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Putin ‘on the ropes’ as Ukrainians continue counteroffensive

September 22, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — As Ukrainian forces continue to mount a counteroffensive against the Russian Army and reclaim the country’s invaded land in the northeast, Russian President Vladimir Putin has upped his military mobilization and rhetoric against Ukrainian officials.

ABC News Foreign Correspondent Tom Soufi Burridge, who is in Kharkiv, spoke to ABC News’ “Start Here,” Wednesday about the latest developments.

START HERE: Ukraine’s continuing to push Russia out of some of its strongholds…and we’re just beginning to see what life was like for residents there, right?

TOM SOUFI BURRIDGE: Yeah, exactly. We’ve been into areas of the newly liberated territory. It took us about three hours to drive down there from Kharkiv City to the southeast of here. And we went to a city called Izyum, and it might be a name that’s beginning to register with people right now. In the forest, by the city, we visited what is a newly discovered mass burial site and what the Ukrainian authorities have now been doing over the last few days, and we witnessed them working [with] these forensic teams in their white overalls. I mean, really digging with care down into the ground, into kind of sandy ground below this pine forest to dig up these bodies, remove them from the ground, [and] exhume them so that they can really identify the victims.

Now, I think what people might not realize about this when they’ve watched this on the kind of news headlines is that some of the people in this forest have died of natural causes. Now, they might have died prematurely because of lack of food, lack of water [and] lack of medicine in these Russian-occupied territories during the war. And more disturbingly, I think, some of the victims being pulled out of the ground, according to Ukrainian officials, are showing signs of torture.

We also met a guy called Sergei living still in Izyum. We met him by his apartment block, which was wrecked in a Russian missile strike. More than 40 of his friends and neighbors were killed during that attack and most of them are now buried in that burial site in the forest.

We met relatives going up to those graves. They’re going there to try and find relatives to try and identify where their relatives are. And we actually met one lady who had a piece of paper and she had the number of the grave of her husband. She knew where he was. He was killed in a Russian airstrike or shelling, but she had two numbers for her mother-in-law. And she had no idea which of the two graves, that were numbered, was the correct grave for her mother-in-law.

START HERE: Well, so then you think about these towns that have been under Russian control for several months now, not weeks, but months. And does that help us explain what’s happened in the last 24 hours? Because I heard Russia is now organizing referendums in some of the pockets of Ukraine where they do control. And these referendums would be like a vote, like do you want to be part of Russia? To which I would have said, like, duh, these can be sham elections. I’m sure Russia is going to say, “Yep, everyone wants to be Russian now” – it doesn’t mean it’s true. So like, why was that announcement such a big deal?

BURRIDGE: I think it’s a massive deal because…I’m pretty confident they will not be free and fair. This will not be a vote that will be recognized internationally. In the White House and the Pentagon [they] are saying it’s a sham. And I think most people around the Western world would agree with that.

And now we’re effectively seeing Russia saying, “OK, we’re going to say that all of that territory in our command in the south and the east is actually Russian property. We’re going to officially recognize that that is Russian land.” And the reason this matters is because in the war going forward, it raises the stakes a bit and it raises the possibility that if Ukraine with Western-supplied weapons is attacking those territories, Russia might try and claim that that is a direct attack on Russia and you get more.

START HERE: So now all of a sudden the response is as if they attacked St. Petersburg or if they attack some border town in Russia. That’s how they’re going to react.

BURRIDGE: Now, that’s, I think that’s the principle they’re laying down in their rhetoric. Now, obviously, I think some analysts are already saying, well, wait a minute. And actually you hear this from U.S. officials already. They’re saying, “This is grandstanding by the Russians. This is part of their information game.”

They’re trying to raise the stakes. Putin’s on the ropes. He’s massively weakened after he lost huge amounts of territory in northeastern Ukraine, up around Kharkiv, where we are. And he’s in trouble. He’s being increasingly isolated internationally. In recent days it’s been really interesting at home. It’s hard to read right back in Russia. We don’t know what public opinion’s like.

The media is very controlled. There’s no freedom of expression, etc. For example, a megastar Russian singer came out recently on Instagram and basically, and really came out for the first time against the war. And that is a figure that really is massively popular among the generations, like someone who really stretches back to the older generations as well, who are traditionally quite a sort of fans of Putin. So Putin’s in trouble and he’s in a corner and now he’s coming out with these kinds of tactics to raise the stakes on the battlefield. And it feels like a slightly dangerous moment.

James Webb Space Telescope captures Neptune’s rings in new images

September 22, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — NASA released new images of Neptune from the James Webb Space Telescope on Wednesday, showing off some of the planet’s rings.

This is the clearest view of Neptune’s rings in over 30 years since NASA’s Voyager 2 photographically captured the rings during a flyby in 1989, the agency said.

NASA said that the telescope’s advanced technology captures some of Neptune’s usually hard-to-see rings.

“It has been three decades since we last saw these faint, dusty rings, and this is the first time we’ve seen them in the infrared,” Heidi Hammel, an interdisciplinary scientist for the James Webb Telescope Project, said in a statement.

Neptune, the furthest planet in the solar system, is known as an “ice giant” alongside Uranus because the interior consists of denser chemicals than the gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, according to NASA.

Usually appearing blue in images from the Hubble Space Telescope, Neptune appears more visible with the Webb telescope because it uses infrared technology that makes it easier to identify objects in space.

The James Webb Space Telescope also captured seven of Neptune’s 14 moons, with its largest moon Triton, which orbits the planet backward, appearing with diffraction spikes, which are seen in many pictures from Webb, NASA said.

According to the agency, the “ice giant” is located about 30 times farther from the sun than Earth, orbiting a remote dark region of the solar system. Neptune is so far from the sun that noon on the planet is like a dim twilight on Earth, NASA said in the press release.

First launched in December, the Webb telescope has been releasing pictures of deep space since July, offering millions of people a better look at galaxies and planets.

Former cop Thomas Lane sentenced in state case over George Floyd’s death

September 22, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(MINNEAPOLIS) — A former Minneapolis police officer who pleaded guilty to his role in the 2020 death of George Floyd was sentenced Wednesday to three years in state prison.

Thomas Lane, 39, learned his fate over closed circuit television from a federal prison in Colorado, where he is already serving a 2 1/2-year sentence for violating the 46-year-old Black man’s civil rights.

Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill imposed the sentence on Lane Wednesday after defense attorneys and state prosecutors reached a plea agreement earlier this year in which they jointly recommended Lane receive a sentence of 36 months in prison. State Attorney General Keith Ellison said at the time that the plea agreement is an “important step toward healing the wounds of the Floyd family, our community, and the nation.”

Upon sentencing Lane, Cahill said he will receive 31 days credit for time he has already served. He will be allowed to serve his state prison time concurrently with his federal sentence.

Lane did not speak during the hearing.

He pleaded guilty in May to a state charge of aiding and abetting in second-degree manslaughter. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors agreed to dismiss the top charge against him of aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional murder.

“I now make no claim that I am innocent,” Lane said during his plea hearing in May.

Lane and two other former Minneapolis police officers, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng, were convicted in February by a federal jury on charges of violating George Floyd’s civil rights by failing to intervene or provide medical aid as their senior officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeled on the back of Floyd’s neck, while he was handcuffed, for more than nine minutes in the May 25, 2020, incident.

Chauvin was convicted in state court last year of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison.

The 46-year-old Chauvin also pleaded guilty in December to federal charges of violating Floyd’s civil rights and was sentenced in July to 21 years in federal prison.

Fed hikes benchmark rate 0.75% in significant escalation of inflation fight

September 22, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The Federal Reserve instituted a dramatic interest rate hike on Wednesday, the latest in a series of borrowing cost increases, as the central bank tries to dial back near-historic inflation while avoiding an economic downturn.

The Fed raised the benchmark interest rate by 0.75%, repeating the same hike it imposed at each of the last two meetings. Prior to this year, the Fed last matched a hike of this magnitude in 1994.

The move arrives a little more than a week after a higher-than-expected inflation report revealed that prices rose slightly in August, worsening the cost woes for U.S. households and sending the S&P 500 tumbling for its worst day of 2022.

The Fed has put forward a string of aggressive interest rate hikes in recent months as it tries to slash price increases by slowing the economy and choking off demand. But the approach risks tipping the U.S. into a recession and putting millions out of work.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday reasserted the central bank’s commitment to bring inflation down to a target rate of 2%, saying the Fed expects to put forward “ongoing increases” to its benchmark interest rate.

“We have both the tools we need and the resolve it will take to restore price stability on behalf of American families and businesses,” Powell said.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Federal Reserve depicted the U.S. economy as one struggling with high prices.

“Inflation remains elevated, reflecting supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic, higher food and energy prices, and broader price pressures,” the Federal Reserve said.

“Recent indicators point to modest growth in spending and production. Job gains have been robust in recent months, and the unemployment rate has remained low,” the statement added.

Hours before the rate hike announcement, chief executives at some of the largest U.S. banks sounded the alarm over sky-high inflation in testimony before Congress, warning that price hikes would require further borrowing cost increases from the Federal Reserve that will slow the economy and impose widespread financial pain.

Speaking at a conference held by the conservative-leaning Cato Institute, Powell said earlier this month that the central bank must act “forthrightly, strongly” to dial back inflation.

The rate hikes have yielded mixed results, however. On an annual basis, consumer prices have moderated slightly but remain highly elevated.

The consumer price index rose 8.3% over the past year as of August, a slight slowdown from 8.5% in July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Some prices have already fallen significantly, though. Gas prices dropped 10.6% in August, the bureau said.

Meanwhile, rate increases appear to have slowed key sectors of the economy, sending mortgage rates higher and slowing the construction of new homes, for instance.

Still, other indicators suggest the U.S. economy continues to hum.

U.S. hiring fell from its breakneck pace but remained robust in August, with the economy adding 315,000 jobs and the unemployment rate rising to 3.7% as more people sought work, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in early September.

On Wednesday afternoon, immediately after the rate hike announcement, each of the major stock indexes had fallen slightly.

Toddler found dead in stolen car hours after deadly shooting, suspect in custody: Police

September 22, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(HOUSTON) — A toddler was found dead inside a car that was stolen after the child’s father was shot and killed in Houston on Tuesday, police said.

A 38-year-old man now faces charges of murder and tampering with evidence in connection with the case, police said Wednesday. The name of the suspect, who initially had been detained for questioning, will be released once charges are filed, police said.

Police had appealed to the public for information in the hours after the grim discovery amid their search for a suspect.

“We are asking for a lot of things from the public right now,” Houston Police Executive Assistant Chief Larry Satterwhite told reporters during a press conference Tuesday night. “First and foremost, to pray for this family. A mother lost her husband and she lost her 2-year-old child today. We are also asking the public’s help in identifying the suspect. He is still at large.”

The Houston Police Department received a 911 call about a shooting in the area of El Camino Rey Del Rey Street and Chimney Rock Road at around 1:46 p.m. local time on Tuesday. Upon arrival, officers found a 38-year-old man who had been shot to death, according to Satterwhite.

Investigators believe the victim was meeting with another man at the location when possibly an argument ensued. The other man took out a gun and shot the victim multiple times before stealing his black SUV and fleeing the scene, Satterwhite said.

That evening, at approximately 6:36 p.m. local time, a woman called 911 to report her husband and 2-year-old son missing. The information she provided was specific enough that police soon realized the shooting victim was her husband, according to Satterwhite.

“We never knew about the child until she called,” he told reporters.

The stolen SUV with the little boy inside was found on Elm Street, more than 10 miles away from the shooting scene. Officers shattered the windows of the locked vehicle to get to the child, then immediately tried to render aid and called for an ambulance, according to Satterwhite.

“Sadly, it was too late. The child had passed in the car,” he said. “At this time, we don’t know why or how or what the cause of death will be. It could be something like heat exhaustion, we just don’t know. That will be determined later through autopsy.”

Investigators believe the suspect had left the car there, locked up and turned off, with the child in the backseat, according to Satterwhite.

“It’s the hardest thing we do,” he told reporters. “Children are innocent.”

The unidentified suspect, who remains on the loose, is described as a Black man wearing a white T-shirt, black shorts and a black Oakland Raiders cap.

When asked if he had a message for the suspect, Satterwhite said: “Turn yourself in. Turn yourself in now.”

Wisconsin governor calls special session to repeal 1849-era abortion ban

September 21, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(MADISON, Wisc.) — Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers announced Wednesday that he is calling a special session of the state legislature in his latest attempt to repeal a criminal abortion ban dating back to 1849 which suspended some abortion services in the state after the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade in June.

“In Wisconsin, we still have an 1800s-era criminal abortion ban on the books that originated before the Civil War and when Wisconsin women did not have the right to vote, which could ban nearly all abortions, including in cases of rape and incest, if it goes back into effect,” Evers said in a statement on social media.

The Democratic governor had called a special session earlier this year, before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, to repeal the then-dormant law. The Republican-controlled state legislature gaveled in and out of the special session without holding any discussion. Days later, the Supreme Court released its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, effectively overturning Roe. Abortion providers in Wisconsin have since suspended services amid the threat of prosecution.

Evers said he is now calling a special session to “create a pathway for Wisconsin voters” to repeal the abortion ban, which makes it a felony to provide an abortion except when the mother’s life is at risk.

The governor’s actions come a week after Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin suggested voters could challenge the abortion ban through a statewide referendum.

Voters in Wisconsin currently can not change state laws by referendum or introduce ballot initiatives, according to the governor’s office. Instead, a constitutional amendment must pass two consecutive state legislatures before heading to voters.

Evers proposes creating a process that would enable voters to “bypass” the state legislature and allow referendum ballot questions brought by the public.

“Wisconsinites were not only stripped of their reproductive freedom, but they currently can’t enact change to protect that freedom without having to get permission from the Legislature first. That’s just wrong, and it’s time for us to change that,” he said.

Evers has ordered the state legislature to act on his proposals on Oct. 4.

In response, the Republican leaders of the state legislature called Evers’ actions a “desperate political stunt.”

“Governor Evers would rather push his agenda to have abortion available until birth than talk about his failure to address rising crime and runaway inflation caused by his liberal DC allies,” state Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu and state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said in a joint statement.

Evers is further challenging the pre-Civil War abortion ban in a lawsuit filed in June by Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul that names three Republican state legislative leaders among the defendants. Last week, Kaul named three district attorneys as new defendants in the ongoing case. The lawsuit argues that newer legislation, including a 1985 law that bans abortion only after fetal viability, should take precedence.

The governor, who is up for reelection this November, has vetoed more restrictive abortion laws passed by the state legislature in the past three years.

Cancer deaths in US declined by 2% every year since 2016, report says

September 21, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Cancer deaths in the United States are continuing to decline, according to a new report from the American Association for Cancer Research.

The report, published Wednesday, found that deaths from cancer have decreased by 2.3% every year between 2016 and 2019.

Overall, there has been a 32% reduction in the U.S. cancer death rate since 1991, which translates into approximately 3.5 million lives being saved, the report said.

Additionally, in 2022, there are more than 18 million cancer survivors living in the U.S., equivalent to 5.4% of the population, the report found. Fifty years earlier, there were just 3 million cancer survivors.

According to the report, the decreasing number of deaths is due to “unprecedented progress” made against cancer within the last decade.

This includes eight new anticancer medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration between August 2021 and July 2022 as well as 10 previously approved medications that have been expanded to treat other types of cancer.

Another reason is due to the decline in smoking, the report says. Rates of smoking among U.S. adults have also decreased from 42% in 1965 to 12.5% in 2020.

The report also highlights the importance of cancer screenings, which can determine if a person has precancerous lesions or cancer in its early stages.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Colorectal Cancer Control Program — which aims to rise cancer screening rates among people between 45 and 75 years of age — saw an average increase of 8.2 percentage points and 12.3 percentage points among clinics that participated in the program for two and four years, respectively, according to the report.

“Basic research discoveries have driven the remarkable advances that we’ve seen in cancer medicine in recent years,” Dr. Lisa Coussens, the president of AACR, said in a statement.

“Targeted therapies, immunotherapy, and other new therapeutic approaches being applied clinically all stem from fundamental discoveries in basic science,” the statement added. “Investment in cancer science, as well as support for science education at all levels, is absolutely essential to drive the next wave of discoveries and accelerate progress.”

However, because cancer continues to be the second-leading cause of death in the U.S. — with an estimated 600,000 lives expected to be lost this year — the AACR is calling on Congress to increase funding for the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health and for the FDA, which oversees the regulation of anticancer medication.

The group also called for more support for programs such as President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative, which was relaunched in February 2022, with a goal of slashing the national cancer death rate by 50% over the next 25 years.

The good news comes despite a recent report that cancers among adults younger than age 50 have “dramatically increased” globally over the last several decades.

Researchers from Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital said the sharp rise of several cancers including breast, colon, esophagus, kidney, liver and pancreas began in the early 1990s.

The Brigham study found the rise is partially attributable to early screenings for some of these cancers. Early life exposures such as people’s diet, weight, lifestyle, environmental exposure, and microbiome may factor into what’s contributing to early-onset cancer, but more information on individual exposures is needed, the study said.

ABC News’ Dr. Evelyn Huang contributed to this report.

Appeals court grants DOJ’s request for partial stay of judge’s ruling on Trump special master

September 21, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — A panel of judges on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has granted a request from the Justice Department to stay portions of a ruling by district Judge Aileen Cannon that had effectively paused the government’s investigation into former President Donald Trump’s potential mishandling of classified records after leaving office.

The three-judge panel, comprised of two Trump appointees and an Obama-era appointee, ruled unanimously that the Justice Department is no longer enjoined from using the documents with classifications recovered from Mar-a-Lago in its investigation and will no longer have to submit them to special master Ray Dearie for his review.

“[Trump] has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents,” the panel said in its ruling. “Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents.”

They also agree with the Justice Department that Trump has submitted no record or claim that he ever declassified the documents at issue, and that his team resisted stating as much when pressed by Dearie.

“In any event, at least for these purposes, the declassification argument is a red herring because declassifying an official document would not change its content or render it personal,” the judges said. “So even if we assumed that Plaintiff did declassify some or all of the documents, that would not explain why he has a personal interest in them.”

House passes election reform bill to curb future interference; 9 Republicans join Democrats

September 21, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The House on Wednesday approved a post-Jan. 6 election reform bill intended to blunt future challenges to presidential elections.

The Presidential Election Reform Act, crafted largely by Reps. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., passed by a 229-203 vote, with nine Republicans joining the Democratic majority in favor of it.

The legislation would alter the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act, which — as the House committee investigating Jan. 6 showed through a series of hearings — former President Donald Trump and his allies focused on in their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 race Trump lost to Joe Biden.

Among other things, the new bill would confirm that the vice president’s role in overseeing the Electoral College count after each election is purely ministerial. The legislation would also raise the threshold needed for electoral objections by lawmakers to receive a vote in Congress and it would mandate that governors transmit state results to Congress.

As the Jan. 6 committee detailed, Trump and his allies pressed then-Vice President Mike Pence to not green-light the electors submitted from certain swing states and pushed governors to send to Congress alternate slates of electors who backed Trump over Biden.

Objections to some states’ electors on Jan. 6, 2021, also easily earned votes under the current standards, which only require one member each in the House and the Senate to back an objection. The new legislation raises that floor to one-third of each chamber.

Prior to Wednesday’s vote on the Presidential Election Reform Act, supporters emphasized the need for the legislation as numerous election deniers, including those running for office this year, still say the 2020 race shouldn’t have been certified, citing groundless claims of voter fraud.

“Let me be clear. This is a kitchen table issue for families, and we must make sure this anti-democratic plot cannot succeed,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said on the House floor. “It’s a kitchen table issue because denying the American people their fundamental freedom to choose their own leaders denies them their voice in the policies we pursue, and those policies can make tremendous difference in their everyday lives.”

“Our bill will preserve the rule of law for all future presidential elections by ensuring that self-interested politicians cannot steal from the people the guarantee that our government derives its power from the consent of the governed,” Cheney added in her own remarks.

The bill was not anticipated to garner significant Republican support in the House, though, outside of anti-Trump lawmakers.

The nine Republican votes came from Cheney and Reps. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Peter Meijer Michigan, Tom Rice of South Carolina, Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, John Katko of New York, Fred Upton Michigan and New York’s Chris Jacobs. None of them are returning next Congress, either because they are retiring or lost their primaries this year.

House GOP leadership had actively whipped against the bill, with Minority Whip Steve Scalise’s, R-La., saying in a memo Tuesday that “In their continued fixation to inject the Federal government into elections, this legislation runs counter to reforms necessary to strengthen the integrity of our elections.”

The House bill is also competing with Senate legislation crafted after bipartisan talks that included Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va, and Susan Collins, R-Maine.

The two bills are similar, though the Senate legislation sets a lower threshold to introduce objections to the electoral count.

ABC News’ Benjamin Siegel contributed to this report.

Russia releases two Americans captured fighting in Ukraine

September 21, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Two Americans who were being held captive by Russian-backed forces after volunteering to fight with Ukrainian forces have been released, their families said.

Alexander Drueke and Andy Huynh, both military veterans from Alabama, were reported missing by their families following a fight in the Kharkiv area of Ukraine in June.

They are currently in the custody of the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia, their families announced in a joint statement on Wednesday.

“We are thrilled to announce that Alex and Andy are free,” the families said. “They are safely in the custody of the US embassy in Saudi Arabia and after medical checks and debriefing they will return to the States.”

“We deeply appreciate everyone’s prayers and especially the close communication and support of our elected officials, Ukrainian Ambassador Markarova, and our members of the US embassies in Ukraine and Saudi Arabia and the US Department of State,” the statement continued.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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