News – Page 1819 – 105.7 WDNY

Russia-Ukraine live updates: Russia stonewalling on missing Americans: State Dept.

June 21, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into neighboring Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with Russian forces invading from Belarus, to the north, and Russia, to the east. Ukrainian troops have offered “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.

The Russian military has since launched a full-scale ground offensive in eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donbas region, capturing the strategic port city of Mariupol and securing a coastal corridor to the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.

Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:

Jun 21, 4:41 pm
2 captured Americans being held in eastern Ukraine: Russian media

Alexander Drueke and Andy Huynh, two Americans feared to have been captured while fighting in Ukraine, are being held in a detention facility in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Russia’s Interfax reported, citing an unnamed source.

The State Department said earlier that the Kremlin has not yet officially confirmed to the U.S. that the men have been captured, much less shared any information on their location.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Tuesday that the U.S. has reached out to Russia about the missing Americans, but received no answers.

“We are working hard to learn more about reports of Americans who may be in Russian custody, or in the custody of Russian proxy forces. We have been in touch with Russian authorities regarding U.S. citizens who may have been captured while fighting in Ukraine,” Price said.

Jun 21, 2:20 pm
Russia still stonewalling on missing American fighters, State Dept. says

Senior State Department officials said Tuesday that the U.S. has not received any direct information from Russian authorities or any of their proxy forces about Alexander Drueke and Andy Huynh, two American citizens feared to have been captured while fighting in Ukraine.

While the Kremlin’s spokesman has publicly labeled Drueke and Huynh as mercenaries and said “they should be held responsible,” Moscow has not yet officially confirmed to the U.S. that the men have been captured.

But senior State Department officials reiterated that the U.S. has been in contact with the Russian government to remind them of the protections granted to prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, even though the Kremlin argues that as “soldiers of fortune” the detainees would not be covered by those protections and could face the death penalty.

“We obviously disagree vigorously. And we have made our position clear to the Russian government,” one official said.

The Geneva Conventions outline the humanitarian rights given to prisoners of war, however, mercenaries are not given the same protections.

When asked if the Americans could face the death penalty, Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov said this week, “Yes, we do not rule out anything.”

White House spokesman John Kirby on Tuesday called that “appalling.”

“It’s appalling that a public official in Russia would even suggest the death penalty for two American citizens that were in Ukraine,” he said.

Kirby added that the U.S. was still “trying to learn more about these two individuals.”

-ABC News’ Shannon Crawford and Ben Gittleson

Jun 21, 12:51 pm
Russia controls about 96% of Luhansk region

Russia now controls about 96% of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces are fighting to hold onto several municipalities in the Luhansk region: Severodonetsk, Lysychansk and the three neighboring villages of Pidlisne, Myrna Dolyna and Toshkivka.

Serhiy Haidi, the head of the Luhansk Regional State Administration, said Ukrainian forces are still holding on to the city of Lysychansk because it sits on elevated ground, giving them a tactical advantage. Russian forces have been heavily shelling the city where approximately 10,000 civilians remain. More than 10 high-rise buildings, private homes and a police station have been destroyed.

In Severodonetsk, Russian forces continue to fire on the Azot chemical plant where 568 civilians are sheltering.

-ABC News’ Fidel Pavlenko, Natalya Kushnir and Christine Theodorou

Jun 21, 11:15 am
AG Garland visiting Ukraine, meeting with prosecutor general on war crimes

Attorney General Merrick Garland made an unannounced visit to Ukraine on Tuesday.

Garland is meeting with Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova to discuss the efforts to help identify, apprehend and prosecute the people involved in war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine, a Department of Justice official said.

Garland told reporters, “The United States is sending an unmistakable message: There is no place to hide. We and our partners will pursue every avenue available to ensure that those who are responsible for these atrocities are held accountable.”

Garland announced that the Justice Department has launched a War Crimes Accountability Team.

“This initiative will bring together the Department’s leading experts in investigations involving human rights abuses and war crimes and other atrocities; and provide wide-ranging technical assistance, including operational assistance and advice regarding criminal prosecutions, evidence collection, forensics, and relevant legal analysis,” the department said in a statement. “The team will also play an integral role in the Department’s ongoing investigation of potential war crimes over which the U.S. possesses jurisdiction, such as the killing and wounding of U.S. journalists covering the unprovoked Russian aggression in Ukraine.”

The Justice Department also said it will provide more personnel to help Ukraine and other international partners counter Russian illicit finance and sanctions evasion, including “an expert Justice Department prosecutor to advise on fighting kleptocracy, corruption, and money laundering.”

-ABC News’ Alex Mallin

Jun 21, 9:00 am
AG Garland to visit Ukraine, meet with prosecutor general on war crimes

Attorney General Merrick Garland is making an unannounced visit to Ukraine on Tuesday, according to a Department of Justice official.

Garland will meet with Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova to discuss the efforts to help identify, apprehend and prosecute the people involved in war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine, the official said.

-ABC News’ Alex Mallin

Jun 21, 7:42 am
American killed in Ukraine, officials say

U.S. citizen Stephen Zabielski has died in Ukraine, the State Department confirmed to ABC News Tuesday morning.

“We can confirm the death of U.S. citizen Stephen Zabielski in Ukraine,” a State Department spokesperson said. “We have been in touch with the family and have provided all possible consular assistance. Out of respect to the family during this difficult time, we have nothing further.”

Zabielski’s death was first reported by Rolling Stone.

US officials again cautioned Americans against traveling to Ukraine, saying “that U.S. citizens in Ukraine should depart immediately if it is safe to do so using any commercial or other privately available ground transportation options.”

-ABC News’ Matthew Seyler

Jun 21, 5:39 am
Russia intensifies threats, announces retaliatory strikes

Following Ukraine’s attack on three oil drilling platforms in the Black Sea off the coast of Russian-annexed Crimea on Monday, Russian officials announced plans to strike critical Ukrainian targets in retaliation.

“The attack on the Chernomorneftegaz towers unleashes Russia’s hands,” Mikhail Sheremet, a Russian member of parliament, said on Monday as quoted by Russian media. “Retaliatory strikes on decision-making centers will be carried out in the near future,” Sheremet added.

Seven people remain missing after Ukraine’s strike on the drilling platforms, a source in the emergency services of Crimea said on Tuesday.

The fire on one of the oil rigs is still continuing, Russian Federation Council member from Crimea Olga Kovitidi told Interfax.

“With regards to the blaze, it is not abating on the oil rig. The fire approached the well overnight,” Kovitidi said.

On a day filled with intimidation tactics, Russia extended its threats to Lithuania on Monday, calling the Baltic country’s decision to suspend the transit of EU-sanctioned goods to the Russian Kaliningrad region “unprecedented” and “illegal.”

On June 18, Lithuania notified the Kaliningrad Railway of suspending the transit of EU-sanctioned goods through its territory. Up to half of ready-to-import goods, including building materials and metals, are subject to the ban, Kaliningrad region Governor Anton Alikhanov said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the Lithuanian Chargé d’Affaires on Monday and warned the Baltic diplomat of repercussions if freight transit to the Kaliningrad region is not restored in full in the near future.

“Russia reserves the right to take action to protect its national interests,” the Russian ministry told the Lithuanian official as reported by local media.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a tweet on Monday that “Russia has no right to threaten Lithuania.” According to Kuleba, “Moscow has only itself to blame for the consequences of its unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine.”

Yet on the same day, Russian officials announced military drills of the Baltic Fleet in the Kaliningrad region.

Several hundred firings of multiple rocket launcher systems, large-caliber guns and other artillery will be carried out during the exercises, the Baltic Fleet stated on Monday.

Maneuvers in the Kaliningrad region on Monday involved about 1,000 servicemen and more than 100 combat units, including special artillery equipment and missile units, according to Russian media.

Andriy Yermak, who heads the Ukrainian Presidential office, said Russia’s attempts to threaten Lithuania “are a challenge for the European Union and NATO.”

“Now it is important to maintain a stable position and not make concessions to Russia on sanctions and restrictions on the transit of goods from Russia to Kaliningrad,” Yermak said on Monday.

Any concession will be perceived by Russia as a weakness, the Ukrainian official added.

-ABC News’ Edward Szekeres, Max Uzol, Tatiana Rymarenko and Yuriy Zaliznyak

Jun 20, 4:17 pm
Kremlin spokesperson addresses missing Americans, Brittney Griner

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told MSNBC that Americans Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh and Alexander Drueke, who were captured while fighting in Ukraine, “committed crimes,” and that they were not part of the Ukrainian armed forces and therefore not subject to the Geneva Conventions.

“They were involved in firing and shelling our military personnel, they were endangering their life and they should be responsible. They should be held responsible … for those crimes that they have committed,” he said.

The Geneva Conventions outline the humanitarian rights given to prisoners of war, however, mercenaries are not given the same protections.

Regarding WNBA star Brittney Griner, who has been detained in Russia since February, Peskov said she’s not a hostage.

He said Russia has strict drug laws and she was caught carrying banned substances.

Griner was taken into custody at an airport near Moscow after officials allegedly found vape cartridges with hashish oil in her bag. Hasish oil is illegal to possess in Russia. The U.S. government has classified her case as “wrongfully detained,” which means that the U.S. would work to negotiate her release.

Jun 20, 4:09 pm
Ben Stiller, a goodwill ambassador with UNHCR, visits Ukraine

Actor Ben Stiller, a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for the last five years, is visiting Ukraine to highlight the refugee crisis.

“I’m here meeting people forced to flee their homes due to the war in Ukraine. People have shared stories about how the war has changed their lives — how they’ve lost everything and are deeply worried about their future,” Stiller said Monday from Ukraine.

“Protecting people forced to flee is a collective global responsibility,” he said. “We have to remember this could happen to anyone, anywhere.”

Stiller was seen meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday. Stiller told the actor-turned-president, “What you’ve done and the way that you’ve rallied the country and for the world, it’s really inspiring.”

Stiller also met with displaced people in Poland.

-ABC News’ Christine Theodorou

Jun 20, 2:10 pm
Russians launching large-scale offensive in Luhansk region

Serhiy Haidai, the head of the Regional Military Administration in Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, said the situation along the entire Luhansk front is “extremely” difficult with Russian forces “launching a large-scale offensive in our region.”

“They have accumulated a sufficient number of reserves and today all the free settlements of the region are on fire,” Haidai said.

The city of Lysychansk in the Luhansk Oblast has been coming under “massive” Russian fire all day, he said, with the number of victims unknown. He said Russian forces are advancing along the Lysychansk-Bakhmut highway and nearby settlements are under constant fire.

Haidai added that Ukrainian troops are only in control of the Azot chemical plant in Severodonetsk.

Uvalde shooting hearing: Police response was ‘abject failure’

June 21, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(AUSTIN) — The Texas state Senate heard testimony Tuesday on the deadly school shooting in Uvalde as part of a committee hearing on preventing future mass shootings in Texas. Among those testifying was Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw, whose office is conducting one of multiple investigations into the law enforcement response to the massacre.

Uvalde school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was the incident commander on site, was the lone witness in a separate hearing on the shooting held Tuesday in executive session by the Texas state House of Representatives.

Here’s how the news developed. All times Eastern.

Jun 21, 3:21 pm
McCraw concludes his testimony

After nearly five hours of testimony, the committee chairman of the Texas state Senate concluded Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw’s portion of Tuesday’s hearing.

The panel was scheduled to hear additional testimony from experts in Texas law enforcement training and protocols, with an eye toward preventing future mass shootings in the state.

Jun 21, 3:16 pm
McCraw recommends equipping troopers with ‘go-bag’

Among the recommendations that Texas Director of Public Safety Steven McCraw made with an eye toward improving police response to future mass shootings was equipping all officers with a specialized “go-bag.”

“I’d like a go-bag for every trooper, that has the shield that I discussed … and certainly breaching tools. And then not just issued but trained on them,” McCraw said.

Jun 21, 3:08 pm
Lawmakers question why state troopers ceded command to local police chief

Multiple state senators challenged Texas Director of Public Safety Steve McCraw to explain why arriving officers from larger law enforcement agencies did not take over command during the Uvalde shooting, instead leaving those responsibilities to Pete Arredondo, the local school district police chief.

McCraw explained that the agency with the most expertise should take command — and that the school district police chief, in this circumstance, was the best person to deliver orders.

“I’m reluctant to encourage — or even think of any situation — where you’d want some level of hierarchy, where a larger police department gets to come in and take over that type of thing,” McCraw said.

“I don’t see why y’all didn’t take command once you had DPS agents inside the hall pushing to breach the door,” one state senator asked McCraw later. “Lives would have been saved.”

“They don’t have authority by law,” McCraw shot back.

Jun 21, 2:21 pm
State senator calls on chief to testify in public

New revelations from the Senate hearing have put an additional spotlight on Pete Arredondo, the embattled school district police chief who was the on-site commander during the Uvalde shooting but has largely remained silent in the wake of the mass shooting.

Arredondo has spent the day in the neighboring House chamber, testifying behind closed doors. A lawmaker on the state Senate panel called on Arredondo to appear before their committee in a public setting.

“I challenge this chief to come testify in public as to what happened here,” said Sen. Brian Birdwell, a Republican on the state Senate committee. “Don’t go hide in the House and talk privately — come to the Senate, where the public … can ask these questions.”

“Not a single responding officer ever hesitated, even for a moment, to put themselves at risk to save the children,” Arredondo told The Texas Tribune on June 9. “We responded to the information that we had and had to adjust to whatever we faced. Our objective was to save as many lives as we could, and the extraction of the students from the classrooms by all that were involved saved over 500 of our Uvalde students and teachers before we gained access to the shooter and eliminated the threat.”

Jun 21, 1:24 pm
‘Not enough training was done’ in Uvalde, McCraw says

Texas Director of Public Safety Steven McCraw alluded on multiple occasions to specific lapses in protocol and training during the Uvalde shooting — but his overall message is that police officials on site were not trained well enough.

“Obviously, not enough training was done in this situation, plain and simple. Because terrible decisions were made by the on-site commander,” McCraw said.

Asked what one recommendation he would make to prevent a repeat of Uvalde, McCraw was unequivocal: “We need to train more men.”

He also suggested that the police failures at Robb Elementary could pose lasting harm to law enforcement’s reputation.

“Mistakes were made. It should have never happened that way. And we can’t allow that ever to happen in our profession,” he said. “This set our profession back a decade, is what it did.”

Jun 21, 12:35 pm
Door to classroom might not have been locked, McCraw says

Texas Director of Public Safety Steven McCraw sought to clarify some confusion over whether the exterior and interior doors used by the Uvalde gunman to enter Robb Elementary School were locked — and whether officers even needed keys to breach the classroom where the gunman had barricaded himself.

According to McCraw, the door to the classroom containing the gunman could not be locked from inside, meaning it was likely unlocked for the duration of the shooting.

“I have great reasons to believe [the door] was never secured,” he said.

McCraw later said it appears that officers on the scene never checked whether the door to the classroom was unlocked, even as they waited for additional equipment to breach it and worked to secure a set of keys.

“How about trying the door and seeing if it’s locked?” McCraw said he would ask the officers who responded first.

Regarding the gunman’s entry into the building, McCraw confirmed previous reporting that a teacher at one point propped a door open but later closed it before the gunman arrived. He did not clarify how or why the door closed but remained unlocked.

“The only way you can lock these exterior doors in the West building … the only way to do that is from the outside. You can’t do it otherwise,” McCraw said. “So when [the teacher] knocked the rock out, it closed securely, but there’s no way for her to tell that the door was unlocked. The only way to know that the door is unlocked is to go out, close the door, OK, then try it.”

Jun 21, 12:00 pm
Police radios didn’t work well in school, McCraw confirms

Texas Director of Public Safety Steven McCraw laid out a series of communications failures that exacerbated the decision-making missteps that hampered the police response to the shooting at Robb Elementary School.

McCraw confirmed previous reporting that Pete Arredondo, the on-scene commander, arrived at the school without a radio. Later, according to McCraw, local police and Border Patrol lost radio communication signals inside the school.

Those circumstances ultimately led Arredondo and others to begin communicating with dispatchers on their cellphones, McCraw said.

“Cellphones did work, obviously, inside the school,” he said. “It’s just the portable radio devices that first responders had didn’t.”

McCraw also said “there was no duress system throughout the campus,” which caused confusion among those inside the building. The principal of the school did trigger an emergency alert system called Raptor, but the program did not appear to sufficiently inform those inside the school about the shooting.

“It’s not the same as a direct system,” he said.

Jun 21, 11:28 am
‘We’re trying to preserve life,’ commander said on police radio

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw walked through an updated timeline of events from the Uvalde shooting and read aloud from a transcript of police radio communications.

The transcript describes Uvalde school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo and other officers speculating on the status of those inside the classroom and painstakingly debating whether and how to breach the door.

Nearly an hour after the gunman entered the school, according to the transcript, an officer told Arredondo, “People are going to ask why we’re taking so long.”

“We’re trying to preserve life,” Arredondo replied, per the transcript.

Jun 21, 11:17 am
McCraw says commander was ‘only thing’ holding back officers

Reviewing the timeline of the Uvalde shooting, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw, said that enough officers and equipment arrived on-site “within three minutes” of the gunman entering the school to “neutralize” him.

McCraw said the on-scene commander, Uvalde schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo, was the “only thing stopping” officers from breaching the classroom.

Arredondo, McCraw said, “decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children.”

Jun 21, 11:10 pm
McCraw calls Uvalde police response ‘abject failure’

In his opening statement, Texas Director of Public Safety Steven McCraw said his department’s ongoing probe has uncovered “compelling evidence” to suggest that the police response “was an abject failure.”

“Three minutes after the subject entered the west hallway, there was a sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor, to isolate distract and neutralize the subject,” McCraw said in reviewing the timeline of events. “The only thing stopping a hallway of dedicated officers from entering room 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander, who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children.”

“The officers had weapons — the children had none. The officers had body armor — the children had none,” he said.

“One hour, 14 minutes and eight seconds. That’s how long the children waited and the teachers waited in rooms 111 to be rescued. And while they waited, the on-scene commander waited for radios and rifles. Then he waited for shields. Then he waited for SWAT. Lastly, he waited for key that was never needed,” McCraw said.

Jun 21, 11:10 am
Hearing gaveled in with moment of silence

Committee Chairman Sen. Robert Nichols, a Republican, gaveled the hearing to order shortly and immediately asked those present to observe a moment of silence for the lives lost in Uvalde.

Members of the panel then had an opportunity to make brief opening remarks, where lawmakers wasted little time criticizing law enforcement officials who presented shifting narratives about the Uvalde shooting in the ensuing days and weeks.

“I have never seen in my entire public policy career facts that change 180 degrees from one week to the next,” said Texas state Sen. Paul Bettencourt. “I hope today with the witnesses that we have, we can get nearer to the bottom of the facts because they’ve been elusive … we are all in the dark.”

Supreme Court says Maine cannot bar religious schools from state tuition program

June 21, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the state of Maine must allow parents who receive taxpayer-funded tuition assistance payments to use them at religious schools, saying a ban on the practice had violated the First Amendment.

The decision is a significant expansion of religious liberty and opens the door for wider use of taxpayer funds for sectarian education.

“The State pays tuition for certain students at private schools — so long as the schools are not religious. That is discrimination against religion,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion joined by the court’s five other conservatives.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

“The Court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build,” Sotomayor wrote.

Half of Maine’s school districts — mostly in rural and sparsely populated areas of the state — do not operate their own public schools. Instead, they either contract with a neighboring district to provide public education for residents, or they provide parents with tuition assistance payments to use at a private school of their choice. About 5,000 students currently use the assistance to attend private schools.

State regulations have prohibited use of the funds at a school that promotes a specific faith or belief system and teaches academic material through a “lens of faith.”

A pair of families who want to send their children to religiously-affiliated private schools using the program sued the state alleging discrimination under the First Amendment. Two lower federal courts sided with the state, saying that the program was rightly restricted because of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits government establishment of religion.

“A neutral benefit program in which public funds flow to religious organizations through the independent choices of private benefit recipients does not offend the Establishment Clause,” Roberts writes. “Maine’s decision to continue excluding religious schools from its tuition assistance program …thus promotes stricter separation of church and state than the Federal Constitution requires.”

Chief Justice Roberts noted that Maine is not required outright to fund religious schools, but that once it allows general subsidy of private education it could not discriminate. “The State retains a number of options: it could expand the reach of its public school system, increase the availability of transportation, provide some combination of tutoring, remote learning, and partial attendance, or even operate boarding schools of its own,” he wrote.

In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer argued that the Constitution gives the states some leeway to choose how scrupulous they want to be in keeping taxpayer dollars away from religious use.

“That need is reinforced by the fact that we are today a Nation of more than 330 million people who ascribe to over 100 different religions. In that context, state neutrality with respect to religion is particularly important,” Breyer wrote.

Justice Sotomayor, in a separate dissent, sharply rebuked the court’s conservative majority.

“Today, the Court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation,” she writes. “If a State cannot offer subsidies to its citizens without being required to fund religious exercise, any State that values its historic anti-establishment interests more than this Court does will have to curtail the support it offers to its citizens.”

Advocates for the Maine families challenging the program celebrated the court’s decision.

“We are thrilled that the Court affirmed once again that religious discrimination will not be tolerated in this country,” said First Liberty president and chief counsel Kelly Shackelford. “Parents in Maine, and all over the country, can now choose the best education for their kids without fearing retribution from the government.”

Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the justices were infringing on the rights of those who believe the government must remain neutral in matters of religion.

“This nation was built on the promise of religious freedom, which has always prevented the state from using its taxing power to force citizens to fund religious worship or education,” Laser said in a statement. “Here, the court has violated that founding principle by requiring Maine to tax citizens to fund religious schools. Far from honoring religious freedom, this decision tramples the religious freedom of everyone.”

Jan. 6 hearing live updates: Trump’s pressure campaign on state election officials

June 21, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol holds another hearing Tuesday at 1 p.m. on the pressure campaign it says former President Donald Trump and allies put on state election officials as part of a larger “seven-part scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Please check back for updates. All times Eastern.

Jun 21, 3:47 pm
Schiff calls Trump’s action ‘unpatriotic’ but punts to DOJ on whether criminal

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who led the hearing Tuesday focused on Trump’s pressure campaign on state election officials, appeared to speak to Attorney General Merrick Garland and other prosecutors at the Department of Justice watching the committee unfold its findings, reminding the public that lawmakers will not be the ones to bring charges to Trump and allies.

“Whether his actions were criminal will ultimately be for others to decide. But what he did was without a doubt unconstitutional. It was unpatriotic, and it was fundamentally un-American,” Schiff said.

The committee has appeared to make the case that Trump directly engaged in a conspiracy to defraud the government.

Jun 21, 3:37 pm
Mother-daughter election duo describe impact of ‘hateful’ attacks

Ruby Freeman, the mother of Shaye Moss, both former election workers in Fulton County, Georgia, sat behind her daughter in the hearing room Tuesday as Moss detailed “racist” and “hateful” threats to their lives after Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani falsely accused them of “smuggling” ballots in suitcases.

Both women told the committee they are now scared to use their names, and Freeman was told by the FBI she had to leave her home for two months because of threats. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said that in Trump’s call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, he mentioned Freeman’s name 18 times.

“I’ve lost my name and I’ve lost my reputation,” Freeman, a 62-year-old grandmother, said in taped testimony. “I’ve lost my sense of security, all because a group of people starting with No. 45 and his ally Rudy Giuliani decided to scapegoat me and my daughter Shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen.”

“I can’t believe this person has caused this much damage to me and my family,” she added. “It was horrible.”

Asked how the false attack espoused by the president and his allies affected her, Moss said it has “in every way.”

“I haven’t been anywhere at all. I’ve gained about 60 pounds. I just don’t do nothing anymore. I don’t want to go anywhere,” she said. “All because of lies — for me doing my job, same thing I’ve been doing forever.”

Jun 21, 3:30 pm
Former elections worker describes moment she learned about threats against her

Shaye Moss, a former election worker in Fulton County, Georgia, told the committee about the moment she learned Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani was falsely accusing her and her mother of smuggling ballots in suitcases.

“When I saw the video, of course the first thing that I said was, ‘Why? Why are they doing this? What’s going on?'” Moss recalled.

Moss then described the onslaught of threats and hateful messages she received online — a situation she had never been in during her 10 years as an elections worker.

“It was just a lot of horrible things,” she said.

“A lot of threats, wishing death upon me, telling me that, you know I’ll be in jail with my mother,” Moss added.

Moss opened her remarks by telling the committee what she had loved about her job, stating she took pride in helping elderly voters and college students cast their ballots.

Jun 21, 3:13 pm
Committee plays audio of Trump’s call to Raffensperger to ‘find’ votes

The committee played audio clips of the now-infamous phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, in which Trump told Raffensperger he needed to “find” 11,780 votes in Georgia — just one vote over the margin by which he trailed President-elect Joe Biden — so he could be declared the winner of an election that three separate counts in the state confirmed he lost.

The call lasted 67 minutes and appeared to follow a cycle of Trump offering false election conspiracies and Raffensperger calmly explaining to him that each one was not accurate. At one point, Trump suggested to Raffensperger that his inaction could mean he was criminally liable.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., leading Tuesday’s hearing, also said that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows reached out to Raffensperger 18 times to set up the call with Trump.

Jun 21, 3:04 pm
Audio of Trump pressuring Georgia official aired in hearing

The committee aired audio from a call in which Trump tried to convince Frances Watson, the Georgia secretary of state’s lead elections investigator, to reverse his loss.

“You know, you have the most important job in the country right now,” Trump told her as he continued to falsely claim victory in the Peach State — which he lost to Joe Biden by some 11,000 votes.

“When the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised,” Trump said to Watson.

Jun 21, 2:55 pm
Sterling describes threats to election workers amid Trump’s pressure

Gabe Sterling, the chief oversight officer of Georgia’s election, said trying to combat misinformation spread by Trump and his team was “kind of like a shovel trying to empty out the ocean,” adding that he even argued with his own family members over the ‘big lie.’

With Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., asking the Georgia election officials about threats made against them, Sterling said the “straw that broke the camel’s back” for him was a message to a Dominion contractor which said, “You committed treason — May God have mercy on your soul,” accompanied with a “slowly twisting GIF of a noose,” he said.

“I lost my temper, but it seemed necessary at the time because it was just getting worse,” Sterling said.

The committee went on to play a video of him from December 2020 in which he pleaded with Trump to “stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence.”

Jun 21, 2:53 pm
Raffensperger says Georgia race ‘remarkably smooth’ despite false allegations

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was the first to testify after a short recess and was immediately asked by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., to address the false allegations of widespread voter fraud Trump and his allies pushed in the battleground state.

“Our election went remarkably smooth,” Raffensperger said. “President Biden carried the state of Georgia by approximately 12,000 votes,” he reminded.

Raffensperger, a Republican who supported Trump’s re-election bid, recounted how three separate audits in the state confirmed President Joe Biden as the winner.

“Three counts — all remarkably close — which show that President Trump did come up short,” he said.

Jun 21, 2:38 pm
GOP Sen. Johnson attempted to give fake electors to Pence, committee shows

The committee showed evidence that Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., attempted to deliver slates of “fake” Trump electors from Wisconsin and Michigan to then-Vice President Mike Pence.

Text messages the House panel obtained between Johnson staffer Sean Riley and Pence aide Chris Hodgson were displayed on-screen during Tuesday’s hearing.

Riley wrote that Johnson wanted to hand over fake electors from the two states — which Joe Biden won — to Pence ahead of Jan. 6.

“Do not give that to him,” the Pence aide replied.

Jun 21, 2:32 pm
Arizona House speaker recounts faith in standing up to pressure

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers emotionally recounted the pushback he and his family faced under immense pressure from Trump’s top team, who tried to convince him there was a law in Arizona that would have allowed him to overturn electors in the state — which did not legally exist.

Bowers summarized the effort to go around him and send fake Arizona electors to Washington as a “tragic parody” and recounted how people turned on him as Trump continued to espouse the ‘big lie.’

“It is painful to have friends who have been such a help to me turn on me with such rancor,” he said. “I may, in the eyes of men, not hold correct opinions or act according to their vision or convictions, but I do not take this current situation in a light manner, a fearful manner, or a vengeful manner.”

“I do not want to be a winner by cheating,” he added. “I will not play with laws I swear allegiance to with any contrived desire towards deflection of my deep, foundational desire to follow God’s will as I believe he let my conscience to embrace. How else will I ever approach Him in the wilderness of life knowing that I ask of His guidance only to show myself a coward in defending the course he led me to take.”

He mentioned the threats around his home and how it upset is daughter, Kacey Rae Bowers, who was gravely ill at the time. She passed away at age 42, just days after the attack on the Capitol, on Jan. 28, 2021.

Jun 21, 2:15 pm
RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel appears in videotaped testimony

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, niece of Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, made her first appearance at a Jan. 6 hearing in video testimony where she was asked about the scheme to send “fake” electors to Congress to decertify President-elect Joe Biden’s win.

The House select committee says the RNC assisted Trump in coordinating the effort “at the president’s direct request.”

“He turned the call over to Mr. Eastman, who then preceded to talk about the importance of — helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing change the results of any states,” McDaniel recounted.

“The campaign took the lead, and we just were helping them in that role,” she added, appearing to try to distance the RNC from the effort.

Jun 21, 2:07 pm
Arizona House speaker says he told Eastman twice he wouldn’t break oath

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers said he told Trump election lawyer John Eastman on two occasions that he would not break his oath of office and decertify electors for President-elect Joe Biden and recalled the conversations before the committee.

“I said, ‘What would you have me do?’ He said, ‘Just do it and let the courts sorted out.’ I said, ‘You’re asking me to do something that is never been done in history, the history of the United States. And I’m gonna put my state through that without sufficient proof? That’s going to be good enough with me that I would put us through that, my state?”

Bowers recalled telling Eastman, “‘I swore to uphold both in the Constitution and in law — no, sir,'” and said that Eastman suggested he “do it” and let the courts figure it out.

Bowers also said he also received a call from Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, asking Bowers if he’d support the decertification of electors. Bowers told Biggs he would not.

Jun 21, 1:58 pm
Arizona Republican gets emotional describing pressure to violate his oath

Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, got emotional Tuesday as he described to the committee the pressure placed on him by Trump and others to violate his oath to the Constitution.

Bowers said he was not presented with any strong evidence that would have given him doubt as to the integrity of the election.

“It is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired, one of my most basic foundational beliefs,” Bowers said. “And so for me to do that because somebody just asked me to is foreign to my very being. I will not do it.”

Jun 21, 1:49 pm
Arizona House speaker rejects Trump’s claim, says he told Giuliani he wouldn’t be ‘used as a pawn’

After Trump claimed earlier Tuesday on his social media platform Truth Social that Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers told him the election was rigged, Bowers said that was “false.”

“I did have a conversation with the president. That certainly isn’t it. There are parts that are true. There are parts that are not,” Bowers said, asked about Trump’s claim. “Anyone, anywhere, anytime [saying] I said the election was rigged, that would not be true,” he added.

Bowers said Trump’s team claimed widespread fraud in Arizona but couldn’t provide evidence of it.

“I did not feel that the evidence, and its absence, merited the hearing,” he said, explaining that Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani wanted him to reconvene his state legislature to change the state’s vote. “I didn’t want to be used as a pawn.”

“I said, look, you are asking me to do something that is counter to my oath that I swore to the Constitution to uphold it. I also swore to the Constitution and the laws of the state of Arizona — this is totally foreign as an idea or a theory to me,” Bowers recalled. “You’re asking me to do something against my oath. I will not break my oath.”

Jun 21, 1:36 pm
Arizona House speaker faces 1st questions

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican who was pressured by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to decertify Biden’s victory in the state, according to emails reviewed by ABC News, as well as Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, according to The Arizona Republic, faced the first questions from the committee on Tuesday, establishing that he did support Trump’s re-election bid.

Bowers and other state officials on the first panel did not deliver opening statements, but Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said the Republican House speaker of Arizona will talk about “conversations with the president, with Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, what’s the president’s team asked of him and how his oath of office would not permit it.”

A spokesperson said for the Arizona House of Representatives said that Bowers is appearing in response to a committee subpoena.

-ABC News’ Ali Dukakis

Jun 21, 1:30 pm
Trump’s election lies are ‘a dangerous cancer,’ Schiff warns

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., described the pressure placed on state officials as a “dangerous precursor” to the violence the nation witnessed on Jan. 6, 2021.

“This pressure campaign brought angry phone calls and texts, armed protests, intimidation, and, all too often, threats of violence and death,” Schiff said in his opening statement. “State legislators were singled out. So, too, were statewide elections officials. Even local elections workers, diligently doing their jobs, were accused of being criminals, and had their lives turned upside down.”

Trump’s supporters, Schiff said, saw his conduct toward local officials as “a call to action.”

“The president’s lie was — and is — a dangerous cancer on the body politic,” Schiff said. “If you can convince Americans that they cannot trust their own elections, that anytime they lose, it is somehow illegitimate, then what is left but violence to determine who should govern?”

Jun 21, 1:20 pm
Cheney says committee will show Trump’s ‘direct and personal role’ in fake electors scheme

Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in her opening statement, said the committee will provide evidence that Trump “had a direct and personal role” in a scheme to have key states send fake electors to Congress and for Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results, “as did Rudy Giuliani, as did John Eastman.”

“In other words, the same people who were attempting to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes illegally, were also simultaneously working to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election at the state level,” Cheney said.

Cheney said the public will learn about calls Trump made to officials of Georgia and other states, and asked, “As you listen to these tapes, keep in mind what Donald Trump already knew at the time he made those calls — he had been told over and over again that his stolen election allegations were nonsense,” she said, going on to play video testimony of Trump’s attorney general Bill Barr.

Also raising threats of violence to election workers, Cheney said, “Donald Trump didn’t care about the threats of violence” and “made no effort to stop them; he went forward with his fake allegations anyway.”

“Do not be distracted by politics,” she added, as the former president and GOP allies continue to attack the committee’s investigation. “This is serious. We cannot let America become a nation of conspiracy theories and thug violence.”

Jun 21, 1:10 pm
Chairman opens hearing

Chairman Bennie Thompson convened the committee’s fourth hearing this month shortly after 1 p.m. and previewed the pressure campaign he said Trump and his allies put on election officials in key states with the aim of overturning the 2020 election.

In his opening statement, Thompson said “pressuring public servants into betraying their oaths was a fundamental part of the playbook” and that, in 2020, only a handful of election officials in key states “stood between Donald Trump and the upending of American democracy.”

“Everything we describe today — the relentless, destructive pressure campaign on state and local officials — was all based on a lie. Donald Trump knew it,” Thompson said. “He did it anyway.”

Explaining how the U.S. elects its president with the Electoral College system, Thompson also warned that “the lie hasn’t gone away” but is still “corrupting our democratic institutions,” citing an example of a county commissioner in New Mexico who refused to certify primary results last week.

“People who believe that lie are now seeking positions of public trust,” Thompson said. “If that happens, who will make sure our institutions don’t break under the pressure? We won’t have close calls. We’ll have catastrophe.”

Jun 21, 12:18 pm
Committee subpoenas filmmaker for new footage of Trump

The House select committee has subpoenaed a British documentary filmmaker who had substantial access to Trump, his family and closest aides both before and after the Jan. 6 attack, according to a statement from the filmmaker obtained by ABC News.

A spokesperson for filmmaker Alex Holder, who began filming Trump for a project in September 2020, confirmed the subpoena, first reported by Politico.

Holder said he has “fully complied with all of the committee’s requests” and handed over footage which includes interviews with Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner and Vice President Mike Pence, shot in the weeks around the Jan. 6 attack.

-ABC News’ Ali Dukakis and Benjamin Siegel

Jun 21, 12:09 pm
Former election worker to describe threats against her, family

Shaye Moss, a former election worker in Georgia, will testify Tuesday about the threats she said she and her family received in the aftermath of the 2020 race, according to a copy of her opening statement obtained by ABC News.

“Ever since December 2020, I have been under attack for just doing my job,” the statement reads. “My mom too.”

Moss will describe how they were the target of lies spread by Trump and Rudy Giuliani, including false accusations that they brought ballots into the State Farm Arena in a suitcase.

“People showed up at my grandmother’s home trying to bust the door down and conduct a citizen’s arrest of my mom and me,” her statement reads. “The threats followed me to work. People would email the general email address for our office so everyone could see their threats and the hateful messages directed at me.”

Jun 21, 12:04 pm
4th June hearing to include 4 live witnesses

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whom Trump asked to “find” just one vote over the margin by which he trailed President-elect Joe Biden in a now-infamous phone call on Jan. 2, 2021, will testify before the committee this afternoon, along with his blunt-spoken deputy, Gabe Sterling, after facing backlash from their own party for pushing back on Trump’s claims of election fraud in Georgia.

Joining them will be Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who was pressured by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to decertify Biden’s victory in the state, according to emails reviewed by ABC News. Bowers previously described to The Arizona Republic that Rudy Giuliani also called him after the election to pressure him to involve the state legislature to manipulate results in his state.

Former Fulton County election worker Shaye Moss, who was falsely accused by Giuliani and other Republicans of election fraud and smuggling “suitcases” of illegal ballots in Atlanta on election night, will testify on a second panel. She’s said that she and her mother, another election worker, were subject to harassment and threats online even after Georgia election officials debunked fraud allegations.

Jun 21, 11:42 am
What to expect at Tuesday’s hearing

The committee’s afternoon hearing will focus on what it says was then-President Donald Trump’s “unprecedented” effort to push key state officials to reject the election results and his central role in the plot to create “fake” slates of electors to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.

Trump “drove a pressure campaign bases on lies” about the election, an aide told reporters on a briefing call Monday, and was “warned that his actions risked inciting violence” but “did it anyway.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., will lead the 1 p.m. ET hearing that the aide said will reveal new information obtained by the committee detailing Trump’s involvement and feature live witness testimony from Arizona and Georgia officials.

5-year-old boy dies in hot car as Houston reaches scorching 102 degrees

June 21, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(HOUSTON) — A 5-year-old boy has died after being left in a hot car in Houston as record-high temperatures struck the city.

The boy had been inside the car, which was parked outside his home, for several hours before he was found dead on Monday, according to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.

Houston hit a scorching 102 degrees Monday, marking the hottest temperature this early in the summer since 2011.

The family told authorities they had been preparing for the boy’s sister’s birthday party, the sheriff’s office said.

The boy’s mother was “excited, trying to get things together [for the party] … with the busyness of the activities that they were preparing for, it took them awhile to notice that the child wasn’t in the house,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez told reporters.

The sheriff said it appeared the boy knew how to unbuckle himself from his carseat and exit his family’s car on his own, but it’s believed that on Monday the family had a rental car.

“Perhaps the child wasn’t as familiar with” the rental car, the sheriff said, noting, “the door didn’t have any kind of child safety lock.”

The sheriff’s office said “investigators will meet with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office to present their finding of the investigation.”

The little boy, who hasn’t been identified, is the fifth child to die in a hot car in the U.S. this year, according to national nonprofit KidsAndCars.org. Click here for tips on how to keep children safe from hot cars this summer.

Senators agree on draft of gun violence bill after snags on abortion, ‘red flags,’ more

June 21, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, the top Democratic negotiator on a pending package to address gun violence, told reporters on Tuesday afternoon that a deal had been reached on the legislative text — and that the bill will be out soon.

“We have an agreement and the text will be coming out very shortly,” Murphy said before walking onto the Senate floor to preside.

Murphy declined to give more specific timing on when the draft bill would be introduced ahead of what leaders have signaled would be a quick vote.

A bipartisan group of senators has been working for days behind the scenes to turn a previously announced legislative framework into a specific bill that retains enough Republican support to avoid a filibuster.

Democratic leadership, including Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, have been clear they need bill text by Tuesday to get to a vote before the July 4 recess.

The disagreements negotiators faced

Sources previously told ABC News that abortion funding had emerged as the latest snag in the Senate’s talks to finalize the legislative agreement, with the informal deadline looming at the end of Tuesday in order to keep a potential bill on track for a vote before the two-week holiday break.

Negotiators had recently been focusing on the Hyde Amendment, which forbids federal funding from being used to pay for abortions. That provision got caught up in the portion of the possible gun law dealing with mental health funding, with Republicans pushing for language barring any money in an ultimate agreement from being used pay for abortions, according to a source familiar with the matter.

That snag marked the latest curveball in the discussions.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the lead Republican working on the deal, expressed optimism to ABC News earlier on Tuesday that an agreement could be reached later that day, saying that draft text would emerge “hopefully shortly.”

Still, Cornyn said — without elaborating — that certain “details” needed to be worked out.

“It’s a complicated bill and it’s been a tough negotiation,” he said.

The other core negotiators have been Sens. Murphy, Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).

The gun talks recently narrowed in on two other disagreements: funding for “red flag” laws, which would allow law enforcement to remove firearms from those deemed a danger to themselves or others, and how extensively to address the “boyfriend loophole” by expanding the kinds of domestic abusers barred from having firearms.

Sen. Durbin, the majority whip, suggested to ABC News on Tuesday that conversations over the Hyde Amendment could be resolved quickly and aides were still optimistic that an overall deal would not be derailed.

Negotiators have been pressing for a bill that can get the filibuster-proof support of 10 Republican senators, the same number who previously supported the framework announced on June 12.

Democrats want a deal to be wrapped up shortly to maintain momentum amid public outcry following high-profile mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas. Republicans, meanwhile, are facing calls from their base to blunt the gun-access aspects of any legislation, with that pressure on display over the weekend when Cornyn was booed at a state party convention in Texas.

When asked by ABC News on Tuesday if that made negotiations more difficult, Cornyn replied, “Oh no. No it hasn’t.”

Summer camp safety in spotlight after Texas shooting

June 21, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — As millions of U.S. children prepare to go off to summer camp, a shooting at one in Texas last week has left some parents like Janill Briones-Lopez with concerns that go far deeper than the normal bumps and bruises kids experience during what has traditionally been a fun-filled respite from the classroom.

While hoping her 7-year-old son will have a safe experience at the free Summer Rising camp run by the New York City Department of Education, Briones-Lopez told ABC News she plans to question camp organizers about staff training on active shooter protocols.

With recent mass shootings at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24 that left 19 students and two teachers dead and an attack on the summer youth camp in Duncanville, Texas, in which an armed suspect was killed in a gunfight with police as campers hid, Briones-Lopez said she can’t help but worry that summer camps “may become targets for these types of attacks.”

“I will be bringing it up at the orientation,” said Briones-Lopez, adding that money-conscious couples like her and her husband depend on the city-run summer camp to provide free care for their children while they are working.

The mother said she has spent the past two-and-a-half years worried about her son contracting COVID-19 and that just as the virus vaccine has allayed some of her worries, the rising epidemic of gun violence across the country has given her something else to be anxious about.

“I am worried about guns and gun violence, but I don’t let myself worry about it on a daily basis because at what point do we shutter ourselves away and become too afraid to go outside?” Briones-Lopez said. “We still have to live our lives.”

‘I was so scared’

One of the country’s top camp directors, Tom Rosenberg, president and CEO of the American Camp Association, which advises and trains camp staffs nationwide on procedures and protocols for running safe and educational programs, said the shooting last week at the Duncanville Fieldhouse summer camp in Texas left him and others in his nonprofit organization “taken aback.”

Rosenberg told ABC News that in his nearly 30 years as a camp professional, he couldn’t recall a shooting or violent attack occurring at a summer camp in the United States.

In July 2011, self-professed white supremacist Anders Behring Breivik carried out a mass shooting at a summer youth camp in Norway on the tranquil, wooded island of Utoya, northwest of Oslo, killing 69 campers and staff. Breivik attacked the camp on the same day he detonated a car bomb at a government building in Oslo, killing eight people.

He was found guilty of mass murder, causing a fatal explosion and terrorism charges in July 2012 and sentenced to the maximum civilian criminal penalty in Norway of 21 years in prison, with the possibility of extending his sentence for as long as he is deemed a danger to society. In February, a Norwegian court rejected Breivik’s latest bid for parole, finding he still has no remorse for the attack and remains a risk to society.

“This is not unknown, but what happened in Norway hasn’t happened quite like that in our country that I’m aware of in recent times. But when we see our fellow educators in the school system dealing with this now so much, we’ve been preparing for some time around active shooter training,” Rosenberg said.

He added, “I don’t think we can say that any environment today is immune. But all places where our children are being supervised today outside of our homes really need to be prepared for all types of emergencies, period. End of story.”

On June 13, an armed 42-year-old man entered the Duncanville Fieldhouse in the Dallas suburb, where roughly 250 children ranging in age from 4 to 14 were participating in a summer camp, police said. Duncanville police officers rapidly responded to calls of a man with a handgun at the athletic complex as quick-thinking camp staffers ushered the children to safety, authorities said.

Police said the suspect, Brandon Keith Ned, confronted an employee in the facility’s lobby and fired two shots, including one at a classroom full of children he couldn’t get into because the door was locked.

Authorities said officers arrived at the facility within 10 minutes of getting the first call, engaged the suspect in a gunfight and killed him.

A motive for the shooting remains under investigation.

Ned had a felony record, having pleaded guilty to intoxication manslaughter in 2011 and sentenced to two years in prison, according to court records. His wife, LaQuitha Ned, told ABC affiliate station WFAA in Dallas that he was bipolar and that the handgun he allegedly used in the episode belonged to her.

“I didn’t know he had the gun at that time,” LaQuitha Ned said. “He’s not supposed to own a gun. I own a gun. It stays in a lock box with the key hidden.”

The shooting came less than a month after a gunman wielding an AR-15 style rifle he legally purchased after turning 18, killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

While no children were injured in the episode in Duncanville, campers like 8-year-old Trenia Summerville said the incident was terrifying.

“There was gun shooting. I was so scared,” Trenia told WFAA.

‘Summer of resilience’

Rosenberg said a positive outcome of the Duncanville incident is that camp staffers did exactly as they have been trained.

“This is an example of how this program at Duncanville Fieldhouse really did a fine job of executing their plan,” Rosenberg said. “But no one wants to see all that training have to be used in a terrible situation like this. It’s really hard to understand what motivates a person to cause that kind of terror.”

Rosenberg said the American Camp Association has advised directors at the more than 15,000 day and overnight camps expected to operate this summer on active shooter drills and procedures for other emergencies that might arise, including COVID outbreaks and wildfires, for an estimated 26 million campers and 1.2 million employees.

“We work hard to train directors and staff of all these different kinds of camps to think about security concerns and think about medical concerns, think about safety concerns around how programs operate so that everyone can be focused on making sure that everyone is safe, so everyone feels safe at camp and is physically safe at camp,” Rosenberg said.

“Typically, for example, camps have emergency action plans, which have been developed in concert with law enforcement, fire department, EMS and other consultants,” he said. “So, those kinds of things are things that they train on during staff training practice just like how do we manage the health care of all the campers? How do we deal with emotional supports that kids and staffers need during the summer?”

He said this summer is expected to be one of the most important summers “in the history of camp in America.”

After the COVID-19 pandemic shut down summer camps almost entirely in 2020 and severely limited capacity in 2021, Rosenberg said camp directors are ready to open at almost full capacity this summer.

“Hopefully, as many children as possible will have an opportunity to experience more freedom than they’ve had in the past two-and-a-half years, opportunities to be more curious to try new things, to learn new things, make friends. Learn to have conversations in person, face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball, heart-to-heart with their buddies,” Rosenberg said.

“I think of this as a summer of resilience for our whole country, where in spite of COVID, in spite of gun violence, in spite of all the challenges that we have, that we can use this summer as a time for healing, a time for learning, a time for fun and a time for community. And that’s what camp is really all about,” Rosenberg said. “There’s no question everyone’s anxieties are up as a result of what happened in Duncanville and what’s happened in Uvalde and historically. But because of this summer and all the work that we’re going to do at camp, we’re going to see more resilient children as a result.”

He encouraged parents who are hesitant to send their children to camp to question camp directors about safety precautions they’ve taken to make camps safe from intruders, adding that many programs have security guards.

“Camp directors really welcome that. They want to help you understand how they do what they do; all the aspects of how they run their camp. And you should develop a relationship with them just like you develop a relationship with teachers,” Rosenberg said.

Rosenberg said his message to parents is that safety precautions taken to prevent gun violence “is not going to get in the way of summer camps.”

Gun violence is now leading cause of death among children

Patrick Bresette, executive director of the Children’s Defense Fund-Texas, told ABC News he hopes the shooting in Duncanville will not prompt a hardening of camps to the point of militarizing them like some schools. Ohio lawmakers passed a bill on June 1 that would allow teachers and other school staff to carry guns in school safety zones, with little training.

“We’ve spent billions on that kind of approach and not spent enough time making sure people who do harm don’t have access to guns,” Bresette said. “It just doesn’t work. There’s no stat that shows hardening schools is doing nothing more than militarizing them to be honest with you. And I certainly don’t want to see that same thing happen in camps.”

Bresette said he fears while taking precautions and planning for the worst is necessary, he doesn’t want to see camp counselors spending more time training on active shooting drills than on how to provide fun, educational programs for young campers.

“Having been a camp counselor in my high school years, that’s not what I want to focus on,” Bresette said. “I’m there to provide an amazing experience for children and that’s what we should be making sure we’re training the staff for. This is not their job. Their job is to call 911.”

In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report in The New England Journal of Medicine showing that gun violence surpassed automobile accidents as the leading cause of death among children and adolescents ages 1 to 19. The report found that between 2019 and 2020 there was a nearly 30% increase in gun deaths among children.

“But there are multiples of that trauma, who were in that room,” Bresette said of the children who witnessed or heard the gunfire in the incidents in Duncanville and Uvalde. “And I think we’re living with a generation of children, unfortunately, because of the easy access to guns that are meant to kill people, who are traumatized and go to places fearful in the ways they should not be. I think that’s very saddening and the solution to that is to get more control of the guns that are just proliferating in our society.”

In the aftermath of the mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo, New York, where 10 Black people were on May 14 killed in what authorities alleged was a racially motivated attack at a supermarket carried out by a suspect wielding an AR-15 style rifle he also purchased after he turned 18, a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators began working on proposals to curb gun violence.

But negotiations apparently stalled after the group announced last week that they had reached an agreement on the framework for gun legislation, including bolstering red flag laws all across the country that allow courts and police departments to temporarily seize firearms from people who present a danger to themselves or to others, and closing the so-called boyfriend loophole, which allows men convicted of assaulting their girlfriends to continue to buy weapons.

The proposals, however, have been met with resistance from gun rights advocates. Over the weekend, the Texas Republican Party formally “rebuked” multiple GOP senators, including one of their own, Sen. John Cornyn, for helping lead the bipartisan negotiations.

“For our organization, we need solutions that control guns,” Bresette said. “Not more security. I mean, in this (Duncanville) case it appears the counselors did what they were trained to do, got kids safe, law enforcement was called and they got there and, thank God, no child was injured in any way. But no one should be able to just pick up a handgun and walk into a summer camp. So, the measure we really want to see are things that control access to guns. I think that that’s the bottom line.”

Hot car dangers: How to keep your kids safe this summer

June 21, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — As a heat wave slams the U.S. this week, it’s important to remember the dangers of leaving children in hot cars.

A child died in Harris County, Texas, on Monday after being left in a hot car for several hours, according to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. This marked the fifth child to die in a hot car this year, according to national nonprofit KidsAndCars.org.

A record 54 children died in hot cars in 2018, followed by 53 fatalities in 2019, according to KidsAndCars.org.

It’s especially important to be mindful of hot car safety as more parents return to the office and their routines, KidsAndCars.org director Amber Rollins said. A change in routine can often prompt an accidental hot-car death, she explained.

Rollins said she’s also worried about parents who return to work with a hybrid schedule (working at home some days and in the office other days.)

“When your routine is shifting all over the place … that’s one of the most serious risk factors,” she said.

The science behind hot cars

Children’s bodies heat up much faster than adults’ do, according to the nonprofit National Safety Council.

Children’s internal organs begin to shut down once their core body temperature reaches 104 degrees, and it takes very little time for a car to get too hot for children, according to a report published by the council in 2018.

On an 86-degree day, for example, it would take only about 10 minutes for the inside of a car to reach a dangerous 105 degrees, researchers said.

What you can do

Rollins offers these tips for drivers:

— Always keep cars locked even if you don’t have children.

— Always keep keys out of children’s reach.

— Place an item you can’t start the day without in the back seat.

— If a child goes missing, check the inside and trunk of all cars in the area immediately.

— Teach children to honk the horn if they get stuck.

— If you spot a child or pet alone inside a car, “do something,” Rollins said. “If they are in distress, you need to get them out immediately and begin to cool them.”

South Korea launches first successful homegrown rocket, starting ‘new era’ for space program

June 21, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(SEOUL, South Korea) — South Korea successfully launched and put its homegrown space rocket into orbit Tuesday, becoming the seventh nation capable of launching practical satellites using a self-developed propulsion system.

“The Nuri rocket launch was a success,” Lee Sang-ryul, director of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute told the press after the launch. “After the launch, Nuri’s flight process proceeded according to the planned flight sequence.”

KARI set off its 200-ton homegrown space rocket from the Naro Space Center in the Southern coastal village of Goheung. The launch was delayed from the original test date last Thursday due to weather conditions and a technical glitch.

Loaded with a 162.5-kilogram (358-pound) performance-verification satellite — as well as four cube satellites for academic research and a 1.3-ton dummy satellite — Nuri reached its target orbit of 700 kilometers (435 miles) above the Earth. All three stages of its engine were combusted according to plan, separating the mounted satellites at the arranged moment.

With Tuesday’s launch, South Korea joined the U.S., Russia, France, China, Japan and India in its self-developed propulsion capabilities, according to officials.

“The launch opens up a new era for South Korea’s space program and science technology,” Aerospace Engineering professor Cho Donghyun of Pusan National University told ABC News.

The Nuri Development Project, also known as the Korean Launch Vehicle project, commenced in 2010. The completion of its three-stage launch vehicle system technology enabled the team to test-fire South Korea’s first homemade rocket last October.

Back then, the rocket made it to the target altitude of 700 kilometers but failed to put a dummy satellite into orbit, making the launch a half-success. The rocket launched on Tuesday stably settled the performance-verification satellite into orbit.

“The Nuri spacecraft is fired up by not just one engine but a clustering of four 75-ton grade liquid engines. This gives potential to build larger projectiles with more engines in the future,” Cho said.

A latecomer in the aerospace industry, South Korea’s rocket-launch journey began in 2013 when it blasted its first carrier rocket, Naro-1, to achieve orbit. The aircraft was a collaborative project with Russia’s Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center and KARI.

In the 12 years since that collaboration, South Korea developed its very own space rocket. South Korea invested $616 million on space research in 2021, according to South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT, a figure considerably less than the $48 billion the U.S. spent in the same period.

“We have set the stage for us to travel to space whenever we’d like, without having to rent a launchpad or a projectile from another country,” Minister of Science and ICT Lee Jong Ho said. “The South Korean government plans to enhance the technical reliability of the Nuri rocket through four additional launches until 2027.”

ABC News’ Eunseo Nam contributed to this report.

Kellogg announces split into three separate companies

June 21, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Kellogg has announced that it will separate into three different companies to create “greater strategic, operational, and financial focus” for each of the new firms that will be named at a later date.

Under the plans announced on Tuesday, Kellogg will separate its North American cereal and plant-based foods business — which represent an estimated 20% of Kellogg’s net sales in 2021 — from its global snacking brands, cereal and noodle brands and frozen breakfast brands.

“Kellogg has been on a successful journey of transformation to enhance performance and increase long-term shareowner value,” said Steve Cahillane, Kellogg Company’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer in a statement announcing the company’s plans. “This has included re-shaping our portfolio, and today’s announcement is the next step in that transformation.”

“These businesses all have significant standalone potential, and an enhanced focus will enable them to better direct their resources toward their distinct strategic priorities,” Cahillane continued. “In turn, each business is expected to create more value for all stakeholders, and each is well positioned to build a new era of innovation and growth.”

Kellogg expects these moves to be completed by 2023 and the headquarters for the three companies set to focus on their global snacking brands, their cereal brands and their plant-based food brands will remain unchanged.

Said Kellogg: “After several years of transformation and improving results, the Company believes it is the right time to separate these businesses so they may pursue their particular strategic priorities.”

After the announcement, Kellogg rose more than 6% in pre-market trading on Tuesday.

The global snacking company, which earned $11.4 billion in revenue last year, will be made up of well-known brands such as Pringles, Cheez-It, Pop-Tarts, Kellogg’s Rice Krispies Treats, the Kellogg said. Sales at the snacking company last year also came from some cereal brands as well as frozen breakfast brands and the Eggo brand, the company added.

The cereal company accounted for $2.4 billion in sales last year through business in the U.S., Canada, and Caribbean, Kellog said. The cereal company sells brands such as Frosted Flakes, Froot Loops, Mini-Wheats, and Special K.

The plant-based company, which earned $340 million in revenue in 2021, will be anchored by the MorningStar Farms brand, which features an array of plant-based items such as chicken nuggets and sausage links, Kellogg said.

The cereal company and plant-based company will both remain headquartered in Battle Creek, Michigan, Kellogg said. The global snacking company will maintain dual campuses in Battle Creek and Chicago, Illinois, with its corporate headquarters located in Chicago.

+ More