting a $10 million bribe from a Ukrainian oligarch — an accusation core to Republicans’ impeachment case that the Justice Department said is false.
Other witnesses — a onetime and tangential business associate of Hunter and James Biden, Tony Bobulinski, and Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer — have supported the committee’s notion that Joe Biden knew more about his family’s business affairs than the president, the White House and other business associates close to the family have let on.
Archer, who collaborated with Hunter Biden on multiple deals, told the committee that while Joe Biden met on a handful of occasions with their foreign business partners and was sometimes put on speakerphone in their presence, none of their discussions extended beyond pleasantries or delved into “commercial business.”
Bobulinski went so far as to suggest that James Biden had created a shell company to protect Joe Biden’s financial stake in the business deal with the Chinese energy company.
“Joe Biden is not on this document. He didn’t sign it,” Bobulinski said in his Feb. 13 interview with the committee. “However, I don’t know if Joe Biden had an ownership [stake in the shell company] … I just know that Jim Biden signed on behalf of it.”
Instead, Bobulinski, whose credibility has been called into question by Democrats after coordinating with former President Donald Trump’s campaign ahead of the 2020 election, suggested that lawmakers put James Biden “under oath” to reveal “the extent” of Joe Biden’s alleged role.
Hunter Biden is expected to appear before the panel one week later on Feb. 28.
