(NEW YORK) — Weekly flu cases, hospitalizations and deaths have nearly doubled for the second week in a row, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
So far this season, there have been at least 2.8 million illnesses, 23,000 hospitalizations and 1,300 deaths from influenza.
By comparison, the prior week’s estimates had illnesses at 1.6 million, hospitalizations at 13,000 and deaths at 730.
Additionally, the cumulative hospitalization rate currently sits at 5 per 100,000, which is the highest at this point in the season since the 2010-11 season, as far back as statistics are available.
What’s more, 6,465 new patients were admitted to hospital this past week with flu complications, according to the CDC, compared to 4,326 the previous week.
Fourteen states — mostly in the southeast and south-central regions of the U.S. — as well as New York City and Washington, D.C., are reporting “very high” levels of influenza-like activity.
Experts have stressed that getting the flu shot is the best way to protect Americans from severe illness and death, but vaccine uptake has been sluggish in comparison with previous flu seasons during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to CDC data, flu vaccination among children remains similar to last season but is lower than two years ago.
As of the week ending Oct. 22, the latest date for which data is available, 24.8% have been vaccinated against flu in comparison with 32.1% at this time in October 2020.
CDC data shows that flu vaccinations among pregnant women are much lower compared to previous seasons.
At the end of September, the latest date for which data is available, 21% of pregnant women were vaccinated against the flu. By comparison, 26.4% had been vaccinated by the end of September 2021 and 38% had been at the end of September 2020.
This is especially concerning because pregnant women are more likely to fall severely ill and die compared to women who are not pregnant.
Receiving a flu shot can lower a pregnant woman’s risk of being hospitalized from flu by around 40%, according to the CDC.
Additionally, a recent study jointly conducted by the CDC and the University of Auckland, in New Zealand, found that women who receive a flu vaccine have a lower risk of complications, including premature birth, low birthweight and stillbirth.
The newest data comes as the U.S. experiences a surge of respiratory illnesses, including respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.
Data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed 78% of the estimated 40,000 pediatric hospital beds in the country are filled with patients — the highest figure recorded in two years.
ABC News’ Sony Salzman and Eric Strauss contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A bus carrying 18 children in Kentucky crashed Monday morning, causing multiple injuries, according to police officials.
Kentucky State Police said the school bus exited the roadway on state Route 40 when it went over the embankment injuring the students and the bus driver.
According to Magoffin County Schools Superintendent Chris Meadows, the students and the driver suffered minor to severe injuries and were sent to local area hospitals by ambulance and helicopter.
Some students were taken to the hospital by their parents, Kentucky police said. No fatalities were reported following the crash.
“Kentucky State Police is on the scene and we are responding swiftly,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said in a statement on Facebook. “Please join me in praying for all those involved. We will continue to share updates as available.”
According to police officials, the students’ ages ranged from elementary to high school-aged kids. Before the crash, the bus was en route dropping off students at various schools. The school bus did not have any seatbelts, Kentucky police said.
Officials are investigating the crash.
ABC News’ Ahmad Hemingway contributed to this report.
(UVALDE, Texas) — The Uvalde school district foundation tasked with building a school to replace Robb Elementary announced its proposal Monday to build a new $50 million school two miles from the site of the massacre that took 21 lives this past May.
“This was a really emotional experience for me, and I think many of the other committee members,” Natalia Arias, co-chair of the community advisory committee for the project, said Monday night during a presentation of the proposal. “We had to really think hard about what types of people needed to feel the safest and the most proud of the space.”
The proposal for the new school includes 39 classrooms across three grade levels, three science and technology rooms, two art rooms and 14 special education classrooms. The proposed site is next to Flores Elementary, an existing pre-K through first-grade school.
The proposal will be presented to the school board for approval Wednesday, when community members can share their opinions. Approximately 50 people attended the presentation Monday, including some school board members and the interim superintendent, Gary Patterson.
The group has not proposed a name for the new school, instead saying that process will take more time. The current Robb Elementary School building will be demolished, but plans to redevelop the site have yet to be released.
“The committee recognizes that not keeping the school at its current location could create a void in the local neighborhood,” Eulalio “Lalo” Diaz, a committee representative, said. “The redevelopment of the Robb site has to be thoughtful and include the wide range of stakeholders necessary to get that right.”
Robb Elementary School has a history before the May shooting. In 1970, it was involved in one of the largest demonstrations in the Chicano rights movement: a walkout protesting the firing of a beloved teacher. That history wasn’t mentioned during the proposal presentation Monday, but a spokesperson for the Charles Butt Foundation acknowledged that the activism history at Robb Elementary is something the committee has been considering.
Arias said they are working on creating “a campus that reflects the richness of the community’s culture.”
Huckabee Architects, the architecture firm that has donated a value of $8 million of their labor to the project plans, to break ground on the school in June 2023. The school will be finished in October 2024, according to the project principal, Jeff Rodriguez.
The school will be funded by donations. According to the foundation’s executive director, Tim Miller, they have secured $18 million in donations so far. This includes $10 million from the Charles Butt Foundation, the philanthropic organization of the CEO of the popular Texas supermarket chain HEB.
The prevalence of bailouts — high-speed car chases between law enforcement and immigrants crossing the border — was considered in the school’s location and design, according to the presentation. The frequency of bailouts fed a diminished sense of urgency when responding to the scene during the shooting, according to the Texas investigative report in the wake of the mass shooting.
The new school will be informed by this past but provide hope for the future, too, said committee member Bryan Perez.
“I was very cautious on, are we going to be able to embrace all the different aspects of reflecting why we’re here but also being able to move forward?” Perez said. “Knowing that we’re going to be working on creating a facility for our community that’s gonna last for nearly a century.”
Uvalde:365 is a continuing ABC News series reported from Uvalde and focused on the Texas community and how it forges on in the shadow of tragedy.
(NEW YORK) — A flood of fake accounts impersonating public figures and brands overtook Twitter last week after the launch of paid verification badges, raising fears about the supercharged spread of misinformation.
Some of the misinformation carried high stakes. A fake Eli Lilly profile garnered at least 15,000 likes for a false post announcing that the diabetes drug insulin would be given away for free. Twitter ultimately suspended the user.
A slew of other impostor accounts posed as basketball star LeBron James, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, gaming company Nintendo of America and even Tesla, the electric vehicle maker run by Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk.
Twitter Blue, the newly revamped subscription service that allows users to access verification if they pay $8 a month, appeared to be unavailable on the company’s Apple iOS app for at least some users on Friday – just two days after its debut.
Before the launch of paid verification, Musk said the service would elevate users who lack the prominence previously required to attain a blue check mark. “Widespread verification will democratize journalism & empower the voice of the people,” he said.
Still, users who subscribed to the service have retained their blue check marks, leaving open the possibility of more impostors. To address the problem, Twitter has temporarily restricted verified accounts from changing their display names, the company said.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Here are some simple ways to identify fake accounts on Twitter:
Click the blue check mark on the profile page
Twitter offers one surefire way to determine whether a prankster has replicated a prominent account.
The technique depends on the prior rules governing verification. Previously, Twitter verified celebrities, politicians, journalists and prominent figures on a case-by-case basis using a government-issued ID in an effort to prevent impersonation. Users who accessed verification under the old system retained their blue check mark after the change.
In turn, Twitter allows users to easily determine whether an account was authenticated under the previous, rigorous system or under the relatively lax current one. If the account appears prominent but received verification through the subscription service, then it’s almost certainly a fraud.
If a user navigates to the profile page of the account in question, he or she can click the blue check mark that appears next to the account’s name.
After clicking the check mark, a pop-up box delivers one of two messages. If Twitter authenticated the account under the previous model, the message says: “This account is verified because it’s notable in government, news, entertainment, or another designated category.”
If Twitter verified the account through the $8 paid verification service, the message says: “This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue.”
If a purportedly prominent account was verified under Twitter Blue, it’s quite likely a fake.
Assess the number of followers
Typically, accounts belonging to well-known figures or brands boast a large number of followers. Musk, for instance, counts 115.5 million followers; while Walmart carries more than a million followers.
If an account claims to be a prominent figure or business but lacks a significant number of followers, that’s a dead giveaway that the user in question is likely a fake.
Check the profile picture
Another hint for account sleuths centers on the profile picture. Oftentimes, a fake account features a stock image or no image at all.
By contrast, authentic accounts offer high-quality images or authentic logos that mark the account as legitimate.
Look for a bio
Similarly, fake or bot accounts often forgo the inclusion of a bio, personal information that appears on a profile page below an account’s username.
Prominent users, however, almost always include a tagline or resume as part of their profile.
Closely examine the spelling of the username
A sneaky tactic deployed by fake accounts relies on close mirroring of the official account’s username.
Soon after the launch of Twitter Blue, a fake account popped up mimicking the streaming service Apple TV+, but the fraud carried a very slight modification.
The username for the streaming service appears as @AppleTVPlus but the impostor simply replaced the second “l” with a capitalized “i,” making the fake name appear almost identical as: @AppleTVPIus.
The lesson: Look very closely at the username of a potential fake, or even copy-paste the two usernames into a different interface that allows for easier comparison.
(NEW YORK) — Federal prosecutors in New York said Monday they have declined to file criminal charges against former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, more than a year after his apartment and office were searched by the FBI.
The grand jury investigation has concluded “and that based on information currently available to the Government, criminal charges are not forthcoming,” prosecutors said in a letter to the court.
Prosecutors asked the court to end the appointment of Barbara S. Jones, the retired federal judge who had been appointed special master in the case.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan had been deciding whether Giuliani, one of Trump’s lawyers and a close adviser, violated lobbying laws when he campaigned for the ouster of then-U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch from Ukraine.
The FBI seized more than a dozen devices from Giuliani’s home and office during a search in April 2021. Jones had been reviewing the contents.
Giuliani “was very pleased” when he learned Monday he would face no foreign lobbying charges, his attorney told ABC News.
The attorney, Bob Costello, said he informed Giuliani shortly after the U.S. attorney’s office issued its letter.
“We are very pleased that they did this,” Costello said. “I’m not surprised that they did this because I saw the evidence, or lack thereof, and knew Rudy Giuliani didn’t do anything wrong.”
“They deviated from office policy by issuing a statement like this, which is very nice, because there’s a memorialization now that Rudy Giuliani didn’t do anything wrong in Ukraine.” Costello added he wished prosecutors had done it sooner.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment beyond the letter that was filed on the public docket.
Costello had denied any wrongdoing by his client speaking to ABC News at the time Giuliani’s home and office were raided last year.
“They’re trying to make Rudy Giuliani look like a criminal. He has done nothing wrong,” Costello said in April 2021.
On April 28, 2021, Giuliani was awoken by federal agents at 6 a.m. at his home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Costello told ABC News. Agents took electronic devices, including Giuliani’s cellphone, while at his office they seized devices, including a computer belonging to longtime Giuliani assistant Jo Ann Zafonte, Costello said.
Giuliani, though he is now off the hook in the Southern District of New York, he remains a target of criminal investigators in Georgia over his role in seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
ABC News’ Lucien Bruggeman, Olivia Rubin, Mark Crudele and John Santucci contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The House Jan. 6 committee said Monday it was evaluating all of its options after former President Donald Trump sued to block a subpoena from the panel for documents and testimony.
“Former President Trump has failed to comply with the Select Committee’s subpoena requiring him to appear for a deposition today,” the committee chair, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, and Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair, said in a statement.
“Even though the former President initially suggested that he would testify before the committee, he has since filed a lawsuit asking the courts to protect him from giving testimony,” Thompson and Cheney said.
They said that Trump’s “attorneys have made no attempt to negotiate an appearance of any sort, and his lawsuit parades out many of the same arguments that courts have rejected repeatedly over the last year. The truth is that Donald Trump, like several of his closest allies, is hiding from the Select Committee’s investigation and refusing to do what more than a thousand other witnesses have done.”
Trump’s attorneys have described a different situation.
In their lawsuit, his lawyers argued that he retained immunity as a former president and that while other presidents and former presidents have voluntarily agreed to testify before Congress, his legal team claimed that no president has been compelled to do so.
They described the committee subpoena as “invalid” because they said it did not further a legislative purpose and claimed it was overly broad and infringed on his First Amendment rights.
Thompson told reporters Monday night that Trump’s lawsuit “kinda puts everything on hold right now” and said the committee will “take a position at some point.”
Thompson didn’t rule out a vote to hold Trump in contempt but said the panel first needed to determine how it plans to respond to the lawsuit.
“I’m saying the first thing we do is see how we address the lawsuit and at some point after that, we’ll address the path forward,” he said.
Committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told ABC News that “our three general avenues for potential response are referral for criminal contempt, an effort to get a court to compel participation through a civil contempt proceeding and then exercising inherent powers of contempt of Congress, which we haven’t done yet.”
“Beyond that, we can use the general social-shaming mechanisms of American political culture to raise the point that everybody should be complying with the law, including former presidents of the United States,” Raskin said.
The Jan. 6 committee had extended the deadline for Trump to comply with their documents request by one week. The initial deadline was Nov. 4.
The committee also asked Trump to appear for a deposition on Monday.
As ABC News previously reported, this move was expected by Trump’s team to attempt to run out the clock on the subpoena before Republicans potentially retook the House following the 2022 midterm elections.
With some midterm results still outstanding, ABC News estimates that the GOP could gain the majority in the chamber in January, though control has not been projected.
(PHOENIX) — Democrat Katie Hobbs is projected to win her race against Republican Kari Lake, ABC News reports, flipping the Arizona governor’s seat for the first time in more than a decade as voters across the nation appear to have delivered a stunning rejection of election deniers and extremists in midterm contests.
After her projected victory, Hobbs said in a statement, in part: “I want to thank the voters for entrusting me with this immense responsibility. It is truly an honor of a lifetime, and I will do everything in my power to make you proud. I want to thank my family, our volunteers, and campaign staff. Without all of your hard work, passion, and sacrifice this night would not be possible. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
“For the Arizonans who did not vote for me, I will work just as hard for you – because even in this moment of division, I believe there is so much more that connects us,” she said, adding, “Let’s get to work.”
Hobbs, the incumbent secretary of state, cast her matchup with Lake as a choice between sanity and “chaos.”
“Do we want to elect a governor whose entire platform boils down to being a sore loser — or a governor who’s going to get the job done for Arizona?” Hobbs said on the campaign trail, calling Lake her “election-denying, media-hating, conspiracy-loving, chaos-causing opponent.”
Hobbs served eight years in the Arizona Legislature before being elected secretary of state and gaining prominence in 2020 with her defense of Arizona’s voting system against a barrage of baseless fraud accusations that then-President Donald Trump and his allies thrust in the national spotlight. This heightened profile helped her sail through the Democratic primary, but polling had shown her statistically tied with — if not behind — Lake leading up to the election.
“It’s called ‘battleground’ for a reason,” Hobbs would say of their race.
Lake, among Trump’s favorite endorsees, left her job as a local TV news anchor last year, citing discontent with the media, and months later announced a bid for governor, saying God and Arizona voters called on her to run. Lake pitched herself as “ultra MAGA” and a “mama bear” fighting for the “Arizona First” movement, and she said her first act as governor would be to declare an invasion at the southern border.
“I welcome the attacks, and I welcome every bit of it with ultimate gladness,” Lake said on the heels of her primary win. “Because this fight before us proves to us that God is with us. He has chosen me, and he has chosen you.”
Lake embraced Trump’s attacks on the election he lost. On the stump, she often called President Joe Biden “illegitimate” and said she would not have fulfilled her legal duty to certify his win in 2020. If elected governor, she said she would sign legislation to eliminate electronic counting machines and move to “one-day voting” in the state where voting by mail is a popular option.
“When people tell me what’s the top issue in Arizona, I say, ‘OK, border’s big, the economy’s big, inflation is a problem, our election integrity’ — but what’s really going to get us to the polls, us mama bears and papa bears, is what they’re trying to do to our kids,” Lake said on election eve, leaning into social issues and attacks on “gender confusion.”
Given her embrace of election denialism, Lake is not widely seen as a candidate who will accept her defeat after all the votes are counted.
“We’re gonna win — and when we win, it’s going to be come to Jesus for elections in Arizona,” Lake said while voting in downtown Phoenix last Tuesday. “There’s going to be a come to Jesus.”
Asked last month if she would concede her race if she lost, Lake told ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl that she would — “if we have a fair, honest and transparent election.”
During the campaign, Lake repeatedly called on Hobbs to recuse herself as secretary of state, insisted she was “not losing to Katie Hobbs” and recently hired Republican National Committee attorney Harmeet Dhillon as her team continues to weigh legal challenges to the vote.
Lake had also suggested foul play in the primary election before she won. “We outvoted the fraud,” she declared at the time.
Hobbs is the third statewide Democrat whom ABC has projected will win their midterm race this year, after Sen. Mark Kelly and Adrian Fontes, who will succeed Hobbs as secretary of state. While the Republican ticket more often than not campaigned together, the Democrats regularly appeared separately, despite a coordinated campaign under Mission for Arizona, raising questions about unity on the ticket.
Hobbs faced criticism from pundits and voters alike for refusing to debate Lake, with Lake calling her a “coward,” but she maintained she wouldn’t engage with Lake and “make Arizona the subject of national ridicule.”
Laurie Roberts, a columnist for The Arizona Republic, called Hobbs’ refusal to debate Lake “a new level of political malpractice.”
“This is two candidates, each asking to govern a state of more than seven million people for the next four years. Voters have a right to see them, side by side,” Roberts wrote. But that opportunity never materialized.
Lake also highlighted accusations of racism and sexism against Hobbs, citing a winning lawsuit filed by Talonya Adams, a former staffer in Hobbs’ state Senate office who was fired. Hobbs said last year, about Adams, “I can say with certainty on my part, my decision in the termination was not based on race or gender. There were other factors.”
‘Not a Trump state’
Hobbs chose to run a largely low-key campaign when compared to Lake’s rallies and moderated Q&A events, which turned out hundreds. Like Trump, Lake also embraced — and often sparred with — the press.
Republicans flocked to Arizona to fuel the enthusiasm for Lake, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Steve Bannon.
But Trump also drew massive crowds in the Grand Canyon State — and, notably, lost in 2020 to Biden by more than 10,000 votes.
And there were prominent names that campaigned against Lake. Outgoing Rep. Liz Cheney invested in TV ads in Arizona, clipping Cheney saying during a Q&A at the McCain Institute at Arizona State University, “I don’t know that I have ever voted for a Democrat — but if I lived in Arizona now, I absolutely would. And for governor and for secretary of state.”
Former President Barack Obama weighed in too, saying that being governor “is about more than snappy lines and good lighting.”
“Katie, she may not be flashy,” Obama said at a rally with Democrats earlier this month in Phoenix. “She could have been. She just chooses not to be, because she’s serious about her work.”
Barrett Marson, a GOP strategist in Arizona, tweeted Friday after Kelly defeated Republican Blake Masters, “Arizona is a conservative state but not a Trump state. And voters keep telling us that.”
Marson predicted Hobbs would win in a state where a third of registered voters are independents because moderate GOP and right-leaning independents “couldn’t stomach” Lake, he said. “And of course, they listened to Lake who proudly said she was driving a stake in the heart of McCain republicans. Looks like the foot’s on the other shoe.”
Lake narrowly won her primary against real estate developer Karrin Taylor Robson, seen as the more establishment candidate endorsed by former Vice President Mike Pence and outgoing Republican Gov. Doug Ducey.
Ducey had said that Lake was “putting on an act,” calling her “Fake Lake,” but he ultimately supported her bid after her primary win.
Lake made border security her top issue, alongside election integrity. She repeated lines from Trump’s winning 2016 presidential race, calling migrants who come across the border “known terrorists … murderers and rapists” while often tying herself to his thinking. “I know President Trump said that many, many years ago. That’s a fact,” she said at a “Faith and Family” festival.
While she struggled to articulate her own plan for the border, Hobbs blamed inaction from both parties in Washington and warned that Lake’s plan at the southern border would “bring untold levels of chaos into our state.” The top issues on her stump included public education, water management and housing affordability.
Hobbs ran TV ads promising to establish a state-level child tax credit and to cut the sales tax on feminine hygiene products, diapers, baby formula and over-the-counter medicines.
Her campaign picked up momentum in September, when a pre-statehood, near-total ban on abortion took effect in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Hobbs and state attorney general candidate Kris Mayes hit the trail together to say they would not enforce any bans on abortion in Arizona, unlike their opponents.
Asked by ABC News last month if she would support legislation that protected abortion until viability, following the guidelines of Roe, Hobbs said she didn’t want to “talk about hypotheticals.”
“The reality is right now that Arizonans are living under an extreme ban at 15 weeks or the possibility of an entire ban, and we need to focus on making sure that Arizonans have access to safe legal abortion,” she said. “And that’s what I’ll do.”
Lake was rumored to be a potential 2024 vice-presidential pick if Trump were to win the Republican nomination, but it’s unclear what her political future holds with her projected loss in the governor’s race.
Because Arizona is one of five states without a governor’s mansion, Hobbs will likely continue to reside in the greater Phoenix area, with her husband, Pat, two children and their dog, Harley.
(WASHINGTON) — The White House will return for another round of the fight for COVID-19 funding.
After multiple failed attempts this past winter and spring to secure more money to address the pandemic, the White House plans on requesting $10 billion during the lame-duck session of Congress before newly elected lawmakers begin in January, sources familiar with the discussions confirmed to ABC News.
It could potentially be one of the last chances for Democrats to receive additional COVID funding if there is a divided government next year, but it also comes at one of the lowest points of public concern over the entire pandemic. In a recent poll from Quinnipiac University that asked voters about the most urgent issues ahead of the midterms, only 1% said the pandemic.
The Washington Post first reported the impending request.
People familiar with the budget discussions told ABC News that that $10 billion request would go toward the “research and development of next-generation vaccines and therapeutics” — which has been a major priority for the administration — as well as research into long COVID and global efforts to combat the virus.
There would also be some money set aside for combating other infectious diseases, these people said.
“While COVID-19 is no longer the disruptive force it once was, we face new subvariants in the U.S. and around the world that have the potential to cause a surge of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths—particularly as we head into the winter months, a time when viruses like COVID spread more quickly,” one person familiar with the discussions said in a statement.
“That means an urgent need for additional COVID-19 funding remains to help us stay on our front foot against an unpredictable virus with the tools we know work to protect the American people against COVID-19,” the source continued.
The push for more COVID funding first began in March, when the White House requested $22.5 billion from Congress and said it was running out of money to buy tests, treatments and vaccines.
But Republicans stonewalled the effort, skeptical of how Democrats had spent the billions in COVID aid that had already been allotted. Texas Sen. John Cornyn and others linked such efforts to high inflation.
“The problem is they want to keep spending more money and throw more gasoline on the inflation fire,” he said in September. “I think that’s a bad idea.”
Some in the GOP also pointed to Biden’s remark in a TV interview that the pandemic was “over.”
“The president saying the pandemic is over is … just kind of mind-boggling,” Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who previously worked as a doctor, said in September. “He wants tens of billions for COVID and he says the pandemic is over?”
Republican Sens. Mitt Romney and Richard Burr, some of the only conservative allies in Congress on the COVID funding cause, worked on a deal that would’ve given the administration $10 billion by pulling from other programs, but that eventually fell apart. In June, the White House took matters into its own hands and moved $10 billion of already-allocated money away from certain COVID efforts so that the government could purchase new bivalent boosters — the latest shots, which target the BA.4/5 subvariants — and Paxlovid, an oral treatment that significantly reduces hospitalization and death.This $10 billion, if granted, wouldn’t necessarily be a replacement of those lost funds.
Instead, the White House would aim to fund new research and treatments that could keep the country ahead of the virus even as it mutates and changes.
(NEW YORK) — The collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX is now the subject of an investigation by federal prosecutors in New York, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Prosecutors join regulators from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in investigating the circumstances of FTX’s bankruptcy.
At issue, the sources said, is whether FTX violated securities laws when it reportedly gave customer funds to Alameda Research, the trading firm of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment.
Authorities in the Bahamas, where FTX was located, have also launched a criminal investigation, according to a statement from the Royal Bahamas Police.
Earlier this month, concerns of financial instability at FTX — a top platform where users buy and sell crypto — triggered a wave of customer withdrawals totaling billions of dollars. But FTX lacked sufficient funds to pay sellers, instead imposing a halt on withdrawals altogether.
On Friday, FTX began bankruptcy proceedings in the U.S., as it assesses the value of its remaining assets, a company announcement said.
Bankman-Fried, 30, a prominent crypto entrepreneur and the CEO of FTX, resigned on Friday, the announcement added.
The fall of FTX centers in part on the cryptocurrency exchange’s close relationship with Alameda Research, a crypto hedge fund also founded by Bankman-Fried.
FTX lent customer deposits to Alameda Research to help it meet its liabilities, and top executives at Alameda Research were aware of it, The Wall Street Journal reported.
FTX did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
FTX faced a sudden selloff last week of a native cryptocurrency called FTT after news outlet CoinDesk reported that a significant portion of Alameda Research’s assets consisted of the token, calling into question the financial independence of FTX.
Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of rival crypto exchange Binance, announced that he would sell $580 million worth of the token, causing a further spike in customer withdrawals that totaled $5 billion in a single day.
The selloff, akin to a bank run, put FTX in a difficult position of meeting the sudden demand for customer funds.
Some crypto traders on the platform have said they cannot access their money and may never get it back. The debacle coincides with a rough year for crypto, as the value of bitcoin has fallen more than 60%.
(CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.) — A suspect is in custody after three football players were killed and two other students were injured in a mass shooting at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville on Sunday night, authorities said.
The shooting took place on a bus full of students returning home from a class field trip to see a play in Washington, D.C., university officials said.
All three victims killed were on the football team, University of Virginia President Jim Ryan said at a news conference. The victims were identified as wide receivers Lavel Davis Jr. and Devin Chandler and linebacker D’Sean Perry.
The suspect, identified as student Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., was taken into custody Monday morning following an overnight manhunt, authorities announced.
Jones was a running back for the university’s football team in 2018, though he never played in a game.
A motive is not clear, Ryan said.
One injured student is in critical condition and the other is in good condition, Ryan said Monday.
The shooting was reported on the University of Virginia’s campus at about 10:30 p.m. local time, according to police.
University of Virginia sophomore Em Gunter said she was in her dormitory doing schoolwork when she heard gunshots.
“I looked over to my friend and like, ‘Did you hear that?’ I was like, ‘I think that was like gunfire,'” Gunter recalled in a telephone interview with ABC News early Monday, while sheltering in place.
“I’m terrified,” she said.
Gunter invited her friend Nicholas Lansing to shelter in her third-floor dorm room, since his is on the ground floor.
“I have one locked door, but I also have a glass window that leads directly outside. So I’ve been up here on the third floor in Em’s room for the past three and a half hours,” Lansing, a University of Virginia junior, told ABC News via telephone.
The university’s president canceled classes for Monday.
Longo learned of the suspect’s capture in the middle of Monday morning’s news conference, when a captain with the Virginia State Police interrupted Longo and whispered in his ear.
UVA UPDATE: Police have the suspect in custody. This is the final alert message.
“We’ve just received information that the suspect is in custody,” Longo announced, before a lengthy pause absorbing the news.
“Just need a moment to thank God, breathe a sigh of relief,” he said.
The 22-year-old was taken into custody just before 11 a.m. in Henrico County, Virginia, according to Henrico police.
Longo said Jones is facing charges of three counts of second-degree murder and three counts of using a handgun in the commission of a felony. Charges could change, he said.
Longo also revealed prior history involving Jones. In September, university officials investigated a report of Jones making a comment about possessing a gun, but Longo said Jones did not make a threat.
Jones was involved in a hazing investigation, which was later closed due to uncooperative witnesses, Longo said.
The university’s threat assessment team also learned of a prior criminal incident involving “a concealed weapon violation” from February 2021 in another city, Longo said. Jones is required as a student “to report that — and he never did — so the university has taken appropriate administrative charges,” Longo said. That matter is pending, Longo said.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement Monday: “The President and First Lady are mourning with the University of Virginia community after yet another deadly shooting in America has taken the lives of three young people. Our deepest condolences are with the countless families, friends, and neighbors grieving for those killed as well as those injured in this senseless shooting.”
The press secretary called on the Senate to pass an assault weapons ban. The House narrowly passed a ban in a symbolic vote in July.
“We need to enact an assault weapons ban to get weapons of war off America’s streets,” the statement said. “House Democrats acted, and the Senate should follow.”
ABC News’ Peter Charalambous, Jack Date, Melissa Gaffney and Lauren Minore contributed to this report.
