(NEW YORK) — With the emergence of COVID-19 and the recent surge in monkeypox cases, scientists and doctors who specialize in infectious disease are issuing increasingly dire warnings, saying wealthy countries can no longer afford to ignore small outbreaks abroad.
For decades, diseases that primarily affected lower and lower-middle income countries were relegated as “neglected” diseases, having less funding, fewer resources and little attention. Monkeypox, for example, has been smoldering quietly in Western Africa since 2017. Now, scientists are increasingly warning that global infectious disease outbreaks could become the new normal.
“I think it’s very clear that we’re living in a new age of pandemics,” said Dr. Jay Varma, a professor of population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine.
“We’ve been dealing with infectious diseases since we appeared on this planet,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Although the advent of antibiotics, vaccines and basic sanitation measures have helped control infectious diseases, the acceleration of international travel in recent decades has unleashed viruses that may have otherwise been contained in one region.
“What’s occurring in one geographic area may not remain in that geographic area [because] a pathogen can travel by the speed of a jetliner,” says Adalja.
Experts say people tend to focus on problems closer to home, and tend to be unaware of diseases spreading beyond their borders.
“There’s sort of this false sense of security, that when something is spreading somewhere where you don’t live and don’t know anyone, it’s easy to think that it will just sort of continue that way,” says Stephen Kissler, Ph.D., a research fellow at the Harvard Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases.
Oftentimes, officials work to limit travel to slow the spread of disease, as occurred globally during the COVID-19 pandemic or the Zika outbreak in the United States. But that strategy rarely halts the transmission of a virus.
“One of the important lessons of public health is that diseases don’t respect administrative borders and they certainly don’t carry passports or request visas,” said Varma.
Historically, less funding has existed to study viruses that primarily thrived outside U.S. borders.
“Public health [is underfunded]. Infrastructure is underfunded. And that’s especially true in resource poor settings where infectious disease burden is significant,” said John Brownstein, Ph.D., an ABC News contributor and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Now, there is evidence that pandemics are picking up pace. In the past 15 years, seven emergency declarations have been made by the organization — H1N1, Ebola (twice), Poliomyelitis, Zika, COVID-19, and just recently, monkeypox.
“Ultimately, these declarations are helpful, because they unlock resources, support, visibility, and education that are important in the sort of response to an emerging infectious disease,” Brownstein said.
But not every virus — or every country — gets such resources. Just this last week, scientists have been monitoring a few dozen cases of a new virus in China called the Langya virus (LayV). Because there’s limited evidence of LayV spreading between people, experts are not overly concerned at this time, but they note that dealing with new infectious diseases is not uncommon.
“We still see the sort of power architecture of the world, to be heavily imbalanced, towards countries that have historically, over the past 200 years, held the most power and political way. And that’s primarily countries in Europe and the United States,” said Varma.
In responding to COVID-19 — a truly global pandemic — governments scrambled to protect their own citizens first. The COVAX initiative aimed to share COVID vaccines equitably around the world, but never reached its full potential, experts say.
“When you have a sort of gift to the world, like the development of highly effective COVID vaccines, they’re immediately gobbled up by the countries that have the most power and wealth, leaving the rest of the populations around the world which don’t benefit from that wealth behind,” said Varma.
Pharmaceutical companies also serve as the lifeline for many that depend on vaccines or medications to protect themselves and their loved ones. Yet, the incentive to combat neglected diseases is limited — especially early in an outbreak, when very few people are sick.
“[Neglected diseases] are a small market compared to what a pharmaceutical company might be going after like high cholesterol or heart disease or something like that, that’s much more lucrative,” said Adalja.
Experts noted that the global health community increasingly works together to stop the spread of emerging diseases. But funding remains a consistent hurdle to ensure that outbreaks are contained quickly and efficiently.
“I do think that there’s always a window of opportunity, with any emerging outbreak, to do something and potentially prevent it from spreading more broadly,” said Kissler.
(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into neighboring Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with Russian forces invading from Belarus, to the north, and Russia, to the east. Ukrainian troops have offered “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.
The Russian military has since launched a full-scale ground offensive in eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donbas region, capturing the strategic port city of Mariupol and securing a coastal corridor to the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Aug 24, 9:13 AM EDT
Biden announces new aid package, congratulates Ukraine on Independence Day
President Joe Biden in a statement Wednesday said he was “proud to announce our biggest tranche of security assistance to date” to Ukraine: “approximately $2.98 billion of weapons and equipment.”
“This will allow Ukraine to acquire air defense systems, artillery systems and munitions, counter-unmanned aerial systems, and radars to ensure it can continue to defend itself over the long term,” Biden said.
Biden confirmed the money would come through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. The USAI money can be spent on contracts with the defense industry to produce new equipment for Ukraine.
Biden in his statement also marked Ukrainian Independence Day, saying, “Ukrainians have inspired the world with their extraordinary courage and dedication to freedom.”
“Today is not only a celebration of the past but a resounding affirmation that Ukraine proudly remains — and will remain — a sovereign and independent nation,” he said.
He continued, “I know this Independence Day is bittersweet for many Ukrainians as thousands have been killed or wounded, millions have been displaced from their homes, and so many others have fallen victim to Russian atrocities and attacks.”
“Today and every day, we stand with the Ukrainian people to proclaim that the darkness that drives autocracy is no match for the flame of liberty that lights the souls of free people everywhere,” Biden said.
Aug 23, 4:39 PM EDT
2 Zaporizhzhya power plant employees killed in shelling in city of Enerhodar
Two Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant employees were killed on their day off when Russian forces shelled the city of Enerhodar, officials said.
-ABC News’ Yuriy Zaliznyak and Dada Jovanovic
Aug 23, 2:35 PM EDT
US to announce its largest single aid package for Ukraine
The U.S. will announce its largest single aid package for Ukraine on Wednesday, according to two U.S. officials. The package is expected to be valued at roughly $3 billion — though one official told ABC News some changes could be made overnight, and $3 billion is on the higher end of the estimates.
A senior U.S. official told ABC News the package will come from Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funds. Unlike presidential drawdown packages, which pull from existing U.S. equipment stocks, the USAI money can be spent on contracts with the defense industry to produce new equipment for Ukraine.
The U.S. has committed about $10.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration.
-ABC News’ Matt Seyler and Shannon Crawford
Aug 23, 1:54 PM EDT
Americans urged to leave Ukraine over Russian strikes on civilians
The United States is once again urging its citizens to leave Ukraine amid concerns Russia is ramping up attacks on civilians in the war-torn country.
In a security alert posted Tuesday on its website, the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv urged Americans “to depart Ukraine now using privately available ground transportation options if it is safe to do so.”
“The Department of State has information that Russia is stepping up efforts to launch strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and government facilities in the coming days,” the embassy said in the alert. “Russian strikes in Ukraine pose a continued threat to civilians and civilian infrastructure.”
Sources within the State Department said the heightened risk of a Russian strike on highly populated centers is most directly tied to Ukraine’s Independence Day on Wednesday.
“The risks are really high,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told ABC News. “We are receiving information that there may be a provocation by the Russian Federation, by the occupiers. Therefore, we do not want large gatherings on such days. The days are beautiful, but … our neighbors are not.”
Aug 23, 9:10 AM EDT
Americans urged to leave Ukraine over Russian strikes on civilians
The United States is once again urging its citizens to leave Ukraine amid concerns Russia is ramping up attacks on civilians in the war-torn country.
In a security alert posted Tuesday on its website, the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv urged Americans “to depart Ukraine now using privately available ground transportation options if it is safe to do so.”
“The Department of State has information that Russia is stepping up efforts to launch strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and government facilities in the coming days,” the embassy said in the alert. “Russian strikes in Ukraine pose a continued threat to civilians and civilian infrastructure.”
Aug 22, 10:59 AM EDT
FSB accuses Ukrainian special services of assassinating Darya Dugina
Russia’s FSB is accusing Ukrainian special services of assassinating Darya Dugina, the daughter of Putin ally Alexander Dugina, who was killed by an explosive this weekend.
The FSB said a Ukrainian national arrived in Russia on July 23 with her 12-year-old daughter and rented an apartment in the same Moscow building where Dugina lived, Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti reported. The woman allegedly trailed Dugina for nearly a month and then immediately left for Estonia with her daughter just after this weekend’s bombing.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a statement that Darya Dugina was “a bright, talented person with a real Russian heart – kind, loving, sympathetic and open.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Ukraine is working under the assumption that Russian secret services are behind the killing, saying “Ru-propaganda lives in a fictional world.”
-ABC News’ Anastasia Bagaeva and Oleksii Shemyskyo
Aug 22, 9:13 AM EDT
Air raid sirens sound across Ukraine
Air raid sirens are sounding across Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Russia could launch a “particularly ugly” provocation this week as Ukraine approaches its Independence Day on Wednesday.
In Kyiv, all public events are canceled and government employees have been told to work from home through the week.
In Kramatorsk, public events have been canceled for Tuesday through Thursday and public transportation has been stopped.
Aug 22, 6:16 AM EDT
Explosive under Putin ally’s car was remotely triggered, investigators say
An explosive device planted on the underside of Putin ally Alexander Dugin’s vehicle was remotely triggered, Russian investigators said.
Dugin’s daughter, Daria Dugina, was killed in a blast near Moscow on Saturday.
“A presumed explosive device planted on a Toyota Land Cruiser went off when the car was moving at full speed past Bolshiye Vyazemy in the Odintsovo urban district at about 9 p.m. on August 20, and the car caught fire,” the Russian Investigative Committee said in a statement posted to Telegram. “The woman driving the car died instantly. The victim was identified as journalist, political analyst Daria Dugina.”
Alexander and Daria attended a traditional patriotic festival on Saturday afternoon, according to the Odinstovo administration. They’d planned to leave together in the same vehicle, but Daria instead drove alone.
The Russian Investigative Committee’s press service told Interfax that Daria was assassinated.
Detectives established that the bomb was planted on the underside of the driver’s side of the vehicle, the committee said. Russian media outlets had reported that the SUV belonged to Dugin.
“Detectives and specialists from the Main Forensic Department of the Russian Investigative Committee are continuing to examine the incident scene. In particular, a forensic technician examined the charred vehicle before it was taken to a special parking lot,” the Committee said.
Biological, genetic, physical, chemical and explosive examinations have been scheduled, the committee said.
-ABC News’ Anastasia Bagaeva
Aug 21, 3:12 PM EDT
Daughter of Putin ally killed in car bomb; Schiff hopes it wasn’t ‘from Ukraine’
U.S. officials do not know who to blame for the car bomb that killed the daughter of political theorist Alexander Dugin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said during an interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Daria Dugina, a 29-year-old TV commentator, was killed on the Mozhaisk Highway in the outskirts of Moscow on Saturday night by an explosive that had been planted in the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving, Russia’s state-run news agency TASS reported.
Alexander Dugin, often referred to as “Putin’s brain,” had just attended “Tradition” cultural festival with his daughter, according to TASS. Russian media outlets reported that the SUV belonged to Dugin.
The Russian Investigative Committee press office told TASS Dugina’s killing was planned and contracted.
Schiff said Sunday that he had not yet been briefed on the killing and that he “couldn’t say” who is behind it, adding that he hoped it was an “internal Russian affair” rather than something “emanating from Ukraine.”
“There are so many factions and internecine warfare within Russian society, within the Russian government,” Schiff said. “Anything is possible.”
Adviser to the Ukrainian presidential office Mikhail Podolyak denied Kyiv was involved in the explosion that killed Dugina during a televised interview on Sunday.
“I emphasize that Ukraine certainly has nothing to do with this, because we are not a criminal state like the Russian Federation, and even less a terrorist state,” Podolyak said.
-ABC News’ Ben Gittleson and Patrick Reevell
Aug 20, 2:10 PM EDT
Videos circulating online show smoke over Sevastopol
Videos circulating online show smoke rising over Sevastopol, the largest city in Crimea and a major port on the Black Sea.
The city’s Russian-appointed governor said a drone was struck down and fell through the roof of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet Headquarters. Ukraine has not commented on the strike.
-ABC News’ Layla Ferris
Aug 19, 3:31 PM EDT
US to offer new $775M aid package to Ukraine
The U.S. has authorized a new $775 million military aid package for Ukraine, the Department of Defense announced on Friday.
The package will include more High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) ammunition and howitzers, as well as some firsts, including ScanEagle reconnaissance drones and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles.
The 15 ScanEagle drones are intended to help Ukraine identify targets and put the HIMARS and howitzers to better use, according to a senior U.S. defense official.
The 40 MRAP vehicles and other mine-clearing equipment will help Ukrainian troops cross dangerous terrain, according to the official.
“We know that Russia has heavily mined areas in parts of southern and eastern Ukraine. We know there’s a significant amount of unexploded ordinance,” the official said.
The new aid package follows a $1 billion package announced on Aug. 8.
Photography by Keith Getter (all rights reserved)/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — More rain is pounding the soaked South. Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are expecting 3 to 5 inches of rain over the next 48 hours, sparking flash flooding and river flooding.
The rain will continue to spread, reaching the Gulf by the weekend. Over the next five days, the Gulf Coast from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Fort Myers, Florida, will likely get 3 to 5 inches as well.
Louisiana and Mississippi were already hit by downpours this week, with several spots in Mississippi breaking daily rainfall records on Monday. Over the last 48 hours, rain totals climbed above 7 inches in Louisiana and reached 6 inches in Mississippi.
Meanwhile, areas along the California/Arizona/Nevada border, including Las Vegas, are bracing for downpours and possible flash flooding on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox declared a state of emergency in the wake of devastating flooding in Moab and other southern towns. The flooding killed a woman who was hiking in Zion National Park.
“We also urge everyone to take flash flood warnings very seriously. We mourn the loss of Jetal Agnihotri of Tucson and pray for her loved ones,” the governor said in a statement.
“I’m shocked by the size and scope of the flooding that swept through Moab causing damage to homes, businesses, and local infrastructure,” Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson added. “Fortunately, I’m hopeful for a full recovery.”
(NEW YORK) — After officials in Nye County, Nevada, accepted a pitch from a Republican nominee for secretary of state to stop using voting machines for the general election and move to hand counting instead, long-time county clerk Sam Merlino decided to walk away from the job she loved.
For Merlino, a Republican, the move was the last straw as her county continued to be consumed by unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
“It was just so disheartening after everyone had put in so much hard work, and then to have everybody question what we’ve been doing for years,” Merlino, who resigned two weeks ago, told ABC News. “I loved working with the voters, I was always at a polling place on Election Day. I loved the process.”
Since the 2020 election, states across the country have seen a slow exodus of election officials prompted by an unprecedented level of misinformation, harassment and threats, according to election experts and officials.
And now, with only three months until Election Day, election offices in at least nine states including Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Texas and New Jersey have seen a new wave of departures and early retirements, ABC News has learned.
Elizabeth Howard, senior counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan think tank that tracks election rules, told ABC News that the loss of so many local election officials is a “significant concern” because “there’s a huge amount of institutional knowledge that we are losing across the country.”
“Election administration has grown increasingly complex over the past few decades, and election officials are perpetually trying to balance technology with accuracy and reliability, and have an accurate voter registration list and make it as easy as possible for eligible voters to cast a ballot that’s accurately counted,” Howard said.
‘We can’t get our real work done’
In Gillespie County, Texas, the county’s entire three-person election department resigned last week due to threats and misinformation, a staffer told the Fredericksburg Standard.
“It is concerning that it’s happening this close to an election and that now the county officials are scrambling to put together a team that is going to be qualified and trained to run the election in November,” said Sam Taylor, spokesperson for Texas Secretary of State John Scott.
Taylor told ABC News that Texas has seen a 30% turnover rate among county officials over the past two years, with several officials across the state resigning due to threats of violence.
In a report released this month by the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee, election administrators expressed concerns about staffing ahead of the midterms.
“[T]he job of an Election Official has changed dramatically over the years and it’s not a position that just anyone can learn in a few short months,” Arizona election officials said in the report. “It takes years to become an industry expert. The fact so many of us are leaving the field should concern every person across the country.”
The report detailed how false claims of election fraud in the 2020 election have led election administrators to face a combination of threats, lawsuits and misinformation that one election official said were “distracting us to the point where we can’t get our real work done.”
‘Disrespect and disdain’
Efforts to discredit and overturn election results have been fueled and supported on a national scale by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who pushed false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election after Donald Trump lost his reelection bid. This past weekend, Lindell hosted the “Moment of Truth Summit,” where hundreds of people gathered in Springfield, Missouri, to hear him and other election deniers rail against voting machines and discuss their ongoing efforts to contest the 2020 vote by, among other things, petitioning election officials for voting machine information and election data.
Among those who appeared at the event virtually was Colorado county clerk Tina Peters, who became a leading figure in the election denier movement last year when she was accused of and then indicted on election tampering charges after authorities say the election software she used for her county wound up in the hands of a consultant, and screenshots of the software appeared on right-wing websites. Peters pleaded not guilty in early August.
Peters, who in June lost the Republican primary in her bid to become Colorado secretary of state, detailed for summit attendees how she had paid for a recount in that race, and urged them to be “courageous” in confronting election results.
“Tina Peters lost, started talking about fraud and how election officials are in on it,” Matt Crane, the director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, told ABC News. “She lost by 15 points and yet she still requested a recount that’s taken time away from clerks who would have otherwise been working to prepare for the general election. All of that continues to put pressure on clerks.”
Like many other states, Crane said that Colorado has seen election officials resign or retire early, ahead of the November election.
In Florida, Supervisor of Elections Mark Early told ABC News that election officials in the state have “felt the hate” from 2020 election deniers.
“It’s the disrespect and the disdain that your neighbor might have for you nowadays,” Early said. “Now the threats are out there and people are looking at you out of the corner of their eye and just kind of shaking their head or just very blatantly coming up to you and saying negative things, even if it’s not a death threat.”
“All of this is taking a toll on our ability to conduct elections,” explained Early, who said there have been numerous resignations and early retirements. “We’re losing staff members.”
A former Georgia election worker testified at the House Jan. 6 hearings in late June that after former President Trump and his lawyers spread lies about her actions counting Georgia 2020 ballots, violent threats toward her and her family forced her out of her job.
“It’s turned my life upside down. I no longer give out my business card … I don’t want anyone knowing my name,” Wandrea Moss testified.
As more and more election administration posts are left empty, Howard said a recent Brennan Center survey showed that officials are concerned about who’s going to take the place of those leaving.
“Some of the election officials are concerned that the people that are going to replace the outgoing election officials believe the lies that have been told about how our elections run and are not going to understand how the system actually works,” Howard said. “Certainly, if you have somebody that is an election denier that’s responsible for running the election, that’s a concern.”
Even more concerning, Howard said, is that she expects another exodus of election workers after the 2022 election cycle — potentially leaving even more vacancies ahead of the 2024 presidential cycle.
‘It’s just too much’
Nevada, too, has seen a wave of resignations in at least half a dozen counties over the last few months as election deniers continue to challenge the 2020 results.
While numerous departing officials cite non-work-related issues as the reason for their departure, many point to how difficult their jobs have become over the last two years as they’ve faced increased scrutiny and mounting hostility from skeptics.
Last month, Washoe County Registrar of Voters Deanna Spikula resigned after 15 years with the registrar’s office. She told the Nevada Independent in January that she had received death threats and was concerned for the safety of her front-line election workers who face voters in person.
At the time, Spikula said she had already lost one staff member to another county department, but that she loved her job and was remaining in her position. But six months later — two weeks after Nevada held its state primary — she submitted her resignation.
“It’s just too much,” Washoe County Communications Manager Bethany Drysdale said of the harassment that local election workers have faced over the past few months, including being followed to their cars and being called “traitors.”
“It’s really difficult to pull the really long hours and face the animosity from the public,” Drysdale said. “Our interim registrar of voters is really focused on keeping hours down and making sure that nobody is too overwhelmed or too overworked leading up to the election, so they can really be here and give it their all during the election.”
In Pennsylvania, Berks County Elections Director Paige Riegner submitted her resignation this month following May’s state primary, after the Pennsylvania Department of State sued Berks and two other counties for excluding mail-in ballots that didn’t have the date handwritten on the security envelope.
And in Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County, election director Michael Susek resigned last month after only eight months on the job, to go work for an organization “committed to advancing election integrity and the profession as a whole on a national level,” according to local reports. His departure made him the state’s fourth county election director to step down since 2019.
‘Just overwhelming’
Robin Major, the Board of Elections administrator in Monmouth County, New Jersey, said that for small local election offices, losing just one or two staffers can put a significant strain on the department.
Major told ABC News that in recent months her office has lost two out of its eight staff members, with one of them retiring and another going to work in a different department.
“I think we’re seeing it across the state,” Major said. “We have seen a number of colleagues in our professional association who have decided to retire because the amount of work is just overwhelming and we’re not properly compensated” — a situation Major said has been exacerbated by a new statewide mandate requiring counties to conduct an election audit after every general election.
Major also said that “people questioning things” has put an extra burden on her office.
We’re getting an increased number of requests on a daily basis that are just impossible to fulfill,” she said. “So that puts on a lot of pressure, also, while you’re trying to run an election.”
Sylvia Albert, the director of voting and elections at the liberal watchdog group Common Cause, said that the increased retirements and resignations mean that the country must invest in “the infrastructure to train the next generation of election workers.”
“We’re going to run an election and we’re going to make sure people can vote — we’re just going to have to use all hands on deck,” she said of the upcoming midterms. “But we should be looking towards a long-term solution of proper investment in the election system.”
(NEW YORK) — Travis Snyder is in a fight for his life as he races to find a bone marrow donor in his seven-year battle with acute myeloid leukemia, a type of cancer that worsens quickly if not treated, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Snyder, 44, is being helped in his search for a donor by actor Jason Momoa, whom Snyder met in Hawaii shortly after he was first diagnosed with leukemia in 2015.
The Aquaman star has shared Snyder’s story on Instagram and urged people to register on Be The Match’s bone marrow registry to become potential bone marrow donors.
“He’s a friend that’s always been there for me,” Snyder said of Momoa in an interview with ABC News’ Good Morning America. “When I mentioned the registry thing, he was kind of mad at me, and was like, ‘What? Why haven’t you told me this before?'”
Snyder continued, “Once he realized the awareness issue, he’s jumped in with both feet. I really love him and appreciate the support and awareness.”
Snyder, a father of three, was in good health and competing in triathlons when he said he began to feel achy and sick while traveling in London for work.
After he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia — a type of cancer in which the bone marrow makes abnormal blood cells, according to the National Cancer Institute — doctors put him on a regimen of chemotherapy because they did not find a perfect match in the bone marrow registry.
Snyder went into remission for three years, but then his cancer returned in 2018.
Unable again to find a perfect match donor, Snyder underwent a bone marrow transplant with his brother, who was a half-match.
He was in remission again until the cancer returned this March, forcing Snyder to look again for a bone marrow donor.
Doctors have not yet been able to find a match for Snyder, which has inspired him to advocate for change to broaden the bone marrow registry to more people and raise awareness of the need for donors.
Two of the largest bone marrow registries in the world — United States-based Be The Match and Germany-based DKMS — currently have over 40 million potential donors on their registries combined, a small fraction of the world’s population.
Currently, nearly 150 people die from a blood cancer each day, according to Be The Match.
“This continued cycle of being sick and going through all the treatment and getting well for long enough that I get my life going again, and then coming back and going to the registry and nothing is there, I feel very passionate,” Snyder said of his commitment to growing the bone marrow registries. “Obviously on behalf of myself but the many, many people who don’t have a match in the database.”
Snyder, the founder of The Color Run, a series of 5K road races, said he is focused on applying the entrepreneurial spirit that has propelled his career to revolutionizing the ways people join bone marrow registries.
Each year in the United States alone, around 18,000 people are diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses where a bone marrow transplant or umbilical cord blood transplant is their best treatment option, according to the Health Resources and Service Administration.
Snyder said he would like to see bone marrow donation become as common and well-known as organ donation, which people can volunteer for on their driver’s license.
Snyder is particularly focused on expanding the diversity of the bone marrow registries because of his own experience.
“We recently discovered that one of the reasons I’m unique is that I have Pacific Islander genetics, which is a surprise,” he said. “But Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are really underrepresented in all the registries, so the odds of finding a match are really low.”
According to Be The Match, the odds of someone who is Asian or Pacific Islander finding a match is 47%, while the odds of someone who is white is 79%.
Snyder’s doctor, Dr. Gary Schiller, a hematologist at UCLA, said that in addition to Pacific Islanders and Hawaiians, groups such as Asians, Native Americans and African Americans are also underrepresented. It is also more difficult for interracial people to find a donor, especially if they are in underrepresented groups, according to Schiller.
“For some reason, and there are a variety of reasons, for some ethnic groups it is more difficult than others,” Schiller told GMA. “It’s a combination perhaps of insufficient outreach but I think often it’s just insufficient understanding and reticence on the part of some individuals or groups to put themselves on the registry and donate.”
Schiller said doctors look for perfect matches when it comes to bone marrow donors in order to ensure the best chance for a successful recovery.
“Every one of our cells, with very few exceptions, wears markers on the surface. These markers are distinct for an individual,” he explained. “There are two pairs per cell — one pair from one’s father, one pair from one’s mother — and if we attempt to do a bone marrow transplant, we try to match at all of those markers.”
Schiller continued, “Some people have a collection of markers for which it is very hard to find a donor, even with 30 million people in the bone marrow registry.”
A main part of Snyder’s mission is making sure people know about the bone marrow registry and how easy it is both to join the registry and donate bone marrow.
All it takes to join the Be The Match registry, is to use the organization’s registration kit and give a swab of cheek cells, which entails rubbing a Q-tip-like item on the inside of your cheek.
The process of donating bone marrow is similar to donating blood, according to Schiller, who described bone marrow as “probably the easiest organ to donate.”
Snyder said that while he waits to find his own donor, he continues to see it as a “beautiful thing” that someone out in the world could be the person that saves his life. He said he wants people to realize the impact they could have by becoming a bone marrow donor, and what it means to a person like himself who is still in need of a donor.
“As an entrepreneur, I’m always interested in return on investment and making sure that what you put out, you get back in full,” he said. “And this is a huge return on investment situation for people because for a minor inconvenience to someone, it’s everything to someone else and their family.”
(KYIV, Ukraine) — As Ukraine prepared on Wednesday to celebrate its Independence Day, residents of Kyiv, the capital, took to the streets to take photographs with rows of destroyed Russian tanks, which have become a symbol of Russia’s failed strategy to take the city.
The Russian army may have failed in its early plans to replace the Ukrainian government, but a war of attrition has set into the country’s east, with analysts warning that the war may drag on for months or even years.
Despite the presence of the tanks, the atmosphere in the capital this week has been mostly muted, residents said. But authorities have warned that Independence Day may bring renewed Russian strikes on the city, far away from the frontlines.
The United States repeated those warnings, with Americans being advised to leave the country via private means. The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv said the State Department “has information that Russia is stepping up efforts to launch strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and government facilities in the coming days.”
With the city on high alert and the country under assault, the overlap of the two anniversaries has proven to be a moment for Ukrainians to reflect on the meaning of their independence.
Ukraine issued its Declaration of Independence from the Soviet Union on Aug. 24, 1991. The day has since been one of Ukraine’s state holidays, usually marked by a military parade.
“During these six months, we changed history, changed the world and changed ourselves,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a speech on Wednesday. “And the whole world learned who Ukrainians are. What Ukraine is. No one will say about it anymore: it is somewhere over there, near Russia.”
The Ukrainian public not only supports the struggle to liberate the Russian controlled-areas, but has said it believes that Ukraine will win the war, according to polling in the country, though reports suggest Ukrainians are more divided on how much territory taken back would constitute a victory.
But it has also left a nation traumatized by war. Millions have been displaced and hundreds of civilians are killed each week, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Humanitarians fear that the winter will bring more misery. There have been almost 1,000 verified deaths of children, according to the U.N., though observers say this number is likely higher.
For many, independence now carries a new significance.
“When Ukraine became an independent country, I was a little kid, I was only ten and at that time, I really couldn’t understand what is going on around, but I have heard many times from my grandmother about evil of Russian empire,” Andriy, 41, a musician, traumatologist and radio anchor from Lviv who now serves as a medic on the southern front, told ABC News. “When [the] Russian war exploded with more power on February 24, now I understand independence of Ukraine as [an] absolutely new thing.”
German, a 59-year-old Kyiv resident, said there is a new clarity about what it means to be an independent country on the eve of the anniversary.
“Until February 24, 2022, there was no clearly formed understanding of independence,” he told ABC News. “After the start of the war, the vision was as follows: independence is free people hardened into a nation that moves its state forward.”
For some of the displaced, being forced to flee from the east has uprooted their sense of local identity and connection to home, even if they believe in Ukraine’s ultimate victory.
“Maybe now I will sound in a stupid way, but I don’t want to adapt, to adjust,” Yana, a 32-year-old who left the city of Kharkiv in March to the comparatively safe western city of Lviv, told ABC News. “No, not because I’m somehow abnormal, just because I don’t have a sense of home anywhere… Lviv is a wonderful city, and Vinnytsia, and Poltava, and Kremenchuk, and all other cities, but my home is not there.”
“What has changed now, every minute of our existence, we need to prove and fight for our independence,” she said. “Which until February 24 was a common thing and understandable to everyone.”
For many Ukrainians, the war has changed not just their understanding of independence, but their entire lives, forever.
“Adaptation is very simple,” German said. “It will never be the same again, as it was before. So I do what I can for the victory.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Pennsylvania Senate race took a heated — and personal — turn on Tuesday as an aide to Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee and former cardiothoracic surgeon who for years offered medical advice as a popular TV host, was quoted derisively blaming Democratic opponent John Fetterman for his own stroke.
“If John Fetterman had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke and wouldn’t be in the position of having to lie about it constantly,” Oz communications adviser Rachel Tripp said in a statement, first reported by Insider, responding to Fetterman’s attacks on Oz as elitist and out of touch.
The Oz campaign comment drew immediate reaction on social media, including from Fetterman, who tweeted, “I know politics can be nasty, but even then, I could *never* imagine ridiculing someone for their health challenges.”
“I had a stroke. I survived it. I’m truly so grateful to still be here today,” he added.
Fetterman — who told a local outlet in 2018, when he was mayor of a small Pittsburgh suburb, that he had lost nearly 150 pounds by adopting a diet that included more vegetables — acknowledged in the days after the stroke in May that he “should have taken my health more seriously.”
But the tone of Tripp’s statement was deemed inappropriate by a group of pro-Fetterman physicians who earlier spoke out against Oz at an event organized by Fetterman’s campaign.
“No real doctor, or any decent human being, to be honest, would ever mock a stroke victim who is recovering from that stroke in the way that Dr. Oz is mocking John Fetterman,” Dr. Valerie Arkoosh, the Democratic chair of the board of commissioners in Montgomery County, said in a statement provided on Tuesday by a Fetterman spokeswoman.
The Oz campaign doubled down, however, telling ABC News in a statement late Tuesday: “Nice try. Dr. Oz has been urging people to eat more veggies for years. That’s not ridicule. It’s good health advice. We’re only trying to help.”
The latest salvo — in a race in a battleground state that could tip control of Congress — represents a departure from Oz’s other lines of attack since Fetterman’s stroke, which have involved largely dancing around it by jeering at Fetterman for his absence from the trail without referencing what sidelined him.
Oz had struck an even more sympathetic tone immediately after Fetterman announced his stroke. He tweeted then: “I am thankful that you received care so quickly. My whole family is praying for your speedy recovery.”
“I think he just had it,” Stacy Garrity, the state treasurer and a co-chair of Oz’s campaign, told ABC News on Tuesday night. “I think he just got tired. He’s probably tired of hearing about veggies,” she said, referring to the Fetterman team’s repeated swipes over a video showing Oz shopping for vegetables to make crudités and criticizing Democrats for grocery prices.
The volley of statements threatened to overshadow Fetterman’s separate appearance on Tuesday afternoon in Pittsburgh to tout a key labor endorsement — only his second public campaign stop since his stroke. With many eyes still on his health, he spoke for roughly four-and-a-half minutes and exhibited patterns similar to those he showed at a rally in Erie earlier this month, speaking often in choppy sentences. (He told a newspaper last month that he was working with a speech therapist as he recovered.)
Amid now-routine jokes about the “crudités” video and Oz’s residential history outside of Pennsylvania, Fetterman also pledged to “stand with the union way of life” before exiting the venue without answering a group of reporters who flanked him as he walked.
Among those ignored questions was whether Fetterman would agree to debate Oz this fall, an issue Oz has hammered in recent days as Fetterman has remained largely mum about his plans to share a stage with his opponent.
“We’ve said we’re open to debating Oz,” Joe Calvello, a spokesman, said in response to a question that a reporter posed to Fetterman.
Oz’s campaign says he has agreed to five debates, including one on Sep. 6. Fetterman’s campaign says it refuses to set a schedule on Oz’s terms.
But according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report, the campaign has yet to respond to an invitation emailed nearly a month ago to both campaigns by a politics editor at KDKA, a TV station in Pittsburgh planning the Sep. 6 debate.
Oz has accepted the invitation, the station’s news director told the Post-Gazette.
Asked by ABC News to respond to that report, a Fetterman spokesperson sent a statement from Rebecca Katz, a senior adviser to the campaign, who called Oz’s focus on debates “an obvious attempt to change the subject during yet another bad week for Dr. Oz.”
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. military said it carried out airstrikes on Tuesday targeting areas of eastern Syria controlled by Iran-backed militias.
The “precision strikes” in the oil-rich Deir ez-Zor province, near Syria’s border with Iraq, “targeted infrastructure facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” according to Col. Joe Buccino, spokesman for the U.S. Central Command.
“Today’s strikes were necessary to protect and defend U.S. personnel,” Buccino said in a statement. “The United States took proportionate, deliberate action intended to limit the risk of escalation and minimize the risk of casualties.”
Buccino did not offer any casualty numbers from the strikes.
Neither Syria nor Iran immediately acknowledged the attack.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitoring group, said the U.S. strikes targeted the Ayash Camp run by the Fatemiyoun Brigade, a militia made up of Afghan Shiite refugees sent by Iran to fight in the ongoing Syrian Civil War alongside Syrian government troops. At least six Syrian and foreign militants were reportedly killed in the strikes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
According to Buccino, the strikes came at the orders of U.S. President Joe Biden in response to an attack on Aug. 15, when Iran-backed militias allegedly launched drones targeting the al-Tanf Garrison used by U.S. forces in the energy-rich Homs province in central Syria. At that time, U.S. Central Command described the attack as causing “zero casualties and no damage.”
“The United States does not seek conflict, but will continue to take necessary measures to protect and defend our people,” Buccino added. “U.S. forces remain in Syria to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS.”
The strikes came as Biden seeks to revive a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that his predecessor abandoned.
Since 2014, the U.S. has led a coalition of countries conducting strikes targeting the Islamic State group in Syria. U.S. ground forces entered Syria in 2015. In more recent years, the American-led coalition has also launched strikes targeting the Syrian government’s forces and allies, mainly in defense of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias that was formed as part of the campaign against ISIS.
What started as a local protest movement in Syria’s southern city of Dara’a expanded into a full-fledged civil war by 2012. ISIS, which grew out of al-Qaeda in Iraq, took root in northern and eastern Syria in 2013 after seizing swaths of territory in neighboring Iraq. The jihadist group is fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and establish a caliphate.
The Syrian Civil War has pulled in the United States, Russia, Iran and almost all of Syria’s neighbors. It has become the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II, according to the United Nations.
(WASHINGTON) — As another deadline nears on the restart of payments for America’s $1.7 trillion in federal student loans, President Joe Biden is poised to decide whether to cancel debt for a subset of Americans and continue to keep a pandemic-era pause on the repayments — a sweeping move he has openly weighed in some form or another since his time as a candidate.
Without action, numerous Americans will — for the first time in two years — have to start paying their student loans on Sept. 1.
But multiple people familiar with White House policy discussions told ABC News that the loan pause, first put in place under President Donald Trump during the disruptions of COVID-19’s onset, is expected to be extended. Talks about debt cancellation, which were still underway Tuesday, have so far coalesced around forgiving approximately $10,000 for people who make less than $125,000 a year — though details are still being worked out.
An announcement on the federal student loans could come as early as Wednesday, sources familiar with the plan said.
In an interview on Tuesday afternoon, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona told ABC News that the much-anticipated decision on loan forgiveness would come “soon” but was vague on details.
“We recognize it’s an important issue for many families. And we want to make sure that they get the information directly from the president,” Cardona said.
The White House did not confirm any further details, saying only that the president would have more to say on this before Aug. 31.
“As a reminder, no one with a federally-held loan has had to pay a single dime in student loans since President Biden took office, and this Administration has already canceled about $32 billion in debt for more than 1.6 million Americans — more than any Administration in history,” White House spokesman Abdullah Hasan said, referring to debt relief for people who went to fraudulent universities and a restructured program to forgive debt for people who work in public service for 10 years.
But more specific details on how much money will be forgiven and for who are in high demand for the more than 45 million Americans who still have federal student loan debt.
One-third of federal loan borrowers have less than $10,000, meaning they could see their debts completely wiped out should this policy come to fruition. Another 20% of borrowers, around nine million people, would have their debt at least slashed in half.
Such a major cancelation may seem like a big step for Biden to take without Congress, but legal and policy experts say it’s clearer: The move would be well within the president’s authority — it just hasn’t been wielded before because of the political implications.
“The president has some pretty broad authority under the Higher Education Act,” said John Brooks, a law professor at Fordham University who focuses on federal fiscal policy.
“A lot depends on the size of the cancellation. The smaller the amount of cancellation, the easier the question is,” Brooks said. “Wiping out all student debt with a single stroke might be tougher, but the president through the secretary of education does have the power to adjust the amount of loan principle that any borrower has.”
Still, Biden could get taken to court — possibly by loan servicing agencies who would lose revenue or by members of Congress who may believe Biden is spending money in a way that hasn’t been appropriated by legislators.
Outside experts also wonder how long the processes would take to cancel student loans once a policy is announced — and how complicated it would be for borrowers to work their way through it, which are details that have yet to be released.
Some fear that people might fall through the cracks if applications to cancel debt become too labor-intensive because of the prospective income cap.
“The White House is about to ask the Education Department to do something that is extraordinarily difficult, and that is going to have the effect of denying debt relief to low-income folks, economically vulnerable folks, who have the hardest time navigating these complicated paperwork processes,” Mike Pierce, executive director and co-founder of the Student Borrower Protection Center, a think-tank that advocates for universal debt cancellation, told ABC News in an interview.
Pierce and other supporters for more progressive debt cancellation, including the NAACP, said the smoothest path would include full and universal cancellation for everyone.
“If the rumors are true, we’ve got a problem. And tragically, we’ve experienced this so many times before,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement Tuesday, reacting to the details of the potential policy announcement.
“President Biden’s decision on student debt cannot become the latest example of a policy that has left Black people – especially Black women – behind. This is not how you treat Black voters who turned out in record numbers and provided 90% of their vote to once again save democracy in 2020,” Johnson said.
But for many borrowers and advocates for canceling student debt — particularly the nearly half of people with federal student loans who would see their debt extinguished or cut significantly — Biden’s policy would still be cause for major celebration and be seen as a start to reforming the college and university system, where rising costs have become a major area of focus.
For Michigan teacher Nick Fuller, a possible Biden announcement on student loans could come just before the financial crunch of winter, when his heating bills skyrocket.
Though Fuller worked hard his first few years out of school to pay down his school debt, and then had his loan frozen for much of the pandemic, he’s concerned that restarting payments on top of monthly living costs could put him over the edge.
“I think things will get really tight in the winter because my utility bills are higher,” Fuller told ABC News. “I mean for January and February — the highs are zero and the lows are -20 [degrees] for almost two months.”
The frozen temperatures might sting a little bit less if Biden forgives $10,000 of Fuller’s remaining student loan bills, he said.
“It’s about two-thirds of the debt that I have left,” he said.
That would make payments “a lot more affordable and a lot more manageable in my situation,” he said.
Easing the student debt crisis — which is also how Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos described the issue in 2018 — could also aid a crippling teacher shortage that has caused thousands of staff vacancies at the start of the latest school year, something Fuller has seen himself.
Pinched salaries and rising inflation have had many teachers on edge with the loan forgiveness deadline approaching.
And because Black students are among the fastest growing group of people taking on debt, advocates argue that canceling some student loans could also begin to address racial inequities.
Shareefah Mason, the dean of Educator Certification at Dallas College, feels this impact firsthand as a Black woman with student debt. She leads the apprenticeship component of a program that pairs students with residency partners to ensure they earn while they learn, effectively reducing education debt for aspiring teachers.
“I bear the weight of $70,000 in student loans,” Mason told ABC News. “The data shows that student loan debt exponentially impacts and disproportionately impacts Black women.”
The average amount of student debt accrued by Black women is more than any other group at $38,800, according to Education Trust, a nonprofit focused on education reform.
But Mason’s program, the very first full-time paid teacher apprenticeship in the state of Texas, allows students to earn one of the cheapest bachelor’s degrees in the state, Mason said.
The goal, she said, is to aid future educators in breaking the generational barriers that she has faced as a Black woman.
Mason said “they will not have to worry about student loan debt,” which could open more doors for minority communities that have historically lacked the means to access higher education.
“My students will be able to earn, as a first year teacher in the city of Dallas, upwards of $60,000,” Mason said.
For the nation’s most impacted borrowers, Mason said, “there needs to be a space created for them to make enough money to pay their student loans without having to sacrifice their ability to create generational wealth for their families.”
(UVALDE, Texas) — Uvalde school board officials will consider Wednesday whether to fire Pete Arredondo, the school district’s police chief, exactly three months after the school shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers.
School board members agreed in an Aug. 15 meeting to hire outside attorneys ahead of the hearing.
Arredondo has been the target of criticism for the delayed response to the May 24 tragedy.
School officials have continued to face pressure to hold officers accountable for the 77 minutes it took before law enforcement breached a classroom door and killed the 18-year-old gunman.
The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District recommended that Arredondo be fired. The Uvalde school board canceled its July 23 special session to consider the district’s recommendation “in conformity with due process requirements, and at the request of his attorney.”
Parents and community members have called on officials to fire Arredondo immediately, with some calling for the firing of other members of Uvalde’s school district police force who were present during the shooting.
According to an investigative report by the Texas House of Representatives into the events of May 24, the school district’s written active shooter plan assigned Arredondo “to assume command and control” during an active shooter incident.
“But as events unfolded, he failed to perform or to transfer to another person the role of incident commander,” the report from the state House read. “This was an essential duty he had assigned to himself in the plan mentioned above, yet it was not effectively performed by anyone.”
The report goes on to describe the general consensus from witnesses that officers on the scene either “assumed that Chief Arredondo was in charge, or that they could not tell that anybody was in charge of a scene described by several witnesses as ‘chaos’ or a ‘cluster.'”
In an interview with The Texas Tribune, Arredondo said he did not consider himself the commanding officer on the scene. He has said he was not made aware of the 911 calls coming from the children in the attacked classrooms.
Arredondo has defended the police response to the incident.
“We responded to the information that we had and had to adjust to whatever we faced,” Arredondo said. “Our objective was to save as many lives as we could, and the extraction of the students from the classrooms by all that were involved saved over 500 of our Uvalde students and teachers before we gained access to the shooter and eliminated the threat.”
Arredondo resigned from his city council post and is currently on leave from his position as UCISD police chief.
