(NEW YORK) — Fans might call it the luck of the Irish!
Singer-songwriter Niall Horan, who rose to fame as part of the international boy band sensation One Direction, will give a special performance at the White House on Friday to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre teased the star’s appearance on Thursday, tweeting, “It doesn’t get better than this!”
“I think I speak for all the music lovers in the Biden-Harris Administration when I say we cannot wait to welcome @NiallOfficial to the White House tomorrow for a special performance to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day!” she said.
But Jean-Pierre later admitted at a Thursday afternoon press briefing, “I’m going to keep my comments to myself on One Direction. I don’t know who they are. Sorry,” earning laughs from attendees.
Horan, who is from Ireland, was quick to confirm the news.
“It’s an honour to be invited and represent my country. Looking forward to performing and celebrating St. Patrick’s Day at the White House tomorrow,” the 29-year-old responded over Twitter.
President Joe Biden, who often plays up his Irish heritage, will also welcome Leo Varadkar — Ireland’s Taoiseach, or prime minister — on Friday for a bilateral meeting and shamrock bowl handover, an Oval Office tradition to mark St. Patrick’s Day dating back to 1952.
Biden also said earlier this week it was his “intention” to visit both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland to mark 25 years since the Good Friday agreement, the peace accord between Ireland and the United Kingdom.
Typically on St. Patrick’s Day, Ireland’s Taoiseach is hosted across the street from the White House at the Blair House, where the Irish flag is put on display.
Biden couldn’t meet in person with Ireland’s Taoiseach Micheál Martin last year after Martin tested positive for COVID-19 while in Washington.
While Horan hasn’t performed at the White House before, it’s not the first time he was invited. When the Obamas were in the White House, they said One Direction band members had an “open invitation” to perform there and identified daughters Sasha and Malia as big fans.
The band formed in 2010 and broke up in 2016, with members going on to pursue solo careers. Horan was the only member of the British boy band native to Ireland.
It is unclear at what time Horan will perform Friday evening.
(NEW YORK) — Giant hail has fallen in parts of Texas on Thursday as severe weather — including at least one confirmed tornado — hits the state.
The National Weather Service Fort Worth warned residents to watch out for tennis ball-sized and golf ball-sized hail amid a severe thunderstorm warning Thursday afternoon.
“Damaging wind gusts, large hail, and a few tornadoes cannot be ruled out through the evening,” National Weather Service Fort Worth tweeted.
A confirmed tornado was located over Fort Worth at 4:23 p.m. CDT, moving east at 30 mph.
Following the confirmed sighting, a tornado warning was issued for northwestern Dallas County Thursday evening, as a severe thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado moved toward the area.
A tornado watch is also in effect for parts of Texas and Oklahoma through 8 p.m. CDT Thursday.
As images of mandarin-sized hail stones cropped up on social media, the National Weather Service Fort Worth advised those looking to report them to wait until the hail stops falling before going out to find and measure the largest ones.
(NEW YORK) — The CEO behind the company that created ChatGPT believes artificial intelligence technology will reshape society as we know it. He believes it comes with real dangers, but can also be “the greatest technology humanity has yet developed” to drastically improve our lives.
“We’ve got to be careful here,” said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. “I think people should be happy that we are a little bit scared of this.”
Altman sat down for an exclusive interview with ABC News’ chief business, technology and economics correspondent Rebecca Jarvis to talk about the rollout of GPT-4 — the latest iteration of the AI language model.
In his interview, Altman was emphatic that OpenAI needs both regulators and society to be as involved as possible with the rollout of ChatGPT — insisting that feedback will help deter the potential negative consequences the technology could have on humanity. He added that he is in “regular contact” with government officials.
ChatGPT is an AI language model, the GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer.
Released only a few months ago, it is already considered the fastest-growing consumer application in history. The app hit 100 million monthly active users in just a few months. In comparison, TikTok took nine months to reach that many users and Instagram took nearly three years, according to a UBS study.
Watch the exclusive interview with Sam Altman on “World News Tonight with David Muir” at 6:30 p.m. ET on ABC.
Though “not perfect,” per Altman, GPT-4 scored in the 90th percentile on the Uniform Bar Exam. It also scored a near-perfect score on the SAT Math test, and it can now proficiently write computer code in most programming languages.
GPT-4 is just one step toward OpenAI’s goal to eventually build Artificial General Intelligence, which is when AI crosses a powerful threshold which could be described as AI systems that are generally smarter than humans.
Though he celebrates the success of his product, Altman acknowledged the possible dangerous implementations of AI that keep him up at night.
“I’m particularly worried that these models could be used for large-scale disinformation,” Altman said. “Now that they’re getting better at writing computer code, [they] could be used for offensive cyberattacks.”
A common sci-fi fear that Altman doesn’t share: AI models that don’t need humans, that make their own decisions and plot world domination.
“It waits for someone to give it an input,” Altman said. “This is a tool that is very much in human control.”
However, he said he does fear which humans could be in control. “There will be other people who don’t put some of the safety limits that we put on,” he added. “Society, I think, has a limited amount of time to figure out how to react to that, how to regulate that, how to handle it.”
President Vladimir Putin is quoted telling Russian students on their first day of school in 2017 that whoever leads the AI race would likely “rule the world.”
“So that’s a chilling statement for sure,” Altman said. “What I hope, instead, is that we successively develop more and more powerful systems that we can all use in different ways that integrate it into our daily lives, into the economy, and become an amplifier of human will.”
Concerns about misinformation
According to OpenAI, GPT-4 has massive improvements from the previous iteration, including the ability to understand images as input. Demos show GTP-4 describing what’s in someone’s fridge, solving puzzles, and even articulating the meaning behind an internet meme.
This feature is currently only accessible to a small set of users, including a group of visually impaired users who are part of its beta testing.
But a consistent issue with AI language models like ChatGPT, according to Altman, is misinformation: The program can give users factually inaccurate information.
“The thing that I try to caution people the most is what we call the ‘hallucinations problem,'” Altman said. “The model will confidently state things as if they were facts that are entirely made up.”
The model has this issue, in part, because it uses deductive reasoning rather than memorization, according to OpenAI.
“One of the biggest differences that we saw from GPT-3.5 to GPT-4 was this emergent ability to reason better,” Mira Murati, OpenAI’s Chief Technology Officer, told ABC News.
“The goal is to predict the next word – and with that, we’re seeing that there is this understanding of language,” Murati said. “We want these models to see and understand the world more like we do.”
“The right way to think of the models that we create is a reasoning engine, not a fact database,” Altman said. “They can also act as a fact database, but that’s not really what’s special about them – what we want them to do is something closer to the ability to reason, not to memorize.”
Altman and his team hope “the model will become this reasoning engine over time,” he said, eventually being able to use the internet and its own deductive reasoning to separate fact from fiction. GPT-4 is 40% more likely to produce accurate information than its previous version, according to OpenAI. Still, Altman said relying on the system as a primary source of accurate information “is something you should not use it for,” and encourages users to double-check the program’s results.
Precautions against bad actors
The type of information ChatGPT and other AI language models contain has also been a point of concern. For instance, whether or not ChatGPT could tell a user how to make a bomb. The answer is no, per Altman, because of the safety measures coded into ChatGPT.
“A thing that I do worry about is … we’re not going to be the only creator of this technology,” Altman said. “There will be other people who don’t put some of the safety limits that we put on it.”
There are a few solutions and safeguards to all of these potential hazards with AI, per Altman. One of them: Let society toy with ChatGPT while the stakes are low, and learn from how people use it.
Right now, ChatGPT is available to the public primarily because “we’re gathering a lot of feedback,” according to Murati.
As the public continues to test OpenAI’s applications, Murati says it becomes easier to identify where safeguards are needed.
“What are people using them for, but also what are the issues with it, what are the downfalls, and being able to step in [and] make improvements to the technology,” says Murati. Altman says it’s important that the public gets to interact with each version of ChatGPT.
“If we just developed this in secret — in our little lab here — and made GPT-7 and then dropped it on the world all at once … That, I think, is a situation with a lot more downside,” Altman said. “People need time to update, to react, to get used to this technology [and] to understand where the downsides are and what the mitigations can be.”
Regarding illegal or morally objectionable content, Altman said they have a team of policymakers at OpenAI who decide what information goes into ChatGPT, and what ChatGPT is allowed to share with users.
“[We’re] talking to various policy and safety experts, getting audits of the system to try to address these issues and put something out that we think is safe and good,” Altman added. “And again, we won’t get it perfect the first time, but it’s so important to learn the lessons and find the edges while the stakes are relatively low.”
Will AI replace jobs?
Among the concerns of the destructive capabilities of this technology is the replacement of jobs. Altman says this will likely replace some jobs in the near future, and worries how quickly that could happen.
“I think over a couple of generations, humanity has proven that it can adapt wonderfully to major technological shifts,” said Altman. “But if this happens, you know, in a single digit number of years, some of these shifts, that is the part I worry about the most.
But he encourages people to look at ChatGPT as more of a tool, not as a replacement. He added that “human creativity is limitless, and we find new jobs. We find new things to do.”
“I think over a couple of generations, humanity has proven that it can adapt wonderfully to major technological shifts,” Altman said. “But if this happens in a single-digit number of years, some of these shifts … That is the part I worry about the most.”
The ways ChatGPT can be used as tools for humanity outweigh the risks, according to Altman.
“We can all have an incredible educator in our pocket that’s customized for us, that helps us learn,” Altman said. “We can have medical advice for everybody that is beyond what we can get today.”
ChatGPT as ‘co-pilot’
In education, ChatGPT has become controversial, as some students have used it to cheat on assignments. Educators are torn on whether this could be used as an extension of themselves, or if it deters students’ motivation to learn for themselves.
“Education is going to have to change, but it’s happened many other times with technology,” said Altman, adding that students will be able to have a sort of teacher that goes beyond the classroom. “One of the ones that I’m most excited about is the ability to provide individual learning — great individual learning for each student.”
In any field, Altman and his team want users to think of ChatGPT as a “co-pilot,” someone who could help you write extensive computer code or problem solve.
“We can have that for every profession, and we can have a much higher quality of life, like standard of living,” Altman said. “But we can also have new things we can’t even imagine today — so that’s the promise.”
(NEW YORK) — The number of new cases of babesiosis, a tick-borne illness, increased significantly between 2011 and 2019 in the United States, a new CDC report found. It’s also spreading consistently in three new states — now, the disease is endemic in 10 states in the Northeast and Midwest.
The increase isn’t surprising, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, in an email to ABC News. It’s consistent with what experts are seeing with other tick-borne diseases, like Lyme disease.
There are likely multiple factors behind the increases, including human behavior and warmer weather. More people are moving to areas with ticks and are interacting with animals (like deer and mice) that the ticks feed on, Chin-Hong said. Climate change may also be playing a role, he says. “A warmer climate may increase tick survival, shorten the life cycle of ticks (so many more cycles possible in a season) and increase the duration of tick season.”
Usually, the parasite infects humans after being bitten by certain ticks. These ticks are commonly found in wooded, bushy or grassy areas. They are most likely to bite during the spring, summer and fall, though adult ticks may still bite during the winter if temperatures are above freezing. While there is no vaccine available, the disease can be prevented by limiting tick exposure.
Once infected, symptoms can vary. Symptoms can range from none at all to fevers, headaches, kidney failure, and even death. In 2019, there were a total of eight deaths reported. According to the CDC, patients with symptoms can be treated with a combination of antibiotics and antiparasitic drugs.
Before this new report, the CDC only considered seven U.S. states to have consistent number of babesiosis. This included Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. However, the newly released data shows that Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont have similar or higher number of new cases.
Between 2011 and 2019, 16,456 cases of babesiosis were reported in 37 states, according to the report. Most cases overall were reported in New York (4,738). The highest incidence was reported in Rhode Island (18 cases per 100,000 people in 2015). Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire had the largest increase in the number of new cases. Rates of new cases increased in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.
In addition to changes in human behavior and climate, there has also been increased awareness of babesiosis in the past decade, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins Center for Health and Security, in an email to ABC News. That may also contribute to the increased number of cases. “More clinicians are ordering tests,” he said. With testing, doctors started to find cases in new areas.
Preventing babesiosis and other tick-borne illnesses
People should be aware of their risk of contracting babesiosis when traveling or living in areas where the illness is more common. The best way to prevent tick-borne illnesses is avoiding ticks. People can minimize tick exposure by covering exposed skin, using repellants and walking on cleared paths in wooded areas, the CDC says.
Anyone spending time outside in areas where there might be ticks should check their body, clothing, and pets for ticks after coming inside, the CDC says. Showering within 2 hours of being outdoors and putting clothes in the dryer on high heat can also prevent tick bites.
If you do find a tick, pull it straight out with tweezers.
Babesiosis isn’t the only disease ticks can carry — they can also spread Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and anaplasmosis.
People should seek medical attention if they happen to fall ill after a tick bite, Chin-Hong says.
Lauren M. Cuénant, D.O., is a Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation resident at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital and a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
(NEW YORK) — A new double lung transplant technique was successful for two patients with lung cancer, Northwestern Medicine announced. The hospital said it’s leveraging that success into a new clinical program that will offer transplants to patients with end-stage lung cancer.
“Every morning when I open my eyes, like, I just can’t believe it, and life has different meaning now,” said Tannaz Ameli, the second person with lung cancer to receive the transplant, during a press briefing.
Lung cancer is currently the third most common type of cancer in the United States after skin cancer first, and breast cancer in women and prostate cancer in men second, according to the CDC. Yet more people die from lung cancer than any other type of cancer.
Treatment for lung cancer mostly depends on how much that cancer has spread. Patients may be treated with targeted medications, chemotherapy, radiation or surgery to remove the tumor. But those treatments don’t always work, and for some people, a lung transplant is their only option.
Single lung transplants have been successfully performed since the 1980s, and now, more than 1500 single lung transplants happen each year, according to the CDC. But lung transplants for lung cancer aren’t common.
That’s because there’s a high risk that cancer cells will spread from the lung into the rest of the body during the procedure — making it more likely the cancer will come back, said Dr. Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery and director of Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute, in a press release.
When a patient needs both lungs replaced, the lungs are usually removed one after the other, Bharat said. If the first lung is transplanted while the other cancerous lung is still in the body, there’s a risk of the cancer spreading from that lung to the rest of the body, he said.
But Northwestern Medicine’s surgery team found a way to minimize that risk. Their approach allows surgeons to remove the cancerous lung from the body while the patient is hooked up to a bypass machine, which diverts their blood away from the heart and lungs. If blood doesn’t flow through the cancer during the surgery, the risk of the cancer spreading is less.
“We feel quite confident that we’ll be able to help some patients with no other options,” said Bharat. He said that the surgery involves “delicately taking both cancer-ridden lungs out at the same time along with the lymph nodes, washing the airways and the chest cavity to clear the cancer, and then putting new lungs in.”
He added, “These patients can have billions of cancer cells in the lungs, so we must be extremely meticulous to not let a single cell spill into the patient’s chest cavity or blood stream.”
The team at Northwestern Medicine first used the technique on Albert Khoury, a man from Chicago who came to them in 2021 after chemotherapy failed to treat his stage 4 lung cancer. His condition continued to worsen, and he ended up in the intensive care unit, according to a press release.
His doctor at Northwestern Medicine, oncologist Dr. Young Chae, said that a double lung transplant may be his only hope. Without one, Chae said Khoury wasn’t expected to live more than a year.
So, on Sept. 25, 2021, after 2 weeks on the transplant list, Khoury became the first person with lung cancer to have a successful double lung transplant.
One year later, Ameli, who lived in Minnesota, was also diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. She said that she tried chemotherapy, but just like for Albert Khoury, it wasn’t enough. Her husband had seen a video about Khoury’s procedure, she said, and he scheduled an appointment with a surgeon at Northwestern Medicine. She was a candidate — and received the second successful double lung transplant in July 2022.
“We’re so happy,” Ameli said at the press briefing. “I’m back. I did it. I made it.”
Because of those successes, Northwestern Medicine is launching a first-of-its-kind clinical program for people with end-stage lung disease.
The program plans to follow the outcomes of its first 75 patients who receive double lung transplants for lung cancer in a new research registry called DREAM (Double Lung Transplant Registry Aimed for Lung-limited Malignancies). While patients can receive a double lung transplant as a part of the clinical program without enrolling in the voluntary DREAM research registry, researchers hope to use the data to follow overall survival, disease-free survival and transplant rejection rates.
“I hope that all cancer patients can be as lucky as me and Albert were,” Ameli said. “Every day we wake up and we’re thankful for it.”
Aerial Petty, DO, is a family medicine resident at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center and a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
(WASHINGTON) — After six recent close calls between commercial airliners, the Federal Aviation Administration says it will work to require all cockpit voice recorders (CVRs), often called black boxes, to capture 25 hours of information.
If ultimately finalized, that would be an increase from current regulations, which only require CVRs to record for two hours, and mark a major win for the National Transportation Safety Board, which has been pushing for the requirement since 2018.
The FAA said Thursday it would also establish an Aviation Rulemaking Committee to explore how to make greater use of data gathered by airplanes and their systems, including expanded flight data monitoring.
“We welcome any tools or resources Congress wants to provide to help us do this expeditiously,” the agency said in a statement.
In at least six of the most recent close calls involving commercial planes in the U.S. being investigated by the FAA and NTSB, CVR data is not available.
Under the current requirements, CVRs tape for at least two hours at a time and then new data begins to overwrite the previous recording. Aviation officials rely on CVRs in their investigations.
“When we use the cockpit voice recorder, we download it, we transcribe it and so we use that information to help supplement other data that we have, like from a flight data recorder,” Lorenda Ward, chief of the NTSB’s Air Carrier and Space Investigations Division, said in an interview with ABC News last month.
Ward cited one such close call in New York City in January.
On Jan. 13, an American Airlines flight crossed a runway at New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport without clearance from air traffic control, causing a Delta Air Lines plane to abort its takeoff from that runway, according to the NTSB. The closest point between the two aircraft was about 1,400 feet, a preliminary report from the agency stated.
“The reason it’s important, I use the American Airlines recent one at JFK, is that we have a crew who cross over an active runway not aware, they take off and they continue on to London … and the CVR gets overwritten,” Ward said. “So now we have to rely on crew statements to find out what was going on in the cockpit — whereas if we have a cockpit voice recorder, we can kind of hear that occurring in real time, like if there’s any kind of discussion, if there’s any distraction noises, communications with [air traffic control], anything that might be occurring there in the cockpit.”
The NTSB recently subpoenaed the crew of that American Airlines flight after they “refused” three requests for interviews. The NTSB said the crew “refused to be interviewed on the basis that their statements would be audio recorded for transcription.”
“The transcripts of each flight crew member’s account of the activities and conversation leading up to the runway incursion is particularly important in the absence of a cockpit voice recording,” the NTSB said in a statement.
The crew subsequently agreed to be interviewed in compliance with the subpoena.
“Twenty-five-hour CVRs don’t just help all of us learn from accidents and incidents, it helps operators improve safety,” NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said during a safety summit convened by the FAA on Wednesday. “The fact is, Europe has mandated 25 hours … for over a year. We should do the same.”
ABC News’ Clara McMichael and Sam Sweeney contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Last month, the door to Yubrank Suazo’s cell in a Nicaraguan prison flung open in the middle of the night as officers told him to put on his clothes and gather his personal items. Recalling that moment in a recent interview, Suazo said the officers did not tell him or the other 221 prisoners they gathered in similar fashion where they were going, even as they put them on busses with covered windows.
“I thought I was going to be transferred to another cell or another prison,” Suazo told ABC News this week. “I never imagined I was going to be liberated.”
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s government released those 222 people and sent them to the U.S. on Feb. 9.
The group included political prisoners like Suazo, an opposition leader who was detained after organizing protests. A senior Biden administration official said at the time that the Nicaraguan government had “decided unilaterally” to end their detention and the U.S. “facilitated transportation of those individuals once released.”
The release of the prisoners has reignited calls from advocates for President Joe Biden’s administration to redesignate and extend Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for thousands of Nicaraguans who may be at risk of being deported back to their country at a time of political turbulence there.
Suazo was jailed in Nicaragua in 2018 after participating in and organizing anti-government protests. He was released nine months later but was arrested again in 2022 and sentenced to 10 years in prison for undermining national integrity and spreading misinformation.
He told ABC News he was subjected to physical and psychological torture in detention.
In recent weeks, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, at least 272 organizations and Suazo have urged the administration to protect Nicaraguans through TPS.
“I’m going to continue to raise my voice for the Nicaraguan community that has had to leave home because of oppression and persecution,” Suazo said. “I’ve lived through that pain, and that’s why I’m calling on the Biden administration to approve TPS for Nicaraguans who have no guarantee of returning to our county safely.”
TPS is issued by the secretary of Homeland Security when countries are deemed too unsafe for their citizens to return — like in Afghanistan, after the Taliban took control of the national government there in 2021.
The protections, which prevent deportation but don’t lead to citizenship, were first granted to Nicaraguans after Hurricane Mitch devastated Central America in 1998. In 2017, the Trump administration moved to end TPS for Nicaragua and several other countries, saying it wasn’t necessary any longer because those countries were recovering.
That prompted a series of legal challenges on behalf of current TPS holders and the designation for Nicaragua, Sudan, Haiti, and El Salvador has been extended while a preliminary injunction in the case remains in place pending further judicial review.
Only those Nicaraguan immigrants who physically resided in the U.S. before Jan. 5, 1999, are shielded under the program from the threat of deportation. There were 4,250 Nicaraguan TPS beneficiaries in the U.S. as of 2021, according to a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services congressional report.
Suazo and others who support extending the protections are calling on the Biden administration to redesignate the program with a later eligibility cutoff date, which they say would extend it to thousands of more Nicaraguans.
In a February letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, 16 Republican and Democratic lawmakers from multiple states noted that more than 500 Nicaraguans have been killed in Nicaragua since 2018 and tens of thousands have fled the country, which the lawmakers linked to the opposition to Ortega and resulting crackdown.
The lawmakers warned that failure to protect Nicaraguans through TPS would mean some would have to leave the U.S. for life under “President Ortega’s authoritarian regime,” which they called an “unconscionable reality.”
Both the White House and Department of Homeland Security declined to comment when asked if they’re considering redesignating TPS for Nicaragua.
Biden’s immigration policies have been a point of contention, among Republicans and some advocates, as the administration has sought to mitigate a record number of migrants arriving in the country at the southern border.
While the White House says it wants to roll back the hardline stances of predecessor Donald Trump, conservatives have assailed some of its policies as “reckless” and immigration supporters have criticized other decisions, such as restrictions to asylum claims.
In fiscal year 2022, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered migrants over 2.7 million times. At the southern border, CBP had 163,876 encounters with Nicaraguan migrants, more than triple the year before.
The Biden administration recently announced a new parole program to accept up to 30,000 total asylum-seekers each month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. However, the program was coupled with an agreement from Mexico to accept migrants who are expelled by the U.S. when they fail to meet the strict parole requirements, such as having a sponsor in the U.S. who can be financially responsible for them.
Some Republican-led states are challenging the parole program, saying it incentivizes more migrants to come to the U.S.
Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney representing TPS holders under the preliminary injunction, said that if the Biden administration thinks immigrants fleeing a specific country warrant parole, they should also warrant protection through TPS.
“The administration obviously recognizes that Nicaragua is not safe for, at least, many people,” Arulanantham said.
Advocates argue that with ex-President Trump running for reelection, Biden is running out of time to act on an issue that has for decades stymied Congress.
“In the absence of congressional action, this is one of the most valuable tools that they can use at this moment to offer protections to people who really call America their home at this point and can’t return to some to these countries which are in deteriorating conditions,” said Beatriz Lopez, chief political and communications officer at Immigration Hub.
Now in the U.S., Suazo has humanitarian parole for about two years but may be at risk of removal if the administration does not redesignate TPS for Nicaragua.
The fear of not being able to safely return to his homeland to see his elderly parents is what worries him the most, he said.
“I pray each day that I’ll return one day and find them alive waiting to give me a hug,” he said. “All of us who have left our country due to a cowardly dictatorship share that feeling.”
(NEW YORK) — Ford announced this week that it is recalling more than 1.2 million of its vehicles over a serious issue with its brake fluid hoses.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Ford Fusions and Lincoln MKXs sold between 2013 and 2018 have an issue where the front brake hoses may rupture and leak brake fluid.
“A brake fluid leak will increase brake pedal travel and extend the distance needed to stop the vehicle, increasing the risk of [a] crash,” the NHTSA said.
Owners will be notified about the recall in letters, the agency said. Dealers will replace the front brake hoses, free of charge, according to the NHTSA.
Owners can contact Ford at 1-866-436-7332, and ask about recall 23S12, or contact the NHTSA at 1-888-327-4236.
(NEW YORK) — During a thorough investigation into her husband’s murder, police repeatedly heard Nikki Entzel’s ever-changing story about what happened to her husband, often contradicting the evidence they had collected.
“20/20” was granted exclusive access to a one-on-one conversation with the woman recently convicted of conspiring to kill her husband, Chad Entzel, to ask her about details from the case. During the interview, Entzel maintained her innocence.
A new 20/20 episode titled, “The Last Strike,” set to premiere Friday, March 17, at 9 p.m. ET and streaming on Hulu the next day, will explore the case.
“Do I eventually want to figure out what happened? Yes. I wish I had every resource in the world to figure out what really happened? Yes, I do,” Nikki Entzel told ABC News’ John Quiñones. “Do I have every resource in the world to figure out what happened? No. Nobody does.”
On the evening of January 2, 2020, authorities were alerted to a report of a fire at the home of Chad and Nikki Sue Entzel.
When the fire department reached the Entzel household that fateful day, they were met by more than just a smoky home – they found Chad Entzel himself, dead in the bedroom.
Friends and family remembered Chad Entzel as an avid bowler, darts player, and stock car racer, and they said Nikki Entzel enjoyed owning a baking business. They lived with Nikki Entzel’s two sons from previous relationships on the quiet outskirts of Bismarck, North Dakota.
For a time, authorities couldn’t quite put their finger on how Chad Entzel had died. After finding two gunshot wounds and traces of fire accelerant, they concluded foul play was involved.
An in-depth investigation led to the trial and conviction of his wife – and another person, Earl Howard, a married man from Canada with whom she had recently started an affair, police said. Authorities theorized they hoped to abscond with the insurance money and move to Texas together.
Howard ended up pleading guilty to various charges, including conspiracy to commit murder and arson. In making the plea deal, prosecutors agreed to drop a murder charge. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in February 2022.
Nikki Entzel, however, faced a trial. She was convicted in October 2022 of conspiracy to commit arson, conspiracy to commit murder, and conspiracy to tamper with physical evidence, and in February 2023, she was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Authorities were unable to determine which of the two defendants shot Chad Entzel.
When asked if Howard pulled the trigger, Nikki Entzel told Quiñones she “wasn’t there” and “can’t say that for one hundred percent.” Howard denied to authorities that he pulled the trigger.
Nikki Entzel claimed to Quiñones that she was out on a walk when the trigger was pulled – in the middle of the night – at a hotel across town, in freezing temperatures. Nikki Entzel said she left for a walk from the hotel room around 1 a.m., and “did not stop continuously stepping until 2:42 AM.”
However, when police questioned Nikki Entzel in the days after Chad Entzel’s murder, she offered an entirely different scenario. Nikki Entzel told police in early 2020 that she was at the house and heard gunshots on the night of the murder.
Nikki Entzel acknowledged in her interview with ABC News that her various alibis over the last two years don’t always align.
“My story changes so many different times,” she said, “that none of them are really consistent.”
Julie Lawyer, the Burleigh County State’s Attorney who prosecuted the Entzel case, described to ABC News Nikki Entzel’s various stories throughout the investigation.
“There was no telling [the investigators] what they wanted to hear,” Lawyer said. “It was telling them what she thought she could get away with.”
Aaron Silbernagel, former Sergeant with the Burleigh County Sheriff’s Department, described his method of breaking down Nikki Entzel’s many stories.
“I didn’t correct her on them always,” Silbernagel told ABC News. “I would just keep pointing out that I know more, and then have her explain it.”
Among her denials was Nikki Entzel’s characterization of her relationship with Howard. Authorities said they had clear evidence that Entzel lied in her interrogations about their relationship. Investigators discovered surveillance video that showed Nikki Entzel and Howard kissing publicly before leaving a local Walmart, days before the murder was committed.
When ABC News asked about this romantic entanglement, Entzel denied it and claimed Howard was “not my type.”
“I didn’t see no kiss given at all,” she initially told ABC News, though she later seemed to concede in the same interview that a kiss could have happened. “I don’t know, he leaned down, I leaned up,” Nikki Entzel said. “Have I kissed many friends on the cheek? Have I kissed my kids on the cheek? Have I kissed exes on the cheek? Yeah.”
“20/20” also acquired never-before-seen footage of Howard speaking with investigators, where he told authorities his version of events.
Howard is seen in the video claiming that he did have a romantic relationship with Nikki Entzel.
“I took a trip to Minnesota,” Howard said, “and she met me in Minneapolis. We went to the Mall of America. And that’s where the affair started.”
Howard claimed to authorities that Nikki Entzel went into the house and shot her husband, but that he later offered to “take care of it” for her by burning evidence.
Nikki Entzel’s attorney, Thomas Glass, has filed the initial paperwork to start the appeals process.
(DICKSON, N.D.) — A pet monkey was shot in Oklahoma this week after it escaped its owners and attacked a woman, ripping off part of her ear, police said.
Brittany Parker told local reporters she was sitting on her couch on March 12 when she saw the primate on her front porch. At first, the monkey was pacing up and down but then started jumping off the railing into her screen door, she said.
The money tried to get in and tried to rip off the door handle, so Parker said she called 911.
When officers and animal control officials arrived at the scene the monkey jumped on the control vehicle and then back on the porch where Parker and her son were standing, the Dickson Police Department said.
The monkey then crawled up Parker’s back, police said.
“[The monkey] yanked out multiple wads of hair and then ripped my ear in half,” Parker told local affiliate KTEN.
The primate fled into nearby woods while Parker was transported to the hospital, police said.
Officers were able to locate and speak with the monkey’s owners who went out to search for the primate, however, they were unsuccessful in finding it, according to police.
One of Parker’s family members found the monkey later in the day around her home and shot it, police said.
The animal’s remains were sent for testing, according to investigators.
It is legal for Oklahoma residents to own primates without a special permit or license, with the exception of chimpanzees and great apes, according to state law.
Parker, who was still recovering from the attack, said she is concerned about the safety of the neighborhood.
“I think there needs to be some law that is passed where you have training as well as a certificate to even hold these types of animals,” she said.
