(STOCKHOLM) — Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry Wednesday for their work in making molecules “click.”
Two Americans, K. Barry Sharpless of Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, and Carolyn Bertozzi of Stanford University in California, and one Dane — Morten Meldal at the University of Copenhagen — received the prize.
Sharpless and Medal — independent of each other — “laid the foundations of click chemistry,” a field in which molecular building blocks are snapped together “quickly and efficiently.”
Bertozzi then used this field to develop bioorthogonal chemistry, in which scientists modify molecules in cells of living organisms “without disrupting the normal chemistry of the cell.”
“This year’s Prize in Chemistry deals with not overcomplicating matters, instead working with what is easy and simple. Functional molecules can be built even by taking a straightforward route,” Johan Åqvist, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said in a statement.
Sharpless previously won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2001, making him only the fifth person to win two Nobel prizes and the second person ever to win the award twice, according to the committee. His first award was for developing three types of chemical reactions.
Last year, scientists Benjamin List and David MacMillan won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for a new tool in molecular construction.
Each Nobel prize is worth 10 million kronor — the equivalent of about $900,000 — and is given to laureates with a diploma and a gold medal on Dec. 10, the date the creator of the Nobel prizes, Alfred Nobel, died in 1896.
(STOCKHOLM) — A Swedish scientist won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine this week for his work in evolution.
The committee awarded Svante Pääbo, director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution.”
Pääbo sequenced the genome of the bones of a Neanderthal, the ancestor of modern-day humans.
By extracting and studying the DNA, which was widely believed to be impossible, it led to the discovery of a hominin — a type of human species — that was previously unknown, called Denisova.
This work also helped traced the migrations of extinct species and how they influenced the physiology of modern humans, particularly how our immune systems work.
“Pääbo’s seminal research gave rise to an entirely new scientific discipline; paleogenomics,” the committee said in a press release. “By revealing genetic differences that distinguish all living humans from extinct hominins, his discoveries provide the basis for exploring what makes us uniquely human.”
Pääbo’s father is biochemist Sune Bergström, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1982 for the discovery of prostaglandins, compounds in the body that have hormone-like effects.
Each Nobel prize is worth 10 million kronor — the equivalent of about $900,000 — and is given to laureates with a diploma and a gold medal on Dec. 10, the date the creator of the Nobel prizes, Alfred Nobel, died in 1896.
In 2021, scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian jointly received the prize “for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.”
(WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.) — A 20-year-old Purdue University student was killed in his dorm room early Wednesday and his roommate is in custody, school officials said.
Varun Manish Chheda, a senior majoring in data science, was found dead in his room at McCutcheon Hall, a residence hall on the school’s campus in West Lafayette, Indiana, after the suspect called 911 to report the incident at 12:44 a.m. local time, Purdue University Chief of Police Lesley Weite said at a news conference Wednesday.
The suspect, 22-year-old Gji Min Sha, a junior majoring in cyber security, is in custody on a charge of murder, Weite said. He is an international student from Korea, she said.
No other roommates lived with the victim and suspect, Weite said.
A university spokesperson said, with the suspect apprehended, “there is no threat to the community.”
“This is as tragic an event as we can imagine happening on our campus and our hearts and thoughts go out to all of those affected by this terrible event,” Purdue University President Mitch Daniels said in a statement Wednesday morning. “We do not have all the details yet. Our Purdue University Police Department is conducting a thorough investigation of this incident so that we all may learn more about what transpired.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court agreed this week to hear a challenge to a fundamental legal protection enjoyed by social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Tik Tok. The ruling could dramatically change how those platforms operate, even affecting search engines like Google, legal experts told ABC News.
The case concerns Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which protects social media platforms and other sites from legal liability that could result from content posted by users.
The law has drawn criticism from elected officials across the political spectrum. In a rare point of agreement, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have both called for the repeal of Section 230 — but for different reasons.
Typically, Democrats argue that Section 230 allows platforms to evade accountability for permitting harmful or misleading content, claiming the rule lets platforms off the hook for policing too little speech.
While Republicans take issue with what they consider big tech censorship, saying the legal protection allows the platforms to police too much speech without facing consequences.
Some big tech companies, like Facebook and Google, have supported reform of Section 230 that would raise the standard that platforms would need to meet in order to qualify for immunity. But the companies largely support preserving the law in some form to protect them from legal liability tied to user-generated content.
The case, Gonzalez v. Google LLC, concerns a lawsuit brought by the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, an American woman who was killed in an ISIS terrorist attack in Paris in 2015. The lawsuit against Google, the parent company of YouTube, alleges that YouTube recommended ISIS recruitment videos to users.
The case centers on whether Section 230 protects online platforms from legal liability when it comes to their recommended content.
If the high court rules in favor of Google, it would formally extend legal immunity to the algorithms at the heart of many social media products and search engines; but if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiff, the decision could expose the platforms to a raft of new legal vulnerabilities and produce major changes, legal experts told ABC News.
“The Supreme Court could make Section 230 a little more speech friendly or it could functionally eliminate it as a defense for services, which would radically reshape the internet,” Eric Goldman, a Santa Clara University law professor who studies Section 230, told ABC News.
“The Supreme Court really does have the future of the internet in its hands,” he added.
Google has called on lower court judges to dismiss the case, saying its operations are protected under Section 230. In a response to the Supreme Court petition, Google noted that YouTube’s user rules prohibit material that promotes terrorism and that the platform employs moderators to review content around the clock. There is no evidence that any of the Paris attackers received recommendations for ISIS videos from YouTube, Google said in the brief.
Here are two major ways that social media platforms and other sites could change as a result of this case, according to experts:
Altered recommendation algorithms
The online tool at the heart of the case is the recommendation algorithm. Importantly, such algorithms are used not only by social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter but also video sites like YouTube and search engines like Google, Goldman said.
A high court decision that eliminates legal protection for recommended content could significantly alter the type of posts that appear before users on Facebook’s News Feed or Twitter’s timeline, said Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“Sites would be a lot more cautious about those types of recommendations,” Volokh told ABC News. “Whenever they see something that might be potentially dangerous for them, they’ll exclude it from recommendations.”
Posts that could concern social media sites after the ruling include libelous comments and instructions for committing criminal acts, not just the terrorist propaganda at issue in the Supreme Court case, he said.
For example, consider a post featuring a news story critical of the Church of Scientology, Volokh said. If the Church of Scientology writes a letter to a social media site warning that the news story is libelous, the site may stop recommending posts with the story out of caution, he added.
“The platforms might decide to recommend cat videos instead,” Volokh said.
While such decisions could provide an advantage for well-off or litigious actors, the moves could also benefit the public interest, he added.
“What if the story about Scientology really is libelous? It’s possible,” he said.
Online platforms may respond to the court’s decision by shifting their recommendation algorithms in a different direction, however, instead ceding greater control to users as a way to lessen their own liability, said Adam Candeub, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Law.
“If users could say that they’re making a conscious effort to seek out messages rather than Facebook forcing them onto you,” he told ABC News. “Facebook isn’t a speaker.”
More professionally-generated content
A more risk-averse recommendation algorithm, for fear of legal liability, could lead to the recommendation of a larger proportion of professionally-made content, some experts said.
“If a company is deciding what to include in its news feed or a recommendations feed, then including a traditional mainstream news article is a pretty safe bet,” said Volokh, of UCLA.
Goldman, of Santa Clara University, agreed. Twitter, he said, could prevent all users without blue verification checks from posting on the platform or prevent their posts from appearing on the timeline.
“It’s inevitable that services will move away from user-generated content and toward a model like Netflix,” he said. “It’ll be professionally produced, it won’t have the diversity it has, it won’t give speech platforms to as many people and to compensate professional producers, it’s more likely to be paywalled.”
Other experts contested the extent to which such a shift would take effect. User-generated content will still make its way into the recommendation algorithm and go viral, Volokh said. After a court decision that limits Section 230, however, that content will more likely be innocuous than controversial.
“People haven’t stopped selling cars just because they face liability for legal defects on cars,” Volokh said. “They may buy insurance for facing risks to liability or may adjust to it being the cost of doing business.”
Candeub, of the University of Michigan, said the court ruling wouldn’t affect the experience on social media for a typical user.
“I don’t think it would change much, actually,” he said. “Platforms already have tremendous ability to control how content is promoted. They will have to make wiser decisions and be held accountable for those decisions.”
One solution, Volokh said, would allow the social media platforms to preserve products centered on recommendations while policing them tightly: More employees.
“They may need to hire a lot more people,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — A New York City paramedic who responded to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, will be laid to rest on Wednesday, six days after she was stabbed to death.
Lt. Alison Russo-Elling, a nearly 25-year veteran of the New York City Fire Department, was stabbed approximately 19 times in the chest in an “unprovoked attack” while on duty in Queens on the afternoon of Sept. 29, authorities said. She was 61.
Peter Zisopoulos, 34, was subsequently arrested in connection with the slaying. He has been charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon. He has no prior arrests and no known connection to Russo-Elling, according to authorities.
Authorities said Russo-Elling was in the vicinity of 20th Avenue and Steinway Street in Astoria, near her station’s quarters, when she was attacked. Authorities obtained surveillance footage that purportedly shows the incident. In the video, Russo-Elling is seen walking past Zisopoulos, who is standing in the doorway of a building. Suddenly, Zisopoulos appears to pull out a steak knife and “runs full speed” behind Russo-Elling, knocking her on her back and attacking her, authorities said.
An eyewitness is seen in the video apparently attempting to intervene, but Zisopoulos chases them away with the knife still in his hand. He then retreats to his apartment, where he barricaded himself before being taken into custody.
Russo-Elling was transported in critical condition to Mount Sinai Queens Hospital, where she died, according to authorities.
In the wake of her slaying, Russo-Elling’s colleagues described her as “the mother hen of the station” who “was always looking out for everybody.” She was the second emergency medical worker to be murdered on the city’s streets in the last five years and the 1,158th member of the FDNY to die in the line of duty, according to authorities.
In 2017, FDNY emergency medical technician Yadira Arroyo, 44, was struck and killed by her own ambulance after it was stolen in the Bronx.
Acting FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh announced Tuesday that Russo-Elling will be posthumously promoted to captain at her funeral, which will take place Wednesday at 11 a.m. local time.
“Alison Russo was everything we look for in a leader in our Department,” Kavanagh said in a statement. “A dedicated and accomplished veteran of 25 years, she responded to thousands of emergencies, mentored many new EMTs and paramedics, cared deeply for the communities she served, and set an incredible example for others at Station 49 and at every station she called home throughout her outstanding career. This posthumous promotion is a sign of our deep respect and admiration for all the courageous and selfless work she did throughout her career. We will never forget her.”
(WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.) — A Purdue University student was found dead inside a residence hall in West Lafayette, Indiana, before dawn on Wednesday, according to a university spokesperson.
The school’s police force is investigating the death as a homicide, the spokesperson said.
“A suspect is in custody and there is no threat to the community,” the spokesperson added. “An investigation is underway and ongoing.”
The suspect, who was the victim’s roommate, called 911 at 12:44 a.m. local time, according to the spokesperson.
(NEW YORK) — On a sunny August day, Rachel Dos played with her kids at a park in Livonia, Michigan. As they played, Dos chatted with other moms about growing her own vegetables to save money on groceries and seeking out wholesale butchers to buy meat.
“I’m trying to cut those costs and save that extra money, because every little bit counts with its inflation going on,” she told ABC News.
Pushing her daughter on the swings nearby, Noelle Wylin shared her own recent cost-savings tactics.
Wylin said she started making granola and jam at home when prices shot up. She talked about all the hours she spent researching how to refurbish old furniture instead of buying new pieces for her daughter’s bedroom.
She added that she felt it was unfair that so much more time and effort on managing the family budget was landing on her and other women.
“I think whenever something happens with the economy and things aren’t as optimistic, and [things become] more expensive, a lot of the burden gets shifted onto the mom,” Wylin said.
“If I were to buy granola that used to be $3, but now is $7, I have a choice to make. Do I cut it out? And then my daughter’s exposed to less food groups,” she said.
“Do I take on that labor?” she continued. “Home-make the granola, look up the recipes — figure out, should I do hemp parts in there or chia seeds or flax seeds? What’s gonna give her the Omega-3s? … As a woman, it feels like, you know, all the thrifty things that you can do to make the budget work, it gets shifted onto me.”
The additional hours spent at home trying to save money has made Wylin rethink her part-time work situation. At what point, she wondered, is the answer taking on more hours?
Research has long shown that inflation hits women harder, as women are more likely to have accumulated less wealth and earn wages that do not keep pace with inflation.
From groceries to clothing, women today also do the lion’s share of shopping for the home in married, heterosexual couples. The result, experts say, is that women are often the first in the household to see price changes for everyday items and experience the sticker-shock and worry that comes with those changes.
“COVID really showed us what we know intimately, that even when women work full-time, they are still shouldering the bulk of unpaid labor at home,” Brigid Schulte, director of the Better Life Lab at New America, a public policy think tank, told ABC News over the phone.
Schulte pointed to research — such as this study from researchers at the University of California, Berkley and Boston College, published in the journal PNAS in May 2021 — that shows that women who do the family grocery shopping tend to be the more pessimistic about the economy and future inflation.
According to Pew Research, which cited data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, from 2014-2016, more than 80% of married women in households with kids said they did most of the grocery shopping and meal prep at home.
Kimberly Palmer, a personal finance expert at NerdWallet and author of Smart Mom, Rich Mom, said that, not only are women the first to see food prices go up, but they tend to take on additional, unpaid labor as a result.
“All of that labor — and it is labor — of saving money falls largely on women,” she told ABC News over the phone.
She said that, right now, amid record inflation, she sees women looking up recipes, forgoing pre-packed snacks, and spending hours on sites hunting for used clothing and toys for kids.
“People are coming together more, so nothing goes to waste, but that takes so much effort and time and largely it is [on] women,” she continued.
As for cost-saving tips, Palmer agreed it is a tradeoff between investing time and saving money. She recommended planning out meals ahead to save money while grocery shopping, downloading apps that search for coupons and having staples on hand like frozen fish and tomato sauce to help avoid last minute takeout orders.
Schulte argued women should also strive for more equity at home, noting that she had seen in her work how resentment, often over labor at home, can lead to break-ups and how important it is for couples to learn how to talk.
“We can take a page here from same sex couples. They can’t fall back on traditional gender roles. You have to develop standards both can agree to,” she said.
As for the workplace, she said women should continue to fight for better wages and family-friendly policies like paid time-off. But she said the stress women are feeling at home right now “begs a much larger conversation about public policy” around child care, health care and workplace conditions.
(NEW YORK) — A person of interest is in custody in connection with the kidnapping of four family members, including an 8-month-old girl, who remain missing, authorities said.
Eight-month-old Aroohi Dheri and her parents — 27-year-old mother Jasleen Kaur and 36-year-old father Jasdeep Singh — were taken against their will from a business in Merced County in Northern California on Monday, Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke said. The baby’s uncle, 39-year-old uncle Amandeep Singh, was also kidnapped, the sheriff said.
A person of interest in the case is currently in custody, authorities said Tuesday. The man — identified as 48-year-old Jesus Manuel Salgado — attempted to take his own life “prior to law enforcement involvement” and is currently in critical condition receiving medical attention, the Merced County Sheriff’s Office said.
The update comes after detectives received information Tuesday morning that one of the victim’s ATM cards was used at a bank in the city of Atwater, in Merced County, the sheriff’s office said.
The sheriff’s office initially said a subject captured in surveillance footage making a transaction at the bank matched the appearance of a suspect seen in surveillance footage at the kidnapping scene. The sheriff’s office later said a photo of the person at the ATM was not the person of interest who is in custody, and that it’s working with the bank to obtain the correct photo.
The four family members have not been found.
“Investigators continue to follow up on all leads and are working diligently to find the family,” the sheriff’s office said. “We continue to ask for the public’s help with any information that may assist us in locating the family’s whereabouts.”
No motive is known, the sheriff said.
“It’s imperative that we get some information on this. So far, as I know, no contact has been made, no ransom demands, nothing from the suspects,” the sheriff said.
The sheriff’s office announced on Tuesday that Amandeep Singh’s truck had been found on fire shortly before noon on Monday.
Police went to Amandeep Singh’s home around 12:35 p.m. Monday; while they couldn’t locate him, they did speak to another relative, the sheriff’s office said. When the relative couldn’t reach Jasleen Kaur, Jasdeep Singh or Amandeep Singh, the relative reported them missing, the sheriff’s office said.
Sheriff’s officials then responded to a business, and “during the primary investigation, detectives determined that the individuals were kidnapped,” the sheriff’s office said Tuesday.
“We’ve got detectives out canvassing, we’ve had aircraft out looking for evidence. People are gonna be working 24 hours on this until we get a break in this,” he said. “We’ve got to bring this family home safely.”
Merced County is located between San Francisco and Fresno.
The FBI, California Department of Justice and local law enforcement agencies are involved in the search, the sheriff’s office said.
Anyone with information on the family’s whereabouts is asked to call the Merced County Sheriff’s Office at 209-385-7445.
(NEW YORK) — With Ian already the deadliest hurricane in decades in Florida — and the death toll continuing to rise — Gov. Ron DeSantis told ABC News on Monday that there would “of course” be a review of the decisions that local officials made before the storm hit.
DeSantis responded brusquely at an afternoon press conference to questions from ABC News about the evacuation orders issued shortly before Ian made landfall in western Florida last Wednesday.
“Excuse me, this has been handled ad nauseam,” the governor said, cutting off the reporter’s question mid-sentence.
Lee County, which has seen the most fatalities, did not mandate evacuations until the day before the Category 4 storm leveled much of its coastline.
In the week since, both emergency officials and DeSantis have been pressed about that timeline and whether different choices could have lessened the casualties.
The governor and others, including the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have stressed that the decision was made at a local level but defended the evacuation timing, citing uncertainty about Ian’s path.
However, the National Hurricane Center forecast on Sept. 25 that Ian could bring a potential storm surge of between 4 and 7 feet along Florida’s southwestern coast from Englewood to Bonita Beach — covering the entirety of Lee County’s coast.
According to Lee’s emergency management plan from 2018, even a 10% chance of a 6-foot storm surge should be enough to prompt the evacuation of Zone A of the county, which includes low-lying coastal high hazard areas, mobile and manufactured homes.
On Sept. 27, less than 24 hours before Ian made landfall, Lee County issued mandatory evacuations for much of the area starting around 5 p.m. local time.
Asked Monday if he would order a formal review of how Lee County responded, DeSantis said: “Well of course you’re going to review everything you do in these storms. That’s the way it works.”
Lee County’s Sanibel Island and Fort Myers Beach were among the most severely damaged areas in the state. At least 54 of the storm deaths reported in Florida were in Lee County, the sheriff’s office said Saturday.
One resident, Pam Schlitten, rode out the storm in her Cape Coral home. Schlitten, a DeSantis supporter, asked ABC News before the governor’s appearance on Monday why no one knocked on her door and told her to leave.
“I didn’t know what was happening,” said Schlitten, 60.
Her phone service had gone out on Tuesday, she added, which was the day evacuation orders were given.
“There was no police,” she said. “You could have the police running in the area with their speakers. You [have] to get the communication out.”
DeSantis, Lee County defend evacuation timing
The governor has repeatedly said officials on the ground were “following the data” when making evacuation decisions — and it was the data from the forecast models that led them astray.
“When we went to bed Monday night, people were saying this is a direct hit on Tampa Bay, worst-case scenario for the state,” DeSantis said on Saturday. “As that track started to shift south, and the computer models the next morning, they called for the evacuation, they opened their shelters and they responded very quickly to the data.”
“But at the end of the day, Fort Myers and Naples, on Sunday, I think at the 11 a.m. advisory, 72 hours out, they weren’t even in the cone. That’s just the reality, so they followed it very closely,” he added.
The “cone of uncertainty” is what forecasters use to represent what’s likely to be the center of the storm. At least some parts of Lee County were in the cone in the days leading up to landfall, according to models from the National Hurricane Center.
Lee County Manager Roger Desjarlais said at a news conference on Monday that search-and-rescue efforts were continuing in Fort Myers Beach, with crews working 24 hours per day.
When asked about the timing of evacuations, Desjarlais insisted the decision was made at the “earliest possible moment when we got the weather information.”
“Based on all the conditions at the time, I wouldn’t change a thing,” he said, noting that — still — many county residents appeared to have chosen not to evacuate as only 4,000 people came to an area shelter that can house 40,000 individuals.
FEMA weighs in
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell discussed the timing of the Lee County evacuations during an appearance on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, echoing DeSantis’ comments about the unpredictability of the storm.
“Just 72 hours before landfall, the Fort Myers and Lee County area were not even in the cone of the hurricane,” Criswell said when asked if the late timing of the evacuation orders played a part in the death toll.
“And as it continued to move south, the local officials immediately — as soon as they knew that they were in that threat zone, made the decisions to evacuate and get people to safety,” she added.
Criswell said officials were aware Hurricane Ian would have a “significant impact to life,” which is why they prepared search and rescue teams to be deployed early in the morning the day after landfall.
“They are still there today going house-by-house to make sure we account for everybody,” Criswell said Sunday.
(EL PASO, Texas) — A person in U.S. Border Patrol custody was fatally shot on Tuesday in an incident at a USBP station in El Paso, Texas, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
While other details were not immediately available, two officials said the firearm that was discharged belonged to an agent — although it’s unclear what led up to the weapon going off and who fired the gun and why.
The person in custody who died was initially transported to a local hospital for treatment.
Authorities said that publicly available information was limited due to an ongoing FBI investigation. No other injuries were reported by the agency Tuesday.
An FBI spokesman said in a statement late Tuesday that their agents were first contacted about the fatal shooting about 1 p.m. local time.
“As this is an ongoing investigation, no further information can be provided at this time,” said Jeffrey R. Downey, the FBI El Paso special agent in charge.
The CBP Office of Professional Responsibility is also investigating along with the El Paso Police Department.
The increased level of migrants detained or arrested at the southern border — which is at a record high this fiscal year, according to government data, with many people fleeing political and economic turmoil — corresponds with an increased number of use-of-force incidents involving a gun.
There have been 17 such shootings since last October, compared to seven in 2019, according to CBP.
Much like police stations and other law enforcement facilities, Border Patrol detainees are temporarily held at stations where agents are regularly armed.
