(LOS ANGELES) — A California school safety officer has been charged with murder in the fatal shooting of an 18-year-old unarmed woman.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced the charge against former Long Beach Unified School safety officer Eddie Gonzalez, whose arraignment is scheduled for Friday at the Los Angeles County Superior Court, Long Beach Branch. The case remains under investigation by Long Beach police.
“We must hold accountable the people we have placed in positions of trust to protect us,” Gascón said in a statement. “That is especially true for the armed personnel we traditionally have relied upon to guard our children on their way to and from and at school.”
On Sept. 27, Gonzalez was patrolling an area near Millikan High School in Long Beach when he noticed a physical altercation between the 18-year-old, Manuela Rodriguez, and a teenage girl.
Rodriguez tried to leave the scene and hopped into the rear passenger seat of a nearby car when Gonzalez allegedly fired his handgun at the vehicle and hit Rodriguez.
She was taken to a hospital, where she died Oct. 5. Rodriguez is said to have suffered brain damage before being declared brain dead and taken off life support, according to her family’s attorneys.
“Not only did he commit a horrible crime, he destroyed an entire family,” attorney Luis Carrillo said at a press conference.
Gonzalez was fired the following day by the Long Beach Board of Education for violating the district’s use-of-force policy.
According to school officials, the policy states that officers “shall not fire at a fleeing person,” “shall not fire at a moving vehicle” and “shall not fire through a vehicle window unless circumstances clearly warrant the use of a firearm as a final means of defense.”
In a statement, district school board officials said: “We will continue to monitor the progress of the criminal case and will defer questions on investigatory matters to law enforcement. We acknowledge the impact of this tragedy and we again extend our sincerest condolences to everyone who has been impacted, especially the family, friends and loved ones of the shooting victim, Manuela Rodriguez.”
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 4.9 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 740,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
Just 67.3% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Oct 28, 10:11 am
5 states see hospital admissions jump by at least 15%
Hospital admissions have fallen by about 55% since late August, according to federal data.
But five states have seen at least a 15% increase in hospital admissions over the last two weeks: Alaska (21.7%), Colorado (15.9%), Maine (35.3%), New Hampshire (38.9%) and New Mexico (19.6%).
Alaska currently has the country’s highest infection rate, followed by Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota and Idaho.
The U.S. reported approximately 1,600 COVID-19 deaths on Tuesday alone. Deaths are about 1.5 times higher in non-metropolitan areas than in metropolitan areas, according to federal data.
Oct 28, 9:38 am
Colorado ICU beds at lowest point of pandemic
Colorado’s number of ICU beds is at the lowest point of the pandemic following a dramatic spike in hospitalizations and the winding down of extra beds added in the last surge.
Colorado currently has 1,191 COVID-19 patients, according to state data, and 29% of hospitals anticipate an ICU bed shortage in the next week.
State health officials told ABC News that hospitals in El Paso County have turned away transfer requests over the lack of beds.
“We are continuing to move very much in the wrong direction,” Scott Bookman, the state’s COVID-19 chief, said at a briefing.
Oct 27, 6:43 pm
New York City braces for possible mandate-related reduction in fire, EMS service
New York City Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said Wednesday he’s preparing to make major operational changes next week as significant portion of the city’s firefighters and EMS personnel haven’t complied with the city’s vaccine mandate.
“We will use all means at our disposal, including mandatory overtime, mutual aid from other EMS providers, and significant changes to the schedules of our members,” he said in a statement.
The mandate for all New York City public employees will go into effect at the end of day Friday. The FDNY said that 65% of its members were vaccinated as of Wednesday.
An FDNY official told ABC News that by Monday fire and ambulance services could be reduced by as much as 20%.
FDNY leadership has held virtual meetings with uniformed staff explaining the vaccine mandate and imploring them to comply, and will continue doing so throughout the week, the official said.
Oct 27, 3:29 pm
CDC advisers to vote Nov. 2 on pediatric vaccines
The CDC’s independent advisors plan to discuss and hold a non-binding vote on the recommendations for the pediatric vaccine on Nov. 2.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky will likely endorse those recommendations for 5 to 11-year-olds following the vote that day.
Vaccinations can start as soon as Walensky sends out final recommendations.
Meanwhile, the FDA’s decision to authorize the pediatric vaccine is expected in the coming days.
Oct 27, 10:22 am
Nearly two-thirds of Americans have had at least 1 vaccine dose
Nearly two-thirds of all Americans — 220 million people — have had at least one vaccine dose, according to federal data.
But 111 million Americans remain completely unvaccinated, including about 48 million children under the age of 12, who are not yet eligible to get the shot.
National metrics continue to fall, according to federal data. About 51,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, down from 104,000 patients at the end of August
Deaths are are trending down, though numbers remain quite high at over 1,100 fatalities each day.
This report is a part of “Rethinking Gun Violence,” an ABC News series examining the level of gun violence in the U.S. — and what can be done about it.
(NEW YORK) — In the bitter debate over gun control, battle lines are often drawn around the Second Amendment, with many in favor of gun rights pointing to it as the source of their constitutional authority to bear arms, and some in favor of tighter gun control disagreeing with that interpretation.
But if the purpose of the debate is to reduce the tragic human toll of gun violence, the focus on Second Amendment is often misplaced, according to many experts on guns and the Constitution.
They say the battle lines that actually matter have been drawn around state legislatures, which are setting the country’s landscape on guns through state laws — or sometimes, the lack thereof.
Joseph Blocher, professor of law and co-director of the Center for Firearms Law at Duke Law School, described the patchwork of state laws that exists across the country as a “buffer zone” for the Second Amendment.
“Before you even get to the Constitution, there’s a huge array of other laws super protecting the right to keep and bear arms,” Blocher said. “This collection of laws is giving individuals lots of protection for gun-related activity that the Second Amendment would not necessarily require, and certainly, and in almost all of these instances, that no lower court has said the Second Amendment would require.”
Adam Winkler, a professor of law at the UCLA School of Law, also said the Second Amendment is losing its legal relevance in distinguishing lawful policies from unlawful ones as the gap between what he calls the “judicial Second Amendment” and the “aspirational Second Amendment” widens.
Winkler defines the “judicial Second Amendment” as how courts interpret the constitutional provision in their decisions, and the “aspirational Second Amendment” as how the amendment is used in political dialogue. The latter is “far more hostile to gun laws than the judicial one,” he said — and also more prevalent.
“The aspirational Second Amendment is overtaking the judicial Second Amendment in American law,” he wrote in the Indiana Law Journal in 2018, a sentiment he repeated in a recent interview with ABC News. “State law is embracing such a robust, anti-regulatory view of the right to keep and bear arms that the judicial Second Amendment, at least as currently construed, seems likely to have less and less to say about the shape of America’s gun laws.”
Winkler told ABC News the aspirational or “political” Second Amendment has become the basis for expanding gun rights in the last 40 years.
“In the judicial Second Amendment, gun rights advocates haven’t found that much protection,” Winkler said. “Where they found protection was by getting state legislatures, in the name of the Second Amendment, to legislate for permissive gun laws.”
The debate around the Second Amendment (and why some say it might be overrated)
The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution reads in full:
“A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The role of the Second Amendment, like many constitutional rights, is to put limits on what regulations the federal government can pass, and scholars and lawyers have debated its scope since it was ratified in 1791.
Before the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark District of Columbia v. Heller decision in 2008, much of the debate revolved around the meaning of a “well-regulated militia.” The Heller decision struck down a handgun ban in Washington, D.C., and established the right for individuals to have a gun for certain private purposes including self-defense in the home. The court expanded private gun ownership protection two years later in McDonald v. City of Chicago, determining that state and local governments are also bound to the Second Amendment.
“The Bill of Rights, by its terms, only applies to the federal government, but the Supreme Court, through a doctrine known as incorporation, has made almost all of its guarantees applicable against state and local governments as well. That’s what the question was in McDonald,” Blocher said. “But some states have chosen to go above and beyond what the court laid out.”
Notably, the court in Heller carved out limitations on that individual right and preserved a relatively broad range of possible gun regulation — such as allowing for their restriction in government buildings, schools and polling places — but in many instances, state legislatures have decided not to use the authority that the court has granted them.
“Most states have chosen not to use their full regulatory authority,” Blocher said. “If a state decides not to forbid people from having large-capacity magazines, for instance, that doesn’t necessarily result in a law. It can be the absence of a law that has the most impact.”
It goes back to that widening gap between the judicial Second Amendment as the courts interpret it and the aspirational Second Amendment as used in politics, according to Winkler and Blocher.
“There’s a difference between the Second Amendment as interpreted and applied by courts and the Second Amendment as it’s invoked in political discussions. And for many gun rights advocates, the political version of the Second Amendment is quite a bit more gun protective than the Second Amendment as the Supreme Court and lower courts have applied it,” he said.
Laws based on the ‘aspirational’ Second Amendment
There are a few laws many experts say bolster gun rights in ways the Second Amendment does not explicitly require.
In more than 40 states, preemption laws expressly limit cities from regulating guns — with some going so far as to impose punitive damages such as fines and lawsuits on officials who challenge the state’s rules. This means, even if a highly populated city had overwhelming support to pass a local ordinance regulating guns, a preemption law in the state would restrict local officials from taking any action.
After the National Rifle Association formed its own political action committee in 1977, it began targeting state legislatures with the preemption model and found it was a more effective way to bolster the rights of gun owners than going through Congress.
The effort picked up momentum when a challenge, on Second Amendment grounds, to a local ordinance in Illinois banning handgun ownership failed in 1982 — years ahead of the 2008 Heller decision. So, he said, the NRA raised the specter of Quilici v. Village of Morton Grove to lobby for preemption laws in order to lessen local governments’ abilities to regulate guns in the first place.
In 1979, two states in the U.S. had full preemption and five states had partial preemption laws. By 1989, 18 states had full preemption laws and three had partial, according to Kristin Goss in her book “Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America.”
“There’s been a concerted effort by gun rights organizations to enact gun-friendly legislation in the states. And they do so using the rhetoric of the Second Amendment, even though nothing about the Second Amendment necessarily requires the state to pass such legislation,” said Darrell Miller, another expert on gun law at Duke University School of Law.
While a densely populated area with a high crime rate may want to enact stricter gun policies not necessarily suited for other areas in a state, preemption laws restrict local governments from doing so.
For example, in Colorado, a preemption law had prevented cities and municipalities from passing gun regulation measures. Boulder tried to ban semi-automatic weapons in 2018 after a gunman with an AR-15-style rifle opened fire at a high school in Parkland, Florida, leaving 17 dead and surpassing the Columbine High School shooting as the deadliest high school shooting in American history.
But a state court struck down the ban on March 12 of this year — 10 days before a 21-year-old man with a semi-automatic Ruger AR-556 pistol killed 10 people at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder. The judge’s decision did not hang on the Second Amendment but rather a violation of Colorado’s preemption law.
Colorado in June became the first state to repeal its preemption law — a move gun-regulation activists such as those at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence have hailed as a reflection of what voters want. More than half of Americans support more gun regulation, according to data from recent surveys by Pew Research Center and Gallup.
There’s also the presence of “permitless carry regimes,” said Jake Charles, another gun law expert at Duke University, which is when legislatures interpret the Second Amendment as giving individuals the right to bear arms in public without a permit, an interpretation the Supreme Court has not made.
In all 50 states, it is legal to carry a concealed handgun in public, subject to varying restrictions depending on the state, but at least 20 do not require permits for either open or concealed carry of firearms, with Texas becoming the latest to enact what advocates call “constitutional carry.”
Permitless or “constitutional carry” is not something the Supreme Court’s reading of the Second Amendment currently calls for.
Experts say that could change.
In New York state, a person is currently required to prove a special need for self-protection outside the home to receive a permit to carry a concealed firearm. A challenge to the constitutionality of a “may-issue” permit law, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Corlett, will be heard by the Supreme Court this fall — the court’s first major case on guns in a decade, coming as the makeup of the court swings right due to three appointments from former President Donald Trump.
“There are about half a dozen states which have laws similar to New York’s, so if the court strikes it down, we can expect to see challenges to those states’ laws in short order,” Blocher said.
The partisan debate continues
Allison Anderman, senior counsel at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, stressed that, in part because of the influence of state statutes, the Second Amendment should not be a barrier to gun regulation.
She also said that because the Second Amendment’s political definition is entrenched in the true, judicial one, the debate surrounding it gets muddied up and the passion is, perhaps, misplaced.
“It’s a rallying cry. It’s easy. It’s a sound bite,” she said. “But the Second Amendment gets thrown around politically in a way that’s not based in law.”
Blocher agreed and argued the Second Amendment debate is among the most partisan in the nation.
“The gun debate has gone far beyond judicial interpretations of the Second Amendment and these days has much more to do with personal, political and partisan identity,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — The summer surge of COVID-19, fueled by the delta variant, raised alarm bells among scientists and citizens alike that unlike prior variants of the virus, this one was different.
Those fears solidified in July, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported an outbreak in Provincetown, Massachusetts, among mostly vaccinated people. This early data hinted, alarmingly, that the delta variant could be equally likely to spread among the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.
Prior to the emergence of the delta variant, the risk of spreading the virus while vaccinated appeared to be so low the CDC said it was safe for vaccinated people to ditch their masks. But CDC Director Rochelle Walensky described the Provincetown findings as “concerning,” and she promptly reversed the agency’s mask guidelines for vaccinated people, prompting renewed fear and uncertainty about the efficacy of vaccines against variants.
“I think the people who are really concerned are parents with children under 12 who are concerned that even if they’re vaccinated, they could have a breakthrough infection and transmit it to their unvaccinated children,” said Dr. Anna Durbin, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “I get that.”
But reassuringly, experts told ABC News, new studies show those fears may have been overblown.
“Data are coming out that it’s the opposite,” said Dr. Paul Goepfert, an infectious disease physician and director of the Alabama Vaccine Research Clinic.
The CDC’s Provincetown study relied on something called viral load — the amount of virus in a person’s body. Researchers found that viral load levels were the same in vaccinated and unvaccinated people, prompting speculation the virus transmits just as readily among a vaccinated person. But viral loads change over time.
“The problem with the Provincetown study is they just looked at one early point in time,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel member and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“That’s just the first time point,” Goepfert said. “If you keep following them, they’re much less infectious more rapidly.”
Experts said there’s no doubt the delta variant is among the most hyper-transmissible versions of the virus to have emerged. That hyper-transmissibility makes it possible to spread between vaccinated people. But that risk is still low. Even if the delta variant is transmissible among vaccinated people, new data suggests “it’s for a shorter period of time” compared to the unvaccinated, said Durbin.
In late July, researchers following patients in Singapore who had breakthrough infections with the delta variant after vaccinations with mRNA vaccines — such as Pfizer and Moderna — showed this exact decrease in infectivity. The study compared viral load counts during the first few weeks of each breakthrough infection. The delta variant caused the same peak viral load in all infected individuals — a sign of active infection and risk of infectious spreading — but the vaccinated group cleared the infection faster.
Research by a separate group found similar results with the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is authorized in many countries outside the United States. In that study, researchers found that being vaccinated also appeared to shorten the time of breakthrough infection by the delta variant, according to an abstract presented at the Infectious Disease Society of America’s conference in early October.
Both studies have yet to be peer reviewed, but vaccine experts said they offer reassuring evidence that being vaccinated still dramatically reduces the risk of spreading the virus to a friend or loved one — even the highly-transmissible delta variant.
As families prepare for the 2021 holiday season, those who are vaccinated can rest assured that there’s increasing evidence that being vaccinated remains the best defense against the spread of infection, especially in the event of an unlikely breakthrough case.
(WASHINGTON) — As President Joe Biden jets off to Europe to meet with allies, some of the United States’ closest partners are still wondering if America is truly “back” as Biden proclaimed earlier this year.
Cautious about Biden’s domestic standing, and smarting from his lack of coordination on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, they are concerned whether his presidency truly represents a break from the isolationist, confrontational foreign policies of his predecessor, President Donald Trump, according to U.S. foreign policy experts.
Biden’s second trip abroad as president will take him to Rome and Scotland, where he’ll attend international summits aimed at tackling the coronavirus pandemic, global finance and the climate crisis.
But the excitement over Biden’s arrival on the world stage has belied the fact that he’s continued some key Trump policies, such as tariffs on China and a general pivot — started under President Barack Obama — toward Asia and the Pacific. Congressional inaction on fighting climate change also has the potential to weaken Biden’s hand.
“I think there was probably too high expectation that we could just turn the page of the last four years, or maybe we attributed to Trump some policies that were more structural, such as the U.S. shift to China and to the Indo-Pacific,” Benjamin Haddad, the senior director of the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council, told ABC News.
Is America really ‘back’?
When the president took to the world stage for his first trip abroad, with a June trip to the United Kingdom, Belgium and Switzerland, he and other world leaders celebrated the United States’ changed tone.
Biden preached multilateralism, which Trump had maligned for four years. And European allies rejoiced.
When Macron met the U.S. president during a summit in England, the French leader told reporters that he “definitely” believed “America is back.”
“I think it’s great,” Macron said, “to have the U.S. president part of the club and very willing to cooperate.”
But French-U.S. relations hit a major snag last month when the Biden administration announced it would sell Australia nuclear submarines — resulting in Australia canceling a major defense deal with France.
France recalled its ambassador from Washington in response to the so-called “sub snub,” and its foreign minister compared Biden’s style to Trump’s.
But since then, Biden and Macron have sought to repair ties: They held a phone call last week, have launched meetings between senior officials from both countries, and on Friday, plan to meet in Rome. Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Paris next month, too, according to her office.
“In many ways, this is not just about the French,” Célia Belin, an expert on trans-Atlantic relations at the Brookings Institution, told ABC News. “It goes to the core of the conversation that the U.S. should be having with their allies, which is, what do you actually expect from European allies in the Indo-Pacific?”
What’s at stake in Rome and Glasgow
Before those major hiccups, Biden’s reception in Europe stood in stark contrast with the constant spats — both personal and policy-wise — between U.S. allies and Trump.
Calling his foreign policy “America First,” Trump actively sought to lessen American commitments abroad.
He pulled the United States out of international organizations and treaties and publicly called on allies to pay more for defense. His fights with foreign leaders marred the international summits he did attend.
Biden campaigned in large part on reversing the damage he said Trump had caused, and when he won the presidency, U.S. allies rattled by years of instability from Washington had high hopes of a return to the pre-Trump years.
“The decisions that the administration has taken, very much and consistent with the domestic mood and polarization, have left them quite disappointed,” Heather Conley, the director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said.
Allies are now facing the decision of whether to work independently of the United States on certain issues, uncertain whether Biden’s young administration will truly restore America’s relationship with the world, Conley said.
“I think the question for me is, moving forward, has the administration understood that these decisions have profoundly challenged and questioned our allies as far as our credibility?” she said. “Can we restore that trust?”
Biden planned to arrive in Rome late Thursday ahead of a Friday meeting with Macron, and another meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican.
In the Italian capital, the president also planned to attend a summit of the leaders of rich and developing nations known as the Group of 20, or G-20, where he plans to formalize an international agreement on a 15% minimum tax for corporations. The global response to the coronavirus pandemic and other global finance issues are also expected to take center stage.
Biden then plans to travel to Glasgow, Scotland, where on Monday and Tuesday, he is scheduled to attend the U.N. climate change conference known as COP26. The U.S. is pushing countries to cement emissions-reduction targets they had set as part of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
He won’t have the opportunity to meet in person with two leaders who play a key role on climate and security issues: Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. They plan to attend the summits virtually, citing the COVID-19 situation in their countries.
‘It’s nice to have a win’
Biden had hoped to travel abroad with two major pieces of legislation in his pocket: his bipartisan $1 trillion physical infrastructure bill, which has already passed the Senate, and his larger social package — which he calls the “Build Back Better” bill and is full of Democratic priorities like universal pre-kindergarten, expanded healthcare, guaranteed paid leave and programs to combat the climate crisis.
Strong climate provisions, in particular, could lend him credibility at COP26, showing the United States put its money where its mouth is as it hectors developing nations to commit to lowering emissions — and others to fulfill their pledges.
A recent report by the New York-based research institute Rhodium Group — frequently cited by the White House — found that the only way the U.S. could meet its goal of halving its 2005 emissions levels by 2030 would be with congressional action. Experts have questioned whether the climate provisions in the “Build Back Better” bill will have enough teeth to help the U.S. meet that target.
“I’m presenting a commitment to the world that we will, in fact, get to net zero emissions on electric power by 2035 and net zero emissions across the board by 2050 or before,” Biden said last week during a town hall hosted by CNN, referencing COP26. “But we have to do so much between now and 2030 to demonstrate what we’re going to — that we’re going to do.”
Twin legislative victories would also show allies that Biden had political strength and could push through the policies he champions when abroad. They could also help him with sagging poll numbers at home.
“For messaging purposes, it’s nice to have a win when you’re abroad that you can brag about a little bit,” Amanda Rothschild, who served as a speechwriter on the Trump White House’s National Security Council, told ABC News.
Putting money where his mouth is
The president had made clear that he wanted his $1 trillion physical infrastructure deal to pass Congress by the time he departed, and that he also wanted a deal on his larger social bill — which is expected to contain massive climate-related investments.
When it became clear in recent days that might not be possible in time for the trip, the White House has emphasized, instead, that Democratic lawmakers’ negotiations seem to be coming to a conclusion soon.
Biden’s top national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters Tuesday that U.S. allies are “excited” about the investments the president is pursuing in climate change, clean energy, infrastructure, and domestic economic growth.
“They want to see the United States making these investments,” Sullivan said. “They also recognize that the United States has a set of democratic institutions, has a Congress; that this is a process; that it needs to be worked through.”
Sullivan, though, said world leaders understood the ups and downs of policy-making.
“I think you’ve got a sophisticated set of world leaders,” he said, “who understand politics in their own country, and understand American democracy, and recognize that working through a complex, far-reaching negotiation on some of the largest investments in modern memory in the United States — that that takes time.”
Haddad, of the Atlantic Council, said European allies were less interested in the nitty gritty of legislating and more on practical matters like Republicans blocking the confirmation of most of Biden’s ambassadorial nominees.
“I don’t think the day-to-day negotiations in Congress are really being noticed in Europe,” Haddad said. “But the domestic political paralysis does have an impact on U.S. leadership.”
But if Biden arrives in Europe without those pieces of legislation in hand, “it’s going to be much harder for him to make the case, you know, the U.S. is back,” Matthew Goodman, an expert on international economic policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said.
Still, Biden’s not Trump — and even if allies are nervous, the fledgling administration still has time to gain its footing on the international front, after spending much of its time focused on the domestic economic recovery, according to Goodman, who served in the White House and State Department under President Barack Obama.
“I think the rest of the world is going to be relieved that, you know, it’s not Donald Trump at the table, frankly,” Goodman, who served in the Obama administration, said. “He was considered a very disruptive force, and so I think, by comparison, Biden’s going to be well received in that sense.”
(SEOUL, South Korea) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has seemed to have lost 44 pounds in the past two years, according to South Korean lawmakers who were briefed by the country’s intelligence agency in a closed-door meeting.
The massive weight loss has prompted rumors and conspiracies that North Korea was using a Kim Jong Un body double, which South Korea said is untrue.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service conducted the assessment “based on various scientific methods including artificial intelligence” using super-resolution video analysis and a stereometry analysis model that gauges facial fat and weight, Rep. Kim Byung-Kee of the ruling Democratic Party told reporters.
Kim’s often-reported health problems do not pose any serious issues, South Korea said. The analysis also concluded that the conspiracy theories suggesting North Korea may have been exposing a Kim Jong Un look-alike are not credible.
The most noticeable change was the disappearance of the official portraits of his father and grandfather, former leaders Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, from the main walls of official meetings. Instead, the communist regime religiously hung the two portraits in all public areas and individual homes.
“Kim seems to have been working on building a people-friendly image by releasing photos of him drinking beer and smoking together with high-level officials,” Byung-Kee said.
Kim has been more active in public appearances this year compared to the year before. So far, he has been seen through North Korean state media for a total of 70 days in 2021. In contrast, he appeared 49 times during the same time in 2020.
(WASHINGTON) — In a last-minute push before heading overseas, President Joe Biden headed to Capitol Hill Thursday morning to try to get all Democrats behind his social spending and climate policy agenda.
On a call with reporters, senior administration officials laid out the framework of a $1.75 trillion social spending package President Biden will present to House Democrats, including skeptical progressives.
“The president believes this framework will earn the support of all 50 Democratic senators, and pass the House,” an administration official said.
Biden pulled up to the Capitol shortly after 9 a.m., flanked by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, responding only with “It’s a good day” to a reporter asking what his message is to House progressives who don’t trust Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema who have been holdouts throughout the extended and often chaotic bargaining.
As he headed to the closed-door meeting, ABC News Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott asked, “Mister President, do you have a deal?” but Biden merely waved and said “How are you? Good to see you all.”
When reporters started shouting, “Do you think you have enough of a framework to get progressives to support the infrastructure bill?” Biden responded “Yes.”
The White House said he would give the nation an update on his domestic agenda before his international trip in a speech from the White House East Room at 11:30 a.m., saying he is “delivering” on his promises to rebuild the middle class.
“After hearing input from all sides and negotiating in good faith with Senators Manchin and Sinema, Congressional Leadership, and a broad swath of Members of Congress, President Biden is announcing a framework for the Build Back Better Act,” said a White House statement that notably did not say he had an agreement.
“President Biden is confident this is a framework that can pass both houses of Congress, and he looks forward to signing it into law. He calls on Congress to take up this historic bill – in addition to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act – as quickly as possible,” the statement said.
The White House said, “the framework will save most American families more than half of their spending on child care, deliver two years of free preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old in America, give more than 35 million families a major tax cut by extending the expanded Child Tax Credit, and expand access to high-quality home care for older Americans and people with disabilities.”
The Child Tax Credit expansion, which Biden has proposed extending until 2025, would now be only until the end of 2022. Paid family and medical leave, which Biden had originally proposed be 12 weeks and then scaled back to four weeks, appeared to have been dropped altogether after Manchin objected, despite progressives fighting back. Two free years of community college that Biden had promised is not included.
It also claimed it represents “the largest effort to combat climate change in American history” and “the biggest expansion of affordable health care coverage in a decade,” saying it would “reduce premiums for more than 9 million Americans by extending the expanded Premium Tax Credit, deliver health care coverage to up to 4 million uninsured people in states that have locked them out of Medicaid, and help older Americans access affordable hearing care by expanding Medicare.”
An expansion of Medicare to cover dental and vision, a top priority of Sen. Bernie Sanders, is not in the framework.
And, the White House said, “it is fully paid for … by making sure that large, profitable corporations can’t zero out their tax bills, no longer rewarding corporations that shift jobs and profits overseas, asking more from millionaires and billionaires, and stopping rich Americans from cheating on their tax bills.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — Young people everywhere are giving themselves lip filler using DIY methods seen on TikTok, and medical professionals want it to stop.
The popularity of lip filler has been on the rise for years, much thanks to celebrities like Kylie Jenner, who constantly promote the plump lip look. But because the beauty trend has become so common and the procedure so accessible, many people seem to have forgotten that it is, in fact, still a medical procedure that must be taken seriously.
“The omnipresence of medically-enhanced and Instagram filter-enhanced lips and other body parts on social media has led to a false perception that the procedures are easy to perform and carry no risk at all,” said Dr. Dmitry Schwarzburg, M.D., of New York City-based clinic Skinly Aesthetics.
Over the past two years, as people — possibly bored in quarantine during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — spent more time on TikTok and Instagram, interest in and conversation around DIY filler and Botox treatments spiked. The hyaluron pen, for example, which can be purchased on Amazon or Etsy, has become one of the most popular tools to self-administer filler, thanks to social media. TikTok even has a #hyaluronpen hashtag where one can find over 65 million videos of people using or speaking about the pen.
Though at first glance, the tool does seem to work, Schwarzburg said it can cause life-threatening issues, or at the very least long-term damage to the lips. Unlike many other cosmetic procedures, it is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
“The hyaluron pen device essentially forces hyaluronic acid into the lips through the skin with very intense pressure,” he said. “This results in severe bruising, uneven distribution, lumping, and can cause severe and permanent tissue damage and potential for tissue infarction, secondary to obstruction of the blood vessels.”
He added that dermal filler, if desired, should only be applied with a needle, by a trained medical professional, using an approved substance.
Schwarzburg said he believes TikTok, Instagram and YouTube are responsible for the recent popularity of the hyaluron pen, and that unfortunately, many millennial and Gen Z users have bought into it, as they believe it means they can get their cosmetic procedure done at home, without a doctor, for a much lower price. At a reputable clinic, lip filler can cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars, whereas a hyaluron pen goes for as little as $40 through an online vendor — a fact that matters greatly to many, especially those who’ve lost financial stability during the pandemic and are looking to take the cheaper route when it comes to their cosmetic procedures.
But medical professionals are advising people not to take a more dangerous, though inexpensive, route when it comes to fillers.
Stephanie Magana, 26, visited Skinly Aesthetics to get her lip filler dissolved after a different clinic used the hyaluron pen on her and left her with what she described as “white bumps all over my lips.”
She said she found the clinic on Instagram, and though “some of the results didn’t look so bad,” but as soon as the aesthetician administered the filler through the pen, she said she saw her lips swell up, bruise and develop strange bumps.
The clinic she went to did not answer ABC News’ request for comment.
“You don’t really think about it as being as scary, because it’s a pen,” she said, explaining that she chose to try out the pen because she initially thought it was safer and less invasive than a syringe.
After more than a week, with the bumps still not gone, Magana went to Schwarzburg, who dissolved the existing filler and injected her with FDA-approved Juvederm, to give her her desired results.
Schwarzburg said Magana is just one of many patients who’ve come to him this year with “botched filler” caused by unexperienced injectors.
What exactly is filler, and is it safe?
Fillers are often biodegradable substances that can be injected into or just below the skin. Hyaluronic acid — which is what most lip fillers are made up of — is a polysaccharide that is naturally produced by the body, and the filler works because when injected into the lip, it absorbs water from the body, “like a dry sponge thrown into water, which then creates volume and focal sterile inflammation,” Schwarzburg said.
Juvederm Ultra, Juvederm Voluma, Restylane Lyft and Revanesse tend to give more volume to the injected area, according to Schwarzburg, while Juvederm Volbella, Restylane Kysse, RHA fillers and Belotero are more subtle in their volume creation. These types of FDA-approved fillers are all often used by trained professionals to achieve volume in the lips and face.
“If injected properly, they essentially have a 100% safety profile,” Schwarzburg said, adding that some people can develop an allergy to the product, but that is rare and true of any injectable. Correctly administered fillers tend to last 6-15 months.
“As far as the technical aspect is concerned, the most dreaded complication is vascular occlusion, if the filler is inadvertently injected into one of the smaller branches of the facial artery, which if left unnoticed would lead to tissue necrosis, scarring and deformation,” Schwarzburg said, that’s why it’s so important that if a person is looking to get lip filler, they go to a trained expert who understands the human anatomy and the depths of the injections.
The qualifications of who can inject a patient with lip filler vary by country and by state, but in New York, doctors, physician assistants and nurses under the supervision of a doctor can legally administer it, Schwarzburg said.
Earlier this month, the FDA issued a warning about the use of the hyaluron pens.
“Today, the FDA is warning the public and health care professionals not to use needle-free devices such as hyaluron pens for injection of hyaluronic acid or other lip and facial fillers, collectively and commonly referred to as dermal fillers or fillers,” their statement, published on their website, reads. “Patients and healthcare providers should know that FDA has not approved any dermal fillers for over-the-counter sale for at-home use or for use with needle-free injection devices. These unapproved needle-free devices and fillers are often sold directly to customers online, bypassing consultation with a licensed health care provider, a critical safety measure for patients to make informed decisions about their personal health.”
It also said it is monitoring online platforms promoting these devices.
“We also want patients and providers to be vigilant by understanding which products have been approved by the FDA and the dangers of using unapproved products, some of which may be irreversible,” they said. “The FDA will continue to alert the public and take additional actions as necessary in order to protect public health.”
How to put a stop to this trend
Schwarzburg said that while he and other medical professionals are glad millennials are helping destigmatize safe cosmetic medicine by opening up about their experiences and procedures on social media, that openness has unfortunately also helped spread misinformation about the field as a whole, and essentially caused this potentially risky DIY filler trend.
The solution? Do your research, read the FDA guidelines, don’t take the cheap route when it comes to altering your appearance and don’t fall for the fake doctors who make these kinds of procedures appear safer and easier than an actual medical procedure, Schwarzburg said.
“I don’t think that this trend will last very long, as eventually people will come to realize that the whole thing is a dangerous scam, similar to the suction lip enhancements or suction butt enhancements that were trendy a few years ago, that are now joked about on the internet due to the ridiculous results that people were getting,” he added.
(NEW YORK) — A woman from New York is suing The Kellogg Company for $5 million because she says the company’s Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts product doesn’t have enough strawberries in its filling.
Elizabeth Russett filed a class-action lawsuit on Oct. 19 with lawyer Spencer Sheehan against Kellogg’s for falsely advertising the contents of its pastry.
“The strawberry representations are misleading because the Product has less strawberries than consumers expect based on the labeling,” the lawsuit says.
“The amount of strawberry ingredients is insufficient not merely to provide the nutrient benefits of strawberries but to provide a strawberry taste.”
The lawsuit asks for $5 million in damages under the Class Action Fairness Act and a jury trial, claiming that customers wouldn’t have purchased the treats repeatedly had they known it had fewer strawberries than expected. Russett is joined by three other plaintiffs — Illinois’ Stacy Chiappetta and Anita Harris and New York’s Kelvin Brown — who are also represented by Sheehan.
Despite its name, the Whole Grain Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts’ box states the pastries have less than 2% of pears, apples and strawberries with dried pears and dried apples listed before dried strawberries. The product is described on the company’s website as having “sweet frosting decorated with rainbow sprinkles and filled with strawberry-flavored goodness.”
“The Product’s common or usual name of ‘ Whole Grain Frosted Strawberry Toaster Pastries,’ is false, deceptive, and misleading, because it contains mostly non-strawberry fruit ingredients,” Russett’s lawsuit says.
The plaintiff also takes issue with the absence of information regarding artificial flavoring and added coloring on the front label and marketing materials.
Kellogg’s said in a statement to ABC News: “While we don’t comment on pending litigation, we can tell you the ingredients in and labeling of all of our Pop-Tart products fully comply with all legal requirements.”
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 4.9 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 740,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
Just 67.3% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Oct 27, 6:43 pm
New York City braces for possible mandate-related reduction in fire, EMS service
New York City Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said Wednesday he’s preparing to make major operational changes next week as significant portion of the city’s firefighters and EMS personnel haven’t complied with the city’s vaccine mandate.
“We will use all means at our disposal, including mandatory overtime, mutual aid from other EMS providers, and significant changes to the schedules of our members,” he said in a statement.
The mandate for all New York City public employees will go into effect at the end of day Friday. The FDNY said that 65% of its members were vaccinated as of Wednesday.
An FDNY official told ABC News that by Monday fire and ambulance services could be reduced by as much as 20%.
FDNY leadership has held virtual meetings with uniformed staff explaining the vaccine mandate and imploring them to comply, and will continue doing so throughout the week, the official said.
Oct 27, 3:29 pm
CDC advisers to vote Nov. 2 on pediatric vaccines
The CDC’s independent advisors plan to discuss and hold a non-binding vote on the recommendations for the pediatric vaccine on Nov. 2.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky will likely endorse those recommendations for 5 to 11-year-olds following the vote that day.
Vaccinations can start as soon as Walensky sends out final recommendations.
Meanwhile, the FDA’s decision to authorize the pediatric vaccine is expected in the coming days.
Oct 27, 10:22 am
Nearly two-thirds of Americans have had at least 1 vaccine dose
Nearly two-thirds of all Americans — 220 million people — have had at least one vaccine dose, according to federal data.
But 111 million Americans remain completely unvaccinated, including about 48 million children under the age of 12, who are not yet eligible to get the shot.
National metrics continue to fall, according to federal data. About 51,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, down from 104,000 patients at the end of August
Deaths are are trending down, though numbers remain quite high at over 1,100 fatalities each day.
