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As delta variant surges, COVID hospitalizations rise 30% over previous week

August 12, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Driven by the more transmissible delta variant, COVID-19 cases and deaths are up nationwide by more than 20% compared to last week’s seven-day average, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said Thursday, and hospitalizations are up over 30% over the previous week.

On average, cases over the last seven days are up 24% from the week before, hospital admissions are up 31% and deaths are up 22%.

“As we have been saying, by far those at highest risk remain people who have not yet been vaccinated,” Walensky said at a White House briefing.

The surge in cases is far worse in certain areas of the country, although the vast majority of Americans now live in an area with dangerous levels of transmission.

Over the past week, Florida has had more cases of COVID than all 30 states with the lowest case rates combined, and Florida and Texas have together accounted for nearly 40% of new hospitalizations across the country in the last week, the White House said.

At the same time, 90% of counties are now considered to be areas of substantial or high transmission, which the CDC defines as more than 50 cases per 100,000 people or a test positivity rate higher than 8%.

“We all know that vaccines are the very best line of defense against COVID and how we end this pandemic,” White House COVID coordinator Jeff Zients said.

To that end, Zients heralded the news that vaccination rates continue to rise in states that have been hardest hit by the virus, including much of the Southeast.

Vaccinations have also doubled nationwide over the past month in the 12-17 age group, which is vital as kids return to school and are more at risk of getting or spreading the virus.

“For the first time since mid-June, we’re averaging about a half-million people getting newly vaccinated each and every day,” Zients said. “And overall in the last week, 3.3 Americans rolled up their sleeve to get their first shot.”

According to the White House, vaccinations over the past month have tripled in Arkansas and quadrupled in Louisiana, Alabama and MIssissippi — some of the least vaccinated states in the whole country, with uptake in the 30-40% range.

Florida, which has the second highest rate of COVID in the country, has also increased its vaccination rates. Though it had a higher vaccination rate than other hard-hit states prior to the delta surge, vaccinations have still more than doubled in the last month.

The increase couldn’t come soon enough, though, as tens of thousands of doses are expected to expire after months of slow vaccination rates.

While the full extent of COVID-19 vaccine waste in the U.S. remains unknown due to data reporting disparities between the states, research by ABC News found that 5,744 doses expired in Arkansas last month.

Health officials in Alabama confirmed to ABC News that in the past two weeks, approximately 35,147 doses have been discarded — accounting for more than half of the 65,000 doses that have gone unused in the state since the beginning of the year.

And in Mississippi, where the 35% vaccination rate is one of the lowest in the country, officials told ABC News that roughly 40,600 doses have expired so far.

Meanwhile, the CDC is encouraging vaccination among two more groups this week — pregnant women and immunocompromised Americans.

On Wednesday, the CDC announced new guidance that strongly urged pregnant women get vaccinated, based on more evidence that the vaccines are safe for mothers and their babies.

“We are strengthening our guidance and recommending that all pregnant people, or people thinking about becoming pregnant, get vaccinated. We now have new data that reaffirmed the safety of our vaccines for people who are pregnant, including those early in pregnancy and around the time of conception,” Walensky said Thursday.

She also pointed to new recommendations expected for people who didn’t have optimal responses to the first dose of their vaccines because of underlying health conditions, like cancer, HIV or organ transplants, and will soon be allowed to get a third dose of the mRNA vaccines, either Pfizer or Moderna.

“FDA is working with Pfizer and Moderna to allow boosters for these vulnerable people. An additional dose could help increase protections for these individuals, which is especially important as the Delta variant spreads,” Walensky said.

The FDA’s decision, which will be followed by a recommendation from the CDC on exactly who gets a third shot and how, will apply to about 3% of people, Walensky said.

The White House maintains that boosters are not yet needed for the general population, though they will eventually be necessary.

“Apart from the immunocompromised … we do not believe that others, elderly or non-elderly, who are not immunocompromise, need [an additional] vaccine right at this moment,” Fauci said.

“But this is a dynamic process, and the data will be evaluated,” he said. “So, if the data shows us that, in fact, we do need to do that, we’ll be very ready to do it and do it expeditiously.”

ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos, Laura Romero, Soorin Kim, and Sasha Pezenik contributed to this report.

Biden, DeSantis faceoff raises questions of politics versus public health: ANALYSIS

August 12, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The war of words between President Joe Biden, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other GOP governors escalated Thursday, raising new questions about how much politics and politicians should be involved in potentially life or death public health decisions.

At the White House, Biden addressed the ongoing debate — and in some cases, outright cultural war — around children being required to wear masks in school, arguing it shouldn’t be a “political dispute” even though that’s clearly what much of it has become.

“This isn’t about politics. This is about keeping our children safe,” he said. “To the mayors, school superintendents, educators, local leaders, who are standing up to the governors politicizing mask protection for our kids, thank you.”

Under pressure to act more forcefully as the delta variant rages across the South, Biden said earlier this week the White House is “checking” into how much power the federal government has to intervene as DeSantis threatened to withhold state funding from schools and officials adopting mask mandates in Florida — the state with the highest number of pediatric COVID-19 cases as kids head back to school.

It comes after weeks of growing tensions as some Republican governors — particularly in Florida and Texas — continue to fight against mask and vaccine mandates as COVID-19 cases skyrocket in their states. It also follows the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issuing new guidance recommending indoor masking across-the-board for all staff, students and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status.

Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist expert and founder of the Division of Medical Ethics at the New York University School of Medicine, told ABC News that while the federal government has the authority to intervene — and should — it’s the responsibility of elected officials at the state and local level to rely on experts and not make public health decisions colored by appeals to their political base.

“Politicians have to, in a plague, yield to the best science and medical opinion, consensus opinion, that they can get,” Caplan said. “People who often did not take any science classes past high school should not be telling us how best to manage an infectious disease outbreak.”

Even the most scientific minds, however, can be influenced by politics. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expert Dr. Rochelle Walensky, in an interview published Thursday, hinted at regretting her decision in May to ditch masks if you’re vaccinated.

“There was an enormous pressure for vaccinated people to be able to do things that they wanted to get back to doing,” she told the Wall Street Journal.

Under pressure to follow the science, but also no doubt aware of polls showing what Americans want, Biden has often repeated he’s leaning on health experts like the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci in making his decisions, putting the onus on local leaders to take precautions, and not, as some critics have urged, using his presidential powers and influence to take more actions at the federal level.

DeSantis has taken a different approach with his political base, sending fundraising emails in recent weeks exploiting the conservative animosity toward the president and Fauci.

Speaking on ABC’s “GMA3” on Thursday, Fauci said it’s “so unfortunate” that an “ideological divide” is stopping some people from getting vaccinated.

“We’re dealing with a public health crisis, and you address a public health crisis by public health principles,” Fauci said. “Ideology, divisiveness has no place in this and yet, in many areas, it seems to dominate.”

Caplan also said it’s political — and the result, in the case of DeSantis, is harming the people of Florida and beyond.

“The core of his party is still anti-mandates, whether it’s vaccine or masks, and has never shown any enthusiasm for tough public health measures, that’s just political and it is true, despite the fact that Trump is vaccinated, Abbott is vaccinated,” Caplan said. “It’s not like conservative GOP leadership hasn’t been vaccinated.”

But thousands of their constituents are not.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll from July illustrates how partisanship has infected pandemic attitudes and behavior.

Ninety-three percent of Democrats say they either have been vaccinated or definitely or probably will do so; that plummets to 49% of Republicans. Independents are between the two at 65%. And while Republicans are far less likely to get a shot, just 24% see themselves as at risk for infection.

“The bottom line is, look at a map, see where the dead and hospitalized people are, then ask yourself, if the governor’s policies in Texas and Florida make any sense,” Caplan said.

Some Republican governors who have issued orders effectively forbidding local officials from requiring masks in schools, continued with a firing exchange of words with the White House this week as kids, many too young to be vaccinated, head back to the classrooms across the country.

Asked on Wednesday about a recent New York Post headline framing Biden as “kneecapping” DeSantis, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration is not out to get DeSantis but wants him to participate in their efforts to combat COVID-19 — which, she said, he has not.

“Our war is not on DeSantis. It’s on the virus, which we’re trying to kneecap, and he does not seem to want to participate in that effort to kneecap the virus — hence our concern,” she said at an afternoon press briefing.

DeSantis slammed the White House earlier Wednesday and vowed that he would “fight back vociferously” against any attempt by the administration to find a way to pay the salaries of school officials that defy his state ban on mask mandates as he threatens to withhold state funding from those that adopt them.

“If you’re talking about the federal government coming in and overruling parents and our communities, that would be something that we would fight back vociferously against,” DeSantis told reporters in St. Petersburg outside of an elementary school.

The governor is facing at least two lawsuits from parents, and several school districts in Florida have already voted to mandate masks despite his executive order, citing data in their lawsuits that masks are proven to help slow the spread and noting that most kids are still too young to be eligible for vaccinations.

“It is a common sense, reasonable accommodation for a vulnerable child who is immunocompromised or at risk of a serious disease to require a public entity to implement simple precautions to ensure that the most vulnerable children are safe,” one lawsuit said, adding the order allegedly “harms the children who the disability discrimination laws were enacted to protect.”

The White House has praised the “courage” of school officials who have chosen to defy the order and said it’s looking into whether unused funding from the federal government’s American Rescue Plan could be used to make up the difference in funds DeSantis threatens to withhold. Texas, meanwhile, is dealing a similar hand.

Since Biden last week called out Texas Gov. Greg Abbott by name, along with DeSantis, as leaders who need to “help or get out of the way,” Abbott has also stuck defiantly behind his order banning mask mandates — despite hospitals becoming so overwhelmed that Abbot has called for out-of-state medical personnel to come help mitigate the surge of COVID-19 cases there.

Under Abbott’s order, institutions that defy the governor’s mask mandate ban are subject to a $1,000 fine. At least two school districts there have announced they still will require masks, and the tides appear to be turning in their favor.

“Any school district, public university, or local government official that decides to defy GA-38—which prohibits gov’t entities from mandating masks—will be taken to court,” Abbott said in a tweet.

Amid the growing concerns with sending kids back to school amid a surge in pediatric COVID-19 cases, it’s not clear under what authority the White House will actually step in when it comes to fines to educators. Psaki reiterated on Wednesday they are “looking into ways we can help the leaders at the local level who are putting public health first continue to do their jobs,” and speaking with the Department of Education.

Biden took a shot at those governors restricting schools’ abilities to issue mandates on Tuesday, without naming names, saying, “I find that totally counterintuitive and, quite frankly, disingenuous” but admitted he didn’t currently believe he had the authority under law to directly intervene on any state government’s mask mandate.

“I don’t believe that I do, thus far. We’re checking that,” Biden said.

Caplan told ABC News that the federal government “can and should” look at ways in which Texas and Florida are gaining certain federal benefits and suspend them — “until they drop these absurd prohibitions and return to solid public health advice.”

“I would try to turn up the pain on the governors in terms of economic consequences of their ill-thought-out, morally wrong policies, and the justification is you’re putting the rest of the country at risk,” Caplan said. “Because not only are they endangering their own state residents, they’re putting the rest of us at risk.”

12-year-old fights for mask mandate in schools

August 12, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(JACKSONVILLE, Fla.) — Lila Hartley, from Jacksonville, Florida, took matters into her own hands when she heard Duval County Public Schools wouldn’t require masks for the upcoming school year: She wrote a letter to the school board and superintendent pushing for a mask mandate.

“I would like to encourage the requirement of masks at school in Duval County. Right now, especially while the Delta variant is surging, hospitalizing and killing so many kids. I really believe masks should be required,” she wrote in the letter, which was shared with “Good Morning America.”

“This pandemic is still around,” Lila told “GMA” of why she wrote the letter. “People are still dying and getting sick. Masks save lives, and I don’t want my brother to die.”

While Lila and her family are vaccinated, her brother Will, 10, is too young to receive the vaccine.

“I am so worried that if masks are not required my brother could go to school one day and the next be dying in the hospital,” the letter continued. “We are siblings so we have our rivalries but I don’t know what I would do if he died, especially if it was caused by a place that means so much to him, school.”

Will is also a big supporter of masks and finds himself reminding his friends to wear theirs properly.

“Masks do help us,” he told “GMA.” “I wear my mask because even though the rest of my family is vaccinated, there’s still a chance they can get it.”

Lila emailed a copy of her letter to the board on July 26, and has only heard back from one of the board members so far, she said.

On July 30, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order banning schools from requiring masks. If schools are found to be in violation, they may lose state funding.

According to the governor’s office, the order was in response to “several Florida school boards considering or implementing mask mandates” and to “protect parents’ freedom to choose whether their children wear masks.”

Following the executive order, the Duval County school board held a meeting Aug. 3 to decide on whether it would require masks for the upcoming school year.

Lila and her brother demonstrated with a number of others outside the meeting in favor of masks, while her father, Matt Hartley, and other parents, educators, and medical professionals voiced their opinions inside.

“We wanted to support dad because he’s been working hard,” Lila said.

“We’re fighting for ourselves, but we’re fighting for other kids too,” Hartley told “GMA.” “That’s our M.O. — we love our neighbors.”

The board voted 5-2 in favor of requiring masks with a parental opt-out. Parents will not have to provide a reason for opt-outs.

Hartley said that while the vote did “make things a lot better with masking,” he’s “disappointed” as it still leaves a lot of room for people to not wear them.

In a statement provided to ABC News, Duval County School Board Chairwoman Elizabeth Anderson said, “The Board’s emergency policy decision Tuesday night creates the best balance between our deeply held responsibility for the safety and welfare of students and staff while fully respecting parental choice under the Governor’s order.”

“It’s important to wear masks because it keeps each other safe,” Lila, who one day hopes to be secretary of state, said. “If I’m wearing a mask and the other person is wearing a mask then we’re both safe and not giving each other our germs and possibly COVID.”

Thousands of troops heading to Afghanistan to help with US embassy departures

August 12, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The State Department will begin reducing its staff levels at the U.S. embassy in Kabul and the Pentagon will send troops in to help facilitate those departures, as Taliban forces advance on more provincial capitals.

State Department Spokesman Ned Price said that while the embassy in Kabul will remain open, they will be reducing their civilian footprint due to the “evolving security situation.” He added that they expect to draw down to a core diplomatic presence in Afghanistan.

“What this is not — this is not abandonment. This is not an evacuation. This is not the wholesale withdrawal,” Price said Thursday. “What this is, is a reduction in the size of our civilian footprint. This is a drawdown of civilian Americans who will, in many cases, be able to perform their important functions elsewhere, whether that’s in the United States or elsewhere in the region.”

In a briefing at the Pentagon, the Defense Department’s top spokesman announced that it’s sending 3,000 troops from three infantry battalions — two Marine and one Army — to Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport to help out with the removal of American personnel from the U.S. embassy.

They’ll be there “temporarily” and will begin shipping out in the next 24 to 48 hours. These numbers are on top of the 650 already in Kabul protecting the airport and the embassy.

An additional 1,000 personnel will be sent to assist with the processing of Afghans who worked as interpreters, guides and other contractors and applied for Special Immigrant Visas.

Furthermore, a brigade of 3,000 to 3,500 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne will be sent to Kuwait to pre-position in case they are needed further.

Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters that after a meeting with business leaders Thursday afternoon she would leave to “continue the briefings that we’ve been receiving.”

Price said they will continue to relocate qualified Afghans who assisted the American mission, such as interpreters and others who worked for the U.S. government, and flights will ramp up in the coming days.

The U.S. embassy in Kabul has also urged Americans to evacuate Afghanistan immediately, amid fears that the capital could fall into Taliban hands in a matter of weeks.

A military analysis said the city could be isolated in 30 to 60 days and be captured in 90 days, a U.S. official told ABC News, but that timeline seemed even more accelerated Thursday as the Taliban claimed Herat, Afghanistan’s third-largest city.

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

Afghanistan updates: Thousands of US troops to help with US Embassy departures

August 12, 2021 by WDNY Radio

There wasn’t any specific event that led President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to execute the plan, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Thursday afternoon, but rather the overall worsening trend in Afghanistan.

“There wasn’t one precipitating event in the last couple of days that led the president and the secretary to make this decision. It’s a confluence of events, and as I’ve been saying for now for several weeks, we have been watching very closely with concern the security situation on the ground — and far better to be prudent about it and be responsible and watching the trends to make the best decisions you can for safety and security of our people than to wait until it’s too late,” Kirby said.

The events in Afghanistan over the last 24 hours with the Taliban pressuring major Afghan cities was a significant factor in the decision to go forward with the reduction in staffing and the new military mission, a U.S. official told ABC News.

Biden held a meeting with his team Wednesday night and tasked them to come up with recommendations, according to a senior administration official. Then, at a meeting Thursday morning with Austin and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, the recommendations were presented to Biden and he gave the order to move forward.

The official also said the president separately spoke with Secretary of State Antony Blinken Thursday morning to discuss a diplomatic strategy and that Biden continues to be engaged on this issue and is staying in close contact with his team on the situation.

The United Kingdom is also sending military personnel — about 600 paratroopers — to Kabul on a short-term basis to provide support to British nationals leaving the country, according to a joint press release from the Ministry of Defence and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. The number of staffers working at the British Embassy in Kabul has also been reduced to a core team focused on providing consular and visa services for those needing to rapidly leave the country.

The State Dept. will begin reducing its staff levels at the U.S. embassy in Kabul and the Pentagon will send troops in to help facilitate those departures, as Taliban forces advance on more provincial capitals. @IanPannell & @LMartinezABC report. https://t.co/PILkULaxcq pic.twitter.com/FR2OTOLFNt

— ABC News Live (@ABCNewsLive) August 12, 2021

They’ll be there “temporarily” and will begin shipping out in the next 24 to 48 hours. These numbers are on top of the 650 already in Kabul protecting the airport and the embassy.

An additional 1,000 personnel will be sent to assist with the processing of Afghans who worked as interpreters, guides and other contractors and applied for Special Immigrant Visas.

“I want to stress that these forces are being deployed to support the orderly and safe reduction of civilian personnel at the request of the State Department and to help facilitate an accelerated process of working through SIV applicants,” Kirby said. “This is a temporary mission with a narrow focus. As with all deployments of our troops into harm’s way, our commanders have the inherent right of self defense, and any attack on them can and will be met with a forceful and appropriate response.”

Furthermore, a brigade of 3,000 to 3,500 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne will be sent to Kuwait to pre-position in case they are needed further.

Kirby called it a “very temporary mission for a very temporary purpose,” and said the DOD expects to keep no more than 1,000 troops in Kabul to protect the airport and embassy after the Aug. 31 deadline — a number that has notably crept up from the 650 troops originally set to remain.

Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters that after a meeting with business leaders Thursday afternoon she would leave to “continue the briefings that we’ve been receiving.”

The U.S. embassy in Kabul has also urged Americans to evacuate Afghanistan immediately, amid fears that the capital could fall into Taliban hands in a matter of weeks.

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

‘Hands off my hijab’: French Muslims rail against ban on religious garb in soccer

August 12, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(LONDON) — Hawa Doucouré and her teammates on the Les Hijabeuses soccer team have a simple message to send while playing the game they love: “Hands off my hijab.”

It’s a message they hope is received not only by the French Football Federation, but the country’s government as well.

“We are strong together and we will fight to the end,” Doucouré, 19, told ABC News. “We will fight until every woman can play the sport that she wants to play, how she wants to play it.”

The Hijabeuses, a collective of French soccer players, have spent the last year fighting to be included in official competitions. While FIFA, the world governing body for football, has permitted the Muslim veil on the field since 2014, the French Football Federation continues to ban it in club matches and international games, telling ABC News that it “promotes and defends the values of secularism, living together, neutrality and the fight against all forms of discrimination.”

The players’ calls for change are part of a larger movement against the country’s ban on religious symbols and garb, including niqabs and burqas. The latest controversy surrounds an amendment proposed earlier this year that bans minors from wearing a hijab in public.

France currently bans public workers and school students from wearing religious symbols, except at universities. The proposals that were also discussed included bans on Muslim mothers wearing hijabs on school trips and Muslim women wearing burkinis, or full-body swimsuits. They were eventually cut from the bill in one of the legislative rounds.

Rim-Sarah Alouane, a lawyer and researcher of religious freedom living in Toulouse, noted, “These conversations will keep on happening.”

“There was a time when the French had unveiling ceremonies and you had a bunch of French women surrounding a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf celebrating the fact that she would remove her headscarf, usually by force, to say, ‘Now you’re welcome in our society,'” said Alouane.

There is currently no law in France specifically banning hijabs in sports competitions. The Hijabeuses said they have yet to hear back from the French Football Federation about why it has gone beyond the rule of law to restrict the wearing of hijabs in official sports competitions even as FIFA permits them.

The French government said it’s passing these laws in the name of safety and secularism, and that the law strengthens its ability to adhere to principles of neutrality in government institutions. However, critics of the law argue that it will further stoke racism and discrimination in France, which is home to the largest population of Muslims in Western Europe. The country has seen an alarming rise in Islamophobia in recent years in part due to a rash of recent terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists and the subsequent strengthening of far-right politics.

Doucouré and her teammates are part of a movement of female athletes around the world challenging patriarchal norms to dress a certain way during competition.

At the Tokyo Olympics, Germany’s women’s gymnastics team wore full-length bodysuits instead of the more revealing leotards. Norway’s women’s beach handball team, meanwhile, wore shorts instead of bikinis at the Beach Handball EURO 2021 competition.

Germany’s women’s gymnastics team had complied with the existing rules under the International Gymnastics Federation, and thus faced no consequences. Norway’s women’s beach handball team, however, were fined 1,500 euros (about $1,700) by the Disciplinary Commission at the Beach Handball EURO 2021 for “improper clothing,” according to a statement from the European Handball Federation. The singer Pink later offered to pay the fine for the team.

Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir, a former Division I college basketball player, said that when it came to deciding between wearing Muslim garb or continuing to play basketball, she chose her faith. She went on advocate for Muslim women in sports and, in 2017, her efforts paid off when the International Basketball Federation amended its rules to allow head coverings — while also noting that there were no health safety concerns in doing so.

Now, she says that not only are Muslim women allowed to wear head coverings, “but Jewish men can wear yarmulkes, and Sikh men who wear turbans can all participate. So, this rule change was big for just the greater good.”

It’s a struggle that Abdul-Qaadir said has been a “rough” part of her “journey” in her sporting career. Doucouré said times have changed for Muslim women.

“Nowadays, women are visible,” said Doucouré. “We are not like the kind of hijabi they think we are. They have the idea of the hijabi that struggles in the house, who does housework, who don’t have a life. When they see young women wearing it — doing sports, educated — they don’t want to see that because it’s a contradiction with the vision they have of the hijab.”

London’s top cop on Prince Andrew: ‘No one is above the law’

August 12, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(LONDON) — The head of London’s Metropolitan Police, Dame Cressida Dick, was asked on Thursday about the new civil lawsuit against Prince Andrew filed Monday in a New York court by Virginia Giuffre, an alleged victim of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Giuffre is accusing Prince Andrew of sexually abusing her at locations including Epstein’s Manhattan mansion before she turned 18.

London’s chief of police said her team was “open to working with authorities from overseas” and are themselves reviewing their position, saying that “no one is above the law.” She also confirmed that there’s currently no investigation open.

Dick was speaking on her monthly radio phone-in program on LBC, a London radio station.

Nick Ferrari, the interviewer, asked her, “What investigation is taking place into the allegations of Virginia Roberts concerning Prince Andrew?”

She replied: “I’m not going to talk about individuals, but what I can say is that I think what you’re referring to is associated with Jeffrey Epstein, who I will talk about since he is deceased.

“The position there is that we have had more than one allegation that is connected with Mr. Epstein, and we have reviewed those, assessed those and we have not opened an investigation.”

Ferrari replied: “If there are reports of underage girls being trafficked to London to have sex with the Duke of York, isn’t that something you’d want to take a look at?”

Dick explained she’d reviewed the evidence twice and concluded that “that there is no investigation to open.”

“What we will look at is, is there evidence of a crime? Is this the right jurisdiction for it to be dealt with? And is the person against whom the crime alleged still alive?” she responded. “Those are the three things that we do look at and have looked at in these cases. And we have concluded that there is no investigation to open, and we haven’t.

“I’m aware that there’s been a lot of commentary in the media and an apparent civil case going on in America and we will again, of course, review our position.”

When asked for further explanation as to what the commissioner meant by “review our position,” the Metropolitan Police said in a following statement to ABC News: “We do not comment on named individuals who are alive unless they have been charged with an offence.”

In her interview with LBC, Dick also refused to comment on whether she’s seen the testimony from Prince Andrew’s police protection officers.

Ferrari quizzed her, “Have you seen the testimony from the Duke of York’s royal protection team pertaining to the night of the allegations which he strenuously denies what took place in a London apartment?”

Dick replied: “I’m not going to comment any further. … It’s been reviewed twice before, we’ve worked closely with the CPS, we are of course open to working with authorities from overseas, we will give them every assistance if they ask us for anything — within the law, obviously — and as a result of what’s going on I’ve asked my team to have another look at the material.”

“No one is above the law,” she added.

The Met police do not comment on security but there has been much speculation that their records could help to establish Prince Andrew’s movements on the night that Virginia Giuffre alleges he sexually assaulted her.

Prince Andrew has consistently denied these allegations. In a 2019 interview with the BBC, he said, “I’ve said consistently and frequently said that we never had any sort of sexual contact whatever.”

He claimed to have no memory of ever meeting her and suggested that a widely circulated photograph of him with his arm around the waist of the then-17-year-old Giuffre, allegedly taken by Epstein in the London home of Ghislaine Maxwell in 2001, might have been doctored.

“I don’t believe that photograph was taken in the way that has been suggested,” he said. “I think it’s, from the investigations that we’ve done, you can’t prove whether or not that photograph is faked or not, because it is a photograph of a photograph of a photograph. So it’s very difficult to be able to prove it, but I don’t remember that photograph ever being taken.”

The prince also contended that he had an alibi for the date of the alleged encounter, claiming he was home with his daughter, Beatrice.

“I was at home,” the prince said. “I was with the children, and I’d taken Beatrice to a Pizza Express in Woking for a party at, I suppose, sort of 4 or 5 in the afternoon. And then, because the duchess was away, we have a simple rule in the family that when one is away the other one is there. I was on terminal leave at the time from the Royal Navy, so therefore I was at home.”

The prince’s interview was harshly criticized in the British press and, within days, he released a new statement conceding that his “former association” with Epstein had become a major distraction for the royal family, and he stepped back from official duties.

He vowed in that statement that he would be willing “to help any appropriate law enforcement agency with their investigations.”

But since then there have been complaints from the Southern District of New York that the prince has not cooperated with their requests to interview him as a witness for the federal investigation into sex trafficking by Jeffrey Epstein and his associates.

Prince Andrew’s lawyers, Blackfords LLP, however denied this, issuing a statement in June 2020 saying the prince had offered “his assistance as a witness to the DOJ” several times.

The beleaguered royal was last seen Tuesday arriving at his mother’s Scottish home, Balmoral Castle, accompanied by ex-wife Sarah Ferguson. Several UK newspapers are reporting that they are holding crisis talks, deliberating the best response to this lawsuit.

“Now that this lawsuit has been filed, unless it is stopped in its tracks, it doesn’t seem that any of the options for Prince Andrew and his legal team will be particularly palatable to him,” said ABC News Royal Contributor Victoria Murphy.

Legal opinions vary as to what the prince might do, but his options appear to be fourfold.

Firstly, he could ignore the entire thing, the case could go ahead without him and a possible default judgment and damages could be entered against him.

Secondly, he could instruct lawyers to argue that the case is spurious and lacking in evidence in the hopes it would be thrown out before trial.

Thirdly, he could agree to answer questions under oath, attend the trial and defend himself.

And lastly, he could agree to settle the claims out-of-court.

Each option has its own pitfall.

“No one could have predicted just how low Prince Andrew’s reputation could have plummeted in the last two to three years,” Murphy added. “The accusations that have been leveled against him, the fact they’ve been so widely reported and his attempts to draw a line under them spectacularly backfiring have all left his reputation in tatters — and has the potential to seriously impact people’s perception of the monarchy.”

No member of the royal family has made a public comment about the latest developments, and Buckingham Palace told ABC News that this was a legal matter and for Andrew’s lawyers to respond. A spokesman for Prince Andrew said there would be no comment on the new lawsuit.

The Times of London, however, quotes a source close to Prince Charles as saying, “This will be unwelcome reputational damage to the institution. [Prince Charles] has long ago concluded that it is probably an unsolvable problem. This will probably further strengthen in the prince’s mind that a way back for the duke is demonstrably not possible, because the spectre of this [accusation] raises its head with hideous regularity.”

The source also said, “The prince loves his brother and has the ability to have sympathy for the slings and arrows that his brother endures, whatever the reasons may be. His ability to support and feel for those having a tough time is well known.”

It is a difficult position for the family to be in, Murphy explains, as they may be tainted by association whatever they do.

“The monarchy has done everything they can to distance itself officially,” she said. “He has stepped down from official duties, Buckingham Palace no longer speaks for him and he’s not being represented by royal lawyers, but the fact is, he is still the queen’s son. He’s at Balmoral now. There’s no avoiding that this will continue to damage the image of the monarchy and could even affect the standing of other royals.”

Taliban fighters reportedly executing surrendering troops, which could amount to war crimes, US officials say

August 12, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(KABUL, Afghanistan) — As Taliban forces advance on more provincial capitals, the U.S. is warning that its fighters are committing atrocities that could amount to war crimes and the State Department will soon announce that it is significantly reducing its staff levels at the U.S. embassy in Kabul, according to a U.S. official.

To facilitate this decision, the Pentagon “will temporarily deploy additional personnel to Hamid Karzai International Airport.”

The U.S. embassy in Kabul has also urged Americans to evacuate Afghanistan immediately, amid fears that the capital could fall into Taliban hands in a matter of weeks.

While the Taliban have previously denied reports that its fighters have executed Afghan troops, the U.S. embassy said Thursday it was “hearing additional reports of Taliban executions of surrendering Afghan troops” and said they were “deeply disturbing and could constitute war crimes.”

Extrajudicial killings are a war crime according to international law.

In addition, the Taliban have detained “several members of the Afghan government, including both civilian leaders and officers of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces … in several locations,” the embassy said in a statement Thursday.

Those arrests “contradict the Taliban’s claim to support a negotiated settlement” and “contrast the Taliban’s own rhetoric providing for the safety of Afghan leaders and troops in areas recently seized by the Taliban,” the embassy added.

Critics have condemned the Biden administration for putting any stock in what Taliban leaders say or do in Doha, Qatar, where the militant group’s political leadership is based. Negotiations there with the Afghan government have been all but dead since they launched last September, but U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad is there this week in a last-ditch effort to revitalize them.

Khalilzad was meeting separately with Taliban and Afghan government negotiators Thursday, according to a State Department spokesperson.

But critics said the administration should not put faith in a group that the U.S. says is actively committing atrocities.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ABC News those reported atrocities were “deeply, deeply troubling,” but the administration has not taken any action to punish the group for them.

The Taliban have previously denied reports that they have killed Afghan troops — but CNN obtained video last month showing 22 Afghan commandos being executed after they’d surrendered.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Tuesday that the administration has “not taken any tool off the table except for this military presence on the ground,” but would use them “if it’s appropriate.”

It’s unlikely that the tools Price referenced — including U.S. sanctions — would have any impact at this point.

In the meantime, the U.S. embassy issued its second alert to urge all American citizens left in Afghanistan to immediately evacuate the country.

“Given the security conditions and reduced staffing, the Embassy’s ability to assist U.S. citizens in Afghanistan is extremely limited even within Kabul,” the embassy said in its alert.

Just like in a similar alert Saturday, the embassy reiterated Thursday that U.S. citizens should enroll in its emergency notification system “in the event of a future official evacuation flight.”

Census data release sets off nationwide redistricting battles

August 12, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The Census Bureau on Thursday released the first district-level 2020 census results, setting off redistricting battles that could help determine whether Republicans or Democrats win control of the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections.

The data will not only trigger a rush to redraw congressional and state legislative districts across the country, amid voting rights fights, but also are expected to show how the United States has grown more diverse.

Populations of people of color have grown, while the white population of the United States has shrunk, according to the Washington Post’s preview of the data. Six states and the District of Columbia may now have majority-minority populations.

“Republicans enter this redistricting cycle with the power to redraw 187 congressional districts to Democrats’ 75, which means redistricting could hand control of the House of Representatives back to Republicans in 2022 all by itself,” FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich writes.

Many state legislatures and commissions have already begun to discuss the maps of new congressional and legislative districts, but were waiting for the census data — delayed by the pandemic — before drawing maps.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s redistricting tracker, developed in conjunction with ABC News, at least nine states have upcoming preliminary or final deadlines in fall 2021 for either drafts of or final congressional district maps.

Six states are set to add congressional seats, seven states will each lose one seat and the remaining 37 states will keep the same number of congressional districts, the Census Bureau’s acting director announced in April.

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

ABC News’ Quinn Scanlan and Rick Klein to this report.

Siberian wildfires now bigger than all other fires in world combined

August 12, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(YAKUTSK, Russia) — Gigantic wildfires are burning across Siberia on a record scale that is larger than all the fires raging this summer around the world combined.

The massive blazes in Russia are fueled in part by extreme heat waves and record droughts that scientists are blaming on warmer temperatures linked to climate change.

The worst hit region is Yakutia, a vast semi-autonomous republic around 3,000 miles east of Moscow that in winter is one of the coldest inhabited places on Earth. The fires have been burning since late spring in Yakutia and are already among the largest ever recorded.

The region is enduring a historic drought that is feeding the fires. The huge quantities of smoke has drifted as far as Alaska and the North Pole. Local authorities are struggling to contain the infernos, saying they have only a fraction of the manpower and equipment needed.

In the region’s capital Yakutsk last week, in an office cluttered with equipment, Sviatoslav Kolesov looked short of sleep as he showed the latest situation on a map marked with bright orange patches marking the miles of land burning.

A senior pilot-observer with Yakutia’s branch of the federal Aerial Forest Protection Service, Kolesov has been directing his small teams to contain the titanic fires and keep them away from villages outside Yakutsk.

“I’ve been working since 1988 and I have never seen such a summer,” Kolesov said. “Now is crazy. There are too many fires and pretty much all of them are major.”

A state of emergency has been declared in Yakutia over the fires that are estimated by local authorities to cover around 1.5 million hectares. For over a month, thick, acrid smog has hung over hundreds of miles over the region, frequently blanketing the capital and in places blocking out the sun.

Siberia’s warm summers and forest fires are part of life here but not on this magnitude. Since 2017, the region has had unusually dry summers and last year saw record temperatures, including the highest ever recorded in the Arctic.

Until 2017 the republic could expect one or two major fires a year, said Pavel Arzhakov, an instructor from the Aerial Forest Protection Service, who was overseeing efforts at a large fire about 150 miles west of Yakutsk.

But this year, he said, there are 30 to 40 major fires.

Greenpeace Russia estimates the fires have burned around 62,000 square miles across Russia since the start of the year. The current fires are larger than the wildfires in Greece, Turkey, Canada and the United States.

Russia’s emergency services says it is fighting nearly 200 fires across the country. But there are also dozens more that the agency is leaving to burn because they are not deemed a risk to population centers.

This year may pass Russia’s worst fire season in 2012 and Greenpeace has warned the biggest fire in Yakutia alone threatens to become unprecedented in scale.

“It’s possible it will be the biggest fire in the whole history of mankind. For now it’s competing with several famous historic fires in the U.S. in the 19th century,” he told Euronews.

The fire teams in Yakutia are in a vastly unequal fight with the blazes. Teams from the Aerial Forest Protection Service set up camps in the taiga and are trying to contain the fires with trenches and controlled burns. They have little equipment and firefighting planes are used only rarely.

Authorities have sent some reinforcements from other regions. At one camp, a team had flown around 2,000 miles from Khanty-Mansiyisk and have now been in Yakutia’s forest about a month.

“We’re putting the kraken back in the cage,” joked one fire fighter, Yura Revnivik as his team set a controlled burn, trying to direct a fire toward a nearby lake.

But there are nowhere near enough people for the scale of the fires, local firefighters said. Hundreds of local people have volunteered to try to fill the gap. Afanasy Yefremov, a teacher from Yakutsk, said he was spending his weekends trying to help.

“I have lived 40 years and I don’t remember such fires,” he said. “Everywhere is burning and there aren’t enough people.”

Local firefighters in Yakutia in part blamed the scale of the fires on authorities’ failure to extinguish the blazes early on, a consequence they said in part of cuts to the federal forestry fire service.

The fires are worrisome far beyond Russia. They are releasing huge quantities of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Yakutia’s fires have already produced a record amount of carbon emissions, according to the European Union’s Copernicus satellite monitoring unit.

The 505 megatons of emissions released since June would be more than Britain’s entire carbon dioxide emissions for the whole of 2019.

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