(NEW YORK) — The settlement agreement between Fox and Dominion Voting Systems amounted to a warning shot for other media companies that may spread falsehoods, CEO of Dominion Voting Systems John Poulos said on Wednesday in an exclusive ABC News interview, his first since the settlement.
“I think that it’s a big step forward in democracy if our system can send a signal that if media companies lie — whoever they are or whatever channel they’re on — and they do so knowingly, they will be prepared to pay a very high price,” Poulos told George Stephanopoulos on ABC News’ Good Morning America on Wednesday.
Poulos’ statements came a day after his company reached a settlement agreement in its high-profile defamation suit against Fox.
Fox agreed to a $787.5 million settlement in the suit, which had sought $1.6 billion in damages. The suit had accused Fox News of recklessly airing false election claims and conspiracy theories in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.
“We weren’t ready to settle until all the facts we discovered came to light,” Poulos told ABC News in his first interview since the settlement.
Poulos said he feels they got accountability from Fox with this settlement, pointing to all of the facts that had come to light in the hundreds of private communications that were released as part of the suit, but said the effect on his company has been “devastating.”
“If we could have our company back and undo it, we would have it in a second,” he said.
Poulos said he was not surprised it took so long for Fox to settle, saying, “This was not the case of a media company pursuing the truth and making a mistake — they knew.”
Speaking outside the courtroom on Tuesday after the settlement was announced, Poulos said that Fox had “admitted to telling lies about Dominion,” although it wasn’t immediately clear whether Fox officials had agreed in the settlement to make such an admission.
“Truth matters. Lies have consequences,” Justin Nelson, an attorney for Dominion Voting Systems, said as he announced details of the company’s settlement with Fox News during a press conference following the court’s adjournment.
Fox News said in a statement after the agreement was announced that it was “pleased” to have reach the settlement.
“We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” the statement said. “This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”
Poulos on Wednesday said the lawsuit was “never really about Fox, per se, it was about the media telling the truth.”
Noting the other lawsuits against Trump allies the company is still bringing, Poulos said “We will pursue all of them.”
(BENTIU, South Sudan) — The water came in the night, rushing into her home.
And as it covered everything she owned in her hometown of Niahldiu, Nyathak took her children through the waters to the shore, waiting to be rescued.
Flooding during the rainy season is not uncommon here in South Sudan, but as the weeks and months passed without the waters receding, Nyathak — like so many here — made the decision to leave Niahldiu with her family in search of dry land.
She said it took her six days to reach dry land — almost 30 miles away in Bentiu, the seat of Unity State, where, for two years now, tens of thousands of people have come seeking dry shelter, medicine and food, as the flood water claims more and more communities and cuts off many others from supplies.
ABC World News Tonight anchor David Muir and his team traveled to South Sudan to report on yet another front line of the climate crisis, with more than one million people now facing severe food insecurity due to the worst floods here since the 1960s, according to the United Nations.
They joined humanitarian workers from the World Food Programme as they race against time to bring necessary supplies — and food — to support the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by both conflict and climate in the town of Bentiu. So many here have been cut off by the water, forced to rely on canoes or wade through the high waters in search of food, shelter and medicine.
Khaula Waqar, a logistics officer with the WFP who has been in South Sudan for five years, said the floods caught everyone by surprise.
“We were totally taken aback … We were completely surrounded by water, and Bentiu had basically become an island. It was really heartbreaking to see all the villages underwater and the people and their livestock getting displaced,” Waqar told Muir in Tong, one of the villages now isolated due to the flooding. “These people, they’re not water-based communities, so they had no canoes or boats to transport their items. But they just had plastic sheets and were carrying all their possessions in the flood water and moving, searching for higher ground.”
The South Sudanese are no strangers to conflict or displacement. It’s the youngest nation in the world — this region broke away from Sudan in 2011, with the promise of peace after protracted conflict. The people here sacrificed for decades to achieve independence, and thousands of them were displaced in the fighting.
The country, home to one of the world’s largest swamp lands, and its people would move with the seasons. During the rainy season from April to October, the swamp would swell, leading to a dry season where communities here would take their livestock to pasture and grow crops.
ABC News was there as humanitarian convoys traveled the only road in and out of the region — the Bentiu Panakuach Road — that comes from Sudan, witnessing the aid’s uncertain future, as the road is threatened by rising waters in the coming rainy season and now conflict north of the border in Sudan.
“WFP is in a race against time to preposition the food before the rainy season starts, because if we can’t preposition the food, then people will be on the brink of starvation,” Waqar told Muir. “We also have some IPC 5 counties here, which means there’s almost famine there.”
The IPC is the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, and phase 5 is considered catastrophe and famine, according to the system.
The aid is crucial. One in five children here are severely malnourished, with mothers forced to feed them water lilies, which grow in the flood waters, to keep their bellies full.
“It is a coping mechanism because they don’t have enough food,” Aachal Chand, WFP’s head of nutrition in South Sudan, told Muir outside a nutrition site in Tong. Mothers were arriving there by canoe, desperate for help.
Chand warned that, with conflict elsewhere in the world, attention and funding have moved away from South Sudan. Currently, the organization is only able to provide food rations for half the month.
“We do not have enough funds to provide the needs for the whole month, so we only provide a 50% ration, so the other 50% has to be sourced by the community,” Chand told Muir.
Water lilies and fish caught in the flood waters round up the rest of the month, presenting yet another issue.
“Water and sanitation is a big issue here, as well, so diarrheal diseases are very common,” Chand said. “If you don’t have safe drinking water or safe cooking water, then whatever you cook also can harm your child.”
Muir and his team met some of the children affected at the Bentiu State Hospital, where the most severe cases have been admitted. On a recent day, there were 20 children admitted to the hospital for malnutrition, including baby Goer — at 42 days old, he weighs under 4 pounds.
Officials here say the baby’s mother, Nyadier, can’t find enough food to feed herself and thus is not producing enough breast milk for Goer. The flood has claimed the lands; food is scarce.
“The reason of this child being admitted is because the mother does not have milk, breast milk,” Kuajien Gathook, a clinical officer with World Relief, working with WFP at the hospital, told Muir. “The mother cannot find enough food so that she can produce.”
According to the World Food Program:
$7 provides a month of school meals for a child in need, which is sometimes their only reliable meal.
$25 provides 50 mothers with nutritious meals, supporting multiple generations.
$50 provides a child with a year of school meals, keeping kids coming back.
$75 feeds a family of five for one month, providing staples such as rice, vegetable oil, sugar, salt, flour, beans and lentils.
$1,000 can feed a family of five for one year, creating a lasting impact.
(NEW YORK) — More than one-third of Americans live in places with unhealthy levels of air pollution, according to an annual report published by the American Lung Association. The 24th iteration of the State of the Air report determined 19 million fewer Americans live in these areas.
Unhealthy levels of pollution were defined as receiving a failing grade for one of the three metrics.
The annual report looked at three air quality measures: Particle pollution, broken into daily averages and daily spikes, and ozone levels, which are tracked by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
As defined by the report, particle pollution, also known as soot, is a mixture of tiny bits of solids and liquids in the air that can come from many sources that emit fine particles. Sources can include factories, power plants, motor vehicles, and burning of wood, including forest fires.
Ozone, also known as smog, is a gas compound composed of three oxygen atoms that is formed in the lower atmosphere when pollutants, often from burning fossil fuels, interact with sunlight and heat.
“120 million people were living in places that got unhealthy grades, but that’s quite a bit fewer than we saw last year, and that’s largely because we’ve seen improvements in ozone air pollution which is really good news,” says Katerine Pruitt, the national senior director for policy at the American Lung Association.
Since the initial publication of the annual report, there has been a shift of the most polluted cities from the East Coast to the West Coast. This has been attributed to the improvement in ozone pollution and the rise of particle pollution.
“Because we’ve seen improvements in ozone air pollution which is really good news. Ozone air pollution is still the most widespread of the pollutants that we track,” said Pruitt. “On the flip side of that is particle pollution, which is continuing to get worse. And we found that the number of people living with unhealthy levels of fine particle pollution has almost doubled in the last five years.”
Pruitt credits the drop in ozone pollution to the improving standards and regulations following the Clean Air Act.
Unfortunately, these positive impacts have been negated by climate change in the West.
“The impact of climate change is undermining the progress that’s been made,” Pruitt told ABC News.
Wildfires have also been a driving force in the shifting to air pollution.
“I can tell you that in California, where I have been practicing more frequently for the past 25 years because of the wildfire smoke 20 years ago, maybe 20 to 30 days of the year, you would expect to have coverage of wildfires. Now it’s about 100,” said Dr. Kari Nadeau, John Rock Professor of Climate Science and Population Studies and Chair, Environmental Health at Harvard University, and Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology clinical specialist, who currently practices in both California and Massachusetts.
“Ozone in particular can make asthma worse, but it has also been shown to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, increase the risk of stroke and increase the risk of premature birth,” Dr. Nadeau said.
“People with preexisting lung disease like asthma and COPD definitely can experience exacerbations that require them to use more medication to open their airways and it can also lead to them going to the emergency department, or even getting hospitalized,” said Dr. John Balmes, professor emeritus of pulmonary and critical care at the University of California- San Francisco and a spokesperson for the American Lung Association.
Americans can learn more about the air quality in their own communities by visiting the EPA website AirNow.gov or download the AirNow.gov app.
(NEW YORK) — On Thursday, the moon will move to entirely block the sun for just over a minute during what is known as an annular solar eclipse.
This year, however, is extra special.
Read below to find out why:
When is the 2023 April solar eclipse?
The annular solar eclipse on April 19 — or in some places April 20 — is actually a “hybrid” solar eclipse, meaning the moon will move in front of the sun to create what looks like a “ring of fire” before moving to a total solar eclipse, where the moon will completely block the sun, according to NASA .
While solar eclipses happen anywhere from two to five times a year, “hybrid” solar eclipses occur only a handful of times per century, according to NASA .
How to watch the 2023 April solar eclipse
This year’s rare celestial event will only be visible from the southern hemisphere, making Western Australia and the islands in the Indian Ocean the optimal place for eclipse-watchers to see the phenomenon in person.
However, for those who cannot travel to see the eclipse, NASA will livestream the event for free starting at 10:30 p.m. ET on April 19.
(LONDON) — The invitations have been made and the rehearsals have begun for the coronation of King Charles III and his wife Queen Camilla.
Even without an invitation, and even if you’re not in the United Kingdom, you can still get an up-close view of the coronation, an event that last happened 70 years ago when Charles’ mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, was crowned.
Charles and Camilla’s coronation will take place Saturday, May 6, at Westminster Abbey in London.
Cameras are allowed inside Westminster Abbey, so all of us at home will get a chance to see the biggest moments of the day, from the coronation service to a procession through London and Charles’ first wave as king from the balcony of Buckingham Palace.
Home viewers can also catch a glimpse of the special guests attending the coronation — including first lady Jill Biden — and all the best fashion.
How to watch the coronation in the US
ABC News and Good Morning America will have special TV coverage of the coronation on Saturday, May 6, from 5 to 10 a.m. ET.
The five hours of special coverage will also be available to stream on ABC News’ digital platforms, including ABCNews.com and GoodMorningAmerica.com, mobile apps, social platforms and over-the-top (OTT) services.
ABC News’ digital platforms will also re-air the coronation service throughout the day on May 6.
See the coronation day schedule below and get ready to watch history:
Coronation schedule of events
Buckingham Palace has yet to confirm timings for Charles’ coronation day so the below timings are estimated and scheduled to change.
Approximately 5:30 a.m. ET: Charles and Camilla depart Buckingham Palace and travel to Westminster Abbey in the Diamond Jubilee State Coach, which was created for Elizabeth in 2012. The procession will take Charles and Camilla down The Mall and around the east and south sides of Parliament Square to Broad Sanctuary and, finally, to the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey.
6 a.m. ET: The May 6 coronation service will begin at 11 a.m. local time, 6 a.m. ET, and is expected to last around 90 minutes. During the ceremony, Charles will sign an oath pledging to serve the people and will be crowned with the St. Edward’s Crown, marking the only time the king will ever wear that specific crown. Camilla will be crowned with the Queen Mary’s Crown. At the end of the service, Charles will exchange his crown for the Imperial State Crown, or Crown of State.
Approximately 7:30 a.m. ET: Charles and Camilla will depart Westminster Abbey in a procession back to Buckingham Palace. This procession, known as the Coronation Procession, will follow the same route as they took earlier in the day, but will be larger in scale and will include Armed Forces from the U.K. and across the Commonwealth.
Charles and Camilla will travel in this procession in the Gold State Coach, which has been used in every coronation since 1831. The coach was last used at the Platinum Jubilee for Elizabeth in 2022.
Approximately 8 a.m. ET: At the end of the procession, Charles and Camilla will receive a royal salute and three cheers from members of the Armed Forces. They will then appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, where they will give their first balcony waves to the public as king and queen.
The rest of the coronation weekend — which includes a bank holiday in the U.K. on Monday, May 8 — will include celebrations across the country.
Buckingham Palace is encouraging people to host Coronation Big Lunches to celebrate together throughout the weekend.
On Sunday night, a coronation concert featuring Katy Perry, Lionel Richie, Andrea Bocelli and others will be held on the grounds of Windsor Castle.
On Monday, the palace is encouraging people to volunteer in their communities.
(NEW YORK) — With summer and swim season just months away, one mom is warning other parents not to buy blue swimsuits for their kids.
Nikki Scarnati, a mom of two and swim instructor in Spring Hill, Florida, shared in a recent video post on her TikTok page why she doesn’t recommend them.
“This is not a regular bathing suit my daughter wears on a regular basis. I bought it on clearance specifically for this example for parents who wanted to learn,” the 32-year-old says in the video, turning the camera on her 2-year-old daughter Claire, who is seen treading water in a pool while wearing a light blue swimsuit.
“Look how difficult it is to see her under the water — and this is in calm water,” Scarnati continued. “This is not with a whole bunch of other kids playing, splashing around and having a good time. Even look in the sunlight, look how difficult it is to see her with that bathing suit on ’cause it’s the same color as our environment. So, do not buy a blue bathing suit guys.”
Scarnati, a Florida native who specializes in teaching children between the ages of 6 months and 6 years old, said this simple piece of advice was one she learned from her family growing up.
“My mom had three kids so she wanted us to be easiest to spot because we were always in different places at one time. But as I’ve gotten into the teaching role and working with students, I discovered it wasn’t as widely known as I thought it was,” Scarnati explained to ABC News’ Good Morning America.
“In the industry, it’s kind of widely known that blue bathing suits are problematic in pools and open water. So it was just one of the many things that I could help educate parents on, that would be applicable to really everyone,” she said.
Scarnati said she has noticed blue children’s swimsuits are widely available and very easy to find.
“Blues are very common in bathing suit color and I think that [fuels] the frustration for a lot of professionals that work with children, especially in a pool setting,” Scarnati said.
Water safety tips for parents
Adam Katchmarchi, executive director of the National Drowning Prevention Alliance and an assistant professor in sport management at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in Indiana, Pennsylvania, agreed that avoiding blue swimsuits is one way to prevent water dangers like drowning.
“After someone does experience a drowning incident, they can submerge below the water and whether that’s in a pool or in a natural body of water, that can really distort what we’re able to see surface level, to even see that there may be a situation we need to respond to,” Katchmarchi told GMA. “So wearing bright colors, no matter what the age, is really a good safety recommendation.”
The National Drowning Prevention Alliance recommends parents practice five layers of protection to keep kids safe in the water. Those five layers are:
1. Barriers and alarms, like fencing around pools and alarms on doors and windows that open to the pool so an adult is alerted when they’re opened.
2. Supervision that is “close, constant and capable” is critical for water safety, according to the Alliance.
3. Water competency, meaning that both adults and children should know how to swim. The Alliance recommends talking to your child’s pediatrician about when to start water safety or swimming lessons.
4. Life jackets are needed whenever “on or around open and natural bodies of water and when boating,” according to the Alliance.
5. Emergency preparation includes keeping a phone poolside to be able to quickly call 911 and learning and practicing how to perform CPR, according to the Alliance.
Katchmarchi noted that when it comes to supervision, bright bathing suits make a difference.
“Part of the supervision element is … making sure that you can actively supervise your child anytime they’re around or in the water,” he said. “And one of those ways is to make sure that they have a bright colored swimsuit.”
Both Scarnati and Katchmarchi recommend parents seek out neon-colored swimsuits, such as neon yellow and orange that “are going to stand out in the environment.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drowning is a leading cause of death for children between the ages of 1 and 4.
Scarnati said she hopes her TikTok post, which has so far racked up more than six million views and nearly half a million likes, can prevent future drowning deaths.
“At the end of the day, drowning is the No. 1 cause of death in children under 4 and the second in children 5 to 12, so if I can give as many tips as possible to parents to help them make better decisions … just to help drowning statistics lower a little bit, then I’ve done my job,” she said.
(BOSTON) — The Massachusetts Air National Guardsman charged with leaking national defense information online is due back in Boston federal court Wednesday for a hearing to determine whether he should remain in federal custody.
Jack Teixeira, 21, “improperly and unlawfully retained and transmitted national defense information to people not authorized to receive it,” according to a criminal complaint unsealed last week after his arrest at home in North Dighton, Massachusetts.
He has been held in custody since his arrest after the FBI said he caused “serious damage to the national security of the United States.” At his initial appearance, Teixeira’s court-appointed attorney from the Federal Defenders of Boston did not object to his detention pending the outcome of Wednesday’s hearing.
Teixeira began posting classified information on Discord in December, according to the complaint.
At first the material appeared as paragraphs of text. Then, when Teixeira allegedly became concerned he could be discovered copying material at work, “he began taking the documents to his residence and photographing them,” the complaint said.
In addition to a detention hearing, Wednesday is also billed as a preliminary hearing, an indication the judge could lay out a progression for the case, including whether it moves from the District of Massachusetts to the Eastern District of Virginia, where it may ultimately be prosecuted since much of what was leaked originated at the Pentagon.
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday was expected to decide whether to wade into a legal challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill, a case that could restrict access to the drug mifepristone nationwide — even in states where abortion is legal.
If the Supreme Court agrees to take up a Texas judge’s ruling that threatened to pull the drug from the market, it would be the second time in less than a year that the high court will deal with limits to abortion access, potentially paving the way for another blockbuster ruling this summer that could dramatically change how drugs are approved in the U.S.
“It is not a stretch to say that a judge can wake up in the morning and decide that they want to take a certain medication off the market,” including vaccines or anti-depressants, if the lower court rulings stand, said Josh Sharfstein, former principal deputy commissioner at the FDA.
The case has deeply divided the country, with Republican governors and lawmakers lining up behind the conservative plaintiffs in the case.
“Fundamentally, chemical abortion drugs pose serious health and safety risks to women and girls,” states a brief filed with the Supreme Court, signed by nearly 150 Republican lawmakers including Senate Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota, Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Barrasso of Wyoming, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana.
On the other side are Democratic governors, lawmakers and the nation’s largest medical associations, as well as hundreds of pharmaceutical executives and companies. They note mifepristone has been widely available for 23 years — used by an estimated five million women and accounting for more than half of all abortions in the US.
“There is a greater risk of complications or mortality for procedures like wisdom-tooth removals, tonsillectomies, colonoscopies, and plastic surgeries, than by any abortion method (medication or procedural),” the American Medical Association and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, wrote in a court brief.
FDA Administrator Bob Califf was scheduled to testify before a Senate panel Wednesday, where he was expected to field questions about the drug’s safety.
Mifepristone is the sole drug approved by the FDA to end early pregnancies, typically given along with second drug misoprostol that helps empty the uterus.
Since the drug’s 2000 approval, the FDA later expanded access, greenlighting a generic version of the drug and allowing it to be given up to 10 weeks of pregnancy instead of seven and provided via telehealth and the mail.
The drug’s rise in popularity and widespread accessibility has made it a target of the anti-abortion rights movement. Last fall, the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom sued the FDA, insisting that federal regulators ignored critical safety concerns during the drug’s 23 years on the market.
Earlier this month, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the FDA to roll back its rules on the drug — only allowing the drug to be given to patients up to seven weeks of pregnancy instead of 10 after three in-person doctor visits and prohibiting it from being mailed.
The Biden administration appealed, and Justice Samuel Alito issued an administrative five-day stay of the ruling — keeping the FDA’s current rules on the drug in place through the end of the day Wednesday until the high court has a chance to consider how to address the case.
If the Supreme Court decides to weigh in, it is expected the justices also would decide Wednesday whether to keep the 5th Circuit ruling on hold — preserving the status quo — while the legal challenge plays out.
Depending upon what the Supreme Court decides, access to the abortion pill could potentially be severely restricted or even eliminated, including in states where abortion is legal — at least until the case has a chance to wind its way through the legal process.
Complicating the issue is an opposing ruling by a federal judge in Washington who ordered the FDA to keep the drug on the market under its current rules. Danco Labs, which makes the brand-name version of the drug Mifeprex, said the dueling rulings if left unaddressed would create “regulatory chaos.”
The company also warns that if left in place, the 5th Circuit ruling would result in all doses of mifepristone being “misbranded” because the labeling would no longer comply with the approval standard.
Adjusting the drug’s labeling “could take months,” they say, resulting in a stop of production.
The 5th Circuit ruling also would invalidate the 2019 FDA approval of the generic version of the drug — an estimated two-thirds of the market.
(ROCKVILLE, Md.) — Three children have been hospitalized after falling sick when they found and ingested a container of what they thought to be candy.
The incident occurred on Monday when three 7-year-old students became sick at College Gardens Elementary School in Rockville, Maryland — approximately 15 miles north of Washington, D.C. — and went to the nurse complaining of dizziness, according to the Montgomery County Police Department.
“The investigation by detectives determined that a group of students found a container of blue items that they believed to be candy,” authorities said.
The three children went to the school nurse who subsequently called emergency medical services. The children were taken to a local area hospital as a precaution and treated there following the incident.
It is unclear if the container was found on school property or was found elsewhere.
While none of the items were recovered during the police investigation, “based on toxicology of some of the victims, investigators believe that the items may have been a methamphetamine related drug, such as Adderall or MDMA (ecstasy or Molly),” police said.
“I am relieved that the students will ultimately be fine, but in many ways, what happened today is frightening,” said Chief Marcus Jones. “I hope that it serves as a powerful motivator for parents to keep having the difficult conversations with their children about the dangers of taking or eating unknown substances.”
Authorities still aren’t completely sure what the students ingested on Monday but all three of the students have since been discharged from the hospital and are home with their parents.
The Montgomery County Police Department says the investigation into the incident is currently active and ongoing.
(ELGIN, Texas) — Two Texas cheerleaders were shot after one of them said they had mistakenly got into the wrong vehicle in a parking lot early Tuesday morning after practice, officials said.
Elgin Police Department officials said in a statement that a 25-year-old man was arrested for the shootings. ABC News affiliate KTRK-TV verified the information with Bastrop County authorities.
One of the victims was treated and released at the scene, the other was helicoptered to a hospital and is in critical condition, according to Elgin police.
Elgin Police said they arrested Tello Rodriguez Jr., 25, and charged him with deadly conduct, a third-degree felony.
Heather Roth, a cheerleader with the Woodlands Elite Cheer Co., said on Instagram Live that she and three other cheerleaders had completed practice when they went to a carpool lot just after midnight Tuesday.
Roth said she got out of her friend’s car and opened the door to a car she thought was her own, but a man was in the passenger seat. She said she got out of the car and back into her friend’s vehicle.
When the man approached their vehicle, Roth rolled down the window to apologize and the man started shooting, she later said.
