Emily Curiel/The Kansas City Star/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(KANSAS CITY, Mo.) — Multiple school districts in the Kansas City, Missouri, area closed their doors on Wednesday in the wake of a mass shooting threat.
The Blue Springs Police Department said someone called Tuesday morning to report a suspicious Snapchat post made by an individual “threatening ‘killing people — mass murdering.'”
No specific location was mentioned, police said, but the Blue Springs School District, the nearby Fort Osage School District and others decided to close as a precaution.
Blue Springs police said Wednesday morning that a suspect — a male former student — is in custody and charges are pending.
There’s no threat to the public, police said.
The FBI in Kansas City said it was notified of the threat but deferred further comment to Blue Springs police.
Lowell Police Department via John Guilfoil Public Relations
(LOWELL, Mass.) — A massive search for a 3-year-old Massachusetts boy who vanished from his babysitter’s yard entered its second day on Wednesday and involved nearly 200 law enforcement officers, authorities said.
The toddler, identified only as Harry, was reported missing at about 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday in Lowell, Massachusetts. Police said a search for the boy was immediately launched.
Police asked neighboring residents to search their properties, outbuildings and vehicles for the boy.
“He’s active. He likes going outside. When he’s at home, he goes to the yard and plays. He’s a healthy kid but he can’t speak. He’s trying to learn how to speak, but he can’t talk,” Harry’s father told ABC affiliate station WCVB in Boston in a phone interview.
Volunteers eager to join the search were asked by police stay away from the area around the babysitter’s home where police are focusing their efforts.
“Right now we are concentrating efforts with law enforcement personnel and we are trying not to contaminate search areas,” the Lowell Police Department said in a statement posted on Twitter Wednesday morning.
Harry was last seen wearing a long-sleeve maroon shirt and gray pants with a white stripe, police said.
Upon getting the call of the missing child, officers went to the babysitter’s home in the Pawtucketville section of northwest Lowell and immediately began searching the neighborhood. When they found no sign of the boy, they expanded the search to the nearby Lowell-Dracut-Tyngsboro State Forest and the Merrimack River.
Lowell Police Chief Barry Golner said Wednesday morning that investigators have found no evidence suggesting foul play in the boy’s disappearance.
“We are still treating the incident as a missing person, a missing child. All our efforts have been focused on re-searching, retracing. We brought in other assets today — the state police, we have everything from mounted units to marine units,” Golner said.
The child’s parents dropped him off at his babysitter’s house about 7 a.m. Tuesday, police said. At least one neighbor saw the child playing in his babysitter’s backyard around 9:15 a.m., police said.
Carlisle Police Chief John Fisher, president of the North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, which is assisting in the search, urged local residents with surveillance cameras, particularly those with Ring doorbells, to check their footage for any sign of the child.
“A 3-year-old of average mobility, unfortunately or fortunately, can get pretty far,” Fisher said.
Lowell police notified the community of the missing boy on Tuesday by using a reverse 911 system to contact residents and asked them to call the police immediately if they believe they have seen the boy or have information about his whereabouts.
(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — Attorney General Merrick Garland is in Buffalo, New York, on Wednesday to meet with the families of the 10 victims killed in last month’s mass shooting.
Garland will meet privately with families and survivors, visit the site of the massacre and hold a press conference.
Payton Gendron, 18, is accused of storming a Tops grocery store on May 14 and gunning down 10 people, all of whom were Black, in an alleged hate crime.
Charges against Gendron include 10 counts of first-degree murder and 10 counts of second-degree murder as a hate crime. The teen is the first person in state history to be charged with domestic terrorism motivated by hate. Gendron’s lawyers entered a plea of not guilty to all of the charges on his behalf.
Days after the massacre, Garland promised that the Justice Department would be “relentlessly investigating this as a hate crime and as a matter of racially-motivated violence extremism.”
“Confronting hate and preventing hate crimes is a moral obligation of every American if we want to continue to live in a Democracy,” he said.
The Buffalo massacre could inspire more racially motivated attacks in the coming months, the Department of Homeland Security warned in a new report released this week.
Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke have joined Garland for Wednesday’s trip.
(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 15, 6:49 am
Biden promises to free blocked Ukrainian grain
President Joe Biden said on Tuesday the United States is working with European allies to remove blocked Ukrainian grain by rail.
Speaking at the 29th AFL-CIO Quadrennial Constitutional Convention, Biden said 20 million tons of grain are stuck in Ukraine and need to be exported to reduce global food prices.
As the grain cannot be exported via the Black Sea due to the constant threat of Russian attacks and explosions, the U.S. and its partners are planning to build granaries on the Ukrainian border, Biden said.
The railways present an alternative to Ukrainian coastal waters of the Azov and Black seas that are in need of demining. The area of their contamination with explosives can be up to 19,000 square kilometers, Ministry of Internal Affairs spokesperson Alyona Matveeva said on Tuesday.
The full demining of Ukraine can take from five to 10 years with the help of international experts, Matveeva added. To date, about 80% of explosive devices have been removed and neutralized in the Kyiv region, she said.
Jun 15, 6:31 am
Russia turns to outdated missiles
As Russia’s stock of modern high-precision missiles depletes, its invading forces are turning to obsolete Soviet models to strike targets in Ukraine, Yuriy Ignat, spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force, said at a press briefing on Tuesday.
“Recently, there has been a tendency for Russia to save high-precision, expensive missiles. And now the enemy is increasingly using Soviet types of missiles,” Ignat said.
Some of these missiles are extremely powerful, the spokesman added, and their destructive parts can weigh up to 900 kilograms.
“Their main drawback is that they do not always fly at their intended target and very often destroy civilian objects with human casualties,” Ignat said.
According to Ignat, Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile forces have shot down more than 500 enemy air targets since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion. These include Russian cruise missiles, UAVs, planes and helicopters.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former governor of California, weighed in on the question of Russian missiles on Tuesday when he said that Europe is partly to blame for financing Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Addressing a climate conference in Vienna via a livestream, Schwarzenegger said the about 1,300 missiles Russia fired into Ukrainian cities during the first two months of the war cost 7.7 billion euros.
“Now that’s a lot. But during the same time, Europe sent to Russia 44 billion euros for fuel,” the former governor told attendees of the Austrian World Summit. “We have blood on our hands, because we are financing the war. We have to stop lying to ourselves.”
On the other end of the frontline, Ukraine is also grappling with a pressing lack of weapons. The Ukrainian forces received only 10% of the weapons “we said we needed,” Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar told local media on Tuesday.
“Now matter how much effort Ukraine makes, we will not be able to win the war without the help of the West,” Malyar added.
The deputy minister said Ukrainian fighters can afford to spend only about 6,000 shells a day, while the Russians use about 10 times more. The limited number of available weapons and ammunition is crippling Ukraine’s ability to launch a counteroffensive at the front, military expert Oleh Zhdanov said, according to local outlets.
Speaking at an online press conference for Danish media on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeated his plea for Western weapons that he said are vital for the liberation of occupied territories.
The speed of de-occupation “depends on the supply of weapons to Ukraine, and any delays in this matter threaten stagnation on the front,” Zelenskyy said.
Jun 14, 1:20 pm
Russian, Belarusian tennis players can compete at US Open under neutral flag
Russian and Belarusian tennis players, who are banned from Wimbledon, will be allowed to compete in this year’s U.S. Open, but only under a neutral flag, the U.S. Tennis Association said.
The USTA said it “previously condemned, and continues to condemn, the unprovoked and unjust invasion of Ukraine by Russia.”
Russian player Daniil Medvedev, the current No. 1 player in the world, won last year’s U.S. Open.
Jun 14, 6:37 am
Ukraine pleads for heavy weapons ahead of NATO meeting
The only way to end the war in Ukraine, either on the battlefield or behind the negotiation table, is a parity of weapons, Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to the head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, said on Monday.
“Being straightforward — to end the war we need heavy weapons parity,” Podoliak said on Twitter.
According to the presidential adviser, Ukraine’s military wish list includes 1,000 howitzers, 300 multiple launch rocket systems, 500 tanks, 2,000 armored vehicles and 1,000 drones.
“Negotiations are possible from a strong position, which requires parity of weapons,” Podoliak said. “There is simply no other way.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba echoed Podoliak’s plea for weapons on Monday in a tweet that recounted Ukraine’s recent military triumphs achieved with limited resources.
“Ukraine has proven it can punch well above its weight and win important battles against all odds,” Kuleba said, pointing at victories in the battles of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Kharkiv. “Imagine what Ukraine can do with sufficient tools,” the Foreign Minister added. Kuleba urged Ukraine’s partners “to set a clear goal of Ukrainian victory and speed up deliveries of heavy weapons.”
Podoliak said a meeting of NATO defense ministers will be held in Brussels on June 15.
“We are waiting for a decision” on the weapons, Podoliak said.
The group, known as the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, will convene a meeting for the third time in a bid “to ensure that we’re providing Ukraine what Ukraine needs right now,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said at a press briefing in Bangkok, Thailand, on Monday.
Austin, who will be in attendance in Brussels, said that Ukraine needs support “in order to defend against Russia’s unjustified and unprovoked assault.” The secretary of Defense noted that looking ahead, Ukraine will require help “to build and sustain robust defenses so that it will be able to defend itself in the coming months and years.”
In his Monday evening address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Ukrainians to tell people in the occupied territories “that the Ukrainian army will definitely come.”
“Tell them about Ukraine. Tell them the truth. Say that there will be liberation,” the president said.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials played down threats of possible food shortages in the country due to the ongoing conflict. While Ukraine lost 25% of its sown area as a result of Russia’ full-scale invasion, the country’s food security was “in no way” threatened, Taras Vysotsky, the first deputy minister of Agrarian Policy, said at a press briefing for Ukrainian media on Monday.
“Despite the loss of 25% of sown areas, the structure of crops this year as a whole is more than sufficient to ensure consumption, which in turn also decreased due to mass displacement and external migration,” Vysotsky said.
The deputy minister added that Ukraine has “already imported about 70% of essential fertilizers, 60% of plant protection products and about a third of the required amount of fuel” before the war erupted in late February. According to Vysotsky, current sowing volumes are enough to ensure domestic consumption and even exports.
Jun 13, 9:26 am
Bodies of tortured men exhumed in Bucha
Another mass grave has been dug up in Bucha, uncovering the bodies of seven men who authorities believe were tortured and killed during the bloody occupation of the city in March.
Police told ABC News their hands were tied with ropes behind their backs and they were shot in the knees and head.
“They were killed in a cruel way,” police spokesperson Iryna Pryanyshnykova said. “These were civilian victims. The people here were killed by Russian soldiers and later they were just put into a grave to try to hide this war crime.”
It’s not clear why the men were killed, Pryanyshnykova said.
She said experts will analyze DNA to identify the victims.
-ABC News’ Britt Clennett
Jun 13, 6:24 am
Zelenskyy: Ukraine fighting for ‘every meter’ of Severodonetsk
Russian forces have pushed the Armed Forces of Ukraine out of the center of Severodonetsk, Ukrainian officials said.
“They are pressing in Severodonetsk, where very fierce fighting is going on — literally for every meter,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an address on Sunday evening.
Russian forces now control about 70% of the city, as intense shelling makes mass evacuation and the transportation of goods impossible, Sergiy Haidai, another Ukrainian official, said.
Around 500 people, including 40 children, are sheltering in the city’s Azot chemical plant, Haidai said.
While the Ukrainians try to organize their evacuation, authorities of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic have given an ultimatum to Ukrainian troops in the city.
“They have two options: either follow the example of their colleagues and give up, or die. They have no other option,” said Eduard Basurin, deputy head of the People’s Militia Department of the DPR.
-ABC News’ Yulia Drozd and Tanya Stukalova
Jun 12, 5:33 pm
Zelenskyy sends virtual message to Sean Penn’s CORE benefit
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the annual Hollywood fundraiser for actor Sean Penn’s nonprofit Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE) Saturday night with a powerful video message urging people to continue to support Ukraine in its war against Russia.
“All of you have heard about the horrors that Ukraine is going through. Tens of thousands of explosions and shots, hundreds of thousands wounded and killed, millions who have lost their homes,” Zelenskyy said in his virtual speech. “All of this is not a logline for a horror film. All of this is our reality.”
Zelenskyy’s video message included footage showing missiles striking homes and apartment complexes in Ukraine, civilians dead in the streets of Ukrainian cities and children playing in parks amid the backdrop of bombed buildings.
Among those attending the CORE fundraiser, held at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angles, were Penn and CORE co-founder Ann Lee, former President Bill Clinton, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, singer John Legend, and actors Patrick Stewart and Sharon Stone.
The group said the event raised more than $2.5 million for CORE’s disaster relief and preparedness work, including its urgent humanitarian response in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy noted that Penn traveled to Ukraine at the start of the Russian invasion and witnessed the atrocities firsthand. He thanked Penn and his group for the continued support for Ukraine.
“We have been resisting it for 107 days in a row,” Zelenskyy said of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. “We can stop it together. Support Ukraine, because Ukraine is fighting for the whole world, for democracy, for freedom, for life.”
Jun 12, 4:17 pm
Russia’s firepower superiority 10 times that of Ukraine’s in Luhansk: Military chief
Ukraine’s Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhny said Sunday that he told his American counterpart, Gen. Mark Milley, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that Russian firepower superiority in the Luhansk region is far greater than that of Ukrainian forces.
Zaluzhny said that during a briefing he told Milley that Russian forces are concentrating their efforts in the north of the Luhansk region, where they are using artillery “en masse” and their firepower superiority is 10 times that of Ukraine’s.
“Despite everything, we keep holding our positions,” Zaluzhny said.
Zaluzhny also said Russia has deployed up to seven battalion tactical groups in Severdonetsk, a city in the Luhansk region. He said Russian shelling of residential areas in Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine has resumed.
Russian forces destroyed a second bridge leading into Severodonetsk and are now targeting a third bridge in an effort to completely cut off the city, Luhansk region Gov. Sergiy Haidai said Sunday. Ukraine’s army still controls around one third of the city, he said.
Haidai said that Ukrainian forces are still holding onto the Azot chemical plant in Severodonetsk, where around 500 civilians are taking shelter.
If Severodonetsk falls, Lysychansk will be the only city in the Luhansk region that remains under Ukraine’s control.
Zaluzhny said that as of Sunday, the front line of the war stretched 1,522 miles and that active combat was taking place on at least 686 miles of the front line.
Zaluzhny said that during his briefing with Milley, he reiterated Ukraine’s urgent request for more 155 mm caliber artillery systems.
Jun 12, 12:48 pm
Russian cruise missile attack confirmed in western Ukraine
Russia claims a cruise missile strike destroyed a large warehouse in western Ukraine storing weapons supplied to the Ukrainians by the United States and European allies.
While police in the Ternopil region of Ukraine, where at least one cruise missile hit, told ABC News that no weapons were destroyed, the region’s governor said part of a military facility was damaged.
Ternopil’s governor Volodymyr Trush posted a video showing widespread damage from what he said were four Russian missiles launched Saturday from the Black Sea. Trush said 22 people were wounded, including a 12-year-old child, in the missile strikes.
In addition to the military facility, Trush said four five-story residential apartment buildings were damaged. One of the missiles hit a gas pipeline, he said.
Russia’s defense ministry said Kalibr high presicion sea-based, long-range missiles struck near Chortkiv in the Ternopil province and destroyed a large warehouse full of anti-tank missile systems, portable anti-aircraft missile systems and artillery shells supplied by the United States and European countries.
(WASHINGTON) — In 2012, the Obama administration introduced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, protecting all eligible immigrants who came to the U.S. as children from deportation.
“DACA gave me hope,” program recipient Eddie Ramirez told ABC News. “And the biggest thing [DACA] gave me was a Social Security number with employment authorization, which allowed me to work to make money to pay for my schooling.”
Ramirez was born in Jalisco, Mexico, and arrived in the U.S. in 1994 at just 1 and a half years old. Ten years ago, in 2012, he received DACA status, ultimately enabling him to pursue his aspirations of becoming a dentist.
DACA students such as Ramirez are ineligible for federal aid, certain scholarships and internships. Limitations placed on DACA recipients drive various corporations and institutions to deny qualified individuals educational and employment opportunities due to their status.
“Not all institutions are friendly toward DACA,” Ramirez said.
During his last year of dental school, the 2017 rescission of DACA went into effect, threatening Ramirez’s citizenship status.
“It was this anxiety of am I going to be able to be a dentist,” Ramirez said. “Am I going to be able to continue practicing dentistry, everything that I went to school for?”
Ramirez is now a practicing dentist in Hillsboro, Oregon, but the future of his reality, and the life he built for himself, hangs in the balance as legislators delay policy reform that impacts his stability.
As of this year, DACA has promised security to a total of 3,467,749 applicants, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Over the past 10 years, DACA has faced many legislative challenges. Congress’ latest response to the demands of DACA recipients was U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen’s ruling last July outlawing the DACA program and closing the door on all new applicants. The Department of Justice’s appeal to that decision now makes its way to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Meanwhile, immigration reform is stalled in the Senate.
Hundreds of DACA recipients and supporters plan to rally as the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, calling on Congress to guarantee equal opportunity under DACA and the creation of a substantial pathway to citizenship.
One of those recipients is Greisa Martinez Rosas, executive director of immigrants’ rights advocacy organization United We Dream.
“What we’re seeking is permanent protection for us to be able to live without fear in our homes,” Rosas told ABC News. “To be able to drive to work without the fear of being separated from our families and be able to make plans for the future.”
Rosas met with Vice President Kamala Harris in January to stress the demands for permanent protection. She says that while “we felt heard and understood,” no action was taken to fortify a certain future for recipients.
Thousands of qualified students are vulnerable to deportation. Caught in the crossfire of the remnants of the previous administration, which Rosas described as “vehemently anti-immigrant,” and the efforts of the current administration, the realities of undocumented people remain in limbo.
Although DACA does not provide a pathway to citizenship, the last line of defense in the fight for protection is the anticipated American Dream and Promise Act. If signed into law, the bill is set to provide an official pathway to citizenship by granting permanent resident status for 10 years to qualifying undocumented immigrants.
Uncertainty for the future persists for thousands of families as they remain on standby for the outcome of oral arguments in Congress on July 6.
(HONG KONG) — Just 10 days after Shanghai lifted its two-month lockdown and less than a week after Beijing declared its outbreak under control, China’s two largest cities found themselves walking back on loosening up restrictions.
Beijing delayed reopening schools on Monday as a new outbreak centered around a popular bar district pushed cases to a three-week high and Shanghai, once again, suspended dine-in services at restaurants.
Both cities were back to conducting mass testing over the weekend as outbreaks of the Omicron variant stubbornly persist despite the country’s no tolerance zero-COVID measures. Shanghai even briefly placed most of the city back in lockdown Saturday morning to conduct its mass test, which only turned up 66 cases through the weekend.
As much of the world has shifted definitively to living with the virus, China, by all measures, is digging in and even expanding their method of mass testing and suppression authorities call “Dynamic Zero-COVID” where all positive cases, no matter how mild, needed to be isolated and quarantined.
Before Omicron, China’s zero-COVID measures had allowed Chinese citizens to go about their lives as normal for nearly two years as COVID-19 ravaged the rest of the world. China still has one of the lowest official COVID-19 death rates in the world.
The implementation of the Shanghai lockdown, however, came to show the economic and social toll of the country’s stringent measures with Bloomberg Economics predicting that China’s will grow slower than the U.S. economy for the first time since 1976.
Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow for Global Health Yanzhong Huang believes that, despite this, Chinese authorities are drawing a very different lesson from the omicron outbreak and lockdown in Shanghai than when previous zero-COVID stalwarts like New Zealand opened up after omicron broke down their defenses.
“[The Chinese health authorities] believe they didn’t respond speedily enough,” Huang told ABC News. “[They believe] if they took action in the very beginning of the outbreak they would have been able to cut the transmission and bring the situation under control right away.”
In other words, it wasn’t the zero-COVID policy that didn’t work, it was poor implementation that landed Shanghai in lockdown.
So instead of realizing zero-COVID methods were increasingly ineffective against highly transmissible variants like omicron, Huang says authorities came to the opposite conclusion: they needed to double down and that zero-COVID is the only way to go.
Since May, China has rolled out a stringent new PCR testing regime in most major cities across the country — including those where no cases have been detected — and are requiring people to test negative for COVID-19 every 48 to 72 hours in order to work, shop or use public transport.
This has resulted in hundreds of thousands of new semi-permanent testing facilities being set up across the country with the aim of having a testing booth within a 15-minute walk of every resident in all provincial capitals and cities with more than 10 million residents.
Officials argue that constant screening will allow them to catch cases early before they spread exponentially so they would not have to resort to a prolonged lockdown like Shanghai’s.
Shanghai alone has set up 15,000 testing sites in the city but even then social media is teeming with daily clips of long lines of residents waiting to be tested. These booths are usually manned by one or two technicians sealed in an air-conditioned metal and glass cabin with two rubber gloves or openings to take a patient’s sample.
The English-language Chinese outlet Sixth Tone calculated it would cost an estimated $12.55 billion a year to maintain just this testing regime which would have to be paid for by the local governments.
Meanwhile, according to Japanese investment bank Nomura, there are still eight cities across China and an estimated 74 million people currently under full or partial lockdown measures, down from an estimated 355 million people in April.
Last month, the director-general of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, commented that he did not believe zero-COVID is “sustainable, considering the behavior of the virus now and what we anticipate in the future.”
That prompted Chinese Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian to immediately retort, “we hope that relevant people can view China’s policy of epidemic prevention and control objectively and rationally, get more knowledge about the facts and refrain from making irresponsible remarks.”
“The Chinese government’s policy of epidemic prevention and control can stand the test of history, and our prevention and control measures are scientific and effective,” Zhao said. “China is one of the most successful countries in epidemic prevention and control in the world, which is obvious to all of the international community.”
With the focus on testing and isolation, the conversation around vaccinations has been comparatively muted. Though China was one of the first countries to roll out a vaccination program, an estimated 100 million Chinese citizens remained unvaccinated or under-vaccinated, the majority of which are vulnerable seniors.
China has relied primarily on their own domestic traditional technology vaccines that — although proven to be less effective against infection than the mRNA vaccines now used in much of the world — still protected people from hospitalization and death.
CFR’s Huang believes that even if vaccinations rates improved or an effective domestically-made mRNA vaccine is rolled out, it was unlikely to change the government’s attitude towards zero-COVID.
“This is the problem,” Huang said, “if your intention is zero-COVID and cannot tolerate any infections no matter how mild they are, even if they do achieve a 100% vaccination rate, even if you have the best of vaccines in the world, you cannot prevent infections.”
Huang believes the longer China maintains this policy, the larger the immunity gap grows between China and the rest of world.
“You are basically prolonging the inevitable,” says Huang. “You have to face the reality that with such a large population not exposed to the virus and that has relatively low immunity level to virus, no matter how draconian the measures you undertake, you cannot prevent the virus from infiltrating the borders and affecting the Chinese people.”
China’s borders have remained effectively sealed off since March 2020 and in early May this year the National Immigration Administration announced on Weibo that it would “strictly restrict non-essential departures of Chinese citizens” and ban the approval of new passports.
While many had hoped that China would begin easing restrictions after the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics in February, the outbreaks that emerged soon afterwards dampened that outlook. An important Communist Party meeting coming up in the fall where Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to gain an unprecedented third term was seen as the next milestone but that looks increasingly unlikely as well.
In a sign on how long China’s strict measures may last, look no further than next year’s Asia Football Confederation’s Asian Cup soccer tournament set to begin in mid-June 2023. China had won the bid to host and even purposely built or renovated stadiums in 10 cities but last month completely relinquished its hosting rights “due exceptional circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“The zero-COVID policy is the biggest impediment to right now to China’s economic recovery,” said Huang. “But if they choose to pivot away from zero-COVID it will be difficult because that issue is being politicized. Pivoting away means you have to admit to the failure of zero-COVID in which the top leader himself has invested so much.”
On a visit to the western province of Sichuan Friday, Xi made his position clear.
“Persistence is victory,” Xi said. “We must unswervingly adhere to the general policy of ‘dynamic zero-COVID’, strengthen confidence, eliminate interference, overcome paralyzing thoughts, pay close attention to the key tasks of epidemic prevention and control, and resolutely consolidate the hard-won results of epidemic prevention and control.”
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued warnings Tuesday after at least 14 deaths in recent years related to child rockers.
The warnings covered certain Fisher-Price and Kids2 rockers, and the agency warned consumers to not let their children sleep in the products.
CPSC reported at least 13 deaths between 2009 and 2021 of infants in Fisher-Price Infant-to-Toddler Rockers and Newborn-to-Toddler Rockers. It also reported one death in 2019 of an infant in a Kids2 Bright Starts Rocker.
“Parents and caregivers should never use inclined products, such as rockers, gliders, soothers, and swings, for infant sleep and should not leave infants in these products unsupervised, unrestrained, or with bedding material, due to the risk of suffocation,” CPSC said.
There are about 3,400 sleep-related deaths among babies each year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — a number the health agency says includes deaths due to “sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), accidental suffocation in a sleeping environment and other deaths from unknown causes.”
“Fisher-Price recommends consumers visit Fisher-Price’s Safe Start webpage at www.fisherprice.com/SafeStart for safety videos, tips and additional safety information, as well as the latest safety warnings for Rockers and other infant products,” the company said in the CPSC statement Tuesday. The company added that it’s committed to the safety of its products.
Kids2 said in a statement on CPSC’s website that it encourages consumers to report incidents to the company and that its “number one priority is the safety and well-being of the babies and families who love and use our products.”
The CDC advises placing babies on their back for all sleep times; using a firm surface such as a mattress in a safety-approved crib; keeping soft bedding, pillows, bumper pads and soft toys out of the baby’s sleeping area; and having the baby sleep in the same room as a parent, but not in the bed.
A final rule issued by CPSC will go into effect later this month requiring sleep products to have a sleep surface angle of 10 degrees or less, and that all sleep products conform to the existing bassinet, crib, or play yard standards.
“Your infant’s sleep environment should be the safest place in your home,” CPSC Chair Alex Hoen-Saric said Tuesday.
Fisher-Price and Kids2 did not immediately respond to ABC News’ requests for comment.
(WASHINGTON) — As former President Donald Trump’s presidential legacy is tested in Washington this week, with the Jan. 6 hearings dominating Capitol Hill, his political power — and the sway of his election denying — saw a renewed test in the midterm primaries in a handful of states.
Voters took the polls in South Carolina, Nevada, Maine, North Dakota and Texas’ 34 Congressional District Tuesday night, delivering historic turnout numbers and allowing voters to give Republicans who defied the former president a second chance at keeping their jobs, and some Democrats to lose theirs.
Here are some of the key takeaways from Tuesday’s races:
Trump finally lands incumbent ouster
While Trump’s had some success in backing candidates in open races, he’s had major difficulty in knocking off their perch incumbent members of his party who have challenged him in some way, putting aside the score of Trump-scorned Republicans who have decided to not seek re-election.
But finally, on Tuesday, Trump was able to handedly bump one of the most vocal off that list, Rep. Tom Rice of South Carolina, rendering him out of a job come November.
Rice was one of the ten Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment, a “conservative vote” he told ABC News’ Jon Karl that he would make again in a heartbeat, even if it cost him his job. And lost his job he did, to MAGA-world challenger Russell Fry, who was quick to paint Rice as a traitor to his party. The demographic makeup of Rice’s district, toward the northern border of the state where voters trend far more conservative, may have also contributed to the massive backlash against Rice, pushing folks toward Fry’s direction.
Now, with newly-won swagger, Trump will undoubtedly charge on to defeat another impeachment-vote member of his party, and perhaps his biggest enemy yet, in Wyoming: Rep. Liz Cheney. The question remains: can lightning — and political luck — strike twice?
Nancy Mace’s tightrope walk pays off in Trump proxy war
Totally flipped dynamics greeted South Carolina’s 1st District, where Trump was wholly unsuccessful in booting a challenger in Rep. Nancy Mace, who carried her primary win by at least 10 points. Mace defeated cybersecurity expert Katie Arrington, who beat Rep. Mark Sanford in his primary in 2018 but ultimately lost the race to Rep. Joe Cunningham, who historically flipped the district Democrat during the slate of “blue wave races.”
Arrington bet that voters in the low country would see Mace as something of a flip-flop, first condemning Trump hard after the Capitol insurrection and eventually softening her attacks. But that bet didn’t pay off, partly thanks to a bench of heavy hitter South Carolina endorsements for Mace, including former Gov. Nikki Haley and Trump Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney.
Another interesting dynamic in Mace’s race is the endorsement cold war of sorts. The proxy battle between potential 2024 candidates — Haley and Trump — falls squarely in Haley’s camp, the beginning of a nice set up for a highly gossiped about bid for the White House. So far, a good record for Haley, who said in the past she’d bow out of consideration if Trump decides to run. But if Haley notches a few other primary wins, who knows? There may be a spot for her against Trump after all.
Trump seems to be trying to save face a little, saying on Truth Social Tuesday night that Arrington was a “long shot” and Mace will “easily” be able to defeat a Democratic opponent come November.
Big Lie gets big win in Nevada senate race
Voters in Nevada seem to not be scared of a little election denial. Former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt’s open-armed embrace of conspiracy surrounding the 2020 presidential election helped him notch a win in the state’s GOP Senate Primary. Laxalt, who hails from a state political dynasty, bested political outsider Sam Brown who tried and failed to paint Laxalt as cozy with party insiders.
Still, a roster of Republican stars, nearly all of whom are rumored to join the crowded contest for president in 2024, backed Laxalt’s bid, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (Laxalt’s former roommate, funnily enough), Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Tom Cotton, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
He’ll see if that flock of support will be enough to kick Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto out of office. She sails to the general election contest with no serious challengers and now must answer not just to Laxalt but to voters increasingly frustrated with the concurrent fallout of the pandemic, inflation and other economic woes that hit the tourist-driven state.
(NEW YORK) — Prices for flights this summer have skyrocketed at unprecedented rates, and some travel experts say that travelers looking for deals should start planning for fall trips.
Domestic flight prices have jumped by 47% since January, according to an Adobe Analytics report released Thursday. The cost of domestic airfare also increased 6.2% from April to May, the report said.
“We expected to see elevated demand leading into 2022,” Patrick Brown, vice president of growth marketing insights at Adobe, said. “And consumers have been spending at twice the rate that they have over last year, but prices have grown even faster than the demand has grown.”
Brown also said the price increase “hasn’t dampened the demand for travel.”
“Despite the high increases in prices month over month, we’re seeing consumers still booking their travel while they’re looking for other ways to do it and getting creative about when to travel,” Brown said.
However, travel experts said there are still a few ways travelers can find affordable travel options or more room in their travel budget.
Scott Keyes, the founder of Scott’s Cheap Flights, said cheap flights “aren’t gone forever,” but they are for travelers looking to book this summer.
“It’s really too late to get a great deal for your summer travels, but that’s because it’s already June,” Keyes told ABC News.
Keyes said there are still “a ton of deals to be had” for those looking to book fall or winter vacations. For the same seven-day trip from Los Angeles to Maui, waiting a few months could save travelers more than 70%, according to Scott’s Cheap Flights.
“Flights on July 1 through 8 from Los Angeles to Maui are $725 roundtrip,” Keyes said. “But flights from L.A. to Maui on Sept. 1 through 8 are just $161 round trip.”
But Keyes says to get those deals, travelers need to book now.
“My recommendation is book those fall flights now while fares are really cheap and give yourself a trip on the books to look forward to that you get to daydream about,” Keyes said.
For travelers who have already booked flights or are still looking for destinations, the strength of the U.S. dollar could mean more bang for your buck in some foreign destinations, according to Haley Berg, an economist at the booking platform Hopper.
“The dollar has appreciated compared to many local currencies, Mexican pesos is one of them,” Berg said. “So many of those Central American and Caribbean countries might be more attractive to visit this summer than in previous years as well.”
The U.S. dollar’s strength will especially benefit travelers to Europe this summer, where the Euro has depreciated by nearly 15%. Berg said that even though prices for airfare to Europe are up, the dollar parity will help travelers stay in budget.
“When you’re there shopping, staying at hotels, eating out, your dollars will go about 6% further than in 2019,” Berg said.
(NEW YORK) — A new study points to prior COVID-19 infection as a possible culprit for the global wave of severe hepatitis cases among children — though experts caution the true cause is still a medical mystery.
Researchers in Israel added evidence for the theory in a small study published in the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition, suggesting some children might develop liver inflammation in the weeks after recovering from a mild COVID-19 infection.
While the root cause of the pediatric hepatitis outbreak is still unknown, experts say the leading theories include COVID-19 infection, infection with a common cold virus, or an interplay between the two infections, according to Dr. Alok Patel, a pediatric hospitalist at Stanford Health and an ABC News medical contributor.
In a new twist, a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis published Tuesday found that there may not be a spike in cases at all — at least not in the United States. CDC scientists said the number of severe hepatitis cases observed in recent weeks is relatively consistent with pre-pandemic levels, but urged public health authorities to continue to monitor the situation.
“I think it is too early as CDC [is] looking at U.S. data and U.S. has not been hit as hard as other countries like U.K.,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco.
More than 700 children across the globe have been found to have probable cases of severe hepatitis with an unknown cause, officials from the World Health Organization said in a press conference last Wednesday.
At least 38 children have required a liver transplant, and 10 children have died, the WHO says. Additionally, 112 cases are also under investigation, and a total of 34 countries have reported cases to date.
As the mystery deepens, scientists across the globe are racing to understand whether — and why — children are falling ill with severe hepatitis in higher numbers.
Severe hepatitis, or liver inflammation, is often prompted by an infection, but not always. It is unusual among children, and most often seen in adults who have been living with alcoholism or an undiagnosed infection for decades, slowly causing liver damage.
During a global investigation, the WHO found that about two-thirds of children tested positive for a common cold virus called adenovirus 41 — which quickly became one of the leading theories. Only about 12% of children had COVID-19 at the time they developed severe hepatitis.
Because most of the children were too young to be vaccinated, the COVID-19 vaccine was ruled out as a possible cause.
“The latest Israeli study adds just a little gasoline to the fire to try to understand the causes of the mysterious hepatitis in children,” said Chin-Hong.
However, he said the study was too small to be conclusive.
In the study, researchers described five cases of children ranging from 3 months to 13 years old who recovered from COVID-19 and later developed severe liver inflammation, some requiring liver transplants.
If true, this type of delayed reaction to a COVID-19 infection would mirror the rare multi-organ syndrome MIS-C that affects children weeks and sometimes months after COVID-19 infection.
It’s possible children may be experiencing “an autoimmune reaction from a viral infection causing hepatitis, where the child’s immune system attacks their own liver cells in an attempt to combat the virus,” said Dr. Madhu Vennikandam, a gastroenterology fellow at Sparrow Health System.
However, the CDC cautions the cause remains unknown and a global research effort spearheaded by the WHO is ongoing.
“The silver lining in all of this is that vaccines for children under 5 are on the cusp of approval in the U.S.,” said Chin-Hong.
If COVID-19 indeed “has a central role to play in all of this, we should eventually start seeing cases drop,” he said.
