(WASHINGTON) — When President Joe Biden visited Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, he promised a key form of federal aid to those dealing with the lingering effects of the storm, but weeks after landfall getting that financial help has been easier said than done.
The money would go straight into survivors’ bank accounts “so that they can deal immediately with emergencies,” Biden said Sept. 3.
Ida roared ashore near Port Fourchon as a Category 4 hurricane on Aug. 29, wiping out homes and flooding entire neighborhoods. At least 26 people died in Louisiana.
But access to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s critical needs assistance program, designed to provide $500 checks for individuals with lifesaving needs, has been difficult in many of the affected areas.
FEMA defines critical needs as “life-saving and life-sustaining items including, but not limited to: water, food, first aid, prescriptions, infant formula, diapers, consumable medical supplies, durable medical equipment, personal hygiene items and fuel for transportation.”
But weeks after the storm, getting access to those items is still a challenge, and has left some residents who say they have urgent needs confused about why they have not received the federal aid mentioned by Biden.
Melinda Bernard, 34, is among the Ida survivors who has not received the $500 deposit, despite requesting it.
Her family stayed at their home in Houma, Louisiana, when Ida hit as they couldn’t find safe lodging to accommodate them and their pets. They were without power for 15 days, she said.
“Everything was booked. We refused to leave our animals so we stayed home,” she said.
Bernard said she wasn’t anticipating the burden of Ida’s lasting effects, and in an effort to be honest, marked “no” on the FEMA application when asked if she was in immediate need. But as power outages lingered, Bernard was forced to run her generator to power her home, especially because her son, who has asthma, sometimes needs a nebulizer, particularly in hot weather.
Costs added up. Her generator failed and she was forced to replace it.
“Due to the difficulty of finding available gas, we chose to ration the fuel we had,” she said.
In a phone call to a FEMA disaster assistance hotline, a representative told her she couldn’t amend her application, and that she should visit a local food bank for assistance.
A Sept. 14 tweet from FEMA read, in part, “if you are not eligible, this program does not have an appeal process.”
When asked to confirm whether an application marked ineligible can be appealed, FEMA Public Affairs Director Jaclyn Rothenberg said she stood by the agency’s tweet.
Rothenberg said there had been more than 640,000 applications in Louisiana in connection with Ida, and 65% had received critical needs assistance funding.
“Most people are getting the funds they apply for,” she said.
In the Louisiana parish of Tangipahoa, parish President Robby Miller said he applied for the $500 promoted by Biden in the wake of Ida, like many others there. He said on Sept. 15 that he still hadn’t received it, and wasn’t alone.
“I’ve only heard of a handful that have gotten it,” he said.
Miller added that the process of applying for the various forms of aid offered by FEMA confounded him and other parish residents.
“I would say that the messaging and the communication of what is actually available to our citizens, when it will be available, has been rather confusing,” he said.
Danielle Craig, 45, lives in Hammond, on the border of Tangipahoa and Livingston parishes, and was among those displaced by Ida. She and her husband fled their home for nearly two weeks. She said the damage to her community was “unlike anything I have ever seen.”
The widespread destruction in Hammond included roofs ripped from buildings and downed trees lining the streets.
Craig’s husband is diabetic, and needed refrigeration for his insulin, so they stayed with friends for nearly two weeks — wherever they could find electricity.
Water leaked into their damaged home, then black mold began to line the walls and ceilings.
Craig said she tried to apply online for aid from FEMA, but couldn’t confirm her address in its system. When she called, she said a representative told her their home would need to be inspected first. Nobody has showed up, Craig said.
And while she was told she’d receive the $500 promised by Biden, the money hasn’t appeared. After hours on hold, a FEMA representative told her to be patient.
FEMA officials have committed to an equitable process in terms of the allocation of federal aid, and have encouraged applicants who were not offered critical needs assistance to explore other options, including individual assistance.
Rothenberg said FEMA is “improving access to disaster assistance for underserved communities,” including by expanding the criteria for applicants to show they have expenses related to their homes.
Rep. Troy Carter, D-La., announced Sept. 10 that FEMA had granted a 10-day extension to the original deadline to apply for assistance after, his spokesperson said, constituents reported difficulty accessing aid due to long hold times on FEMA phone lines. The new deadline to apply for Critical Needs Assistance is Sept. 22.
But despite the extension, some, like Craig, are still waiting for aid they say they urgently need.
“You can only be so patient after weeks of damage and nobody’s done anything,” she said.
(NEW YORK) — By early next year, all eligible students attending a Los Angeles public school will be required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
The school district is the largest in the country to mandate the shot — which joins a list of other vaccines already required to attend school that protect against highly contagious diseases.
All 50 states and the District of Columbia have vaccine requirements for children to attend school and child care facilities, including laws around allowable exemptions.
Massachusetts became the first state to enact a school vaccination requirement in the 1850s for the smallpox vaccine — the first immunization developed against a contagious disease — according to a publication by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Other states followed suit, and by the 1980-1981 school year, all states had vaccination requirements for students entering the classroom, the CDC said.
Children in close proximity with poor ventilation and hygiene practices can lead to “transmission events,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.
“This is why vaccine mandates in schools have been super important,” Brownstein said. “They create a safe environment where you can recognize that you will not have transmission of a wide range of infectious diseases like measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough.”
The mandates have been “very successful” in preventing outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, he said.
Thanks to vaccination efforts, many highly contagious diseases that were once common, such as measles, mumps, whooping cough (aka pertussis) and chickenpox, are now rare, while polio and smallpox have been eradicated in the U.S. Routine child vaccination is estimated to prevent 936,000 premature deaths and 419 million illnesses in American children born between 1994 and 2018, according to the CDC.
Vaccine mandates for child care and schools vary by state. All require vaccines that protect against polio, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles and rubella, according to the Immunization Action Coalition (IAC), a vaccine education and advocacy organization. Nearly all states require vaccines that protect against mumps, chickenpox, hepatitis B and pneumococcal disease.
Vaccines that aren’t widely required by states include ones for the flu, hepatitis A, rotavirus and HPV, according to IAC. The U.S. stopped routine vaccination for smallpox — which has been eradicated globally — in the 1970s.
“Precedents have been set that you can protect your community by requiring school vaccination requirements,” L.J Tan, chief policy and partnerships officer for IAC, told ABC News.
For the 2019-2020 school year, about 95% of children in kindergarten in the U.S. had received the DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis), MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) and varicella (chickenpox) vaccines, according to the CDC, with roughly 5% exempt from or not up to date on certain doses.
The agency has observed a decrease in vaccination rates during the pandemic, as COVID-19 has disrupted school and routine well visits for many families. There was a 14% drop in public sector vaccine ordering in 2020-2021 compared to 2019, and measles vaccine ordering decreased by over 20%, the CDC reported.
The decline in routine pediatric immunizations has been very concerning for public health experts.
“Whenever we have a decrease in coverage, that could be an opportunity for these infections to reemerge and cause outbreaks — and one of the most obvious, recent examples is measles,” Dr. Flor Munoz, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, told ABC News.
In 2019, the U.S. saw its largest measles outbreak in 25 years, with 1,282 cases confirmed in 31 states, mostly among people not vaccinated against the virus, according to the CDC.
It’s especially important that children stay up-to-date on vaccines as many return to in-person learning and routine activities, Munoz said.
“All of these other diseases that are vaccine-preventable can reemerge at any time,” Munoz said. “Vaccination is the easiest way and the best way to prevent any of these potentially serious infections.”
Pediatric COVID-19 rates have reached record levels in the U.S. as students return to school. In the last two weeks, nearly half a million children have tested positive for COVID-19, according to the latest report on pediatric coronavirus cases from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is authorized for people as young as 12 and approved by the Food and Drug Administration for those ages 16 and up. The pharmaceutical company has said it plans to submit vaccine safety data on 5- to 11-year-olds to the FDA by the end of September.
Currently, no state requires the COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 12 and older for school entry, though some are mandating it for certain state employees and many colleges are requiring it for students.
The Los Angeles Unified School District’s Board of Education last week approved a mandate that students ages 12 and up be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 10, 2022, to attend class in-person. At this time, the school district said it is not requiring booster shots, which the Biden administration is planning to be made available as soon as next week for the general public at least eight months after their second dose.
Beyond Los Angeles, nearby Culver City is mandating that public school students get the vaccine this school year, and two San Francisco Bay Area districts are considering the same. More school districts may likely follow suit, creating a “domino effect,” Brownstein said, especially as younger children become eligible to get the vaccine.
“A safe vaccine that can prevent transmission, protect our kids and ensure that they can stay in in-person learning actually makes a lot of sense,” he said. “And there’s historical precedent for doing so.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Food and Drug Administration’s independent advisory committee will convene in open session Friday to review the latest data submitted by Pfizer and discuss whether a booster dose is safe enough for widespread use and whether it’s necessary and effective at improving protection levels against COVID-19.
Their vote will be non-binding — the FDA is not required to follow the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee’s (VRBPAC) recommendations — but they generally do so.
After that vote, the FDA will decide whether they will formally amend their current vaccine approval for Pfizer. Next week the matter heads to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent advisory panel (ACIP), where that panel will weigh on a more granular level who should get a booster and when? The CDC director will then formally sign off on whatever ACIP recommends.
Friday morning’s opening remarks are set to kick off at 8:30 a.m. ET, followed by introductions by the FDA, presentations from CDC representatives, a discussion about booster protection and a presentation from Pfizer executives who will make the case for why boosters are appropriate.
After a public hearing portion in the afternoon and a question-and-answer session on both Pfizer’s and the FDA’s presentations, the committee will debate the issue for roughly two hours. A vote is expected at about 4:45 p.m. ET, if they stay on schedule.
The meeting Friday comes amid a contentious debate on the timeline for boosters, with some health experts vehement that the data and timing is still premature.
Two top FDA officials who are leaving the agency later this year publicly waded into the debate on Monday, splitting from the agency and arguing in a scientific journal that it was too soon to give booster shots to the general public since the vaccines still offer strong protection against serious disease.
Both are scheduled to attend Friday’s discussion. One of them, the director of the agency’s office of vaccines research and review, is supposed to give an overarching introduction of the topic for the FDA in the beginning of the day.
Also joining Friday’s meeting is the head of Israel’s public health services, Dr. Sharon Alroy Preis, who is set to present data on booster protection against COVID infection and severe disease.
In a review of Pfizer’s data, also released Wednesday, the FDA appeared to be noncommittal on the necessity for boosters. The agency pointed out that Pfizer’s efficacy data could be hampered by the limitations of studying boosters in real-world situations, which can introduce complicating factors.
“There are many potentially relevant studies, but FDA has not independently reviewed or verified the underlying data or their conclusions,” the agency wrote in its briefing.
Naming no one — but nodding to those lingering concerns — Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla penned an open letter on Thursday making the case for booster shots.
“This week we are approaching another pivotal moment in our ongoing fight against the virus,” Bourla writes of Friday’s FDA advisory committee. “Since the start of this pandemic, Pfizer and BioNTech have pledged to follow the science and keep people informed about our progress to help bring an end to this global health crisis. We have stayed true to our commitment of full transparency without selectively cherry-picking data.”
(NEW YORK) — On Friday, an advisory panel for the Food and Drug Administration will weigh in on a debate that has been broiling since the Biden administration announced last month that the country would begin to roll out booster shots against COVID-19.
This panel, which is independent of the FDA and the Biden administration, will look at the data recently submitted by Pfizer on booster shots and make a recommendation. The FDA will then decide whether they will formally amend their current vaccine approval for Pfizer, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has its own advisory committee, will review the information and make a decision.
But the back-and-forth leading up to this process, and the president’s involvement in an otherwise non-political decision, has left many Americans confused about who really needs boosters and when.
Do I need a booster shot, and if so, when?
Unfortunately, there’s no clear answer to this question yet. But it will come sometime in the next week, as the FDA and CDC’s advisory committees discuss the available data.
For now, the one thing to know is that the vast majority of vaccinated people are still well-protected by their vaccines.
“If you have a good immune system, I would certainly not go out and get a booster before anything is recommended. I feel strongly that we have to go by the scientific consensus, which really hasn’t been played out yet,” said Dr. Paul Goepfert, director of the Alabama Vaccine Research Clinic at the University of Alabama.
The latest CDC data found that over 90% of people hospitalized with COVID are still unvaccinated.
And while breakthrough infections happen, particularly as protection against mild infection wanes, the vaccines continue to protect Americans from ending up in the hospital with COVID, as well as vastly reducing their likelihood of death.
The only group that’s potentially at more risk of a serious breakthrough infection are older people who got their vaccines early on in the rollout. Recent studies by the CDC showed that protection against hospitalization for people over 65 has decreased to around 76-80%.
“At the end of the day, the purpose of the vaccines is to prevent hospitalizations and deaths, and they’re doing that very effectively still,” said Dr. Carlos Del Rio, executive associate dean of Emory University School of Medicine.
“Maybe a little less effective for people over the age of 60 or with comorbidities, but still, if you look around the hospitals, the people hospitalized today are people who haven’t received the vaccine.”
Additional vaccine doses, although not quite a booster, have already been approved by the CDC for the roughly 7 million immunocompromised Americans who didn’t have an optimal response to the first round of mRNA vaccines. Nearly 2 million Americans have gotten an additional shot since the FDA and CDC approved them in August for that subset of people.
The CDC officially recommended a third dose of an mRNA vaccine for immunocompromised Americans in August, allowing the approximately 7 million Americans who didn’t get an optimal immune response to their initial vaccine doses of Pfizer or Moderna to gain more protection.
There’s been a lot of debate as the process plays out. What’s the controversy?
When the Biden administration announced that it would roll out a booster shot program beginning Sept. 20, the White House’s COVID response team said it was to get ahead of the virus.
“You don’t want to find yourself behind, playing catch up,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said when announcing the plan. “Better stay ahead of it than chasing after it.”
The White House has relied heavily on Israel’s progress. Data from the country, where the vaccine process began sooner than in the U.S., shows that vaccine protection against serious disease has now begun to wane.
But quickly, career scientists pushed back on the White House’s announcement, saying there wasn’t enough U.S. data to support boosters yet — all the current evidence shows vaccines still protect most Americans against serious disease.
For experts in that camp, the focus usually narrows in on the 80 million Americans who aren’t vaccinated at all. Increasing protection across more of the country would stamp out transmission.
“We’re spending way too much time talking about boosters when we need to be spending time talking about the people that haven’t been vaccinated,” said Del Rio.
But on the other hand, studies do show that general protection against mild infection is waning, even if it’s staying strong against hospitalization.
“We need to reinforce the armor,” said Dr. Todd Ellerin, an ABC News medical contributor and the director of infectious diseases at South Shore Health in Massachusetts.
Ellerin predicted a triple threat ahead: a surge of delta infections, higher transmission during the winter months and close to half the country remaining unvaccinated.
“I think there are strong arguments for both sides and we just have to see,” Ellerin said.
The FDA’s independent advisory committee meets all day on Friday, and plans to vote in the late afternoon. For now, they’re only meeting about Pfizer, the first vaccine to submit its data.
If the FDA panel votes to move forward with boosters, the CDC’s advisory committee will meet almost a week later to nail down the details: who gets boosters and how soon.
The FDA and CDC committees are looking at Pfizer booster shots. What’s the deal with boosters for people who got J&J or Moderna?
Both Johnson & Johnson and Moderna are expected to follow Pfizer and run their data by the official FDA and CDC channels in the coming weeks in an effort to get approval for booster shots.
But both companies maintain protection is still strong against severe infection.
Moderna, in an analysis of various studies released on Wednesday, even made the case that the company’s original vaccine appears to generate the strongest protection among the three currently authorized vaccines.
Nevertheless, Moderna President Stephen Hoge told ABC News in an interview on Wednesday that “protection is not permanent” and “we’re not going to be able to defy gravity forever.”
Newly published data from Moderna’s booster shot trial showed a lower risk of breakthrough infections among people vaccinated eight months ago compared to people vaccinated 13 months ago.
Unlike Pfizer, Moderna’s third booster will be a half-dose. They say their data shows that boosting with a half-shot seems to generate more than enough immune response.
For J&J, the one-shot series chosen by about 14 million Americans, a study found that the vaccine still provided a durable immune response at least eight months later, even without a booster dose.
Another study, not yet peer reviewed, found more good news: The J&J booster dose actually boosted antibody levels higher than they were after the initial shot.
And while it will be a few weeks before there’s more concrete news on the J&J booster shots, there’s room in the timeline. Most Americans didn’t receive the J&J vaccine until late spring of 2020, since it was approved after the mRNA vaccines. That means the J&J boosters won’t be widely necessary until November at the earliest — if the FDA and CDC decide they’re needed at all.
There is not enough data yet on mixing and matching vaccines, though the CDC is actively researching it.
And for all three of the vaccines, recipients have a common question: will I need to get a booster routinely? Experts, wary of predicting anything about the unpredictable global pandemic, said it’s possible, but unlikely.
“My prediction is that as long as the COVID rates are going down, we will not need a continuous boost,” Goepfert said. That could change, however, if a new viral strain requires a newly tailored vaccine.
Are booster shots safe?
Pfizer, the only vaccine so far to have its data reviewed by the FDA, found no safety concerns among the 300 trial participants who were part of its clinical trial. Pfizer followed the participants for up to three months after getting their third shot.
Peoples’ reactions to the booster shots were not significantly different from their reactions to a second dose, FDA and Pfizer both wrote in their separate briefing documents.
“No deaths, vaccine-related serious adverse events, or events of myocarditis, pericarditis, anaphylaxis, appendicitis, or Bell’s palsy were reported among study participants who received the … booster dose,” the FDA wrote in a review of Pfizer’s safety data.
Moderna and J&J have not yet had their data reviewed by the FDA, but have said they found no safety concerns in their clinical trials of booster shots.
(MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.) — Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murder in George Floyd’s death, pleaded not guilty Thursday for allegedly violating the civil rights of a 14-year-old in 2017.
This indictment alleges that Chauvin deprived the teenager of his right to be free of unreasonable force. The indictment claims that Chauvin held the teen by his throat, hit him on the head with a flashlight and then kneeled on his neck and upper back as the teen was handcuffed and no longer resisting.
The restraint was similar to the one he used on Floyd and resulted in bodily injury for the teen, according to the indictment.
This teenager, like Floyd, is Black.
At least 18 complaints had been filed against Chauvin during his 19-year tenure with the Minneapolis police department, according to department records.
Floyd was killed in May 2020 after he was placed under arrest on the suspicion that he was using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes at a convenience store.
In the Floyd murder trial, prosecutors presented evidence of Chauvin’s history of restraining people by kneeling on their neck or upper back — highlighting eight different incidences to the judge.
In Floyd’s death, Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for pressing his knee against Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes. He was sentenced to 22 and-a-half-years in prison.
Judge Peter Cahill rejected Chauvin’s request for a new trial in June.
Chauvin and his fellow former officers Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao have also been charged with violating Floyd’s constitutional rights in ways that “resulted in bodily injury to, and the death of, George Floyd,” according to the federal grand jury indictment.
They all pleaded not guilty.
Lane, Kueng and Thao also face a state trial on charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder and aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. They have also entered not guilty pleas on these charges.
(NEW YORK) — Nicholas is stalling over the Gulf Coast, dropping dangerous amounts of rain over areas still recovering from previous storms.
Flash flood watches are in effect through Friday in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
Ten to 11 inches of rain has already inundated Alabama and Mississippi with more rain on the way.
The heaviest rain will be from Mississippi to Alabama to Florida over the next 24 hours.
New Orleans will continue to see showers and a few thunderstorms with another 1 to 2 inches of rain possible.
Slow-moving Nicholas is an especially dangerous threat for Louisiana, which is still recovering from deadly Hurricane Ida and other devastating storms in 2021 and 2020.
As of Tuesday, about 87,000 customers in Louisiana were still without power from Hurricane Ida, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said.
Double state of emergency looks like THIS… a flash flood watch from #Nicholas on top of 17 day old #Ida damage here in LaPlace, Louisiana… pic.twitter.com/K5nu6FEuri
Over 1,000 Louisiana residents remain at shelters in the wake of Ida, he said Tuesday.
The governor requested an emergency federal declaration, which was granted by President Joe Biden.
Before heading to Louisiana, Nicholas first struck the Houston area with over 6 inches of rain, shuttering schools.
In the Houston area, 460,000 customers were without power at the height of the storm early Tuesday, according to CenterPoint Energy. About 300,000 customers saw their power return by Tuesday evening.
(NEW YORK) — Thursday marks two years since 5-year-old Dulce Maria Alavez mysteriously vanished at a New Jersey park.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has worked with investigators to create this age-progression image showing what Dulce may look like today as a 7-year-old.
“Law enforcement continues to pursue all leads” to find Dulce, Cumberland County Prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae and Bridgeton Police Chief Michael Gaimari said in a joint statement Wednesday.
Authorities — including state, local and federal — are working “to determine those who are responsible” for her disappearance, the statement said.
Dulce was last seen on Sept. 16, 2019, while playing with her 3-year-old brother at the Bridgeton City Park behind Bridgeton High School.
Her mother, Noema Alavez Perez, was sitting in her car 30 yards away helping Dulce’s 8-year-old sister with homework.
“She was a sweet girl. Nice, loving,” Perez told ABC News this year. “She likes to pretend that she was always a princess. She likes to be around like smaller kids. She always like to give hugs and kisses.”
Police and prosecutors said Wednesday there’s no evidence of the little girl’s death and they “hold out hope that Dulce is alive.”
(LONDON) — French officials announced overnight that their military forces had killed the top ISIS leader in Africa, a terrorist for whom the United States had offered a $5 million reward due to his connection to the deadly attack on a team of Green Berets in Niger four years ago.
French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Twitter that Adnan Abou Walid al-Sahrawi, the leader of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, was “neutralized by French forces.”
“This is another major success in our fight against terrorist groups in the Sahel,” Macron said of the region in northwest Africa.
The drone strike occurred in late August but al-Sahrawi’s death was confirmed this month, French and U.S. counterterrorism officials told ABC News.
Al-Sahrawi was wanted by the U.S. for leading the group of more than 100 militants responsible for attacking Operational Detachment-Alpha 3212, a team of soldiers from 3rd Special Forces Group on Oct. 4, 2017, leaving four Americans and at least six Nigerien soldiers dead outside the tiny village of Tongo Tongo.
The 2017 ambush is the subject of a four-year ABC News investigation and an ABC Documentaries film set for release on Hulu in November, “3212 UN-REDACTED: An Ambush In Africa. The Pentagon’s Betrayal.”
Macron did not explicitly say that France’s anti-insurgent Task Force Barkhane in Mali had been assisted by U.S. intelligence, but sources in Paris and in Africa confirmed that was the case. American intelligence had previously assisted in numerous raids carried out by French Special Forces in 2018 that killed many of the Tongo Tongo attackers and recovered American weapons and one vehicle from the Green Beret team attacked in 2017.
The parents of U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Jeremiah Johnson, who was killed in action in the 2017 attack and decorated with the Bronze Star Medal with “V” for Valor, praised the French but said the U.S. should have taken the lead on al-Sahrawi’s capture or killing.
“We are profoundly grateful to the French Armed Forces for removing this threat to West Africa. At the same time, we are disappointed that the United States did not exert the effort to bring this individual to justice,” Johnson’s mother and stepfather, Debbie and Ray Gannon, told ABC News in a statement. “We should have made the effort to either kill or capture the individuals who were responsible for the ambush of ODA 3212 ourselves, instead of relying on other countries.”
Also killed in the 2017 attack were Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright of Lyons, Georgia, Sgt. LaDavid Johnson of Miami, and Staff Sgt. Bryan Black of Puyallup, Washington.
“More death does not make losing Bryan any better. But knowing there is one less evil man in this world brings me peace,” said Michelle Black, who authored the book “Sacrifice: A Gold Star Widow’s Fight For The Truth,” about her husband and the Tongo Tongo gunfight. “Perhaps it will prevent other families from suffering terror at his hands and for me that is enough.”
Bryan Black’s parents, Henry and Karen Black, also were grateful for the French operation, she said.
In a ceremony for all four families of the fallen soldiers in July, LaDavid Johnson and Jeremiah Johnson, both support soldiers who were killed with the Green Beret team, were posthumously inducted into the Green Berets.
“Although nothing can take away the pain of losing our four fallen heroes, there is comfort in knowing that justice has been served,” said former Green Beret Maj. Alan Van Saun, who was company commander of the ambushed detachment ODA 3212, and who appears in the ABC documentary film.
“I am grateful for our French and African partners who worked tirelessly to bring this chapter to an end, but I know there is still a lot of work to be done to bring stability to the Sahel,” Van Saun told ABC News.
The French Defense Ministry said that the operation was conducted between Aug. 17-22, in partnership with the Malian armed forces, against ISIS fighters in the dangerous forest area south of the village of In Delimane in Mali’s Liptako region.
A senior French commander told ABC News that al-Sahrawi was “weakened after the loss of two of his logistics commanders in the same period,” after the French neutralized Rhissa al-Sarhaoui and the commander known as Ikarey.
The French commander told ABC News that, based on U.S. intelligence, “we understood al-Sahrawi left Menaka on a motorbike and was about to cross the Nigerien border.”
Al-Sahrawi was then targeted by a drone airstrike that killed the ISIS leader and resulted in the captured of ten of his men, French and U.S. officials said.
“This zone is a red one. Almost a stateless area. This is a huge get and could rebalance the power at least for the Malian Liptako,” said the French commander, who added that confirming al-Sahrawi’s death “took several weeks.”
“The killing of al-Sahrawi follows a series of tactical successes by the French, who recently killed or captured several senior ISGS [Islamic State in the Greater Sahara] commanders,” said Sahel expert Heni Nsaibia of the risk consultancy firm Menastream. “It appears that these events and the question of who will succeed al-Sahrawi have created serious tensions within ISGS. We are talking about numerous No. 1- and 2-ranking commanders eliminated in just months. This means that it will be difficult for the group to effectively restructure and reorganize at this point.”
In a statement, Macron paid tribute to France’s fallen troops in northwest Africa.
“The Nation is thinking this evening of all its heroes who died for France in the Sahel … of the bereaved families, of all of its wounded,” Macron said. “Their sacrifice is not in vain. With our African, European and American partners, we will continue this fight.”
(NEW YORK) — The United States is facing a COVID-19 surge this summer as the more contagious delta variant spreads.
More than 666,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.6 million people have died from the disease worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Just 63.3% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Sep 16, 7:39 pm
Seattle to require proof of vaccination or negative test for indoor recreation, large outdoor events
The most populous county in Washington state will implement COVID-19 vaccine and testing requirements for indoor dining, large outdoor events and other activities.
Starting Oct. 25, proof of COVID-19 vaccination will be required for everyone ages 12 and up to enter indoor establishments, including restaurants, bars, gyms and movie theaters, and attend outdoor events with more than 500 people in King County, home to Seattle, officials announced Thursday.
Those who are not vaccinated must show proof of a negative PCR COVID-19 test in the last 72 hours or take a rapid test on site prior to entry.
“We are at a critical point in this pandemic, with high levels of new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, and no certainty as to what will follow the Delta variant,” King County Executive Dow Constantine said in a statement. “Vaccination is our best shield against this deadly virus.”
Over 85% of King County residents have received at least their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to Constantine.
Lumen Field, home of the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, already required vaccination or a negative test, while the MLB’s Seattle Mariners said last week they would institute the same guidelines should they make the playoffs.
Sep 16, 6:53 pm
24 state attorneys general warn Biden of potential legal action over vaccine mandate
Two dozen state attorneys general are threatening legal action against the federal government over a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private businesses.
A week after President Joe Biden announced that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration will create a rule that will require roughly 80 million workers nationwide to be vaccinated or undergo weekly testing, 24 Republican state attorneys general warned in a [letter addressed to the president] () that they “will seek every available legal option” if the mandate is implemented.
The letter, which called the plan “disastrous and counterproductive” and debated its legality, was signed by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Earlier this week, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy defended Biden’s vaccine plan in an interview with “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos.
“The requirements that he announced are not sweeping requirements for the entire nation,” Murthy said. “These are focused on areas where the federal government has legal authority to act.”
Sep 16, 5:05 pm
CDC predicts hospitalizations will drop this month
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly ensemble forecast, an average of several models, predicts that the number of new daily hospital admissions will likely drop.
The ensemble forecast predicts “5,000 to 15,300 new confirmed COVID-19 hospital admissions likely reported on October 11.” The current seven-day average is 11,165 new hospitalizations per day.
-ABC News’ Brian Hartman
Sep 16, 3:59 pm
Pfizer CEO pens letter making the case for boosters
In an open letter, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla is making the case for his company’s vaccine booster shot, one day before an FDA advisory committee meets to debate and vote on the issue.
Bourla underscored the “strong immune response after the booster dose” and vowed that Pfizer has “stayed true to our commitment of full transparency without selectively cherry-picking data.”
Bourla also addressed international concerns over boosters for all potentially detracting from access to first doses in developing countries.
“Some people and organizations have raised concerns that the approval of boosters will divert doses dedicated to the low- and middle-income countries and redirect them to the high-income countries. And they use this argument to claim that boosters should not be approved. I disagree,” Bourla wrote.
“No commitments already made by Pfizer to a country will change if boosters are approved,” he wrote.
-ABC News’ Sasha Pezenik
Sep 16, 3:20 pm
US reports highest daily death toll in nearly 7 months
The U.S. reported a staggering 2,000 COVID-19 related fatalities overnight, marking the highest single-day death total in nearly seven months, according to federal data. Although that large number could be partially due to data backlogs, it’s still significant given that the pandemic has been ongoing for 18 months.
In the last five weeks, the U.S. has not seen a single day with less than 100,000 new cases, according to federal data. This is a massive step back in the fight against COVID-19; between Feb. 7 and July 29, 2021, there was never a day with 100,000 or more new cases.
Tennessee has the country’s highest case rate followed by West Virginia, Wyoming, South Carolina, Alaska, Montana and Kentucky.
Nine states now have more patients in hospitals than at any point in the pandemic: Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia.
-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Sep 16, 2:47 pm
Idaho expands crisis standards of care statewide
Idaho is expanding its crisis standards of care plan to the entire state due to a surge in hospitalized patients that’s exhausting resources.
“The situation is dire,” Dave Jeppesen, director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, said in a statement Thursday. “We don’t have enough resources to adequately treat the patients in our hospitals, whether you are there for COVID-19 or a heart attack or because of a car accident.”
Crisis standards of care was first activated Sept. 6 in North Idaho.
“When crisis standards of care are in effect, people who need medical care may experience care that is different from what they expect,” state officials said. “For example, patients admitted to the hospital may find that hospital beds are not available or are in repurposed rooms (such as a conference room) or that needed equipment is not available.”
“Not all hospitals will move to that standard of care,” state officials said Thursday. “Hospitals will implement as needed and according to their own CSC policies.”
Sep 16, 2:25 pm
Italy votes to mandate COVID health pass for workplaces
A COVID Green Pass will be required for all workers in Italy, in both private and public sectors, beginning Oct. 15, the government announced Thursday.
The Green Pass proves a person is vaccinated, has recovered from COVID-19 or has had a negative test in the last two days.
Employees who go to work without the pass face a five-day suspension without pay.
-ABC News’ Christine Theodorou
Sep 16, 12:20 pm
What to expect at Friday’s panel on Pfizer booster shots
An FDA advisory panel will convene in open session Friday to debate the latest booster shot data submitted by Pfizer, and following a non-binding vote, the FDA is expected to formally amend its current vaccine approval for Pfizer.
Opening remarks are set for 8:30 a.m. ET. That’s followed by introductions by the FDA, presentations from CDC representatives, discussion of booster protection and a presentation from Pfizer.
After a public hearing portion in the afternoon and a Q&A on the Pfizer and FDA presentations, the committee is expected to debate the issue for about two hours. A vote is expected at about 4:45 p.m. ET.
Next week, the matter heads to the CDC’s independent advisory panel whose members will discuss who should get a booster and when.
-ABC News’ Sasha Pezenik
Sep 16, 10:46 am
Booster shots begin in England
Booster shots are now being administered in England.
Eligible people must be six months out from their last shot and include: adults ages 50 and over; people in residential care homes; frontline health care workers; social workers; people who are immunocompromised; and caregivers for the immunocompromised.
About 4.5 million people will be eligible for a booster in the next few weeks.
Sep 16, 9:01 am
Pope Francis discusses vaccine hesitancy
Pope Francis said Wednesday he found it “ironic” that a cardinal who was not vaccinated against COVID-19 had been hospitalized with the virus.
Speaking to reporters on his plane while returning to Rome after visiting Hungary and Slovakia, Francis discussed the hesitancy against COVID-19 vaccines and how it has divided people.
“It’s strange because humanity has a friendly relationship with vaccines,” the pope said. “As children, we got them for measles, for other things, for polio. All the children were vaccinated, and no one said anything. Then this happened.”
“Even in the College of Cardinals, there are some anti-vaxxers,” he added, “and one of them, poor man, is in hospital with the virus. But life is ironic.”
Although Francis didn’t identify the man by name, it appeared he was referring to American Cardinal Raymond Burke, one of the Catholic church’s most outspoken conservatives who eschewed the COVID-19 vaccine and spent days on a ventilator after contracting the virus in August.
Francis noted that everyone in the Vatican, “except for a small group,” has been vaccinated against COVID-19.
Sep 16, 7:17 am
China says it has vaccinated over 1 billion people
China said Thursday that it has vaccinated more than 1 billion people against COVID-19.
According to the Chinese National Health Commission, 2.16 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the country so far, fully vaccinating 1.01 billion people. That accounts for more than 70% of China’s population.
China’s COVID-19 vaccination rate is now among the highest in the world, above the United States and Europe. The inoculation drive, however, only used domestically-made vaccines, including Sinopharm and Sinovac Biotech, both of which were approved for emergency use by the World Health Organization but have faced growing scrutiny that they may not be very effective at curbing the spread of the virus, particularly the new variants.
Despite chasing zero cases with the strictest of suppression methods, China still suffers the occasional COVID-19 outbreak. A fresh outbreak of the more contagious delta variant has been growing in the southeastern province of Fujian. Chinese authorities said the source of the outbreak there was a father who returned from Singapore in early August and transmitted the virus to his child after quarantining. The father didn’t test positive for COVID-19 until 38 days after he had returned to China.
Painting the threat of the virus coming in from abroad, China has no plans to reopen its borders for the foreseeable future. Even the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing in February Feb is expected to be held within a very strict bubble that will make the recent Tokyo Games seem lax.
Sep 15, 6:58 pm
NYC health officials investigating cases linked to Labor Day concert
New York City’s Heath Department announced Wednesday it is investigating a cluster of COVID-19 cases that were linked to a Labor Day weekend concert.
At least 16 people have been identified as part of the cluster linked to the Electric Zoo music festival on Randall’s Island, which is located in the East River, the department said.
Eight people have been also been identified who “though likely exposed prior to attending the concert,” were in attendance while potentially contagious, according to the health department.
“Anyone who attended this festival should get tested immediately, regardless of whether or not they have been vaccinated. This is especially urgent if attendees are experiencing symptoms,” New York City’s health commissioner, Dr. Dave Chokshi, said in a statement.
The concert’s organizers had strict rules for entrance.
Attendees had to show proof of vaccination that matched their photo ID. Unvaccinated ticket holders were allowed in if they showed proof of a negative test “no more than 3 days prior to each day of attendance,” according to the concert’s website.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is planning to meet on Sept. 22 and 23 and is prepared to discuss COVID-19 vaccine boosters.
This will delay the potential start date of boosters until at least late next week, past the president’s planned start date for boosters on Sept. 20.
The White House acknowledged that the start date is ultimately up to the CDC and Food and Drug Administration.
The FDA advisory panel is currently scheduled to hold a public hearing on boosters for the Pfizer vaccine and will have a non-binding vote later that day.
If the FDA approves, the ACIP will discuss and vote on recommendations, such as who should get the boosters and when.
The CDC director will make the ultimate decision on the boosters following the ACIP recommendations.
(WASHINGTON) — A lawyer whose firm represented Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the 2016 presidential election was indicted Thursday by special counsel John Durham on a single charge of making a false statement to the FBI.
Michael Sussmann, an attorney for the Perkins Coie law firm who previously represented the Democratic National Committee following the hacking of its servers by Russia during the 2016 campaign, is accused of lying “about the capacity in which he was providing allegations to the FBI” when he met with a top lawyer from the bureau in September 2016 and provided him information about potential ties between a Russian bank and computer servers in the Trump Organization.
“Specifically, SUSSMANN state falsely that he was not doing his work on the aforementioned allegations “for any client,” which led the FBI General Counsel (James A. Baker) to understand that SUSSMANN was acting as a good citizen merely passing along information, not as a paid advocate or political operative,” prosecutors write in the indictment.
They allege instead that Sussmamn intentionally misled the FBI general counsel because he was acting at the time on behalf of an unnamed tech executive, an “U.S. internet company” and Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign.
Prior to his indictment Thursday, Sussmann’s attorneys provided a statement to ABC News maintaining his innocence.
“Mr. Sussmann has committed no crime,” attorneys Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth of the law firm Latham and Watkins said. “Any prosecution here would be baseless, unprecedented, and an unwarranted deviation from the apolitical and principled way in which the Department of Justice is supposed to do its work.”
“We are confident that if Mr. Sussmann is charged, he will prevail at trial and vindicate his good name,” they added.
Durham was appointed by former Attorney General William Barr in May 2019 to investigate allegations of misconduct by members of the FBI and the intelligence community in their investigation of potential ties between Russia and former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for the presidency. Before his resignation, Barr appointed Durham as special counsel extending his tenure into the Biden administration.
While Durham’s probe has long since lapsed the total duration of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, prior to Thursday he had yielded only one indictment against a lower-level FBI lawyer who admitted to doctoring an email used in seeking surveillance against a former aide to Trump’s campaign. That lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, was sentenced to probation earlier this year.
Durham has been tasked with creating a report outlining his findings, though it will be up to Attorney General Merrick Garland to determine whether to make those findings public. Garland has said publicly he has no intention of interfering in Durham’s work.
The indictment alleges Sussmann began in 2016 working with a U.S. tech executive and other cyber researchers in coordination with the Clinton campaign to assemble “white papers” on a potential communications channel between the Trump Organization and Russian-owned Alfa Bank. Sussmann later provided Baker with the documents in a Sept. 19, 2016 meeting where he is alleged to have made the false statement about who he was acting on behalf of at the time.
The connections were later examined by the FBI, but not substantiated.
In a 2017 deposition with House lawmakers, Sussmann said that he requested the meeting on behalf of a client who was a cybersecurity expert that held data he said showed ties between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization. According to a source familiar with the matter, his legal team denied in meetings with Durham’s team that his meeting with Baker was coordinated or on behalf of members of Clinton’s campaign.
The meeting between Sussman and Baker occurred more than a month after the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation — looking into whether people associated with the Trump campaign were coordinating, wittingly or unwittingly, with the Russian government’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 campaign — was opened on July 31.
Days earlier, on July 27, 2016, then-candidate Trump said publicly at a campaign event, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the more than 30,000 emails that are missing.” This was an apparent reference to Clinton emails that had been stored on a private server during the time she had served as secretary of state.
In the spring of 2016, Russian military intelligence had hacked into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee. Emails and documents stolen by the Russians had already been leaked in June and July of 2016 and Trump continued to encourage more leaks as they continued throughout the campaign.
The New York Times, which first reported news of Durham’s plans to seek an indictment against Sussmann, also reported that Garland has declined to overrule Durham’s decision.
Sussmann’s legal team has communicated to Durham’s team that they believe his case will fall apart under scrutiny for several different reasons, a source said. They have noted that Sussmann’s alleged statement to Baker was made nearly five years ago and in a private meeting with no witnesses. And they argue the statements identified by Durham are immaterial in that they likely had no significant impact on any actual investigation being conducted by the FBI at the time.
In the indictment, however, prosecutors contend the statement was material “because, among other reasons, Sussmann’s false statement misled the FBI general counsel and other FBI personnel concerning the political nature of his work and deprived the FBI of information that might have permitted it more fully to assess and uncover the origins of the relevant data and technical analysis, including the identities and motivations of Sussmann’s clients.”
