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Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee 2022 live updates: Queen to miss second Platinum Jubilee event

June 3, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(LONDON) — The U.K. is throwing a once-in-a-generation celebration for Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee.

The 96-year-old queen is the first British monarch in history to reach a Platinum Jubilee, which marks 70 years on the throne.

Queen Elizabeth ascended to the throne on Feb. 6, 1952, following the death of her father, King George VI.

Starting Thursday, the Platinum Jubilee celebration will include everything from the traditional Trooping the Color birthday parade for the queen to a star-studded concert led by Diana Ross to thousands of street parties across the country.

Here is how the news is developing Fridayday. All times Eastern. Check back for updates:

Jun 03, 11:01 am
Queen Elizabeth II will miss second Platinum Jubilee event

Queen Elizabeth II will be absent from a second Platinum Jubilee event after missing Friday’s National Service of Thanksgiving at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The 96-year-old queen, who is marking 70 years on the throne, will not attend the Epsom Derby on Saturday, Buckingham Palace has confirmed.

The queen is instead expected to watch the horse race on television at Windsor Castle, according to the palace.

Elizabeth attended Thursday’s Trooping the Color and a beacon lighting ceremony later that night, but decided not to attend Friday’s service after experiencing “some discomfort” during previous events.

The palace has previously said the queen suffers from “episodic mobility problems.”

Jun 03, 7:25 am
The royal family head to Guildhall after service at St. Paul’s

The National Service of Thanksgiving has concluded after nearly an hour.

Following the service, the bells at St. Paul’s Cathedral will be rung for a continuous four hours with no breaks in between.

According to a press release, members of the St Paul’s Cathedral Guild of Ringers “will ring ‘Stedman Cinques'” and “will be joined by Great Paul, the largest church bell in the UK,” which weighs in at more than 16 tons.

The Great Paul bell was restored in 2021 and this will be the first time it has been rung for a royal occasion.

Royal family members will now head over to a reception at Guildhall, hosted by Vincent Keaveny, the Lord Mayor of the City of London and the City of London Corporation.

Jun 03, 6:25 am
Prince William and Kate, Prince Charles and Camilla arrive at St. Paul’s

Prince William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, have entered St. Paul’s Cathedral to attend the service.

Several minutes after their arrival, Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, also made their way into the central London cathedral.

Once inside the cathedral, Charles and Camilla joined William and Kate to form a royal procession before they took their seats for the service.

Other royal family members who already arrived include the queen’s daughter, Princess Anne, and her husband Vice Admiral Timothy Laurence; their children Zara Tindall and Peter Phillips, and Zara’s husband Mike Tindall; and Elizabeth’s youngest son Prince Edward and his family.

Prince Andrew’s children, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, as well as their husbands, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi and Jack Brooksbank, were also in attendance.

The royal family is attending the National Service of Thanksgiving — which includes Bible readings, prayers and hymns intended to give thanks for the queen’s 70-year reign — without Elizabeth herself. Buckingham Palace announced Thursday that the queen would not attend in person after experiencing “some discomfort” at the Trooping the Color parade earlier in the day.

Jun 03, 6:05 am
Prince Harry and Meghan reunite publicly with royal family

Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have arrived at St. Paul’s Cathedral, marking the first time the couple has appeared publicly with the royal family in two years.

For the occasion, Meghan wore a white belted coat dress, matching hat and gloves, and Harry wore a tailored black dress jacket featuring his military medals and pinstripe pants. They were greeted by a guard of honor and then the Very Reverend Dr. David Ison on the cathedral’s western steps.

The Sussexes stepped down from their roles as senior working members of the royal family in 2020 and later moved to California, where they live with their two children.

The couple watched the Trooping the Color parade Thursday alongside other royal family members at Buckingham Palace, but did not appear publicly.

Jun 03, 5:45 am
What to watch as royals head to church on day 2 of Platinum Jubilee celebrations

The British royal family and more than 400 invitees — including government and faith leaders, teachers, military members, and COVID-19 frontline workers — are gathering at a National Service of Thanksgiving to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s 70 years on the throne.

The 96-year-old queen will not attend the service after experiencing “some discomfort” at Thursday’s Trooping the Color parade, according to Buckingham Palace.

Other senior royals are expected to attend, including three of the queen’s four children — Princes Charles and Edward and Princess Anne. The queen’s son, Prince Andrew tested positive for COVID-19 and will not attend, a royal source told ABC News.

The service — led by the Very Reverend Dr. David Ison — is being held at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, which also hosted services for the queen’s Silver, Golden and Diamond Jubilees.

The service will include readings from the Bible, prayers and hymns that will “give thanks for the Queen’s reign, faith and lifetime of service,” according to the palace.

The Royal Marines’ band and trumpeters from the Royal Air Force and the Household Cavalry, which also performed at Prince Philip’s funeral, will play before and after the service.

A new song, titled “By Wisdom” and composed for the Platinum Jubilee, will also be performed.

How the law enforcement narrative of Uvalde school massacre has changed

June 3, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — In the immediate aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott praised the “amazing courage” of law enforcement, saying the incident that left 19 students and two teachers dead “could have been worse” if the officers hadn’t run toward the gunfire and eliminated the shooter.

But as the investigation has unfolded since the May 24 massacre at Robb Elementary School, allegedly committed by an 18-year-old wielding an AR-15-style rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, law enforcement and government officials have come under scrutiny for the twisting narrative about crucial elements of the police response.

In his press conference the day after the rampage, Abbott and officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety framed the response from police as being swift. But as more evidence has been uncovered, the timeline has been stretched from a rapid response to one that took 77 minutes from the time the shooter entered the school to when he was killed by officers.

“It’s a mess,” said Robert Boyce, retired chief of detectives for the New York Police Department and an ABC News contributor.

Boyce said that in a fluid investigation like the mass shooting in Uvalde, preliminary information is constantly changing.

“When I would do my press conferences, I would always say, ‘This is what we have right now’ and ‘it’s subject to change,'” Boyce said. “So, yes, it’s not unusual for that to happen at all. Things change all the time, or you go back and look at the video and say, ‘Alright, that didn’t match up,’ and people sometimes make assumptions that aren’t true.”

But Boyce said what has not changed is the basic tenet of the active shooter doctrine created after the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado and shared by police departments across the country.

“The bedrock issue is to immediately go in and neutralize the threat,” Boyce said. “People might say, ‘Well, the cops weren’t wearing the proper vests.’ My response to that is those kids had no vests on. So, I don’t want to hear that either.”

Here are three major issues of the Uvalde shooting in which the official narrative from law enforcement and elected leaders has dramatically changed in the 10 days since one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history occurred:

Did a school police officer engage the shooter?

In his press conference the day after the shooting, Gov. Abbott said the alleged gunman, Salvador Ramos, shot his grandmother in the face, leaving her critically injured, before fleeing in her truck and crashing into a ditch outside Robb Elementary School.

“Officers with the Consolidated Independent School District … approached the gunman and engaged with the gunman at that time,” Abbott said.

But one day later, Victor Escalon, the South Texas regional director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, contradicted Abbott’s statement.

Escalon said the school police officer wasn’t at the scene when the suspect crashed outside the school. He said the gunman fired at two witnesses from a funeral home across the street.

“He continues walking towards the school,” Escalon said of the suspect. “He climbs a fence. Now he’s in the parking lot shooting at the school multiple times.”

Citing security video outside and inside the school, Escalon said the suspect entered the school building unabated through a door on the west side of the campus.

He said numerous rounds were fired inside the school as officers were responding to the scene.

Escalon said the suspect walked 20 to 30 feet down a hallway, made a right and walked into a second hallway, made another right, walked roughly 20 more feet and turned left into a classroom that is adjoined to another classroom by a Jack-and-Jill restroom area. Police said that the children and teachers were killed in classrooms 111 and 112.

“Four minutes later, local police departments, Uvalde Police Department, the (Consolidated) Independent (School) Police Department are inside making entry,” Escalon said. “They hear gunfire. They take rounds. They move back, get cover.”

He said the officers tried to approach the locked classroom door where the shooter was, but the gunman fired at them through the door, hitting two officers. He said the officers called for additional resources, body armor, tactical teams and other equipment needed to take on the suspect.

Was the back door of the school left propped open?

On Friday, Col. Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said the door the gunman used to access the school building was left propped open by a teacher prior to the shooter entering the school.

“The teacher runs to the room, 132, to retrieve a phone, and that same teacher walks back to the exit door and the door remains propped open,” McCraw said during a press conference.

On Monday, Texas Department of Public Safety press secretary Ericka Miller confirmed to ABC News that investigators have now determined that the teacher closed the door, but that the door did not automatically lock as it was supposed to.

Don Flanary, a lawyer for the teacher, told the San Antonio Express-News that the teacher had propped the door open with a rock to carry food in from her car. He said that while the teacher was outside, she “saw the wreck” the suspect was involved in and “ran back inside to get her phone to report the crash.

As she went back out while on the phone with 911, the lawyer said, the men at the funeral home across the street from the school yelled, “He has a gun!” Flanary said.

“She saw him jump the fence and (that) he had a gun. So, she ran back inside,” the lawyer said. “She kicked the rock away when she went back in. She remembers pulling the door closed while telling 911 that he was shooting. She thought the door would lock because that door is always supposed to be locked.”

Law enforcement is looking into why the door did not lock, DPS confirmed to ABC News.

It took 77 minutes before the suspect was killed

The timeline on how quickly police responded to the shooting has changed several times, from a rapid response to about 40 minutes, to eventually 77 minutes before a SWAT team entered the classroom where the shooter was located and killed him, authorities said.

McCraw admitted on Friday that mistakes were made on the ground in response to the active shooter incident.

The missteps began before the shooting erupted at the school when a Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District police officer responding to a 911 call of a man with a gun on the school campus drove past the suspect, who was “hunkered down” behind a car in the school parking lot, McCraw said.

The gunman fired at the school multiple times before entering through the unlocked door. Police officials have given various times for when the shooter entered the school building, saying in one press conference that he gained access at 11:33 a.m., while in a different press conference they said 11:40 a.m.

McCraw said the shooter walked into a classroom and began firing more than 100 rounds.

McCraw said that by 12:03 p.m., there were as many as 19 officers in the school hallway. As the officers were outside the door, the incident commander — Chief Pete Arredondo of Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police — wrongly believed the incident had transitioned from an active shooting to a situation where the suspect had stopped firing, barricaded himself in a classroom and no longer posed a risk to children, McCraw said.

“He thought there was time to retrieve the keys and wait for a tactical team with the equipment to go ahead and breach the door and take on the subject at that point,” McCraw said. “That was the decision, that was the thought process.”

McCraw added, “Of course it wasn’t the right decision. It was the wrong decision.”

Arredondo, who was sworn in this week as a Uvalde City Council member, has yet to offer a public statement on his response to the shooting.

But Escalon said last week that children trapped inside with the killer, who was freely walking back and forth between adjoining classrooms, made numerous 911 calls pleading for help.

Law enforcement officers from multiple agencies in the area converged on the school and began evacuating children from other classrooms and away from the two rooms where the gunman was holed up. Video and photos from the scene, showed children being pulled through broken windows and running out of harm’s way.

Escalon said in one of the 911 calls from the classrooms where the mass murder was occurring, a dispatcher heard three shots in the background.

McCraw and Escalon cited numerous 911 calls coming in from students and teachers from 12:03 p.m. to 12:47 p.m., reporting that multiple students were dead, but others were alive. Escalon said at 12:47 p.m., a child called 911, begging, “Please, send police now.”

It remains unclear whether information from the 911 calls was immediately passed on to Arredondo.

At 12:50 p.m., the SWAT team from Customs and Border Protection used a key they got from a janitor, entered the classroom and killed the gunman.

Meanwhile, video has surfaced showing frantic parents outside the school as the shooting was unfolding pleading with police to go into the school and being held back by officers, some who appeared to be armed with semi-automatic rifles and wearing bulletproof vests.

“I think the biggest issue that I see is that (classroom) door,” Boyce said of the investigation into law enforcement’s response to the shooting, which is being handled by the Department of Justice. “When did it get breached? When did they get that key?”

He said most patrol cars aren’t equipped with forcible entry tools like rams, or anything to go through a locked door. But he said the officers should have asked for a sledgehammer or tools within reach to get through the door, or break windows to get into the classrooms.

“You take an oath as a police officer, there are days when you’re going to have to put yourself on the line,” Boyce said. “You do what’s necessary to end the threat.”

Citing the ongoing investigation, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District has not issued a statement on its police department’s response.

Uvalde Police Chief Daniel Rodriguez issued a statement on his department’s Facebook page last week, saying, “It is important for our community to know that our Officers responded within minutes alongside CISD officers. Responding UPD Officers sustained gunshot wounds from the suspect. Our entire department is thankful that the Officers did not sustain any life-threatening injuries.”

Rodriguez added, “I understand questions are surfacing regarding the details of what occurred. I know answers will not come fast enough during this trying time. But rest assured, that with the completion of the full investigation, I will be able to answer all the questions that we can.”

Doctors advise how to get kids 5-11 boosted when COVID vaccination rates in US are low

June 3, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Two weeks ago, federal health officials authorized COVID-19 boosters for children between ages 5 and 11.

Doctors think it will be a challenge to get this age group boosted when uptake for primary doses of the vaccine is so low, but they say town halls, providing information in multiple languages and offering the boosters in pediatricians’ office could help.

As of Thursday, only 35.9% of children under age 12 have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

An even smaller percentage, 29.2%, have been fully vaccinated.

“It absolutely should be much higher,” Dr. Stanley Spinner, chief medical officer and vice president of Texas Children’s Pediatrics and Texas Children’s Urgent Care at Texas Children’s Hospital, told ABC News. “Children can get seriously ill from COVID and children, even if they have very mild symptoms, are extremely proficient at spreading infection.”

And hesitant parents don’t seem inclined to increase these rates any time soon.

An April 2022 poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found 32% of parents of 5- to 11-year-olds said their children will definitely not get vaccinated.

What’s more, 12% said they will only get their child vaccinated if it’s required for school and 13% said they want to wait and see.

How to talk to parents about boosters

Doctors stress it’s important that children not only get a primary series but a booster too so the immune system can get a “reminder” of fighting off COVID-19.

“What the science has shown is that our immunity starts waning around the fifth or sixth month after our primary series,” Dr. Shaquita Bell, medical director of the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic, a community health center operated by Seattle Children’s, told ABC News. “Our immune system needs reminders and that’s what I think of the booster as. The booster is a reminder to help your body remember how to fight off the infection.”

To help alleviate parents’ concerns, Dr. Lalit Bajaj, chief quality and outcomes officer at Children’s Hospital Colorado, said he and his colleagues hold frequent town halls about the vaccine, sit on panels for community organizations to discuss the vaccine and provide information in other languages including Spanish.

“It’s normal to say, ‘I don’t understand this, I don’t know this, this seems brand new,’ and so you do a lot of listening as well,” he told ABC News. “So, we help folks really better understand what they need to learn to alleviate safety concerns.”

Spinner said his hospital is offering the vaccine at all outpatient facilities rather than specific hospital sites to increase vaccination and booster rates among children.

Physicians and staff also speak to parents every time a child comes into the office for a visit about the benefit of the COVID-19 vaccine and booster — even offering to administer the shots right then and there.

“I can tell you it’s made a huge difference,” he said. “When we would talk about getting the vaccine the family would have to go to one of the three hospital campuses [and] they often wouldn’t do it. But when you have the conversation in the office and you have the syringe ready to go … we are able to do a lot better in terms of getting these kids vaccinated.”

Why parents are hesitant to vaccinate their children

Bell said many adults still believe COVID-19 doesn’t impact kids severely.

“[They believe children] are at less risk of severe illness, less risk of death and, because of that, I think people are less convinced that the vaccine is necessary for children,” she said. “Whether or not the risk of getting the disease is lower in a child than it is in an adult, there is still a risk of getting the disease.”

Bell said this may be because when vaccines were first rolled out, the focus was on the elderly because of their high risk of dying from COVID-19.

“Unfortunately, it sort of backfired in that people now think kids don’t get COVID or aren’t going to get sick from COVID or won’t die from COVID,” she said. “And that’s not true. It’s certainly not at the same rate … but it’s still a possibility.”

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital Association report, as of May 26, 2022, nearly 13.4 million children have tested positive for COVID-19, almost 40,000 have been hospitalized, and over 1,000 children have died since the onset of the pandemic.

Dr. Richard Malley, a senior physician in pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases at Boston Children’s Hospital, added that booster shots are not easing the fears of hesitant parents.

“The hesitant parents are not going to become less hesitant because now we’re saying, ‘Oh, by the way, it’s not a two-dose series, it’s a three-dose series,'” he told ABC News. “Unfortunately, it makes people, in general, a little less inclined because they are like, ‘Do I really have to sign my child up to get vaccinated every five months?'”

The importance of booster shots

Malley and others think people have interpreted the rollout of boosters as a sign the vaccines are not effective.

Several studies, however, have shown that while immunity does wane, the vaccines are very effective at preventing severe disease, hospitalization and death, and this is true in children who have been vaccinated.

“What we really want out of vaccines for respiratory viruses is to keep people out of the hospital,” Bajaj said. “And if we can reframe it as, ‘Yes, your child still may get COVID, but the vaccine protects them from getting severely ill,’ I think we may have a better chance of really trying to help folks feel more comfortable with it.”

Uvalde teacher who officials mistakenly said left door open is traumatized and heartbroken, attorney says

June 3, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(UVALDE, Texas) — A teacher at Robb Elementary School has been traumatized and heartbroken since Texas officials incorrectly made initial statements claiming she left a door propped open that the Uvalde gunman used to enter the building before carrying out last week’s mass shooting, her lawyer told ABC News in an interview Thursday.

“It’s traumatic for her when it’s insinuated that she’s involved, the door open,” attorney Don Flanary, who represents the Robb Elementary School teacher, told ABC News correspondent Marcus Moore in an exclusive interview. “She’s heartbroken.”

Flanary told ABC News that prior to the shooting, the teacher walked out the door to retrieve food from a colleague outside, where she saw the gunman crash a gray Ford pickup truck, then exit the vehicle and head her way, toward the school, armed with a gun.

“She sees him throw a bag over the fence and he has the weapon, the gun, around his chest,” Flanary said. “He hops the fence and starts running at her.”

Flanary said the teacher then “immediately turns and she runs inside, kicks the rock out, slams the door.”

Back inside the school, Flanary said, she heard gunshots.

“She thought she was going to die herself. She was waiting for him to come in,” Flanary said. “Obviously she’s heartbroken with all the lives lost.”

At a press conference after the shooting, Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said that the teacher had left the door propped open prior to the gunman entering the school.

“The teacher runs to the room, 132, to retrieve a phone, and that same teacher walks back to the exit door and the door remains propped open,” McCraw said at a press conference last Friday.

But just days later the claim was walked back. Texas Department of Public Safety press secretary Ericka Miller confirmed to ABC News that investigators had determined that the teacher had closed the door — but the door did not lock.

Law enforcement is looking into why the door failed to lock, DPS confirmed to ABC News.

In the meantime, the teacher’s attorney told ABC News that his office is filing a petition for information about Daniel Defense, the company that made the assault weapon used in the attack.

“We can’t bring the kids back, but we can find out who’s responsible. We need to find the people who put the guns in his hands responsible,” he said.

South Florida braces for tropical storm Alex: What to expect on Friday

June 3, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — A tropical storm warning is in effect in Miami, Fort Myers and West Palm Beach as South Florida braces for its first storm of the Atlantic hurricane season.

This tropical system is expected to strengthen to Tropical Storm Alex as it moves toward Florida on Friday.

Alex is forecast to land near Florida’s west coast overnight.

The biggest threat from this storm is flash flooding. Rainfall rates could reach a whopping 3 inches per hour Friday night into Saturday.

Most of South Florida is forecast to get 5 to 10 inches of rain, but some areas could see 10 to 15 inches of rain.

Gusty winds of 40 to 55 mph are also expected.

But this storm should be fast-moving, leaving Florida by Saturday afternoon.

White House expects shots for kids under 5 as soon as June 21

June 3, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The White House is expecting vaccinations for kids under 5 to begin as soon as June 21, White House COVID coordinator Ashish Jha said on Thursday.

“We expect that vaccinations will begin in earnest as early as Tuesday, June 21st, and really roll on throughout that week,” Jha said in the White House briefing, though he cautioned repeatedly that the estimation hinges on the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention processes playing out as planned.

“As I talk through the process today, I want to be very clear that I am not here to prejudge the outcome of the process,” Jha said. “But the administration is hard at work planning all sorts of scenarios based on whatever the outcome is from the process that’s playing out.”

If and when vaccines are authorized and recommended, Jha said he expects appointments to be widely available within weeks.

“Our expectation is that within weeks, every parent who wants their child to get vaccinated will be able to get an appointment,” he said.

The prediction was unusually specific, particularly for a vaccine that parents have been awaiting anxiously for months. And though a late-June kickoff for kids’ vaccines is likely, there are still many steps in the authorization process before shots can be administered.

First, the FDA’s panel of advisers will meet on June 15 to review the data on kids’ vaccines from both Moderna and Pfizer. Moderna’s shot is two doses, while Pfizer’s is three.

After that meeting, the FDA can issue an authorization — which allows the federal government to start shipping doses out to states — but the process moves over to the CDC before shots can actually be administered.

The CDC’s advisory panel meets and then CDC Director Rochelle Walensky issues a recommendation, which is the final step before shots can go in arms. The CDC is expected to announce the dates for its review shortly.

On the planning front, Jha said the government would begin taking orders for vaccines starting Friday.

“We are going to make 10 million doses available to states, pharmacies and community health centers and federal entities to order initially. Starting tomorrow, states can begin to place their orders,” Jha said.

“We have asked states to distribute the initial tranche of doses to their highest priority sites, including those serving the highest risk children and hardest to reach areas. And we’ve also asked them to prioritize sites that can handle large volumes, such as children’s hospitals.”

Jha said he expects the majority of vaccinations to be administered in doctors’ offices rather than pharmacies, and he acknowledged there will likely be less demand in this age group.

A recent survey from KFF found that just under one in five parents are eager to get their children under 5 vaccinated right away.

More than a third of parents — 38% — said that they plan to wait and see how well the vaccine works for others, while 27% of parents reported they will “definitely not” get their child vaccinated, and 11% said that they will only do so if they are required.

More than half of parents said they feel they do not have enough information about the vaccines’ safety and efficacy for children under age 5, according to KFF.

Both Pfizer and Moderna have said their vaccines are safe and effective. They will be rigorously reviewed by the FDA and CDC in the coming weeks, and more vaccine company data will be made public.

Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee 2022 live updates: Royal family gathers for church service without the queen