(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — The supermarket in Buffalo, New York, where a deadly mass shooting occurred in May is officially reopening Friday after extensive renovations.
The Tops Friendly supermarket was closed for months as the site of an active law enforcement investigation into the shooting that killed 10 people and injured three more.
An 18-year-old white male, who has now been indicted on federal hate crime charges, allegedly opened fire in what authorities say was a racially motivated attack. All 10 of those who died were Black.
The store has undergone renovations in the aftermath of the attack, in which the suspected gunman fired more than 60 shots from a high-powered, AR-15-style rifle.
The Tops grocery store on Jefferson Avenue was a lifeline in the predominantly Black community. It served as the area’s lone grocery store, in a neighborhood struggling under years of historic segregation and divestment.
“We understand the important role this store plays in this community and we are committed to reopening our Jefferson avenue location in the right way at the right time, with the best in class amenities that you see in all of our stores,” Tops Friendly Markets stated in a press release in late May.
On Thursday, Tops representatives and community leaders held a prayer service and a moment of silence to honor the victims, store workers and community members affected by the shooting.
Bernd von Jutrczenka/picture alliance via Getty Images
(RIYADH, Saudi Arabia) — U.S. President Joe Biden has promised to bring up human rights concerns when he meets with Saudi leaders in Jeddah on Friday as part of his first Middle Eastern trip, but the visit has been surrounded by considerable intrigue and controversy.
During his presidential campaign, Biden said he would make Saudi Arabia a “pariah state” over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but he has refused to answer whether he will bring up the case specifically with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the Kingdom once seen as a reformer, but who now has a reputation for targeting his critics and crushing dissent.
Human rights campaigners have expressed concern that Saudi Arabia’s human rights record once again may be overlooked in favor of cheap oil, especially since the West is in need of alternative energy options following the war in Ukraine.
The awkward nature of the visit is perhaps summed up by the White House’s refusal to even say whether Biden will shake the Crown Prince’s hand.
But for the families of those who killed in a mass execution earlier this year, which saw 81 people executed on March 12 in what human rights groups condemned as a “massacre,” the trip is seen as nothing less than legitimizing the Kingdom’s regime.
Hamza al-Shakhouri’s brother, Mohammad al-Shakhouri, was executed in March after being convicted of crimes relating to various “terrorist” activities. But in a letter in November 2021, UN special rapporteurs said that they had received evidence that al-Shakouri’s confession, relied on by state prosecutors, was based on torture, and they appealed to the Kingdom to overturn his sentence. The reported use of coerced confessions as evidence of guilt, they said, “would constitute a blatant violation of due process and of fair trial guarantees.”
Saudi Arabia’s counter-terrorism laws have been criticized by the UN as being “unacceptably broad” which have been used against “human rights defenders, writers, bloggers, journalists and other peaceful critics.”
The Kingdom’s secretive judicial system has long drawn condemnation from human rights campaigners for failing to meet the basic standards of due process.
“President Biden has attempted to justify his visit to Saudi Arabia and pledged that his government will not tolerate authorities harassing dissidents and activists,” Hamza said in a statement shared with ABC News by the human rights charity Reprieve. “The Saudi regime doesn’t just harass those who speak out against it; it murders them. My brother is just one of the many victims.”
Yasser al-Khayat, the brother of Mustafa al-Khayat who was also executed in March for alleged “terrorist” activities, told ABC News that the family have still not received his body for a proper burial. According to the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights, Mustafa was also tortured into signing a confession having been held in solitary confinement for six months.
“We are still mourning,” he said in a statement shared with ABC News. “This visit legitimizes Mohammed bin Salman’s actions, sending the message that my brother’s life doesn’t matter and that America will continue to support the regime no matter how many of us they kill.”
“Americans often describe their country as the world’s greatest democracy but its president is partnering with a man who has killed countless people like my brother for daring to ask for those same democratic rights,” he said.
Both men are now outside Saudi Arabia, and so were able to provide their testimony without imminent fear of reprisals.
The White House did not respond to a requests for comment from ABC News on whether officials will raise concerns about Saudi Arabia’s use of the death penalty during the visit to Jeddah.
Reprieve’s Director, Maya Foa, described the current climate under the rule of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin-Salman as an “execution crisis.”
“The authorities are on track to execute more people this year than ever before,” Foa told ABC News. “Child defendants, pro-democracy protesters and people convicted of non-violent drug crimes are among those at risk. There are likely thousands of people on death row but the justice system is so secretive that we simply don’t know how many.”
ABC News’ Ben Gittleson contributed to this report
(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — When the Tops Friendly Market on Jefferson Avenue shut down after the Buffalo mass shooting, the community lost its only grocery store — a lifeline in a predominantly Black neighborhood that fought for years to obtain access to affordable and quality fresh food.
Two months after the shooting, the store is opening its doors again to the public on Friday, but the prospect of returning to the site of the massacre has been difficult for the community. With no other grocery store in the area, some have no choice.
Pastor Dwayne Jones was at his church, Mount Aaron Missionary Baptist Church, when the shooting occurred less than half a mile away. Jones, a developer who has spearheaded projects across the city to provide affordable housing to the community, said that the Tops should open only “temporarily” while they build a grocery store at a new location.
“[It] has been very traumatic to the congregation, to the community, to people — seeing those bodies come out of their Tops,” Jones said.
Ten Black people were shot and killed at the Tops by a white teenager in an alleged racially motivated shooting on May 14. The victims included four grocery store employees as well as six customers, several of them regulars at the store, according to the Buffalo Police Department and those who knew them.
Jones leads a congregation of 300 people at his church where one of the shooting victims, 63 year-old Geraldine Talley, was a member and was buried on church grounds.
“There’s a lot of fear,” Jones said. “There’s a lot of questions. Where do we go from here? How do we trust people that don’t look like us in the community? I wouldn’t say it’s healing, but it’s trying to get through the traumatic part before we get to the healing.”
Jamil Crews, a community leader and organizer who grew up in the East Buffalo neighborhood, said he understands why some don’t want to go back to the Tops and if there was another “viable option” in the community, he also wouldn’t want it to reopen.
“I saw the full video of [the shooting] – unedited, just raw, unedited, and it completely broke me,” Crews, who runs a marketing business located a few hundred feet away from the Tops, told ABC News on Wednesday.
But for many people, he said, “this is the only resource they have in that community, so they need it.”
Crews said he and some of his fraternity brothers will be at the reopening Friday to help elderly people with their groceries and send a message that “it’s safe to come back.”
Community members, store workers and Tops executives gathered on Thursday afternoon for a prayer service and a moment of silence to mark the two-month anniversary of the shooting and honor the victims ahead of the store reopening.
The company said in a statement the store “will quietly and respectfully reopen to the public.”
Regular shoppers, a retired police officer: Remembering the victims of the Buffalo shooting
Asked about relocating, Tops Friendly Markets President John Persons said at a press conference in June that it would take two to three years to do so, according to Buffalo ABC affiliate WKBW.
According to Persons, who spoke at the rededication of the store on Thursday, about 75% of the employees who worked at the Jefferson Avenue store at the time of the shooting have returned to work, which he said is “a testament to their resiliency.”
Persons said in June that employees who don’t feel comfortable returning have the option of working at other branches. According to the franchise’s website, Tops Friendly Markets operates 150 stores across Pennsylvania, Vermont and New York, with seven locations in Buffalo.
Persons also said the store will undergo extensive renovations and remodeling and when it reopens, it will have a different look and feel.
The remodeled store “will provide more space for produce, organic options, fresh foods, personal care products and, importantly, community collaborations for nutrition education and health screenings,” Persons said Thursday.
“It will become an ever greater resource to combat local food insecurity and support health and wellness,” he added.
Following the shooting, the closure of the Tops supermarket underscored the long-standing divestment in East Buffalo that led to the predominantly-Black area to become a “food desert.”
Food deserts are when households lack access to a market because they live beyond walking distance and don’t have a personal vehicle, translating to overall food insecurity, Andre Perry, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of the book “Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities,” told ABC News, adding that Black households are more than two times likely to be food insecure than the national average.
Perry attributes practices such as redlining as a key factor that contributed to the lack of food access. Redlining refers to the practice of withholding services — such as providing housing subsidies — from low-income or minority communities.
“We know that in order to get a supermarket there, there are models created largely around density, around buying power and a number of other factors that really punish poor communities, low income communities and rural communities for not having wealth,” Perry said.
He added, “When people look at black communities, there’s a dim view. Corporations don’t see the potential. They don’t see the value in Black communities, by and large. And that is certainly the case in places like Buffalo.”
Community leaders and city officials, including Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown who was a council member at the time of the store’s opening, advocated and lobbied for a supermarket. When Tops Friendly Market opened in 2003, it became a source of pride for the community.
“There was a significant effort to bring a supermarket chain to the community, but markets refused to come in and refused to provide support for the community,” Brown told ABC News, adding that he “reached out directly to supermarket chains and convinced Tops to come to the community.”
Crews said he still remembers what it was like before the Tops opened its doors when the area was a food desert, with the nearest grocery store more than 3 miles away.
Tops’ opening, he said, “was a big deal because it’s like, finally we have something where we can have access to the fresh fruits and vegetables and we don’t have to rely on like the secondhand stuff or the powdered milk.”
Following the shooting, the store was inaccessible as a crime scene in an active investigation.
While the store was closed, community leaders like Crews worked to make sure people still had access to fresh food. Advocates planned food drives across the city, buses provided free transportation to neighboring grocery stores and volunteers worked to distribute donated hot meals and groceries to East Buffalo families.
“The whole community kind of rallied together,” Crews said.
In the aftermath of the shooting, Tops Friendly Markets partnered with the National Compassion Fund to establish the Buffalo 5/14 Survivors Fund to provide direct financial assistance to family members of the deceased and those impacted by the tragedy. As of Thursday morning, the fund received more than $4.26 million in donations, including a $500,000 donation from Tops Markets.
Jones said his mission is to meet with city officials to advocate for a “full-sized” grocery store to be built at a new location because even before the shooting, the Tops “wasn’t good enough.”
According to Jones, the grocery store is smaller than others across the city and having only one option speaks to years of divestment, redlining and systemic racism in the predominantly Black community in East Buffalo.
Pointing to the plan to demolish Robb Elementary School — the site of the mass shooting that left 19 dead in Uvalde, Texas — Jones said he believes the city should demolish the Tops building and the site should become a memorial to those who were killed.
“They’re going to build a new school because they don’t want to send the kids or the community back into somewhere that was traumatized,” Jones said, reflecting on his own trip to Uvalde, where he met with families of the victims.
“I think we need to have that same compassion in Buffalo, New York,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked a bill that would have both legally shielded the people who travel across states lines to receive an abortion and the providers who care for those patients.
Senate Democrats needed the support of at least 10 Republicans to stop a GOP filibuster of the bill, but no Republicans stood to support the measure.
The Freedom to Travel for Health Care Act of 2022, authored by a trio of Democratic female lawmakers — New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand, Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto and Patty Murray of Washington — made an argument rooted in the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause that, among other things, essentially allows citizens freedom of travel to states while enjoying equal protection under the law.
The blocked bill would codify the ability of people to travel without repercussion from a state where abortion is restricted to another state where it is legal.
The bill would extend those same protections to people or groups who assist in abortion access across states as well as health care providers who offer abortion services to out-of-state patients if they are legally allowed to offer those same services to in-state residents.
A group of Democratic senators attempted to call up their bill for debate on Thursday, but Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., objected.
Senate rules require either the unanimous consent of all 100 senators to start debate on any bill or 60 votes to overcome any filibuster that seeks to block that debate.
Lankford is a longstanding opponent of abortion. In floor remarks opposing the bill — matched by similarly passionate comments by Democrats — he urged colleagues to consider the lives of who he described as unborn babies.
“The conversation today is not just about women. There are two people in this conversation, a child with 10 fingers and 10 toes and a beating heart and DNA that is uniquely different than the mom’s DNA or the dad’s DNA,” Lankford said. “Maybe this body should pay attention to children as well and to wonder what their future could be to travel in the days ahead.”
Lankford also argued that the proposed legislation was unnecessary at this time.
“To be very clear, no state has banned interstate travel for adult women seeking to obtain an abortion — no state has done that,” Lankford said. “Now am I confident there are some people that are out there talking, yes, but there are also in this Senate 5,000 bills that have been filed and how many of them are actually going to move?”
Indeed, some Republican-controlled states are already considering legislation that would bar women from traveling across state lines to receive an abortion. In Missouri, for example, legislation is being considered that would allow private citizens to sue anyone who assists a woman in traveling out of state to receive an abortion. Missouri is one of at least 13 states that have ceased nearly all abortion services.
Democrats warned that other states may soon consider proposals like the Missouri bill that aim to penalize women and those who help them travel across state lines.
“Anyone who tells you this is not a threat is either not paying attention or they are just trying to mislead you,” said Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate health committee.
“We don’t need to conjure up hypotheticals,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said on the Senate floor on Thursday. “We already know what’s happened.”
Klobuchar cited recent reports of a 10-year-old girl in Ohio who had to travel to Indiana to receive an abortion after being impregnated by her rapist. (A suspect has been arrested in that case.)
“Should the next little 10-year-old’s right or 12-year-old’s right or 14-year-old’s right to get the care that she desperately needs be put in jeopardy?” Klobuchar asked. “What about her mom? What about her doctor? Where will this end?”
Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet spoke of his three daughters as he made a plea for the right-to-travel bill. He called near-total abortion bans being implemented in some states “literally crazy” but said some Republican lawmakers want to go further.
“I can’t believe this is what we are handing over to the next generation of America, I cannot believe it, I cannot believe it,” Bennet said. “This is despicable, especially coming from the same people who can never stop telling us how devoted they are to freedom and liberty.”
Democrats knew their effort Thursday would fail, but they feel it had symbolic value for voters ahead of the crucial midterm elections — as Democrats seek to underline the stakes of abortion access, and highlight GOP opposition, in the wake of the Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade last month.
Thursday’s bill was part of a unified strategy among Democrats to have abortion-related votes up to Election Day, when — they and some outside activists hope — the issue may galvanize people to turn out at the ballot box to preserve their fragile majorities in Congress, despite other political headwinds like inflation.
When a draft of the eventual Supreme Court ruling that overturned Row leaked in May, Democrats attempted to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have codified a women’s right to choose and implemented a variety of other provisions to protect abortion access.
That effort was blocked unanimously by Republicans and by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who opposed the bill for going further than a basic codifying of Roe.
(AUSTIN, Texas) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday filed the first legal challenge to President Joe Biden’s executive order on abortion — accusing the administration of turning emergency health care providers into “walk-in abortion clinics” and kicking off what is expected to be a protracted legal battle between the White House and red states.
At issue is Biden’s interpretation of a federal law that requires doctors to treat patients in medical emergencies, even if they do not have insurance, and provide the necessary “stabilizing treatment.”
Under guidance issued Monday, the Health and Human Services Department said the law would require doctors to perform abortions in medical emergencies if their clinical judgement finds such a procedure would help stabilize a pregnant patient.
The guidance was the result of a broader executive order signed by the president earlier this month that called on HHS to to protect reproductive services and expand access to medication abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
On Thursday, Paxton said the administration went too far and filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
“This administration has a hard time following the law, and now they are trying to have their appointed bureaucrats mandate that hospitals and emergency medicine physicians perform abortions,” Paxton said in a statement.
The White House responded by calling Paxton’s position “radical.”
“This is yet another example of an extreme and radical Republican elected official. It is unthinkable that this public official would sue to block women from receiving life-saving care in emergency rooms, a right protected under US law,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
Biden’s order and the subsequent HHS guidance were not expected to have a major impact on abortion access in states that restrict it as life-threatening medical emergencies facing pregnant patients are relatively rare.
Still, the order was aimed at addressing concerns by many medical experts that state laws allowing abortion to “save the life of a mother” were vague. Doctors said they weren’t sure how imminent death must be before a provider could act.
In guidance to hospitals on Monday, Health Secretary Xavier Becerra said the federal law — the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act — should empower doctors to use their best clinical judgement. Becerra noted that because EMTALA is a federal statute, it would take precedence over any state laws restricting abortion.
“As frontline health care providers, the federal EMTALA statute protects your clinical judgment and the action that you take to provide stabilizing medical treatment to your pregnant patients, regardless of the restrictions in the state where you practice,” Becerra wrote.
According to the HHS guidance, emergency medical conditions involving pregnant patients may include “ectopic pregnancy, complications of pregnancy loss, or emergent hypertensive disorders, such as preeclampsia with severe features.”
EMTALA is enforced through complaints. If a hospital is found to violate the law through a federal investigation, it could lose access to the Medicare program or face fines.
A major anti-abortion group, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said Thursday it agreed with Texas on its suit over Biden’s emergency medical guidance.
In a statement provided to ABC News, the organization said the federal law cited by Biden has never specialized a particular method of stabilizing a patient. And if a pregnant person’s health is in danger “every attempt” should be made to stabilize both the mother and child, even if that means premature delivery.
“The new guidance is a complete distortion of [the law] EMTALA and we firmly stand with AG Paxton in Texas,” the group said.
(NEW YORK, NY) — Ivana Trump, the ex-wife of former President Donald Trump, has died at age 73, the family told ABC News.
The former president said she died at her home in New York City.
Ivana Trump was Donald Trump’s first wife. They had three children together: Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric Trump.
“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.
“Ivana Trump was a survivor. She fled from communism and embraced this country. She taught her children about grit and toughness, compassion and determination,” the family said. “She will be dearly missed by her mother, her three children and ten grandchildren.”
Manhattan paramedics, responding to a call for cardiac arrest, found a 73-year-old woman in the Upper East Side apartment where Ivana Trump lived just after 12:30 p.m. Thursday, according to the FDNY. She was pronounced dead at the scene, the NYPD said.
In a statement on his platform Truth Social, the former president remembered Ivana as a “wonderful, beautiful, and amazing woman, who led a great and inspirational life.”
“Her pride and joy were her three children, Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric,” he wrote. “She was so proud of them, as we were all so proud of her.”
Ivana Trump, born Ivana Marie Zelníčková, grew up under communist rule in the former Czechoslovakia. She left in the 1970s and married Donald Trump in 1977.
She worked for years in Trump’s business empire as a senior executive. She was appointed CEO of Trump’s Castle, one of his hotel casinos in Atlantic City, and helped design interiors for the Grand Hyatt Hotel and Trump Tower. She also authored multiple bestselling books and created her own clothing line.
“No matter how busy I was, I had breakfast with my children every day. I sat with them at dinner every night and helped them with their homework (I loved algebra) before going out in a Versace gown to a rubber-chicken charity event,” Ivana Trump wrote in her memoir, “Raising Trump.” “The kids and I celebrated, traveled, and grieved together. Our bond was, and is, our most valuable possession.”
Ivana and Trump divorced in 1992. Their marriage dissolved amid revelations that the former president was having an affair with Marla Maples, who would become his second wife.
In a 2017 interview with ABC News’ Amy Robach, Ivana Trump said she had forgiven her former husband. She also described the formative years of raising her children with Donald Trump.
“He was a loving father, don’t get me wrong, and he was a good provider, but he was not the father which would take a stroll and go to the Central Park or go play to baseball with them or something,” she said. She added, when they “were about 18-years-old,” “he could communicate with them, because he could start to talk business with them.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK, NY) — Uber is being sued by approximately 550 female passengers who claim they were attacked by their drivers, according to the law firm Slater, Slater, Schulman, LLP, which filed a legal complaint against Uber in a San Francisco court on Wednesday.
The women, who live in multiple states, “were kidnapped, sexually assaulted, sexually battered, raped, falsely imprisoned, stalked, harassed, or otherwise attacked by Uber drivers with whom they had been paired through the Uber application,” according to allegations in a statement from Slater, Slater, Schulman, LLP.
The abuse at issue took place between 2015 and this year, Adam Slater, founding partner of Slater, Slater, Schulman, LLP, told ABC News. The firm has filed roughly 25 lawsuits so far and plans to file the remainder within the next several months, he added.
The legal complaint comes about two weeks after Uber released a safety report that revealed at least 3,824 incidences of sexual assault in 2019 and 2020, ranging from “non-consensual kissing of a non-sexual body part” to “non-consensual sexual penetration.”
The company said in a prior report that the number of such sexual assault reports had declined 38% for the years 2017 and 2018.
The new safety report acknowledged that the number of sexual assault claims may have been impacted by a shift in overall usage of the platform amid the COVID pandemic. For instance, bookings on Uber’s core ride-sharing service declined 73% over a three-month period ending in June 2020 compared to the same period a year prior, according to a company earnings report.
“Uber’s whole business model is predicated on giving people a safe ride home, but rider safety was never their concern – growth was at the expense of their passengers’ safety,” Slater, the founding partner of Slater, Slater, Schulman, LLP, said in a statement.
“While the company has acknowledged this crisis of sexual assault in recent years, its actual response has been slow and inadequate, with horrific consequences,” he added.
In a statement, Uber told ABC News that safety is its top priority.
“Sexual assault is a horrific crime and we take every single report seriously,” the company said. “There is nothing more important than safety, which is why Uber has built new safety features, established survivor-centric policies, and been more transparent about serious incidents. While we can’t comment on pending litigation, we will continue to keep safety at the heart of our work.”
Uber’s report points to a set of safety measures that include background checks for prospective drivers, tools for passengers in the app and emergency response from the company.
A feature that allows drivers and passengers to record audio of their trips is available in 14 countries, including Mexico and Brazil, Uber said in December. A pilot program of that safety feature was set to begin in three U.S. cities the following month, the company added.
In the complaint, Slater, Slater, Schulman, LLP allege that Uber first became aware of assault allegations from female Uber passengers as early as 2014.
In 2018, Uber acknowledged that it is not “immune to this deeply rooted problem” of sexual assault.
Travis Kalanick, the founder and former CEO of Uber, resigned in 2017 after a former Uber employee Susan Fowler said she had been sexually harassed while working there and a passenger in India brought a lawsuit against the company tied to her rape by an Uber driver. The case was later settled.
(JERUSALEM) — President Biden on Thursday dodged questions about whether he would set a deadline for stalled negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program following a meeting with Israel’s prime minister, who urged the United States to put a “credible military threat” on the table against Iran.
Biden, who said in a recent interview that the U.S. would consider using military force ‘as a last resort,’ declined to elaborate on any timeline for diplomatic efforts in public after his session with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid.
“We’ve laid out for the people, for the leadership of Iran, what we’re willing to accept now to get back in the JCPOA,” he said about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Obama-era nuclear agreement abandoned by the Trump administration to an Israeli journalist.
“We’re waiting for the response. When that occurs, when that will come, I’m not certain. But we are not going to wait forever,” he said, after signing a joint declaration with Lapid that committed the United States to “never” allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.
The document signed by both leaders also said the United States “is prepared to use all elements of its national power to ensure that outcome.”
Lapid used his opening remarks moments earlier to call on Biden to put a ‘credible’ military threat on the table against Iran, arguing that diplomacy alone would not be sufficient to bring Iran back into the nuclear deal.
“The only thing that will stop Iran is knowing that if they continue to develop their nuclear program, the free world will use force,” Lapid said.
But he also attempted to minimize disagreements between the two countries over Iran’s nuclear program, on the second day of Biden’s visit focused on strengthening ties with Israel and improving the country’s relations with Arab countries that are also aligned against Iran.
“We have an open discussion about what is the best way to deal with it, but I don’t think there’s a light between us in terms of these are all means to an end,” Lapid said of Iran. “We cannot allow Iran to become nuclear.”
Lapid’s call on the U.S. follows President Biden saying the U.S. would use force against Iran’s nuclear program ‘as a last resort’ during an Israeli TV interview taped before he left Washington.
Many Israeli leaders are opposed to the Iran deal and believe diplomacy alone will not constrain Iran’s nuclear program — seen in Israel as an existential threat to the country — or its support for proxy groups such as Hezbollah that are also in conflict with Israel.
During the TV interview, the president declined to say whether Israeli leaders have committed to keeping the U.S. informed of any plans for a military strike targeting Iran’s nuclear program.
“The only thing worse than the Iran that exists now is an Iran with nuclear weapons,” Biden said during the interview. “It was a gigantic mistake for the last president to get out of the deal. They’re closer to a nuclear weapon than they were before,” he said.
A diplomatic resolution is “the best option,” according to the Biden administration’s Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this spring. He said military intervention is not off the table, though.
Republicans in the House and Senate — along with several Democrats — are skeptical of the agreement, making the approval of any potential deal with Iran a challenge for the Biden administration on Capitol Hill.
Earlier this year, the White House said Iran’s nuclear advances would make rekindling such a deal with the country “impossible” if the U.S. does not reach one soon.
ABC News’ Shannon Crawford contributed to this report.
(PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA) — Five children, including a toddler, were wounded in two quadruple shootings that erupted overnight in Philadelphia, according to police.
At least three adults, including a woman believed to be the toddler’s mother, were critically injured in the shootings, authorities said.
The first shooting unfolded about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday in West Philadelphia, when at least one shooter opened fire on a Kia SUV occupied by two women and the two young children, Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small said during a news conference.
Small said 10 shots were fired at the parked vehicle, critically injuring the two women in the front seat and injuring the toddler, a 2-year-old boy, sitting next to his big brother in the backseat. He said the toddler was shot in the leg, while a woman in the driver’s seat, believed to be the child’s mother, was shot in the head and critically injured.
The other woman seated in the front passenger seat was also critically wounded, Small said. He said a 26-year-old man believed to have been standing outside the vehicle when the barrage of shots were fired was hit in the leg by a bullet and taken to a hospital in critical condition.
“In this Kia, in addition to the three victims, there was a 6-year-old boy also in the backseat,” Small said. “He’s lucky since this vehicle was hit 10 times by gunfire and three of the other passengers were all struck by gunfire.”
Investigators believe that following the shooting, the driver of the SUV drove about a block before stopping, according to Small.
No arrests have been announced in the shooting and a motive was under investigation.
“We don’t know if somebody was intentionally firing shots at this vehicle or if it was hit by stray gunfire, but the vehicle clearly has 10 bullet holes in it,” Small said.
Around 2 p.m. Thursday, four children were shot in front of an apartment building in North Philadelphia, police said. The shooting occurred about two blocks from the Edgar Allan Poe national historic site.
Police officers responding to calls of numerous shots fired, found the wounded victims — a 13-year-old boy, a 14-year-old girl, a 15-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl — in a courtyard of the apartment complex, authorities said.
Small said at least 21 shots were fired in the direction of the children, but it was unclear if they were the targets of the shootings.
The two girls were both shot in the face and were taken to a hospital in serious condition, police said. The two boys were hospitalized with non-life-threatening wounds to their legs and arms, police said.
Officers recovered a revolver at the scene, but it was not immediately clear if it was used in the shooting, police said.
The episode came as a 10 p.m. summer curfew the city recently imposed on young people under the age of 18 was in effect. The curfew was enacted by city leaders in an attempt to protect children against gun violence. But Small said two of the children were standing just outside their apartments when they were shot and two others were friends.
“They were just a few feet from the front door on the courtyard, right in front of the house where two of the victims lived,” Small said. “The other two we believe were just visiting, they were friends, when someone fired at least 21 shots in the direction of these teenagers, striking all four.”
The two shootings occurred amid a violent streak on the streets of Philadelphia, including a June 4 mass shooting that left three people dead and 11 injured in the city’s South Street entertainment district.
The Philadelphia police department’s most recent crime statistics show that as of July 10 there have been 2,233 shooting incidents in the city this year, a 6.9% increase from the same period in 2021.
As of Wednesday, the city had recorded 290 homicides, 2% fewer than at this time last year, the statistics show. Philadelphia had 562 homicides in 2021, breaking a record set in 2020.
(NEW YORK, NY) — The number of police officers who died in the line of duty decreased by over 30% over the first six months of this year compared to 2021, but the number of officers killed by gun deaths increased by nearly 20%, according to a new report released Thursday by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
The numbers, part of the organization’s mid-year report on all officer fatalities, found that, so far this year, 129 federal state, tribal and local officers died in the line of duty, compared to 188 over the same time period last year.
The organization says the decrease is almost entirely due to a reduction in COVID-19 deaths but the virus continues to be the biggest killer of law enforcement in 2022, with 54 officers losing their lives because of it, compared to 98 at the same time last year.
Thirty-three officers died from gun deaths in 2022 compared to 28 during the previous year at the same time.
Sgt. Joshua Caudell, a K-9 officer with the Arkansas Department of Corrections was one of the officers shot and killed.
The family of the nine-year police officer called his death “devastating” according to local reports.
NLEOMF says the most of the gun-related deaths were carried out with handguns, and involved domestic disturbances. The month of June saw most gun violence with 12 officer deaths.
Traffic deaths, the group said, are also down 9%, while automobile crashes are up.
“Of the 31 traffic-related fatalities, 19 were automobile crashes and 1 was a motorcycle crash,” the report says. “During the same time period last year, 13 officers were killed in automobile crashes and three died in motorcycle crashes.
The 20 total crashes over the first six months of 2022 represent a 25% increase compared to 16 in the same time period in 2021.”
The report found that 53 were city officers, 41 were from sheriff’s offices and 19 were from state police agencies.
