(FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.) — Two wildfires are threatening communities near Flagstaff, Arizona, as the fire danger remains high due to dry, hot conditions.
The largest, the Pipeline Fire, has quickly swelled to over 20,100 acres since first reported on Sunday and is 0% contained. It is burning about 6 miles north of Flagstaff, with “critical” weather concerns due to warm and windy conditions, according to the National Interagency Coordination Center.
The Haywire Fire is also burning nearby, about 17 miles northeast of Flagstaff. It has grown to over 4,000 acres since first reported on Monday and merged with the smaller Double Fire and is also 0% contained.
On Monday, the Coconino County Board of Supervisors declared a state of emergency due to the Pipeline and Haywire fires.
Several communities are under evacuation and parts of the Coconino National Forest are temporarily closed due to the fires.
High winds and remote terrain have challenged the fire response, though aerial operations were seen on Tuesday. Some 500 fire personnel are working on both fires, with aerial resources including six helicopters and one fixed-wing aircraft, state officials said Tuesday.
“We are priority for all our aircraft, at least in the region if not the nation,” Aaron Graeser, incident commander for the U.S. Forest Service, told reporters Monday.
The causes of both fires are under investigation. Fire officials suspect a lightning strike caused the Haywire Fire. A 57-year-old man was arrested by U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers for “federal natural resource violations” in connection with the Pipeline Fire, according to the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office.
Federal court records show Matthew Riser was charged with building a prohibited fire, residing on national forest lands and possession of a controlled substance (marijuana).
Riser allegedly lit toilet paper on fire in the Coconino National Forest around noon on Saturday. The Pipeline Fire was reported the following day at around 10:30 a.m. in the area, according to a statement of probable cause. Riser reportedly told a law enforcement officer that he did not see the “no campfire” signs, but saw them when he drove out of the area, the probable cause stated.
His attorney told Phoenix ABC affiliate KNXV there is no evidence that Riser started the fire. A detention hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
(RANCHO CORDOVA, Calif.) — The manager of a Northern California gas station was fired after he accidentally set the gas price to 69 cents a gallon.
John Szczecina, who served as the manager for a Shell gas station in Rancho Cordova, said he mistakenly placed the decimal in the wrong spot and that the price was supposed to be $6.99 a gallon.
“I put all three prices on there, except the diesel. The last one kind of didn’t go. So, I just took responsibility for it and said yeah, it’s my fault,” Szczecina told ABC News Fresno station KFSN.
The pricing error reportedly cost the gas station $16,000, as hundreds of drivers capitalized on the mistake and filled their tanks.
Szczecina told KFSN he’s worried the station owners will sue him for lost revenue, revealing that his family created a GoFundMe to help repay them.
According to auto club AAA, nationwide gas prices recently reached $5 a gallon for the first time.
Drivers in California are paying much higher prices for gas — an average of $6.43 per gallon — than the national average.
Gas prices have skyrocketed in the last few months, pinching the pockets of millions of Americans who are struggling to fill their tanks amid inflation costs.
More motorists are also poised to hit the road as the busy summer season gets
(WASHINGTON) — Wilma Mankiller, the first woman elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, can now be seen on U.S. quarters available for purchase.
Mankiller, an activist for Native American and women’s rights, is the third woman to have her face adorned upon a quarter as part of the American Women Quarters Program.
“Chief Mankiller was a true champion for tribal sovereignty, women’s rights, health care, education and building strong communities for the Cherokee people. Every Chief that has followed her looks to her as the standard by which their work should be measured,” Chuck Hoskin Jr., the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, told ABC News Tuesday.
The new coin design shows Mankiller with a “resolute gaze to the future,” the U.S. Mint said in announcing the design.
Mankiller looks to be wearing a traditional shawl, and to her left is the seven-pointed star of the Cherokee Nation. The coin is inscribed with several phrases, including, “E Pluribus Unum,” “Wilma Mankiller,” “Principal Chief,” and “Cherokee Nation,” which is written in the Cherokee syllabary.
“Even years after her passing, Chief Mankiller is making an impact,” Hoskin said at a coin release event held by the Cherokee Nation and U.S. Mint last week.
“She’s not changing the world on this day simply because her likeness is being struck on the quarter. Her likeness is being struck on the quarter because she keeps changing the world for the better,” Hoskin added.
Mankiller served as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1985 to 1995. During her leadership, the nation’s population sprung from 68,000 to 170,000, according to a biography on her website.
The first woman to hold this title, Mankiller advocated throughout her tenure for improved healthcare, education and housing services. While she was principal chief, infant mortality declined and educational achievement rose across the nation, Cherokee Nation officials say.
“She was very driven on behalf of other people she was nurturing, she wanted to make people feel better. She was very approachable,” Ross Swimmer, the Cherokee Nation’s former principal chief, said at the release event.
Mankiller worked with the federal government while chief, working to pilot a self-government agreement for the Cherokee Nation through the Environmental Protection Agency. She guarded centuries of Cherokee traditions, customs and legal codes while managing a budget that reached $150 million by 1995, her website says.
“Wilma suffered from several serious illnesses and was almost killed in an auto accident, but she never complained. She would never say, ‘well, I just can’t do that today, I just don’t feel like it,’ or ‘no, I’m in pain,’ you would never hear that from her. She would go right on and get done what needed to be done,” Swimmer said at the event.
“I want to leave you with my mom’s last words. In 1995, the last time she took the podium as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, she said, ‘I did what I could,’” Felicia Olaya, her daughter, said in a speech at the release event.
In 1993, Mankiller was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
After Mankiller finished her term as principal chief, President Bill Clinton honored her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. In 2018, Mankiller was inducted into the National Native American Hall of Fame as one of the first female inductees.
“Chief Mankiller’s efforts to inspire our Cherokee people to work together at the grass roots level to build strong communities in the spirit of “Gaudgi” is alive and well. Our Cherokee people remain organized to this day working on their own solutions and for every challenge they are confronted with, not simply content to wait for any government to come to the rescue,’ Hoskin told ABC News.
Mankiller began her activism in 1969, when she began serving as director of Oakland’s Native American Youth Center, working to restore pride in Native heritage and reduce the downward spiral of Native youth who grew up in the streets.
In the late 1970s, Mankiller founded the Community Development Department for the Cherokee Nation, which focused on improving access to water and housing. A feature film was created around this work, entitled “The Cherokee Word for Water.”
“Chief Mankiller is still making an impact today, because now every time a little girl sees Wilma’s face on a quarter, and reads her story, she realizes she can do it too,” Hoskin said Tuesday.
Mankiller died in 2010 from pancreatic cancer.
The first coin of the American Women Quarters Program was released in January, with a quarter featuring poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou.
“These inspiring coin designs tell the stories of five extraordinary women whose contributions are indelibly etched in American culture,” Alison L. Doone, the Mint’s acting director, said in a statement last year. “Generations to come will look at coins bearing these designs and be reminded of what can be accomplished with vision, determination and a desire to improve opportunities for all.”
In March, Sally Ride, the first woman to travel to outer space, appeared on U.S. quarters.
Nine Otero-Warren, a leader in Mexico’s suffrage movement and the first female superintendent of Santa Fe public schools, and Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood who left a legacy for women in the film industry, are both set to appear on U.S. quarters in the coming months.
(NEW YORK) — The World Health Organization said it is planning to assess whether the monkeypox outbreak spreading around the world is a public health emergency.
According to Global Health, more than 1,700 monkeypox cases have been identified in non-endemic countries, mostly in Europe and North America.
In the U.S., there are 65 confirmed or suspected cases in 17 states and the District of Columbia, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows.
Because of the highly unusual nature of the outbreak, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he has decided to convene an emergency committee under the International Health Regulations next week.
“The global outbreak of monkeypox is clearly unusual and concerning,” he told reporters during a briefing on Tuesday held in Geneva. “I think it’s now clear that there is an unusual situation meaning even the virus is behaving unusually from how it used to behave in the past.”
He continued, “But not only that, but it’s also affecting more and more countries and we believe that it needs also some coordinated response because of the geographic spread.”
The first case of monkeypox among humans was recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970, and the illness has since spread to several other nations, mostly in central and western Africa.
Typically, the disease does not naturally occur on other continents, and infections are usually identified among people who recently traveled to countries where monkeypox is more commonly found.
However, lately the virus has been identified in people with no history of travel or known contact with anyone who tested positive for monkeypox, which many indicate evidence of community transmission.
According to the National Library of Medicine, between 2007 and 2020, there have been six events declared public health emergencies of international concern.
These include the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 2009; the Ebola outbreak in West Africa from 2013 to 2015; the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 2018 to 2020; the Zika outbreak in 2016; the ongoing spread of poliovirus that started in 2014; and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump on Monday responded in a lengthy statement to the House’s ongoing Jan. 6 committee hearings, assailing the panel as illegitimate and their presentation as one-sided — but rather than refute their evidence, he reiterated the same baseless claims about the 2020 presidential election that are at the center of the proceedings and the group’s case that he had attempted a “coup.”
Trump’s 12-page statement, sent to reporters on Monday night, comes after the second public hearing held by the House select committee investigating last year’s deadly Capitol attack. His statement, marked by characteristic exclamations and insults, called the hearings “a smoke and mirrors show” that failed to include “all exculpatory witnesses, and anyone who so easily points out the flaws in their story.”
The statement, however, did not directly respond to the specifics laid out by the committee to the public thus far — including testimony earlier Monday from Trump’s inner circle that he knew he had lost the last presidential race and had no legitimate reason to claim widespread fraud, instead choosing to listen to Rudy Giuliani to falsely claim victory over Joe Biden.
Much of Trump’s statement, instead, went after President Biden and the Democratic majority in Congress, building on arguments Republicans are making ahead of November’s midterms. Trump said Democrats were at fault for various issues plaguing the country, and he framed the effort to investigate Jan. 6 as a way to deflect attention away from these issues.
“America is crumbling, and Democrats have no solutions. Our nation has no hope of change for the better under Democrat leadership,” Trump said. “People are desperate. Rather than solving problems, Democrats are rehashing history in hopes of changing the narrative.”
Members of the committee, which includes two Republicans, have pushed back at the characterization that their investigation is motivated by partisanship. Instead, they have said, their work uncovered the extent to which the former president worked to undercut the democratic process and remain in power.
“The Constitution doesn’t protect just Democrats or just Republicans. It protects all of us, we, the people. And this scheme was an attempt to undermine the will of the people,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who chairs the committee, said during the first public hearing on Thursday.
Throughout much of his Monday statement, Trump rehashed false or unfounded claims by him, his campaign and his supporters that the 2020 election was rigged in favor of Biden through stolen ballots, mistaken vote counts and various other means.
Trump said the ongoing Jan. 6 hearings were a “narrative” authored by Democrats “to detract from the much larger and more important truth that the 2020 Election was Rigged and Stolen.”
Numerous legal challenges by Trump and others as well as audits and investigations in the wake of the 2020 election discovered no pattern of widespread issues. Likewise, local election officials across the country — both Democrats and Republicans — said the fraud claims were without merit.
Trump used his statement to make arguments beyond the last election, targeting Biden and the Democratic Party’s perceived vulnerabilities with voters, such as rising inflation.
“Our country is in a nosedive,” Trump said. “Americans are struggling to fill their gas tanks, feed their babies, educate their children, hire employees, order supplies, protect our border from invasion, and a host of other tragedies that are 100% caused by Democrats … and the people of our country are both angry and sad.”
The Jan. 6 investigations and its hearings, Trump contended, were meant to bar him from running in the next presidential election. “This is merely an attempt to stop a man that is leading in every poll, against both Republicans and Democrats by wide margins,” he boasted, without offering evidence.
Trump has repeatedly teased but has not formally announced if he will run for president in 2024. He has played a large role in the ongoing 2022 midterm election primaries by endorsing candidates in races across the country, with mixed results.
Video depositions played at the first two hearings included witnesses who were close with Trump at the time of the election and on Jan. 6, including his daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump and then-Attorney General Bill Barr.
Barr, who has stated his team found no evidence of extensive fraud, described how he felt about Trump’s increasing focus on such claims, telling investigators: “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff.'”
The next open hearing by the committee is currently set for Thursday, after one scheduled for Wednesday was postponed.
(NEW YORK) — A coalition of families and survivors of the Sept. 11 attacks on Tuesday urged President Joe Biden, during his visit to Saudi Arabia next month, to hold the kingdom accountable for its role in the terrorist strike that killed almost 3,000 people.
“We appreciate the president’s commitment to do everything he can to support the 9/11 family community, but empathy is not enough,” Terry Strada, the national chair of “9/11 Families United,” said in a statement. “President Biden must do what past presidents have not, which is to demand transparency from Saudi Arabia and accountability for those who supported al Qaeda and the hijackers who murdered our loved ones.”
The White House said Tuesday Biden would travel to Saudi Arabia next month for a summit of Arab leaders. The visit will include a meeting with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, as well as with the effective leader of the country, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, according to White House officials.
Strada was responding to a comment by White House spokesman John Kirby during an interview with CNN earlier in the day.
“What I can tell you is that the president will never shy away of representing the interests of the American people on a national security level wherever he goes,” Kirby said, when asked if he could assure the victims’ families that Biden would address some of their concerns with Mohammed.
“He continues to do everything he can to support the families of the victims of 9/11,” Kirby added. “He knows what a devastating grief they still endure, and he will not shy away from representing them and their concerns.”
Biden has come under intense criticism for agreeing to meet with Mohammed, whom the U.S. has assessed ordered the operation that murdered Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
As a candidate, Biden pledged to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over its human rights abuses.
But the president has also struggled to rein in sky-high inflation. While many ways out of his control, the rapidly rising cost of goods is weighing on Americans’ wallets and proving to be a major political liability for Biden and Democrats heading into this fall’s midterm elections.
Biden is seeking ways to relieve high gas prices, which have in large part been pushed higher by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions on Moscow’s oil and gas sector.
A major oil producer, Saudi Arabia chairs the Gulf Cooperation Council grouping of oil-producing Arab nations.
The White House has welcomed increased oil production with the hope it would drive down gas prices in the U.S. Biden authorized a historic release of oil from the nation’s strategic reserve of petroleum, and his White House welcomed a decision by the OPEC+ oil cartel to boost its production levels.
While Saudi Arabia and the Biden administration have both said energy security will be part of Biden’s discussions during his visit, the White House has sought to avoid the negative optics of an American president flying to Saudi Arabia in a bid for more oil.
“Of course, he will be — they will discuss energy with the Saudi government,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday. “I think what I’m trying to say is to look at this trip as it being only about oil is not — it would be simply wrong to do that.”
The president had even danced around whether he was even going to go to Saudi Arabia at all; “I have no direct plans at the moment,” he said on June 3, after multiple reports said he planned to travel there.
But while Biden once pledged to isolate Saudi Arabia, Jean-Pierre said Tuesday he was “not looking to rupture relationships.”
Asked if Biden would bring up Khashoggi during his meeting with the crown prince, Jean-Pierre would not directly answer.
“Human rights is always part of the conversation in our foreign engagements,” she told reporters on Air Force One, en route to Philadelphia. “So, that will always be the case.”
Biden will also travel to Israel and the West Bank during the trip, which will take place July 13 to 16, according to the White House.
(NEW YORK) — A Great Smoky Mountains bear has been euthanized after officials said it attacked a mother and her daughter while they were camping in the national park on Sunday.
A family of five was sleeping in their tent at the Elkmont Campground when the bear ripped into it at approximately 5:20 a.m.
The park said after an investigation and on site monitoring, wildlife biologists successfully captured the bear.
The black bear, was euthanized due to risk to human safety on Monday, the park said.
“The bear weighed approximately 350 pounds, which is not standard for this time of year, suggesting the bear had previous and likely consistent access to non-natural food sources,” Lisa McInnis, chief of resource management, said in the park’s statement. “In this incident, the bear was likely attracted to food smells throughout the area, including dog food at the involved campsite. It is very difficult to deter this learned behavior and, as in this case, the result can lead to an unacceptable risk to people.”
The park reports the family was inside the tent, with their dog, sleeping when the bear ripped through and entered the tent. Once inside, the bear scratched a three-year-old girl and her mother.
After several attempts, the father was able to scare the bear from the tent and campsite. The family left a note at the campground’s office before leaving the site to seek medical attention.
Both the three-year-old and her mother sustained superficial lacerations to their heads.
Once alerted to the incident at approximately 8:50 a.m., park staff monitored the site for bear activity and set traps in the area.
Park rangers closed the immediate area, interviewed the father and other campers and collected site information such as bear tracks and other identifying markers.
Reportedly, a male bear who matched the father’s description entered the area of the incident and exhibited “extreme food-conditioned behavior and lack of fear of humans, boldly entering the trap without weariness.”
Park officials said the bear’s behavior did not appear consistent with predatory behavior, but rather that of a food conditioned bear.
This is the second bear from the park to be euthanized because of its condition due to being fed human food this month.
According to park officials, human-bear conflicts peak in late May and June when natural foods such as berries are not yet available. As a result, bears are attracted to the smell of food in the park’s developed areas, including campgrounds and picnic areas.
The park encourages campers to take necessary precautions to properly store food while in bear country.
The park stated its staff would continue to track reports of bear activity in campgrounds and other more populated areas to notify the public regarding any site warnings or closures.
(NEW YORK) — New York’s highest court declined to take up an appeal by former President Donald Trump and two of his adult children, a decision that obligates the Trumps to sit for depositions next month in the ongoing civil investigation into how they valued their real estate holdings.
The New York Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal “upon the ground that no substantial constitutional question is directly involved.”
Former President Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump have now exhausted their appeals and must sit for depositions beginning July 15, according to a previous stipulation filed in the case.
The New York Attorney General’s Office has been investigating potential discrepancies in how the Trump Organization valued certain assets when seeking loans or when pursuing tax breaks.
Trump has long denied any wrongdoing in the yearslong investigation.
A state appellate court ruled in May that the subpoenas for their testimony were not, as the Trumps argued, part of a politically motivated investigation into how the family valued its real estate holdings.
The New York Court of Appeals had given the Trumps until Monday to submit an appeal, shooting it down one day later — on Donald Trump’s 76th birthday.
New York Attorney General Letitia James has argued her office has found “significant evidence” of fraud in the investigation into how Trump and the Trump Organization valued real estate holdings in the state. The investigation has reviewed whether the Trump Organization used fraudulent or misleading valuations of its holdings in different ways to obtain a host of economic benefits, including loans, insurance coverage and tax deductions.
Among the real estate holdings being investigated are 40 Wall Street, in Manhattan’s Financial District; Seven Springs, Trump’s estate in Westchester; Trump Park Avenue; and even Trump’s triplex apartment in Trump Tower.
A parallel criminal investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has already led to charges of tax fraud against Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer for the Trump Organization, and the company itself.
They have both pleaded not guilty. A trial is expected to take place in the fall.
(WASHINGTON) — The first federal prison to experience a COVID-19 outbreak in March of 2020 is now severely short-staffed, the Louisiana congressional delegation and members of the Bureau of Prison union say.
FCI Oakdale in Louisiana experienced a severe COVID-19 outbreak in March of 2020, so bad the Justice Department inspector general was critical of the BOP for how it failed to separate inmates at the facility during the first weeks of the pandemic.
The Louisiana congressional delegation, led by Republican Sen. John Kennedy, wrote to the Bureau of Prisons to make sure it takes care of the staffing issues at the facility.
“FCC Oakdale faces unsustainably low staffing levels that is nearing crisis,” the congressional delegation writes. “These vacancies force FCC Oakdale to rely on mandatory overtime in order to meet the basic safety needs of the mission.”
They say they are concerned about the staffing levels and want to know what the Bureau is doing to address it.
“Staffing conditions at FCC Oakdale have understandably forced many veteran staff members to actively seek opportunities for promotion or transfer to other federal prison facilities and agencies or even retire.”
The Bureau of Prisons told ABC News it received and is reviewing the congressional letter. “We have no additional information to provide at this time,” the BOP said.
Federal prisons that are short-staffed are not a new problem, which is something the national BOP union has pointed out.
The local union president at FCC Oakdale tells ABC News FCC Oakdale was the first to experience a major outbreak of COVID-19 and staff worked overtime to provide coverage for the prison.
“During that time, as your aware, the staff worked an extreme amount of overtime to provide security coverage to the inmates at outside hospitals while receiving treatment for COVID,” Ronald Morris, AFGE Local 1007 President told ABC News. “This was a very hard mission staffing wise due to having inmates in the outside hospital, attempting to cover the post at the institution through augmentation and dealing with staff out due to COVID. Fast forward two years and it seems that the staff have not been able to recover. We are still short-staffed,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — A committee of advisers at the Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously Tuesday in favor of authorizing the Moderna vaccine for kids ages 6 through 17, paving the way to add one more vaccine to the options available for this age group.
Currently, only Pfizer’s vaccine is available for kids over 5 years old. Moderna’s vaccine, which was stalled in the regulatory process for months, would give parents another option.
The process to get Moderna’s vaccine out to pharmacies and clinics now moves to FDA leadership, which must decide whether to issue an official emergency use authorization of the vaccine.
After that, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s team of advisers will review Moderna’s data, and finally, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky will issue her recommendation.
It’s not clear whether adding Moderna as another option in the vaccine arsenal will move the needle for uptake in the kids and adolescent age group.
More than 25.4 million eligible kids between the ages of 5 and 17 are still unvaccinated, and only about 44% have been fully vaccinated.
At the meeting before FDA’s advisory committee on Tuesday, though, Moderna representatives argued there was a significant need for a second vaccine because of the continued threat of COVID-19 among kids.
“Recent data have shown that approximately 25% or one in every four children and adolescents hospitalized due to COVID-19 require ICU intervention,” said Carla Vinals, Moderna’s vice president of regulatory affairs strategy for infectious diseases.
Emory associate professor Dr. Evan Anderson, who works with Moderna, presented an analysis showing that COVID-19 is worse than the flu — killing more children ages 5 to 17 than any other vaccine-preventable disease.
Moderna scientists said their vaccine would prevent pediatric hospitalizations if authorized. They estimate the two-dose Moderna vaccine would prevent 95 hospitalizations per 1 million kids ages 5 to 11 and 200 hospitalizations per 1 million kids ages 12 to 17.
The FDA also cleared the air on the issue that delayed Moderna’s authorization for this age group — the potential for the rare incidence of heart inflammation called myocarditis.
Data for international surveillance had suggested a higher risk for myocarditis following vaccination with Moderna compared to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. But after looking into it, those concerns subsided.
The FDA did not find a “statistically significant” difference in risk when comparing the two vaccines, officials said Tuesday.
The risk of myocarditis is also primarily seen among males 18 to 25. Moderna’s vaccine is only for kids and adolescents ages 6 to 17.
If authorized, Moderna’s vaccine dosing would be 100 micrograms for 12- to 17-year-olds, or the same as the adult dose, and 50 micrograms for 6- to 11-year-olds, which is half the adult dose.
