(LONDON) — Dozens of Iranian women political prisoners went on a hunger strike Thursday in protest of the execution of Iranian protester Mohammad Ghobadlou.
The announcement of the hunger strike was made on the Instagram account of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, who is among the 61 women on strike at the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran.
Since the announcement, many prominent Iranian artists and activists have stated they’re joining the symbolic collective hunger strike from around the world.
Ghobadlou, who was hanged Tuesday by the Islamic Republic, was arrested in September 2022 during the bloody “Woman Life Freedom” protests that swept the nation. The 23-year-old was executed despite an international outcry. His lawyer, Amir Raisian, described this execution as a “murder” and an act without “any legal bases” as his client’s court sentence had been initially overruled by the Iranian Supreme Court. Raisian announced on his X account he received the notice of the execution the night before Ghobaldou was hanged.
Ghobadlou was accused of “waging war against God” and “corruption on Earth,” both crimes punishable by death in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Islamic Republic has executed at least seven other protesters for alleged crimes linked to mass protests over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022, allegedly at the hands of Iran’s “morality police.”
“The news of the execution of Iranian youth has sparked a wave of anger and protest in society,” the political prisoners in Evin said in the statement Thursday. “In protest against the recent executions and for the ‘halt of executions,’ will engage in a united hunger strike on the 25th of Jan 2024.”
They said this is a move “to keep the names of the executed alive” and to save hundreds of individuals awaiting execution in the prisons of the Islamic Republic.
“Be our voice against executions in Iran,” they asked the public.
The regime has continued its brutal suppression of protesters after months of demonstrations ignited by Amini’s death.
Amini, 22, was on a trip to Tehran in September 2022 when the hijab police, called the “morality police,” arrested her allegedly for not fully complying with the Sharia-based compulsory hijab laws of the country. She was taken into custody only to be announced dead at a hospital three days later, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency. Iran Human Rights reported in April 2023 that at least 537 people had been killed since the start of the protests and, according to the state-run IRNA, at least 22,000 people were arrested.
Many activists, families of the former dissident victims of the Islamic Republic regime and Iranian prominent artists said they would also go on hunger strike Thursday.
“Together with ’61 female prisoners of conscience of Evin’ to protest the execution of Mohammad Ghobadlou and to stop the execution, with a symbolic approach, I will go on a hunger strike tomorrow, Thursday 25th of January,” Mehdi Yarahi, a celebrated pop singer posted on his X account.
Yarahi himself was arrested by the regime in August after releasing a song celebrating the anniversary of the Mahsa Amini protests.
Iranian-American activist Masih Alinejad also announced she would go on hunger strike Thursday. “Solidarity is beautiful, but if we don’t take action, believe me, more people who are on the death row will be executed soon,” she wrote on her X account.
Another well-known opposition figure, Hamed Esmailiyoun, said he wanted to speak on behalf of the 61 prisoners and others who have joined the collective movement.
In a video published on Instagram, Esmailion addressed Neda Al-Nashif, deputy high commissioner for human rights at the United Nations, and asked her to go to the Evin Prison when she visits Tehran. “Mrs. Al-Nashif should visit the prisoners who are on the death row.”
“We must be their voice before it is too late for the prisoners on death row,” he added.
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump is on trial this week in New York City to determine whether he will have to pay former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll additional damages for defaming her in 2019 when he denied her allegations of sexual abuse.
Last year, in a separate trial, a jury determined that Trump was liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the 1990s, and that he defamed her in a 2022 social media post by calling her allegations “a Hoax and a lie” and saying “This woman is not my type!”
Trump has denied all wrongdoing and has said he doesn’t know who Carroll is.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jan 25, 2:48 PM
‘This is not America,’ Trump mutters as he leaves court
“Not America,” Donald Trump muttered as he exited the courtroom following his testimony.
“It’s not America. This is not America,” he repeated, his voice rising as he slowly walked toward the courtroom exit.
Court is adjourned until 3:30 p.m. ET, at which point attorneys will conference with the judge.
Closing arguments are currently scheduled for tomorrow.
Jan 25, 2:33 PM
Trump testifies he denied allegations to defend himself
“Do you stand by your testimony in your deposition?” Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, asked Trump on the witness stand.
“100% yes,” Trump responded.
“Did you deny the allegation to defend yourself?” Habba asked. “Yes I did, that’s exactly right,” Trump responded.
“Mr. President, did you ever instruct anyone to hurt Ms. Carroll?”
“No, I just wanted to defend myself, my family and frankly the presidency,” Trump answered.
The judge struck everything after the word “no.”
On cross-examination Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan asked whether this is the first trial with Carroll that Trump has attended. He said yes.
On redirect, Trump affirmed he was represented by counsel.
Trump then stepped down from the stand, his testimony over after all of three minutes.
Jan 25, 2:26 PM
Judge provides instructions on scope of testimony
Prior to Trump taking the witness stand, Judge Lewis Kaplan reminded the parties, outside the jury’s presence, that a prior trial found “Mr. Trump in fact sexually abused Ms. Carroll by forcibly and without consent inserting his fingers into her vagina” and that “Ms. Carroll did not make up her claim of forcible sexual abuse.”
Kaplan said the prior trial also established Trump’s statements of denial were defamatory and that Trump “knew they were false, had serious doubts as to the truth of what he said or made those statements with a high degree of awareness that they were probably false.”
The judge reminded the defense that Trump cannot make any argument “disputing or undermining those determinations.” He said “there is cause for concern” that Trump’s testimony might contain inadmissible evidence.
“I want to know everything he is going to say,” Kaplan told defense attorney Alina Habba.
“That he stands by his deposition,” Habba responded. “He is going to say that he did not make the statements to hurt Ms. Carroll.”
Habba said Trump will also say that he had to respond to the allegation and did not instruct anyone to disparage Carroll.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, complained that while Habba was giving her proffer, “Mr. Trump said under his breath that he never met her and had never seen her before.”
Kaplan said the jury would be instructed that, regardless of what Trump says on the witness stand, “he did it.”
Trump was overheard saying he was not at the first trial and that he does not “know this woman” as Habba tried to affirm Trump understood the confines of his testimony.
“So he will comply with the rulings?” Kaplan asked. “That is my understanding,” Habba replied.
The judge has limited the examination to three questions: Does he stand by the deposition? Did he deny the allegation because an accusation had been made? And did he instruct anyone to hurt Carroll?
Jan 25, 2:19 PM
Trump takes the stand
“Defense calls President Donald Trump,” attorney Alina Habba said as Trump took the stand in his own defense.
Jan 25, 1:56 PM
Trump, observing proceedings, is more subdued than last week
With the morning session completed, a more subdued Donald Trump has been in the courtroom today.
Unlike when Trump attended the trial last week, there have been no outbursts from Trump and no sparring with the judge. There are hardly any of the audible comments or hand gesturing that was observed earlier.
Instead, Trump has sat calmly and listened to the testimony, occasionally conferring quietly with his attorneys. When a video was played of him from just a few days ago repeating the claim that he “didn’t know” E. Jean Carroll, he nodded along with the video and silently mouthed the words “true.”
In fact, the only real disturbance today came when a cell phone — which Judge Kaplan strictly prohibits in the courtroom — rang in the galley.
“Whose telephone was that?” the judge asked. “Take that man out of here.”
It turned out to be Trump campaign spokesperson Stephen Cheung– who was removed from the courtroom by security.
Trump may take the witness stand when the proceedings resume after a break.
Jan 25, 1:31 PM
Carroll’s friend testifies she was ‘very concerned’ for her
On cross-examination by Carroll’s attorney Shawn Crowley, former television newswoman Carol Martin explained the safety concerns she said she had due to her association with E. Jean Carroll and her lawsuit against Donald Trump.
“I am a huge consumer of news and I keep up with everything that I can, as it happens, and the climate in the country felt dangerous to me,” said Martin, a longtime friend of Carroll’s. “Mr. Trump was saying he didn’t lose the election and I was very concerned that my friend was right in the middle of a lawsuit like this one.”
She also testified her comments about Carroll’s “narcissism” and “lifestyle” were made out of concern that Carroll might lose at trial. Martin testified that when she called Carroll a “drug addict,” she meant she was very passionate.
“I used the word drug addict. Bad word to use,” Martin said.
“Are you suspicious of her motives?” asked Crowley.
“I am not suspicious of her motives,” Martin replied.
Jan 25, 12:53 PM
Carroll has at times ‘enjoyed the attention,’ friend testifies
Former television newswoman Carol Martin, testifying as a hostile witness for the defense, said that her longtime friend E. Jean Carroll “has an admirable reputation in the workplace.”
Martin testified that she did, “on some levels,” have concern for her safety and her daughter’s safety after Carroll went public in 2019 with her sexual assault accusation against Donald Trump. Martin was among the friends Carroll had told about the assault.
“As I saw the popularity of that article, my daughter became more concerned,” Martin said of the 2019 New York magazine story in which Carroll made the accusation.
“Ms. Carroll assured you she didn’t have security concerns?” defense attorney Alina Habba asked. “That was her opinion,” Martin said. “Jeanie didn’t want us to worry.”
Habba has argued that the harm Carroll said she suffered as a result of Trump’s defamatory statements is overblown.
“Did you think Ms. Carroll enjoyed the attention?” Habba asked. “At points, in early years,” Martin responded. She also affirmed she had texted a friend that Carroll’s “narcissism had run amok.”
Martin testified that “at some point” she became frustrated with what Habba described as Carroll’s “celebratory behavior” in connection with her lawsuits against Trump. “It’s a difference in our personalities, but we work around it,” Martin said.
At one point Martin said she felt Carroll was “loving the adulation.”
“Do you believe Ms. Carroll is enjoying this fame to some extent?” Habba asked. “I think she is adapting to this phase in her life. Enjoying is a multifaceted word,” Martin said, ending her direct examination.
Jan 25, 11:50 AM
Judge denies defense’s motion for directed verdict
The defense’s motion for a directed verdict, made after Carroll’s attorneys rested their case, asked the judge to end the trial due to a lack of evidence.
“Ms. Carroll has failed to establish any causal link between her claim for damages and President Trump’s statement,” defense attorney Alina Habba said. “On causation alone, she has not proven her facts.”
Habba argued, as she did in her opening statement, that people were disparaging Carroll prior to Trump issuing his defamatory denials. She also argued Carroll could not prove she received death threats at the time because she deleted messages that contained them, prompting an interjection from the judge.
“Your theory here is that she should be punished because, before there was litigation, she deleted tweets that could be helpful to her?” Judge Lewis Kaplan asked. “That’s not my argument,” Habba replied. “Sounds like it,” the judge said.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, argued that she had met her burden.
“We believe there is more than ample evidence, causation, here to allow the case to go to the jury,” Roberta Kaplan said.
The judge denied the defense’s motion. Next up will be the defense’s first witness.
Jan 25, 11:31 AM
Carroll rests her case, defense seeks directed verdict
Following concluding statements, E. Jean Carroll’s attorneys have rested their case.
They will now give way to Trump’s attorneys to present the defense’s case.
The defense, meanwhile, has asked the judge for a directed verdict to halt the proceedings and decide the case in their favor.
Jan 25, 11:12 AM
Carroll’s attorneys highlight clips from Trump’s 2022 deposition
E. Jean Carroll’s attorneys ended their defamation case against former President Trump by showing the jury some of Trump’s social media posts and soundbites from his campaign rallies in which he repeats the defamatory statements he has made about her.
The jury also saw a portion of Trump’s videotaped deposition for Carroll’s case that he sat for in October 2022, in which Trump was given a copy of the 2019 New York magazine article that first published Carroll’s sexual assault allegation.
“Did you ever read this article?” plaintiff’s attorney Roberta Kaplan asked in the deposition. “No,” Trump responded.
Kaplan, in the deposition, also read Trump’s defamatory response to the article and asked, “Do you stand by the statement?” Trump responded, “Yes.”
The jury also heard Trump in the deposition affirm that he stood by a June 24, 2019, statement in which he said Carroll was “not my type.”
“You meant she was not your type, physically right?” Kaplan asked. “Physically, she’s not my type,” Trump responded. “The only difference between me and other people is that I’m honest.”
The jury also saw the excerpt of the deposition in which Trump was handed an old black-and-white photo of him, his first wife Ivana, Carroll, and her then-husband John Johnson, and temporarily mistook Carroll for his second wife Marla Maples.
After the confusion, Kaplan, in the deposition, asked Trump if the three women he married were his type, and Trump answered, “Yeah.”
Trump, in the deposition, also conceded that he had no information about Carroll’s political party or evidence that she was pursuing a political agenda.
The jury also saw an excerpt of a videotaped deposition Trump gave in April 2023 as part of Trump’s separate civil fraud lawsuit in which Trump boasted about his wealth, and estimated that the value of his Mar-a-Lago resort is $1.5 billion — possibly meant to show the jury that Trump can afford a large damage award.
Jan 25, 10:26 AM
Carroll is a ‘truth teller,’ former editor says
E. Jean Carroll was a “beloved” columnist at Elle magazine, her former editor testified as the final witness in Carroll’s case.
“She was beloved by the readers,” Roberta Myers testified. “I would say she was the most prominent columnist that we had. I thought of her column as a destination. People would often pick up the magazine and go to her column first.”
“She’s a truth-teller,” Myers said of Carroll.
On cross-examination, defense attorney Alina Habba established that Myers is a registered Democrat who did not vote for Trump in either 2016 or 2020.
When Habba asked whether Myers planned to vote for Trump in 2024, Myers answered, “I don’t think I have to say what I plan to do.”
Trump watched Myers’ testimony from his seat at the defense table.
Jan 25, 10:19 AM
Elle magazine editor takes the stand
After a late start, today’s proceedings are underway in former President Trump’s defamation damages trial.
Roberta Myers, the former editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, where E. Jean Carroll was an advice columnist, has taken the stand to testify for Carroll.
Trump is seated at the defense table with his attorneys.
Jan 25, 9:57 AM
Trump is in court
Former President Donald Trump has arrived in court this morning.
The proceedings, which were scheduled to get underway at 9:30 a.m. ET, were off to a late start.
Jan 25, 9:00 AM
Carroll’s attorneys expected to rest their case
If former President Trump takes the stand in his own defense today, it will happen after Carroll’s attorneys rest their case.
Carroll’s lawyers plan to call one final witness: Robbie Myers, the former editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, where Carroll was an advice columnist.
As part of the defense’s case, Trump’s lawyers also plan to call Carol Martin, a friend of Carroll’s who testified in the earlier assault and defamation trial.
Jan 25, 7:53 AM
Trump indicates he’ll attend trial today, could take stand
In a post to his Truth Social platform overnight, former President Trump indicated that he will attend his defamation damages trial today.
“But now I’m heading back to New York City for a trial based on False Accusations, from perhaps decades ago — The woman has no idea when!” Trump wrote.
Carroll has accused Trump of assaulting her around 1996 but can’t pinpoint the year.
In a series of other posts, Trump also disparaged Carroll, said she made up her story, and suggested she was a paid political operative.
If Trump takes the stand today, he would be banned from using any of those defenses based on a pretrial ruling by Judge Lewis Kaplan which determined that — because a jury last year already found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and then defaming her — Trump is barred from arguing that he did not sexually abuse Carroll or that he never met her.
(NEW YORK) — Shares of Tesla plummeted more than 10% in afternoon trading on Thursday, less than 24 hours after the company reported earnings that fell short of expectations and cautioned of sluggish sales over the duration of this year.
Revenue and profits missed analyst expectations over the three months ending in December, according to the earnings report released on Wednesday.
In all, the company delivered 1.81 million cars in 2023, more than it had in any previous year, the earnings report said. However, Tesla has cut prices as it faces increased competition, putting downward pressure on the company’s revenue.
Further, the company’s vehicle delivery growth “may be notably lower” in 2024, Tesla said in the earnings release.
“Tesla is nothing more than a struggling car company,” Gordon Johnson, CEO and founder of data firm GLJ Research, who is bearish on Tesla, told investors in a note Thursday reviewed by ABC News.
For its part, Tesla said the slowdown owes to the company’s focus on developing a “next-generation vehicle” that will arrive as soon as the second half of 2025. That improved vehicle will supercharge sales, the company said.
“Our company is currently between two major growth waves,” the earnings report said. “The first one began with the global expansion of the Model 3/Y platform and the next one we believe will be initiated by the global expansion of the next-generation vehicle platform.”
The explanation, echoed during a conference call Wednesday, failed to allay the concerns of Dan Ives, a managing director of equity research at the investment firm Wedbush, who is typically bullish on the company.
The conference call, Ives told ABC News in a statement, amounted to a “trainwreck.”
The earnings report has shaken the “near-term confidence” previously endorsed at Wedbush, Ives added. “But we remain firm on a long-term bull thesis around Tesla and the broader AI story set to take hold,” he added.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk drew attention last week when he said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he’s seeking greater voting control of the electric carmaker, threatening to otherwise pursue major projects such as artificial intelligence outside of the company.
The Tesla board, Musk said, should grant him 25% voting control, an amount that would nearly double the vote share currently afforded to Musk through his stake in the company.
The company has also faced government inquiries over risks posed by some of the technology in its vehicles.
In December, Tesla agreed to recall about 2 million cars over a safety issue tied to its autopilot system, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said. Earlier this month, the company recalled an additional 1.6 million vehicles exported to China, citing a problem with the car’s assisted steering system.
The uncertainty that looms over the company, Ives said, amounts to a “bitter pill to swallow for the bulls.”
(NEW YORK) — Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley, will testify in her own defense, lawyer Shannon Smith said Thursday as her manslaughter trial got underway with opening statements.
“Jennifer Crumbley is going to take the stand and tell you about her life, her son … and when he did something she could have not have predicted,” Smith said, though a date for her testimony was not announced.
The mother is facing four counts of involuntary manslaughter for her role in the November 2021 shooting that left four students dead and seven other injured.
Jennifer Crumbley pleaded not guilty to all charges in December 2021. A separate trial for her husband, James Crumbley, who is also facing four counts of involuntary manslaughter, will begin in March.
The trial is a rare case of parents being charged in connection to a child’s mass shooting.
Jury selection was completed on Wednesday with 12 jurors and five alternates.
On Thursday, prosecutors started with opening statements, arguing that the Crumbleys did not secure the firearm used in the shooting in a way to prevent their son from getting access to it. Prosecutors also argued that Jennifer Crumbley “was still given the opportunity” to prevent the shooting on the day it happened, but did not.
Days before the shooting, a teacher allegedly saw Ethan Crumbley researching ammunition in class, and the school contacted his parents but they didn’t respond, according to previous information shared by prosecutors. But Jennifer Crumbley did text her son, writing, “lol, I’m not mad at you, you have to learn not to get caught,” according to prosecutors.
Hours before the shooting, the prosecution has alleged that a teacher saw a note on Ethan Crumbley’s desk that was “a drawing of a semi-automatic handgun pointing at the words, ‘The thoughts won’t stop, help me.’ In another section of the note was a drawing of a bullet with the following words above that bullet, ‘Blood everywhere.'”
The Crumbleys were called to the school over the incident, and said they’d get their son counseling, but did not take him home, prosecutors said.
Prosecutor Marc Keast also alleged Thursday that Jennifer Crumbley privately communicated concerns about Ethan Crumbley with her husband ahead of the shooting.
The defense argued in its opening statements that Jennifer Crumbley had no way to know what was going to happen and that she did not know anything about guns before the shooting.
Smith added that the school did not inform Jennifer Crumbley of her son’s problematic issues and said she did not take him home the morning of the shooting because he wanted to stay at school and the school allowed him to remain in class.
Witnesses take the stand
The first two witnesses to take the stand Thursday were educators at Oxford High School, where the shooting took place.
The first, Molly Darnell — who previously gave testimony in hearings for Ethan Crumbley — was shot through her left arm. She described “locking eyes” with Ethan through her office door before he fired at her with the bullet injuring her left arm. Darnell also detailed barricading herself in her office until law enforcement came to the door.
Darnell made a makeshift tourniquet out of the cardigan she wore to school that day to stem the bleeding from her arm, she said.
Reacting to a photo of her office door, which contained bullet holes, Darnell told prosecutors, “He was aiming to kill me.”
Kristy Marshall, the assistant principal at Oxford High School at the time of the shooting, took the stand as the second witness. Marshall had also previously been the principal at the shooter’s elementary school. Marshall described encountering the shooter and one of his victims in the hallway during the rampage and recognizing him from when he was in elementary school.
“It seemed so odd that it was him. I asked him, ‘Buddy are you OK? What’s going on?’ When he didn’t respond, he looked away, that’s when I knew it was him, he was the shooter,” Marshall said.
Prosecutors then played surveillance video from inside Oxford High School during the shooting that could not be broadcast. The video appeared to be so upsetting that both Jennifer Crumbley and Smith started crying, drawing heated objections from the prosecution, which said the defense was defying the judge’s order to not show too much emotion in court.
Smith, who claimed she did not cry while the video was playing, demanded a break.
Ethan Crumbley, who was 15 years old at the time of the shooting, was sentenced to life without parole in December after he pleaded guilty to 24 charges, including first-degree premeditated murder and terrorism causing death.
Crumbley’s parents are accused of allowing Ethan Crumbley access to the gun used in the shooting and failing to recognize warning signs.
During his plea hearing in October 2022, Crumbley admitted in court that he asked his father to buy him a specific gun and confirmed he gave his father money for the gun and that the semi-automatic handgun wasn’t kept in a locked safe.
ABC News’ Whitney Lloyd contributed to this report.
Haleon is voluntarily recalling eight lots of Robitussin Honey CF Max Day Adult and Robitussin Honey CF Max Nighttime Adult to the consumer level. CREDIT: FDA
(NEW YORK) — With cold and flu season underway, some Robitussin products marketed for the relief of cough, flu and sore throat symptoms are being voluntarily recalled nationwide due to a microbial contamination, the consumer health company Haleon announced Wednesday.
Eight lots of Robitussin Honey CF Max Day cough syrup in four-ounce and eight-ounce bottles and Robitussin Honey CF Max Night cough syrup in eight-ounce bottles, all for adult use, are impacted by the recall. The recalled products carry expiration dates between May 2025 and June 2026. The lot numbers and expiration dates can be found on the Food and Drug Administration’s website.
Immunocompromised individuals can be affected by the potential contamination, including the development of fungemia, the presence of fungi in the blood, or disseminated fungal infection, which can be severe or life-threatening, according to a news release from the FDA.
Those who are not immunocompromised may not develop any life threatening conditions but the FDA noted that “the occurrence of an infection that may necessitate medical intervention cannot be completely ruled out.”
Haleon said it has not received any reports of adverse reactions so far but urged consumers with recalled products to stop using them immediately and return them. Consumers can contact Haleon’s Consumer Relations team at 1-800-245-1040 between Monday through Friday 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Eastern Time or via email at mystory.us@haleon.com.
“Consumer safety and product quality are our utmost priorities at Haleon,” the company said in a statement to ABC News on Thursday. “After a thorough investigation, a root cause has been identified and we are implementing corrective and preventative actions to ensure that this does not recur.”
As war rages in Gaza, civilians have repeatedly been told by Israel to go to the city of Deir al-Balah, in the center of the enclave, for safety.
The city lies below the Wadi Gaza, the line south of which Israel warned people to move starting in mid-October. And after a cease-fire in late November, Israel’s military issued multiple calls for civilians to travel to shelters in the city for their own safety.
Deir al-Balah has since swelled with internally displaced people, according to the United Nations.
But the city has not been spared from the Israeli bombing campaign, according to the United Nations and international human rights organizations like Amnesty International.
ABC News, using satellite imagery from Planet Labs and videos filmed on the ground, has identified at least 91 individual instances of destruction in Deir al-Balah since Oct. 7. Numerous videos and photos reviewed by ABC News appear to support U.N. and human rights organizations’ statements and indicate that while Israel’s military directed civilians to Deir al-Balah, they continued to strike there.
ABC News cannot independently verify every individual instance of destruction as being from Israel.
However, Airwars, a U.K.-based nonprofit that tracks civilian casualties due to airstrikes, told ABC News they think “it is logical to conclude” a majority of damage to Deir al-Balah since Oct. 7 has been caused by the Israel Defense Forces rather than by Gaza-based militants, given the scale of bombardments. Airwars also said exact estimates are hard to come by because the ongoing bombing makes it difficult to access these areas.
Evacuation to Deir al-Balah
In the first two months following the terror attack by Gaza-based militants on Israel and the start of the ensuing IDF campaign in Gaza, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza fled south from the northern part of the enclave, according to the U.N. and the IDF.
After a week-long cease-fire between Hamas and Israel in November, Israel signaled its intention to expand ground operations to areas in the south previously declared safe.
As Israel started this expansion on Dec. 2, it issued new evacuation orders for much of the city of Khan Younis that extended to areas immediately to the south of Deir al-Balah.
Israeli troops positioned themselves south of the city on the main road that spans Gaza from north to south, sandwiching Deir al-Balah between the two areas of ground combat to the north and south.
On Dec. 4, the IDF announced a corridor along a coastal street would allow people to safely go from southern Gaza toward Deir al-Balah. The city is the largest in Central Gaza, with a prewar population of about 75,000 living in roughly 5.7 square miles.
By Dec. 11, the IDF was also urging citizens of northern Gaza to evacuate to “known shelters in Deir Al Balah.” These warnings were posted online almost every day in December, accompanied by leaflets and phone calls.
When the IDF expanded its ground combat operation to central Gaza on Dec. 22, it warned citizens of the city of Bureij, “For your safety, you must move immediately to the shelters in Deir Al-Balah.”
The same message was conveyed to the residents of the other central camps within Deir al-Balah — Nuseirat by Jan. 3, and Maghazi the next week.
IDF officials told ABC News they issued these warnings to protect civilians in areas of intense fighting, but “Hamas systematically attempts to prevent the evacuation of civilians by calling on the civilians to ignore the IDF’s requests.”
The IDF warnings drove hundreds of thousands of people to Deir al-Balah seeking safety, U.N. records and visual evidence, including satellite images and on-the-ground videos, showed.
Many Gaza residents have heeded these warnings quickly, Juliette Touma, communications director for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, told ABC News.
“The minute people hear about these evacuation orders, it creates a sensational amount of panic and anxiety and people just leave,” Touma said.
Striking Deir al-Balah
Despite these indications that Deir al-Balah would offer relative safety to civilians, the area was not spared from aerial bombardment.
ABC News’ analysis identified dozens of destroyed buildings ranging from entire city blocks to family homes.
Between Dec. 7 and 8, Israel destroyed the Yaffa Mosque in central Deir al-Balah, leveling the building and severely damaging the neighboring Yaffa Hospital.
Images taken by local journalists show the rubble of the mosque and destroyed walls of the hospital.
Israel’s military has the weaponry to cause the damage seen at the scene, but Hamas and other militant groups based in Gaza do not, said Marc Garlasco, a military advisor with the Netherlands-based PAX Protection of Civilians. ABC News asked Garlasco to review a collection of visual evidence, including satellite imagery, videos and photos.
Garlasco, who reviewed the material remotely, said it appeared to indicate the mosque was likely destroyed using a bomb on a delayed fuse, causing the structure to “pancake” and reducing the potential for blast and fragmentation damage.
“Regardless,” Garlasco said, “dropping such a structure with an aerial bomb may have wide area effects that endangered people in the hospital.”
On Jan. 13, an Israeli missile hit a house in Deir al-Balah but did not explode, according to The Associated Press. Shortly after, according to a neighbor who witnessed the attack speaking with The Associated Press, two more missiles hit the street, destroying his home.
Video of the aftermath shows a crater about 40 feet wide with debris scattered around it. Images show the unexploded missile lying precariously on the ground. Garlasco said he identified the missile as a 2,000-pound American-made Mark 84 bomb.
Between Dec. 2 and 3, satellite images reviewed by ABC News show another crater and destroyed building about 500 feet from a school-turned-shelter. Garlasco told ABC News the crater’s size indicated a 1,000- or 2,000-pound bomb consistent with those used by the IDF, and not with rockets or mortars fired by Gaza-based militant groups like Hamas.
UNRWA said it recorded at least three instances of schools being used as shelters sustaining damage due to strikes on or near the buildings in Deir al-Balah.
Provided by ABC News with specific coordinates and dates from each of three strikes, as well as others in Deir al-Balah, the IDF did not deny carrying them out. ABC News sent requests over a series of days seeking detailed comment from the IDF.
While the IDF did not respond to any specific claims, it did reply on Sunday with several paragraphs, telling ABC News, in part, “[A]s part of Hamas’s systematic use of the civilian population as a human shield, Hamas exploits the humanitarian areas, shelters and hospitals, by attacking IDF forces from within these places, and concealing terrorists and military assets in them.”
They did not specify whether their intelligence suggested that Hamas operatives or assets were present at the strike locations provided, which included four specific places and a general question about the entire city.
Asked whether steps were taken to protect civilians at Yaffa Hospital, and schools and shelters near strikes in Deir al-Balah, the IDF said they take “all feasible precautions under the relevant operational circumstances to mitigate harm to civilians when operating. Some of these precautions include specific warning before strikes when possible.”
The IDF added, “In addition, as part of Hamas’s systematic use of the civilian population as a human shield, Hamas exploits the humanitarian areas, shelters and hospitals, by attacking IDF forces from within these places, and concealing terrorists and military assets in them. For example, in recent weeks Hamas has launched dozens of rockets towards Israel from the humanitarian area in Al-Muassi.”
The IDF did not specify whether precautions to protect civilians were taken at any of the Deir al-Balah sites.
Nowhere to go
An ABC News analysis of IDF evacuation warnings earlier this month found that over 60% of Gaza was then under evacuation orders. More areas have been warned to evacuate since.
Martin Griffiths, under-secretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs at the U.N. told the Security Council on Jan. 12, “[M]ore and more people are being crammed into an ever-smaller sliver of land, only to find yet more violence and deprivation, inadequate shelter and a near absence of the most basic services,” he said, “There is no safe place in Gaza.”
IDF evacuation orders, and the ground combat they portend, are now in effect for areas surrounding Deir al-Balah, coming to just across the street from one of the area’s last functioning hospitals, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
International aid organizations, including Doctors Without Borders and the International Rescue Committee (IRC), announced on Jan. 6 and 7 that they would be forced to leave Deir al-Balah.
IRC said it would leave as “a result of increasing Israeli military activity around the Al Aqsa Hospital.”
American doctor Seema Jilani, who fled the hospital along with her colleagues from the International Rescue Committee, told ABC News she saw civilians with extensive injuries who she didn’t think would receive timely treatment due to the incursion of IDF troops.
“I saw children, infants with their limbs blown off. I saw children with third-degree burns from explosive injuries, and to leave them without any care is something that I know I will struggle with for the rest of my life,” Jilani said.
The IDF told ABC News it seeks to notify the population about evacuations “in a variety of ways, including radio broadcasts, a dedicated website in Arabic, millions of pre-recorded phone calls and tens of thousands of live phone calls, and millions of leaflets.”
An IDF leaflet distributed the week of Jan. 8 warned citizens of another central city to evacuate to Deir al-Balah. The image on the leaflet circled only a section of the city as being the “safe” area, cutting out about half of the city’s known shelters as well as the hospital.
Most IDF evacuation warnings instruct people to go to known shelters in Deir al-Balah.
Touma, UNRWA’s communications director, left Gaza on Jan. 16 after visiting some of the organization’s shelters and camps, including several in Deir al-Balah and Rafah. She told ABC News the shelters are overcrowded.
“It was almost claustrophobic walking into the school. The schoolyard and the playground, all covered with these little makeshift structures that people have set up, because everything indoors is just overcrowded and overflowing,” she said.
Satellite images appear to show tent camps swelling with new arrivals between Dec. 24 — after Israel announced their ground operation in Central Gaza — and Jan. 5.
But, by Jan. 10, gunfire between combatants could be heard from a tent camp outside Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital courtyard, as captured on video by local journalists. The shooting didn’t appear to have been in the hospital. People fled again.
The hospital camp and shelters at schools on the same street shrank. Satellite images showed the tent camps and shelters further inside the city growing in a matter of days.
According to UNRWA, Deir al-Balah’s population has now swelled to at least 4 times the city’s prewar population. As Israel has asked civilians to move to smaller areas, there are fewer places to go, the U.N. said.
The only other major city in Gaza where IDF ground troops are not operating on the ground, Rafah, is also overflowing, according to UNRWA. It is now home to over a million people, more than 10 times its prewar population, the organization said.
Some people have fled Deir al-Balah to go south to Rafah, despite that city’s overcrowding, Touma said.
Others arriving in Deir al-Balah at the behest of the Israeli army move to shelters or anywhere else they can, she said.
“There is no space. People are just setting up these little structures wherever they can everywhere,” Touma said. There’s no pavements, because people just set up these little structures right. It’s like seas of people.”
But the destruction continues. The IDF retreated from their positions in the south of the city on Jan. 10. Satellite images show several buildings that were in their control for weeks were destroyed in the days leading up to the troops’ rebase.
Dr. Jilani, speaking with ABC News after leaving Gaza, said she still could not believe what she had seen in Deir al-Balah.
“This is entirely a preventable man-made catastrophe on nightmarish levels,” she said. “This is not a natural disaster. This is something that humans are doing to other humans, and there is no humanity left when we do this.”
ABC News’ Chris Looft, Samy Zyara, Kris Anderson, and Jordana Miller contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Immigration, one of the most politically divisive and complex matters in the U.S. for decades, is emerging as a top issue in the 2024 election.
Look no further than Iowa and New Hampshire, two early-voting states thousands of miles from the southwest border.
Voters there ranked immigration nearly as important as the economy when asked which issue mattered most in deciding how to vote in the Republican presidential contests.
“I think overall the most important thing to me is securing the borders, national security,” Bill Collins of Bedford, New Hampshire, told ABC News at a polling place on Tuesday.
Border security was a centerpiece of Donald Trump’s successful 2016 campaign, and he is now repeating those messages (and in many cases going further than he did eight years ago, accused of echoing Hitler in saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”) to energize and unite his supporters against what Republicans have dubbed “Biden’s border crisis.”
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is facing rancor within his own party as Democratic leaders in New York and Illinois are being forced to deal with the fallout from busloads of migrants being sent to their cities by Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott amid a historic influx of border crossings.
“In his entire administration, it has eclipsed everything else,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.
Migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border reached a record high of 302,000 in December and apprehensions hit historic peak of 2.2 million in fiscal year 2022. Over 100,000 migrants have been transported to cities like Washington, Los Angeles and New York.
Images of migrants lining the streets in Manhattan or Chicago helped shift perceptions of the issue from a far-away problem to a daily close-reminder of border tumult, making it even more potent than in prior cycles.
“This is where it’s different from any other chapter in our history,” Chishti said.
“When you have an organic absorption of migrants in society, it doesn’t get noticed. But when you have sudden, dramatic groups of people showing up then it becomes a different kind of problem,” Chishti added.
Polls show immigration is a major political vulnerability for Biden. He has just an 18% approval rating on the issue, the lowest for any president since ABC News and the Washington Post began asking the question in January 2024.
An ABC News/Ipsos survey conducted last November, one year out from Election Day, showed Republicans were generally more trusted to do a better job than Democrats when it came to handling immigration. At the same time, nearly a third of U.S. adults said they didn’t trust either party to effectively deal with the issue.
Biden’s apparent shift
Biden campaigned as Trump’s foil on immigration, promising to put an end to controversial policies like those that led to families being separated at the border. Shortly after he entered office, he sent a bill to Congress, he said, to “restore humanity and American values to our immigration system.”
But now, amid relentless attacks from critics for his handling of the border, he is entertaining negotiations with Republicans on a compromise immigration bill in exchange for unlocking urgent aid to Ukraine. While hosting mayors at the White House last week, Biden said he is open to “massive changes” to solve the problem at the border, including reforms to asylum laws.
Some congressional Democrats have already aired frustrations with the administration, though no bill text has been released or announced. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, led by Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán, called on Biden to “reject Trump-era immigration policies” being pursued by Republicans, saying it’s “unconscionable that the President would consider going back on his word to enact what amounts to a ban on asylum.”
Biden’s apparent shift “appeals to moderates and independents in the electorate but does risk alienating more progressive members of the party,” said Louis DeSipio, a political science and Chicano-Latino professor at UC Irvine.
“Biden’s on a tightrope with this issue,” DeSipio said. “It’s the first time in quite a while that Democrats have had this level of internal division over immigration.”
While a bipartisan deal could deflate the GOP’s talking point that Biden hasn’t sufficiently tackled the issue, there’s the looming question of whether it will happen at all. Trump has urged Republicans not to accept whatever is worked out between Senate negotiators and the Biden administration. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who speaks to Trump frequently on the issue, has said he doesn’t believe now is the time for comprehensive reform. Instead, Johnson has said Biden should use executive action to address the border.
“It’s an issue that Republicans are going to run on but not legislate on,” said Douglas Rivlin, the senior communications director at America’s Voice, a progressive immigration advocacy group.
Biden and the White House are pushing back on Republicans signaling opposition.
“They have to choose whether they want to solve a problem or keep weaponizing the issue to score political points against the president,” Biden said last week.
According to reporters in the room, when asked if the border was secure, Biden replied, “No.” He also said “no” when asked if his administration’s policies have caused any of the problems.
Some immigration activists have accused Biden and Democrats of letting Republicans take control of the narrative.
“Time and time again, what I keep seeing in our polling and in our research is that Americans are just not hearing from Democrats,” said Beatriz Lopez, the deputy director with the Immigration Hub.
Lopez said the group urged the Biden’s team to not cede too much ground in border negotiations to GOP demands, and instead refocus on rebuilding its coalition and reminding voters what’s at stake in 2024.
“You’re not going to win by out-Republican the Republicans,” Lopez said. “You’re going to win by leaning into good pragmatic solutions, reminding people of our shared values and countering the anti-immigrant rhetoric. That’s the formula.”
Trump ramps up anti-immigrant rhetoric
Trump appears even more emboldened this campaign on a number of issues, with immigration at the forefront.
If elected, Trump has said he plans to crack down severely on both legal and illegal immigration. He has vowed to carry out the “largest domestic deportation in American History” and to sign an executive order ending birthright citizenship — both of which would face significant legal challenges, if not practically impossible to implement.
He’s not only gone so far as to suggest migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” more recently he’s describing migrants coming to the border as dangerous people coming from “insane asylums” being emptied out around the world. CNN reported earlier this year that his campaign could provide no evidence to back up his claims.
But his message of an immigrant “invasion” appears to be resonating among some Republicans.
Debbe Magee, a Trump supporter, cited the border as her most important issue while attending one of his rallies in New Hampshire.
“We’re not safe,” Magee said.
DeSipio said Trump, both during his presidency and in the years since, has “captured the fear of the change that was coming to the country” with migration over the past few decades and amplified it.
“It has resonated with Republicans since 2016, and now increasingly with some independents and some Democrats,” DeSipio said, though he noted it could do more harm than good among independents and moderates.
Proving the GOP’s embrace of Trump’s proposals, there was little daylight between him and his GOP rivals on how to approach the issue if elected.
While the issue helped to first propel Trump into the White House, it wasn’t as successful in 2018 or 2020. Trump and other Republicans made a migrant caravan moving toward the U.S. a rallying cry in 2018, though Democrats flipped control of the House with a net gain of more than 40 seats. In the 2020 election, immigration issues were largely overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic and economy.
But as the 2024 race increasingly turns to a likely rematch between Trump and Biden, Trump is going all in criticizing his chief rival on his management of the border.
“We have millions and millions of people flowing into our country illegally,” Trump said in his New Hampshire victory speech. “We have no idea who the hell they are. They come from prisons and they come from mental institutions. And it’s just killing our country.”
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump is on trial this week in New York City to determine whether he will have to pay former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll additional damages for defaming her in 2019 when he denied her allegations of sexual abuse.
Last year, in a separate trial, a jury determined that Trump was liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the 1990s, and that he defamed her in a 2022 social media post by calling her allegations “a Hoax and a lie” and saying “This woman is not my type!”
Trump has denied all wrongdoing and has said he doesn’t know who Carroll is.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jan 25, 7:53 AM
Trump indicates he’ll attend trial today, could take stand
In a post to his Truth Social platform overnight, former President Trump indicated that he will attend his defamation damages trial today.
“But now I’m heading back to New York City for a trial based on False Accusations, from perhaps decades ago — The woman has no idea when!” Trump wrote.
Carroll has accused Trump of assaulting her around 1996 but can’t pinpoint the year.
In a series of other posts, Trump also disparaged Carroll, said she made up her story, and suggested she was a paid political operative.
If Trump takes the stand today, he would be banned from using any of those defenses based on a pretrial ruling by Judge Lewis Kaplan which determined that — because a jury last year already found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and then defaming her — Trump is barred from arguing that he did not sexually abuse Carroll or that he never met her.
(NEW YORK) — Communities in the southern and eastern United States are grappling with dangerous floods from heavy rainfall, while dense fog envelops a swath of the country.
Major flash flooding on Wednesday affected areas from Louisiana to Mississippi, where localized rainfall totals ranged from 5 to 9 inches. Over the past few days, heavy rain also hit parts of eastern Texas, just north of Houston, where more than 8 inches fell.
On Thursday, the worst of the flooding is expected to be from Louisiana to western North Carolina and northern Georgia, where some areas could get in excess of 5 inches of rain with flash floods in the forecast. The major cities that could be impacted include New Orleans, Louisiana; Jackson, Mississippi; Mobile, Alabama; Birmingham, Alabama; Montgomery, Alabama; Atlanta, Georgia; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Asheville, North Carolina.
The heavy rain is forecast to move north where there is still snow in the Midwest to the Northeast. A flood watch has been issued for the rain that will fall on top of the snowmelt and ice jams.
As of early Thursday, 15 states from Texas to Rhode Island are under flood alerts.
The East is expected to get waves of rain through the weekend.
Meanwhile, millions of Americans are waking up to extreme fog in at least 25 states from New Mexico to New York on Thursday morning. There are already reports of visibility being near zero in cities such as New Orleans, Louisiana; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Chicago, Illinois.
There are also reports of low visibility in major cities on the East Coast, including New York, New York; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Some areas will see this dense fog through most of the day.
Temperatures are forecast to stay mild for the East Coast this week, with the warmest air along the Interstate 95 travel corridor.
On Thursday, temperatures are expected to be near 60 degrees Fahrenheit in Washington, D.C.; in the 50s in New York, New York; and near 50 in Boston, Massachusetts. The mild air is forecast to linger over the next few days, with near 50 degrees for New York, New York; 60s for Washington, D.C.; 70s for Atlanta, Georgia; and summer-like 80s for Orlando, Florida.
(NEW YORK) — A new study in Science is shining a light on the continuing impact of long COVID, with research revealing further and continuing health concerns for some of the 16 million sufferers in the U.S.
Long COVID is a syndrome, or collection of symptoms, that continue or develop after an acute COVID-19 infection and can last weeks, months or years. There is no test to confirm if symptoms are related to long COVID. Some scientists suggest that long COVID is caused by overactive immune cells, but the exact cause remains unclear.
The study followed 113 patients at four different hospitals in Switzerland with mild and severe COVID-19 and found that 40 had symptoms of long COVID at six months, 22 of whom had persistent symptoms at 12 months.
Researchers looked at blood samples from the 40 who experienced long COVID symptoms, compared them to controls who were not infected with COVID-19, and found that those who had long COVID had evidence of inflammation (increased complement activity), blood cell dysregulation (hemolysis and platelet activation) and tissue injury in their blood.
The specific details from the small study may help provide “a basis for new diagnostic solutions,” according to the researchers, for the condition with no known cure or FDA-approved treatments.
While these results finding evidence of inflammation in patients with long COVID symptoms are not entirely surprising nor specific to long COVID, they are a step forward in identifying the cause of long COVID.
It’s more than just researchers, though, looking into developments in our understanding of the syndrome. The condition received renewed attention from the federal government last week, as the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions convened a group of patients and experts to testify about the impacts of long COVID before a bipartisan group of Senators.
In the Senate’s first-ever hearing on this topic, Sen. Tammy Baldwin said researchers and government officials need to “increase the sense of urgency” over understanding and treating the condition.
For Sen. Bernie Sanders, chairman of the committee, more needs to be done.
“We think we haven’t done anywhere near enough, and we hope to turn that around,” he said.
Medical experts testified at the hearing, telling the committee that the condition can emerge in patients of all ages and backgrounds, that the risk increases with multiple infections, and rates of long COVID are higher in minority communities.
“The burden of disease and disability from long COVID is on par with the burden of cancer and heart disease,” Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, M.D., a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University, said. “We must develop sustainable solutions to prevent repeated infections with SARS-CoV-2 and long COVID that would be embraced by the public.”
Patients and Caregivers
Angela Meriquez Vazquez, a long COVID patient from California, testified that she has helped over 15,000 sufferers through online advocacy.
“We are living through the largest mass destabilizing event in modern history,” she told the Senators.
As she told her own story, Meriquez Vazquez, a former runner, said she is currently on 12 medications. Although she said she has managed to continue working, and she has health care, the condition has forced her to work from home, lying down to minimize her symptoms.
“Not since the emergence of the AIDS pandemic has there been such an imperative for large-scale change in healthcare, public health, and inequitable structures that bring exceptional risks of illness, suffering, disability, and mortality,” Meriquez Vazquez said.
One of the Senators — Republican Roger Marshall — shared his own testimony, revealing to the committee that one of his loved ones “is one of the 16 million people” who has “suffered for two years” with the condition.
He told the committee his family member’s illness is “like mono(nucleosis) that does not go away,” adding that the person has seen 30 doctors in an attempt to find help.
Marshall said there needs to be more focus on treatments for long COVID at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“I’m frustrated that our CDC is more focused on vaccines than they are on treatments,” he said.
Epidemiologists and Researchers weigh in
Dr. Al-Aly, while testifying, repeatedly called on our country’s leaders and medical experts to come together to tackle the ongoing health crisis.
“We are the best nation on earth, and we can solve this,” he said.
One of his proposed solutions is establishing a new multidisciplinary research institute to address infection-associated chronic conditions.
Research into the condition has been “slow,” Dr. Charisse Madlock-Brown, Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, said at the hearing. She noted clinical trials are in the “experimental medicine” phase and pushed for more investment to identify proven treatments.
Sen. Tim Kaine said the National Institutes of Health has been provided more than $1 billion since 2020 to study long COVID, and he urged representatives from NIH to testify before the committee. In 2021, the NIH launched the Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery initiative to identify further risk factors and causes of long COVID.
“We can’t take two years just to get ‘geared up,'” he said.
According to the most recent information from the CDC, long COVID can cause up to 200 symptoms, including chronic fatigue, blood clots, gastrointestinal issues, brain fog and heart issues. Symptoms can last from months to years following a COVID infection. Risk factors for developing long COVID after a COVID-19 infection that have been identified include severe COVID-19 illness, underlying health conditions (such as asthma, diabetes, obesity or autoimmune diseases) and not getting the COVID-19 vaccine.
While the interest from the Senate and the new study in Science are promising, more research needs to be done to find the specific cause of why some people get long COVID from COVID-19, and others do not, and to find effective treatments.
