(NEW YORK) — A dangerous heat wave is stretching across much of the U.S. with temperatures in the triple digits from the West to the South to the East as sweltering, unrelenting heat continues to slam Europe.
Here’s what to expect Wednesday:
Excessive heat warnings stretch from San Antonio to Tulsa to Memphis, where it’ll feel like 105 to 115 degrees.
Heat advisories extend from Cincinnati, Ohio, to the Mexican border, with the heat feeling like over 100 degrees for this wide swath of the central U.S.
The heat index — what temperature it feels like with humidity — is forecast to skyrocket to a dangerous 108 degrees in Houston, 113 in Dallas and 112 in Little Rock and Memphis.
Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio may reach record highs. The intense heat is also continuing to create a breeding ground for fires in Texas.
In the Northeast, heat advisories stretch from Maryland to northern Vermont.
The heat index is forecast to jump Wednesday to 101 degrees in Philadelphia and 98 degrees in New York City and Washington, D.C.
The heat wave in the Northeast is expected to last through the weekend and may linger into next week.
Meanwhile, in the West, temperatures are expected to climb to 112 in Palm Springs and 113 in Las Vegas.
And in Europe, the United Kingdom on Tuesday reached its highest temperature ever, breaking 40 degrees Celsius for the first time as U.K. officials declared a national emergency and issued unprecedented health warnings.
Tuesday was the busiest day for London’s fire department since World War II, Mayor Sadiq Khan said.
Spain and Portugal have reported more than 1,100 heat-related deaths amid Western Europe’s record-breaking heat wave.
People in Paris and London will feel some relief Wednesday with temperatures falling to 75 degrees Fahrenheit and 80 degrees Fahrenheit respectively.
But the heat Wednesday turns to Spain, Italy and Germany.
Madrid is forecast to reach 99 degrees Fahrenheit, Milan 98 degrees and Berlin a scorching 100 degrees.
(HIGHLAND PARK, Ill.) — A therapy resource for people affected by the mass shooting during a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, is going viral, highlighting the widespread mental health impact of mass shootings.
In the days after the shooting that killed seven people and injured dozens more, Alexandra Kaehler, an interior designer in nearby Winnetka, Illinois, took to Instagram to crowdsource a list of available mental health therapists to whom people could reach out.
Kaehler, a mom of three, also offered to pay for mental health services for people who needed help.
“I feel helpless right now,” Kaehler wrote. “But there are people who are traumatized by what they saw, and if there’s one thing I know it’s that therapy is so incredibly important. Hopefully this is one *tiny* thing I can do to help right now.”
Within hours, over 100 therapists reached out to asked to be added to her list, Kaehler told ABC News’ Good Morning America.
To date, there are over 200 therapists on the list, which Kaehler said she shared publicly so anyone could reach out.
“It just gave me so much hope in humanity in how ready and willing people were to help,” said Kaehler. “And I hope that it has an even wider reach than I know.”
Kaehler said she was attending a July Fourth parade with her family in her hometown of Winnetka when she heard about the shooting in Highland Park, which is just 15 minutes away. During the annual parade in a Chicago suburb, a gunman opened fire on parade-goers with a high-powered rifle.
Kaehler recalled receiving frantic calls from family and friends worried about her safety, but said she immediately thought of one of her best friends, whom she knew was at the parade.
Kaehler later learned that her friend, Natalie Lorentz, survived, but was sitting near people who were killed in the shooting.
“When I think about the experience that I’m having watching all of this unfold and thinking about what her experience was, it pales in comparison obviously, but I felt just really incapacitated,” said Kaehler. “It had never happened this close to home for me.”
Lorentz told GMA last week that the mental health recovery for her and her family has been “second by second.”
“I have moments where I feel panic and anxiety and like I’m back there, and then moments of just overwhelming sadness for what us and so many other people had to go through and then just numbness where I’m compartmentalizing and trying to put one foot in front of the other,” said Lorentz, who attended the parade with her husband, mother and three young sons. “It’s really just been a whirlwind of emotions.”
Lorentz added that she is worried about future mental health concerns for her sons, saying, “They’re young and not fully aware really of everything that took place that day. I’m more worried about a month from now, three months from now, what implications that holds for them.”
Jamie Kreiter, a Chicago-based licensed clinical social worker, said her concern about the long-term impact of a mass shooting like the one in Highland Park is the reason she responded when she saw Kaehler’s call for help on Instagram.
“People are forever changed by traumatic experiences,” Kreiter told GMA. “This community will be forever changed by this tragedy, so how do we heal? How do we move forward and mobilize?”
Kreiter, CEO and founder of Nurture Therapy, LLC, said she and her husband were both born and raised in Highland Park and had friends and family who attended this year’s parade.
Though Kreiter and her family and friends were safe, she said she, like so many other people, experienced secondary trauma, a type of trauma that comes from hearing about or seeing a traumatic event without physically being there or even having a direct connection to the event, according to Kreiter.
“What you experience is similar to symptoms of trauma — picturing yourself there, difficulty with concentration or focus, feeling overwhelmed and flooded by those images, difficulty sleeping, being hypervigilant and feeling that your safety has been disrupted,” said Kreiter.
Mass shootings that have made headlines recently in cities from Uvalde, Texas, to Buffalo, New York, each have the power to cause community trauma, especially when shootings happen in common places like schools, as with Uvalde, or grocery stores, as with Buffalo, according to Kreiter.
So far in 2022, more than 300 shootings that have resulted in four or more injuries or deaths have occurred in the U.S.
Factors including how much a person pays attention to the news, or how much time they talk about shootings with friends and family may affect the severity of trauma, according to research analyzed by FiveThirtyEight.
Dr. Sandro Galea, an epidemiologist at the Boston University School of Public Health who studies how mass shootings impact mental health, told FiveThirtyEight that research is still limited on how shootings may impact the mental health of people on a more widespread basis.
“The issue of mental health in community members who are not directly affected… most people in the mental health space think it’s a real issue but there actually has been very little research on it,” he said.
Kreiter said in Highland Park, thousands of people have sought therapy services at the town’s elementary school and high school, where therapists like herself have donated their services for free.
“We’re seeing people who are grieving not just loved ones who have been injured or lost but grieving the disrupted sense of safety,” said Kreiter. “Or they’re feeling overwhelmed with emotion or guilt, either that they were there or one small decision may have prevented them from being there.”
She continued, “I think I speak for many providers and community members that you just feel this loss of control. People no longer feel a sense of safety.”
Kreiter said she has been sharing information about trauma on social media so that people feel comfortable seeking mental health help even if they were not directly impacted by the parade attack.
“There are some people who weren’t there but were deeply impacted and perhaps have some hesitation to seek services,” she said. “Whether you were there or not there, this kind of trauma is very real.”
For people who have felt unsettled or unsafe amid the spate of recent mass shootings, Kreiter said she wants people to know that help is available.
In addition to seeking professional support, Kreiter said there are steps individuals can take as well to improve their mental health.
Her tips include limiting intake of the news and social media, especially before bed; leaning on your support system and community; resuming as much normalcy as possible and practicing grounding and coping skills in your toolbox.
If you are experiencing suicidal, substance use or other mental health crises please call or text the new three digit code at 988. You will reach a trained crisis counselor for free, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can also go to 988lifeline.org or dial the current toll free number 800-273-8255 [TALK].
(NEW YORK) — Hundreds of millions of people around the world are currently experiencing sweltering, dangerous heat — a new reality as the effects of climate change continue to manifest in severe weather events of every kind.
A scorching airmass remains over the majority of the continental U.S. on Wednesday, with a heat dome sitting over the Southwest and Great Plains and triple-digit temperatures stretching throughout the Midwest and up and down the East Coast.
While Wednesday brought slight relief to Europe with its own block of boiling weather that helped to reach the hottest temperature ever recorded in London, there were wildfires across the continent and more than 1,500 heat-related deaths in Spain and Portugal alone.
The predictions climate scientists have been making for decades about what awaited the planet should the temperatures continue to rise are currently coming into fruition in the form of these heat waves that are occurring concurrently in lands thousands of miles apart, experts told ABC News.
The “most direct” connections between weather and climate change are the increase in intensity, frequency, duration and expanse of heat waves, said Jennifer Francis, senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. And “even stronger extremes” are expected in the future, World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said during a press conference Tuesday.
Extreme heat is a “basic consequence of climate change,” and the fact that it’s happening in several different locations at the same time is characteristic of the average global temperatures rising, Jason Smerdon, a climate scientist for the Columbia Climate School’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, told ABC News.
“While each heat wave itself is different, and has individual dynamics behind it, the probability of these events is a direct consequence of the warming planet,” Smerdon said, adding that a break in low airmass off the Atlantic Ocean moved east and blanketed Spain and Portugal, which is why those countries experienced the worst of the prolonged heat.
Historically, when records are broken, they are done so in very small increments, such as a fraction of a degree — another characteristic that makes the current heat waves much more severe than in years past, Smerdon said. The previous record in the U.K. occurred in London’s Cambridge Botanic Gardens at 101.6 degrees Fahrenheit. On Tuesday, that record was broken when the temperature measured at 104 F — a hallmark that the Earth’s climate is currently in “uncharted territory,” Francis said.
“These things are blowing the roof off of the previous record,” Smerdon said, adding that the same applies to the record-breaking heat waves that occurred in the Pacific Northwest last year. Those heat waves would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change, a study published in 2021 found.
If the Earth were in “normal times,” there would be an even distribution between low-temperature and high-temperature records being broken, Francis said.
The fact that Britain, which is essentially at the same latitude as Calgary in Canada, is experiencing triple-digit temperatures at such frequency poses a danger to human health because the majority of the infrastructure was built during a century that never saw such heat, Smerdon said. A large portion of the population is not equipped with air conditioning in their homes, and therefore are not able to cool off all the heat exhaustion that built up during the day, Rachel Licker, senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told ABC News. The heat is also colliding with other climate hazards, such as the wildfires in Spain and the poor air quality that comes with it, she added.
Look to the poles for another explanation as to why extreme heat will occur more often, the experts said. Because the North Pole and South Pole are warming faster than the rest of the planet, therefore reducing the difference in temperature between the polar regions and the equatorial regions, it’s shifting the atmospheric patterns of the jet stream, the band of strong winds created by cold air meeting warmer air that moves west to east and helps to regulate weather around the globe, Smerdon said.
There is research to suggest that the pattern of the jet stream, also known as the polar vortex, is becoming more wavy due to the melting Arctic and Antarctic, which would increase the possibility of “pumping a tremendous amount of heat up into western and northern Europe,” Smerdon said.
The weakening jet stream can also be blamed for the extreme cold that reaches southern states that normally do not experience freezing temperatures, such as the freeze that struck Texas in February 2021, knocking out the power grid and leaving millions in the cold.
One of the reasons temperatures in western Europe heated up so quickly was the combination of the dry soil, changes in the jet stream and high-pressure airmass that stalls over one place over a long period of time, Sjoukje Philip, a researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, said in a statement on Friday.
Temperatures reaching up to 50 degrees Celsius, or 122 degrees Fahrenheit, are not out of the realm of possibility in the coming decades if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced to zero, Robert Vautard, director of the Dynamic Meteorology Laboratory at Sorbonne University in Paris, said in a statement last week.
“We know such a jump is possible,” Vautard said.
Despite decades of research that projected these heat events, scientists are not immune to worrying about the state of global warming as they watch these heat waves disrupt the daily lives of so many millions of people, Licker said.
“They’re all of these different segments of society that are particularly vulnerable to extreme heat,” such as the elderly and outdoor workers, she said.
The “silver lining” of these heat waves may be the wakeup call that the government and industries need to really focus on reducing carbon footprints in the next decade, Francis said, adding, “We don’t have much time left.”
Climate scientists will now be tasked with answering more prevailing questions, such as whether there are amplifying features they are missing in their predictions.
“Is there a potential that we’ve under-predicted the magnitude of these extreme events because of subtle features in the climate system that we haven’t characterized, adequately?” Smerdon said of the immediate future of climate research.
(WASHINGTON) — Senate Democrats’ campaign arm outraised its Republican counterpart in the second quarter of 2022 amid a fierce battle for control of the upper chamber, which is split 50-50.
In numbers shared first with ABC News, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) said Tuesday it drew $33.5 million in donations from April to June, of which $12.5 million was raised in June alone. The group finished June with more than $53.5 million in the bank and has no debt, it said.
Comparatively, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) previously announced that it raised $25.6 million in the second quarter of 2022 and finished June with $28.5 million cash on hand. It also had no debt, it said.
“The DSCC’s record breaking fundraising continues to be powered by strong, energized grassroots supporters who recognize the stakes of this election — and are committed to protecting and expanding our Democratic Senate Majority that is fighting to address working families’ most pressing priorities,” DSCC Executive Director Christie Roberts said in a statement.
An NRSC spokesperson said in their own statement that “the NRSC has broken fundraising records and are spending money early to define the Democrats. Meanwhile, Democrats are blowing money defending weak incumbents in states that Joe Biden won by double digits. No amount of money can save Democrats from themselves.”
The dueling hauls indicate both parties will be flush with cash heading into November. They are also both expressing optimism about their ability to control the Senate in the next Congress — when Democrats hope to preserve their bare majority while Republicans look to capitalize on President Joe Biden’s sagging approval and other political headwinds, like high inflation.
Democrats say they saw a surge in donations last month after the Supreme Court scrapped constitutional protections for abortion. The DSCC said the day of the decision overturning Roe v. Wade marked its strongest day of online fundraising so far this cycle, with the day after marking the second-best day of online fundraising.
Democrats are hoping that social issues like abortion and gun reform will energize a base that polls show has been depressed heading into the midterms, with Biden’s approval ratings stuck under 40%, according to the FiveThirtyEight average.
The core Senate battleground map has Democrats defending incumbents in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire — and Republicans trying to hold onto open seats in North Carolina and Pennsylvania while electing Sen. Ron Johnson to a third term in Wisconsin.
(UVALDE, Texas) — The Texas House of Representatives committee report on the Robb Elementary School shooting revealed the accused school shooter exhibited many warning signs in the years, months and days leading up to the school shooting, but he was still able to legally purchase the assault rifle used in the shooting.
The report illustrated many failures by the school and by law enforcement officers leading up to and on the day of the shooting and caused outcry among families of the 21 people killed in May.
Private individuals were the only people who knew of the many warning signs he displayed, as he had no criminal history prior to the shooting. The alleged shooter’s apparent motive was a “desire for notoriety and fame,” according to the report.
Those interviewed by the committee, including family, friends and acquaintances, reported many warning signs that experts say should have raised red flags.
“He exhibited almost every warning sign,” John Cohen, an ABC News contributor and the former acting undersecretary for intelligence and counterterrorism coordinator at the Department of Homeland Security, said in an interview. “This guy should have been on everybody’s radar.”
School officials had identified the accused shooter as “at-risk” academically by the third grade due to consistently poor test results. However, he did not receive any education services, according to the report.
The shooting itself took place in the accused shooter’s former classroom. The suspect had discussed bad memories of fourth grade with an acquaintance just weeks before, according to the report.
The suspect’s fourth grade teacher told the committee she was aware he needed special help and that he claimed to be a victim of bullying. She met with his mother over these concerns and said she believed he ultimately had a good year and that the classroom was a safe space where he made friends, according to the report.
The suspect’s family, however, disputed this account saying that classmates bullied him over his stutter, clothing and short haircut. Some family members also said that some of the teachers picked on the suspect and his cousin, according to the report. Notes found on the alleged shooter’s phone indicated that he was bullied beginning in middle school.
Concerning patterns
Beginning in 2018, the alleged shooter had bad school attendance, with more than 100 absences annually. He also had failing grades and increasingly dismal performance on standardized and end-of-course exams, according to the report.
The committee found that the local court does not regularly enforce truancy rules and it is unclear if any school resource officers ever visited the alleged shooter’s home.
Aside from a single 3-day suspension due to a “mutual combat” with a student, the suspect had almost no disciplinary history at school.
By 2021, when he was 17 years old, the alleged shooter had only completed ninth grade. He was involuntarily withdrawn from Uvalde High School in October 2021, citing poor academic performance and lack of attendance, according to the report.
Last year, the suspect increasingly withdrew and isolated himself. At the beginning of the year, a group of the alleged shooter’s former friends “jumped him,” according to the report.
His former girlfriend described the alleged shooter as lonely and depressed and said he was constantly teased by friends who called him a “school shooter,” according to the report. He was also called a “school shooter” online due to his comments.
She said he told her repeatedly that he wouldn’t live past 18, either because he would commit suicide or simply because he “wouldn’t live long.” The alleged shooter also responded to their breakup last year by harassing the girl and her friends, according to the report.
The alleged shooter’s activity online was also concerning as he began to watch violent and gruesome videos and images of things like suicides, beheadings and accidents.
Those with whom he played video games reported that he became enraged when he lost. He allegedly made over-the-top threats, especially towards female players, whom he would terrorize with graphic descriptions of violence and rape.
Later internet usage suggests he may have wondered if he was a sociopath and sought out information on the condition. His internet research resulted in him receiving an email, which was not disclosed from where in the report, about obtaining psychological treatment for sociopathy.
One month into working at Whataburger in 2021, he was fired for threatening a female coworker. He reportedly had a similar experience at Wendy’s.
His family and friends were aware of his efforts to buy guns before he was old enough to do so legally. He asked at least two people to buy him guns when he was 17, but they both refused, according to the report.
None of the suspect’s online behavior was ever reported to law enforcement, and if it was reported by other users to any social media platform, it does not appear that actions were taken to restrict his access or to report him to authorities as a threat, according to the report.
Red Flag Laws
Red flag laws, or extreme protection orders, allow law enforcement or family members to ask a civil court to temporarily remove guns from a person who poses a risk to themselves or others. Recent federal legislation included funding for states to implement these laws.
While Texas is not one of the 19 states that have red flag laws in place, experts say these laws could have prevented the shooting if they had been used in this case.
“I think this is an illustration of why red flag laws might be needed. And that might be helpful, particularly if they were used extensively here,” Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychology and behavioral studies who is affiliated with the Center for Firearms Law at Duke University, told ABC News in an interview.
The alleged shooter in Uvalde showed sufficient indication of risks that his guns could have been removed under these laws, Swanson said.
Jarrod Burguan, the former San Bernardino police chief and ABC News contributor, said the mental health system being a revolving door has not made it effective in forcing treatment and potentially protecting society from these kinds of attacks.
While law enforcement can detain people they suspect pose a potential risk for up to 72 hours (this varies based on state), Burguan said millions of people slip through the cracks.
“We need something that puts more teeth in the ability of the mental health system to hold somebody and force them into treatment, and stop allowing people to walk away, and then affect everybody else in society,” Burguan said.
Cohen said he has heard this concern from law enforcement all over the country, but says the recent federal legislation can be helpful by increasing access to mental health care.
Cohen sees a need to also implement threat management strategies where community members, leaders and family could put in place a plan that would help people who may pose a risk.
Even if there is not enough evidence to arrest someone who may pose a risk, there is still middle ground for acting preventatively with “law enforcement working with mental health professionals to assess the risk based on an evaluation of the person’s behavior,” Cohen said.
(NEW YORK) — The funeral for the late Ivana Trump, first wife of former President Donald Trump, will be held Wednesday at New York City’s St. Vincent Ferrer Church.
Her three children — Eric, Ivanka and Donald Jr. — are expected to speak during the services.
Ivana Trump died Thursday after suffering injuries sustained from a fall in her Upper East Side home, New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said. She was 73.
She was married to the ex-president from 1977 to 1992 and had three kids together, Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka.
“Our mother was an incredible woman — a force in business, a world-class athlete, a radiant beauty, and caring mother and friend,” the Trump family said in a statement at the time of her passing.
In a statement on his Truth Social platform, former President Trump called her a “wonderful, beautiful, and amazing woman, who led a great and inspirational life.”
Ivana Trump was found unconscious and unresponsive at the bottom of a set of stairs in her apartment, police sources said. Her death was ruled an accident, according to the medical examiner.
Known for her glamour, Ivana Trump created her own clothing line and helped design the interior for the Grand Hyatt Hotel and Trump Tower. She was also a bestselling author and worked for her former husband’s business empire as a senior executive, where she served as the CEO of Trump’s Castle, a hotel casino in Atlantic City.
Instead of flowers, her family is asking people to donate to the Florida nonprofit Big Dog Ranch Rescue, the organization said on its website.
(UVALDE, Texas) — Poor Wi-Fi service and a staff desensitized to alerts by frequent notifications diminished the effectiveness of Robb Elementary School’s digital emergency system during the May 24 massacre there, hampering teachers’ ability to swiftly secure their classrooms and students, according to an investigative report published Sunday.
The emergency alert system, called Raptor, was implemented by Uvalde’s school district in February 2022 to disseminate information about on-campus or nearby police activity. But on May 24, the alert system failed to sufficiently warn staff as a gunman approached the school and killed 21 people, the report found, even after the school’s principal triggered it.
“If the alert had reached more teachers sooner, it is likely that more could have been done to protect them and their students,” concluded the report, which was prepared by a special committee of the Texas state legislature.
Raptor Technologies, the Houston-based company that developed the emergency alert service used at Robb, pushed back against some of the committee’s findings, including details about when the first alert notification was transmitted.
David Rogers, the firm’s chief marketing officer, told ABC News that the report “paints an ambiguous and potentially misleading picture of the degree to which the data communication infrastructure was performant during the incident,” and said the committee did not request their data or input before publishing its report.
In the wake of one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, and as students across the country prepare to return to classrooms in the coming weeks, school districts across the country are grappling with their own alert systems and safety concerns.
The alert system was just one of many procedures that together failed to prevent the shooter from entering the school. In their investigative report, lawmakers noted that many of the shortcomings identified at Robb — including how it handled its emergency alert system — exist elsewhere in the state.
“We must not delude ourselves into a false sense of security by believing that ‘this would not happen where we live,’” according to the report. “The people of Uvalde undoubtedly felt the same way.”
Beyond the myriad of missteps on the part of law enforcement and the school district to adequately prepare for an active shooter event, the lawmakers’ report offered new details about how administrators sought to use the Raptor system during the siege with varying degrees of success. Patchy wireless connection at Robb Elementary delayed sending and receiving alerts, the report said, and an influx of notifications in recent months “diluted” the seriousness of the lockdown warning.
Difficulties with the digital alert app began almost immediately, the committee found. After hearing from a teacher who witnessed the gunman approach the school, Robb Elementary School Principal Mandy Gutierrez “attempted to initiate a lockdown on the Raptor application, but she had difficulty making the alert because of a bad wi-fi signal,” according to the report.
“Poor wi-fi connectivity in Robb Elementary likely delayed the lockdown alert through the Raptor application,” the report added.
Rogers, the Raptor executive, again disputed this claim from the committee, telling ABC News that the report “appears to imply that the lockdown was ‘attempted’ but not successfully initiated.”
“If that was the intended implication of the House Report,” he continued, “that would be inaccurate.”
Rogers said the firm’s internal system log data, which was shared with ABC News, confirmed that a “lockdown” alert was successfully transmitted at 11:32 a.m. — one minute before the shooter entered the school building. The committee’s report also noted that at least one teacher inside the school successfully received a lockdown alert at 11:32 a.m.
“Within seconds” of the alert being generated, Rogers said, 91 “critical notifications,” which are similar to an Amber Alert, 68 text messages and 136 emails were sent to “all configured user devices” associated with the Robb community. Rogers added that several teachers communicated amongst themselves using the app’s “group chat” function as the shooting unfolded.
With regard to Wi-Fi challenges cited by the committee, Rogers said Raptor’s alert system relies on devices that use cellular networks and wired connections, too — but said school districts are the ones responsible for ensuring strong Wi-Fi signals.
Once Gutierrez’s lockdown alert was successfully transmitted, the committee reached another troubling conclusion: many teachers likely ignored it. According to the report, the high volume of Raptor alert notifications about off-campus police activity in the weeks and months leading to the May 24 shooting “diluted the significance of alerts and dampened everyone’s readiness to act on alerts.”
Between February and May 2022, according to the report, staff members received more than 50 alerts — a frequency that “contributed to a diminished sense of vigilance about responding to security alerts,” the committee said.
Most of those alerts were in response to what the committee described as nearby “bailouts,” referring to incidents when undocumented immigrants flee their vehicles and attempt to outrun police. Because of Robb’s proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border, these so-called bailout events happen often.
“The series of bailout-related alerts led teachers and administrators to respond to all alerts with less urgency—when they heard the sound of an alert, many assumed that it was another bailout,” the committee reported.
Rogers said that Raptor is “actively working” with the Uvalde school district to make modifications to its platform so that “bailout” incident alerts would have a different notification setting, “so as to be clearly differentiated from other categories of emergencies.”
Even so, the committee added that many teachers “did not always reliably receive” the alerts for a number of other reasons, including “poor wi-fi coverage, phones that were turned off or not always carried, and employees who had to log-in on a computer to receive a message.”
In at least one instance during the shooting, the Raptor system worked as planned. Jennieka Rodriguez, a fourth-grade teacher in classroom 105, told the committee that she received a lockdown alert on her phone at 11:32 a.m. — just one minute before the gunman entered the school.
“[Rodriguez’s] students knew what to do and where to hide,” according to the report. “She stepped outside and checked her classroom door to ensure it was locked. As she did so, she looked across the hall and locked eyes with another fourth-grade teacher, Ms. [Irma] Garcia, who was locking the door to her classroom, Room 112.”
Moments later, the gunman entered the school and stormed classroom 112, killing Garcia and her students.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden is expected to announce on Wednesday a few executive actions to address climate change, with a focus on helping Americans facing extreme heat — but the steps fall far short of the more sweeping measures climate activists are calling for.
In fact, the directives largely appear to provide more funding to or otherwise strengthen existing programs.
According to the White House, the president’s latest set of executive actions will include “protecting communities facing extreme heat with additional FY22 funding for FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program and additional guidance to support the Department of Health and Human Services Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).” The BRIC program offers funding to communities for hazard mitigation, while the LIHEAP provides low-income Americans with assistance in covering their energy costs.
The White House said Biden will also announce “additional actions to boost the domestic offshore wind industry.” Further information on those actions was not immediately available, and it was unclear whether they would be new or impactful.
Biden will make the announcements while visiting a now-defunct coal-fired power plant, called Brayton Point, in Somerset, Massachusetts. The site is expected to be turned into a manufacturing plant that will produce transmission cables for Massachusetts’ offshore wind industry, according to the White House.
“The President ran on fighting the urgent economic and national security threat of climate change, and tomorrow’s actions will be a continuation of the decisive steps on climate that the President has taken since day one,” a White House official said. “In the coming days, he will continue to announce executive actions that we have developed to combat this emergency.”
While Biden does not plan to declare a climate national emergency this week, that option is “still on the table,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday.
The Biden administration’s efforts to continue to pivot the U.S. power sector toward zero-emission energy options, such as off-shore wind, move the country in the right direction but don’t address the larger problem of cutting and reducing current energy-based emissions from the existing fossil fuel industry. Without continuing to cut and reduce current emissions from a range of polluting areas, it will take much more than empowering renewable energy and improving building efficiency to reach Biden’s climate goals.
Wednesday’s announcements come as people across the United States — and around the world — grapple with sweltering temperatures this week. A scorching airmass remains over the majority of the continental U.S. on Wednesday, with a heat dome sitting over the Southwest and Great Plains and triple-digit temperatures stretching throughout the Midwest and up and down the East Coast.
(MORENO VALLEY, Calif.) — A woman is being held on $1 million bail after allegedly dressing as a nurse and gaining access to a maternity ward at a hospital in an attempt to steal a baby.
The incident occurred on Thursday, July 14, when Moreno Valley Sheriff’s deputies in California were notified by hospital staff at the Riverside University Health System – Medical Center of an alleged “individual impersonating a nurse on campus,” said the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department in a press release.
Authorities said that the suspect — later named as 23-year-old Jesenea Miron from Moreno Valley, California — had allegedly entered the hospital posing as a newly hired nurse and was able to gain access to the medical unit where all of the newborn babies were being looked after.
“The female entered a patient’s hospital room and identified herself as a nurse,” said the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. “While inside the patient’s room, she attempted to take their newborn infant.”
It is unclear what security measures were in place at the hospital and how Moreno was able to gain access to the maternity ward.
Moreno was eventually confronted by hospital staff who immediately notified security of the breach and alleged attempted kidnapping, authorities say.
“The female fled the location before she was able to be apprehended by hospital security or law enforcement,” said the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. “Investigators served a search warrant at the 11000 block of Weber Street in the city of Moreno Valley, where Miron was located and arrested. Additional items of evidentiary value were also located inside the residence.”
Authorities say that Miron was subsequently booked into the Robert Presley Detention Center for kidnapping charges and is currently being held on $1 million bail.
Anybody with further information regarding this case is asked to contact the Moreno Valley Sheriff’s Station or the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. The investigation into the incident is ongoing.
(WASHINGTON) — There is no need for a disinformation board at the Department of Homeland Security, a DHS panel has concluded in its interim report on examining the board.
“We have concluded that there is no need for a Disinformation Governance Board,” the interim review panel, chaired by former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, said Tuesday.
In the spring, the Department of Homeland Security faced swift backlash from Republicans and civil liberties groups on creating a board to address privacy concerns that arise with disinformation campaigns when information is shared between departments, as well as to ensure it’s done appropriately, and also appointed a controversial leader — Nina Jankowicz — to chair the board.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas faced criticism for putting the board together and even admitted its rollout was sloppy.
Less than a month after it was put together, DHS put the board’s activity on pause and commissioned a review.
“Given the complete lack of information about this new initiative and the potential serious consequences of a government entity identifying and responding to ‘disinformation,’ we have serious concerns about the activities of this new Board, particularly under Ms. Jankowicz’s leadership,” Mike Turner and John Katko, Republican leaders of the House Committee on Homeland Security, wrote in a letter to Mayorkas in May.
The Homeland Security Advisory Council’s Disinformation Best Practices and Safeguards Subcommittee will issue a full report in early August “on how the Department can most effectively and appropriately address disinformation that poses a threat to the homeland, while increasing transparency and protecting free speech, civil rights, civil liberties and privacy.”
HSAC is a group of Homeland Security professionals picked by the secretary to offer advice on certain departmental issues.
