(NEW YORK) — Some 911 call centers across the country say they are experiencing staffing shortages.
Some centers are struggling with as much as 30% to 50% vacancies, according to reports from the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch.
“We have actually been experiencing much higher staffing shortages throughout the pandemic,” April Heinze, operations director at the National Emergency Number Association, told “Good Morning America.” “It’s actually really starting to kind of take a head.”
For Ashley Bagwell, the mom of 6-year-old Hadlee, experienced the effects of those staffing shortages when she couldn’t get through to 911 earlier this month when Hadlee was having a seizure.
“I was terrified,” said Bagwell, whose oldest daughter also ran to the neighbors to try 911 but they also couldn’t get through. “I remember just screaming, I just said, ‘What do I do? I need them to talk me through what to do.’ It was the scariest moment of my entire life.”
In Lexington County, South Carolina, where Bagwell lives, officials say they are facing challenges when it comes to staffing shortages. Calls like Bagwell’s were not answered “due to a large volume of 911 calls received within a 15-minute period, which overload call takers,” according to officials.
But county officials say dispatchers called back the initial caller within three minutes and there was no answer. And “several other calls were made finally connecting with a caller” 10 minutes after the first call.
Other parts of the country that are seeing staffing shortages include Alabama, where there are 88 dispatcher jobs open across 10 agencies, and Chesapeake, Virginia, where a 911 call center is struggling to hire dispatchers.
“We’re about 30% short of overall staffing,” said 911 coordinator Lt. James Garrett of Chesapeake, who told “GMA” that there are delays in getting to 911 callers. “We’ve seen a drop in our ability to answer 911 calls and within 10 seconds and within 30 seconds, which is some of our standard, we’re not able to be as fast as we were because I don’t have enough and available people to answer those phones.”
Officials say COVID is playing a role in the staffing shortage, but so is burnout and low salaries.
To attract more people to apply for these open dispatcher roles, some states are working on or have passed legislation reclassifying 911 dispatchers as first responders so they can get better benefits. A similar bill is currently in Congress.
In the meantime, as call centers try to keep up with the large volume of 911 calls, dispatchers are urging the public to be patient. They’re also advising folks not to hang up if they don’t get to a dispatcher on the phone right away, otherwise, it will move them back to the end of the queue.
“I just hope no one ever has to experience the terror of this,” Bagwell said. “I just don’t want anyone to have to go through the stress of 911 not answering when your child is unresponsive.”
(NEW YORK) — Remains found in a Southern California desert have been identified as 30-year-old Lauren “El” Cho, a New Jersey woman who was missing for months, authorities said.
Her cause and manner of death are pending toxicology results, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said Thursday.
The remains were recovered on Oct. 9 during a search for Cho “in the rugged terrain of the open desert of Yucca Valley,” the sheriff’s department said. Cho was reported missing on June 28 “when she reportedly walked away” from the Yucca Valley home where she was staying, the sheriff’s department said.
The search for Cho was launched this summer and included planes searching the remote mountain terrain and canines scouring the area for evidence, the sheriff’s office said.
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 4.9 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 743,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
Just 67.4% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Oct 29, 10:18 am
Montana, Idaho leading nation in death rates
In recent weeks, cases have been creeping up in Alaska, Alabama, Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, Utah, Vermont and Washington, according to federal data.
The nation’s daily death average has dropped by about 36.3% in the last month, but it remains persistently high, around 1,150 new deaths reported each day.
Montana currently has the country’s highest death rate, followed by Idaho and West Virginia, according to federal data.
Oct 28, 12:44 pm
Florida files lawsuit against Biden administration over vaccine mandate for federal contractors
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state has filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration, arguing that the vaccine mandate for federal contractors is “unconstitutional.”
“Florida companies, public and private, receive millions of dollars in federal contracts annually and will be negatively impacted by the unlawful requirements,” a statement from Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody said.
DeSantis said in a statement, “The federal government is exceeding their power and it is important for us to take a stand because in Florida we believe these are choices based on individual circumstances.”
Oct 28, 11:37 am
Global cases, deaths on the rise for 1st time in 2 months
The global number of COVID-19 cases and deaths are now increasing for the first time in two months, largely driven by an ongoing rise in Europe that outweighs declines in other regions, W.H.O. Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Thursday.
The highest case increases in the last two weeks were in the Czech Republic (up by 234%), Hungary (up by 200%) and Poland (up by 183%), according to the W.H.O.
The director-general attributed ongoing infections “in large part” to inequitable access to tests and vaccines.
“Eighty-times more tests, and 30 times more vaccines, have been administered in high-income countries than low-income countries,” Tedros said. “If the 6.8 billion vaccine doses administered globally so far had been distributed equitably, we would have reached our 40% target in every country by now.”
Photo by Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images
(VATICAN CITY) — As President Joe Biden embarked on only his second overseas trip, he started with a personally poignant audience with Pope Francis on Friday, the first time in more than half a century that a Roman Catholic U.S. leader has met at the Vatican with the head of the Catholic Church.
The White House said the private meeting lasted about 90 minutes, unusually long.
Biden, only the second Catholic elected president after John Fitzgerald Kennedy, spoke of the moment’s significance last month.
“I happen to be a practicing Catholic and one of the things I like about my pope today is he’s all about renewal and forgiveness, that’s what that’s what he’s about. And I look forward to — I hope I get to see him in the not-too-distant future,” Biden said in September.
In a statement after Friday’s meeting, the White House said “President Biden thanked His Holiness for his advocacy for the world’s poor and those suffering from hunger, conflict, and persecution. He lauded Pope Francis’ leadership in fighting the climate crisis, as well as his advocacy to ensure the pandemic ends for everyone through vaccine sharing and an equitable global economic recovery.”
At one point, the two men exchanged gifts.
“I’m not sure this is appropriate, but, there is a tradition in America that the president has what is called a command coin that he gives to warriors and leaders, and you are the most significant warrior for peace I’ve ever met,” Biden can be heard explaining to Francis in edited footage released by the Vatican, as an interpreter shares the message with the pope. The Vatican did not allow U.S. news photographers inside.
Biden described the symbols on the coin, and the personal connection it has to his late son, Beau, telling Francis he knew Beau would want him to have it.
“It has the U.S. seal in the front. … I know my son would want me to give this to you because on the back of it, I have the state of Delaware in the 261st Unit my son served with,” Biden said.
Later, at a photo op with Italian President Sergio Mattarella, ABC’s Ben Gittleson asked Biden how the meeting went.
“Wonderful,” Biden replied. When asked what they discussed, he answered, “A lot of personal things.”
Overshadowing the meeting, though, was criticism from conservative U.S. bishops over Biden’s political position on abortion.
This is not the first time the two have met. In fact, the pair have spent more time together than perhaps any previous U.S. president and pope — a distinction not lost on Shaun Casey, a senior fellow at Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University.
“They’ve known each other for the entire papacy. And this will not be their first meeting, which I think makes it fairly unique in American presidential history, it may be even in papal history that these two guys know each other to a degree that no other analogous pair do.” said Casey, who served as a special representative for religion, and global affairs to Secretary of State John Kerry during the Obama administration.
“These guys know each other, and I think they’re comfortable with each other and they have a relationship that seems to be very warm and very genuine.”
Biden and the pope
As vice president, Biden attended Francis’ inauguration in 2013, and helped shepherd him during his visit in Washington in 2015, before once again meeting Francis at the Vatican in 2016 for a conference on regenerative medicine.
Francis’ visit to the United States was particularly touching for Biden, coming just a few months after the passing of his son, Beau, from glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, that May.
“He asked to meet with the family in the hangar in the airport as he was leaving in Philly,” Biden recalled of Francis in an interview with CBS “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert last year.
“He came in. We had 16 family members there, and he didn’t just speak about Beau, he spoke in detail about Beau, about who he was and about family values and about forgiveness and about decency. I mean, he is — I am a great admirer of His Holiness, I really am,” Biden continued.
He keeps a photo of himself and Francis in the Oval Office.
Yet, Biden’s political views have sometimes put him at odds with the church on issues like gay marriage and abortion, issues that still divide him and Francis. Despite that, the two men share similar views when it comes to helping the poor, the need to address climate change and combatting the pandemic.
According to Casey, Francis places the church’s “pastoral” role above its “theological” one — an outlook that bonds him with the American president.
“Biden draws meaning and sustenance and healing from how the church has been with him during his grief over his long public career. And so in essence, there’s a pastoral bond there, in addition to the sort of social teachings bond that they share.
Francis is not the only pope Biden has met in his nearly 50 years in Washington. Biden also met with Pope Benedict XVI in 2011, and in 1980, the then-senator met for 45 minutes with Pope John Paul II.
“He kept kidding me about how young I am,” Biden told The Dialogue, the newspaper of the Wilmington, Delaware, diocese following the meeting.
Biden also recalled “discussions with the pope were relatively uninterrupted, even though several times during their conversation aides knocked on the library door, only to be waved away by John Paul.”
‘My religion defines who I am’
Biden is perhaps the most publicly religiously observant president the country has seen since Jimmy Carter. He attends Mass almost every weekend and on holy days of obligation, very often accompanied by family members, and wears Beau’s rosary beads on his wrist.
“My religion defines who I am,” Biden said during the 2012 vice presidential debate. “I’ve been a practicing Catholic my whole life. And it has particularly informed my social doctrine. Catholic social doctrine talks about taking care of those who — who can’t take care of themselves, people who need help.”
Biden attended Catholic school growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Claymont, Delaware, and has cited his faith as helping him to weather some major traumas in his life, including the death of his young wife and daughter in a 1972 traffic accident, and his son in 2015.
“I never miss Mass,” Biden said last August. “It is part of who I am. It’s what gets me through the very difficult times in my life, and I believe it very strongly.”
But even as he acknowledges the profound impact his religious devotion has had on his life, Biden largely deems his faith to be a “private matter” and not open for public discussion.
“I don’t proselytize. This is just a private thing with me and I feel very — my faith … means a great deal to me. And it’s been sort of my salvation,” Biden said in 2019.
But Biden’s private faith has become the subject of a major public debate during his presidency. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has criticized him for his stance on abortion, and voted to draft guidance on who should be able to receive the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist — the consecrated host Catholics believe is the Body of Christ.
Biden, who campaigned on codifying Roe v. Wade, and announced his opposition to the Hyde Amendment, which prevents the use of public funds for abortions, during the 2020 campaign, has drawn a line between his public and private views of the issue.
“My position is that I am personally opposed to abortion, but I don’t think I have a right to impose my view on the rest of society,” Biden wrote in his 2007 memoir.
That position has caused problems for Biden in the past. In 2019, Biden was denied Communion at a South Carolina Catholic church while campaigning for president.
“Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of Church teaching. As a priest, it is my responsibility to minister to those souls entrusted to my care, and I must do so even in the most difficult situations. I will keep Mr. Biden in my prayers,” Rev. Robert Morey of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Florence, South Carolina, said in a statement.
For his part, Biden brushed off the incident as a one-off event, saying, “it’s not a position I’ve found anywhere else, including from the Holy Father who gives me Communion.”
A vote on the new guidance for Eucharistic eligibility, pushed by conservative bishops, is set to take place in mid-November, and would require support from two-thirds of the conference to be implemented, but the effort has not been received warmly by the Vatican.
Francis has made clear that Holy Communion is “not a prize for the perfect,” and does not believe in denying Communion.
“What must the pastor do?” Francis asked aboard the papal plane in September. “Be a pastor, don’t go condemning. Be a pastor, because he is a pastor also for the excommunicated.”
“The bishops here in the U.S. cannot miss the symbolism of the warm embrace of Joe Biden by Pope Francis,” Casey said of the visit.
Even if approved, implementation would be up to local bishops. The Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Wilton Gregory, has also said he does not support denying Communion, as has Holy Trinity Catholic Church, which Biden attends in Washington.
“As a parish which has a long history of welcoming all, we concur with and support the pastoral approach of our Archbishop. Holy Trinity Catholic Church will not deny the Eucharist to persons presenting themselves to receive it,” the parish said in a statement.
When Biden was asked about the effort earlier this year, he simply replied, “That’s a private matter, and I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
(ROME) — After meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Friday, President Joe Biden will participate in a G-20 weekend summit in Rome, the first time leaders of many of the world’s largest economies have met in person since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic, increasingly urgent concerns about climate change, disruptions to the economic supply chain and uncertainty over the future of Afghanistan are some of the major topics on the summit agenda and likely to come up in Biden’s other meetings with world leaders.
The G-20 summit in Rome comes just before many of the leaders will participate in the COP26 climate conference starting Monday in Glasgow, Scotland.
Here’s are some key things to watch for:
‘America back’ or ‘America first’?
Biden declared “America is back” when he took office — a pledge to affirm, with tested and steady leadership, the alliances strained by four years of President Donald Trump.
But the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and the swift collapse of the country to the Taliban frustrated and stunned some European leaders, who were forced to deal with policy fallout as well as resettling refugees from the war-torn country.
That, together with the Biden administration’s reluctance to ease travel restrictions for foreigners until the fall — much later than Europe — has led some allies to wonder whether “America First” didn’t leave the White House with Trump – and whether America can be counted on to keep its military and foreign policy commitments.
“The real question looming large over the summit is, how reliable will the United States be in the coming years? Not just because of the prospect that Trump could return, but where does Biden see America’s responsibilities shifting?” Brett Bruen, a former U.S. diplomat, told ABC News.
“There certainly are a lot of people after the withdrawal from Afghanistan that are wondering about their own security,” he said.
Plans for the pandemic, supply chain challenges
The G-20 leaders will meet in person for the first time since 2019 as the world is on track to miss the World Health Organization and United Nations’ goal to vaccinate at least 40% of the population in every country by the end of 2021.
The U.S. frustrated world health officials by moving forward with COVID-19 vaccine boosters — even as experts pushed to first use supplies to vaccinate more people across the developing world. Biden has promised to ship more than 1 billion vaccine doses abroad by next fall — but a key question is whether leaders will reach any agreement to speed up the production or delivery of vaccines to poorer nations.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Monday also told reporters that Biden hopes to improve “transparency” and communication between countries around supply chain bottlenecks. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Thursday night, Sullivan said Biden would convene a supply chain meeting with other world leaders in Rome.
On the economic front more broadly, the U.S. also wants the G-20 countries to promote new forms of debt relief for emerging economies that have struggled during the pandemic.
The U.S. will also tout the new international agreement on a global corporate minimum tax of 15%, which, if approved by Congress in the United States and lawmakers in the countries party to the deal, would make it more difficult for multinational corporations to avoid paying taxes, potentially raising billions of dollars in revenue.
US and France: Repairing the oldest alliance
The last time they met in Europe, Emmanuel Macron and Joe Biden laughed and clasped hands at the beach in England, huddling for longer than scheduled; the French president declared that America was “definitely” back.
Their upcoming meeting on Friday ahead of the G-20 in Rome could have a different tone, after the U.S. infuriated its oldest ally by announcing a new security agreement with the United Kingdom and Australia that scuttled a lucrative French military contract to provide a new submarine fleet to Australia.
The White House has run a full-court press to smooth things over with Paris after Macron briefly withdrew his ambassador to Washington.
Several senior Biden administration officials have met with him in Paris, and Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Paris next month.
Separately, Biden could meet with other world leaders on the sidelines of both conferences. Sullivan on Thursday night confirmed that Biden is expected to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Scotland and will hold a meeting with the leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Germany in Rome on the status of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
‘Build Back Better’ or ‘blah, blah, blah’?
The White House had hoped to broker a major social policy deal with congressional Democrats before Biden left for Europe Thursday — and with it, new U.S. commitments to fight climate change. But having failed to do so, how will Biden sell any potential progress abroad when his party failed this week to pass a package that included $550 billion in clean energy and climate investments? A figure that experts say is insufficient to meet the Paris climate agreement commitment to reduce 2005 emissions levels by 50% by 2030.
Or, as activist Greta Thunberg — who will be in Scotland — put in remarks in September, will experts and activists see Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan as more “blah blah blah”?
John Larson, a director of power and energy research at the Rhodium Group, told ABC News that the still-developing Democratic climate plan “could be the single largest action by Congress, if not the federal government, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions ever.”
If an agreement is eventually cemented in Washington, its terms could eventually give Biden more credibility to extract greater climate commitments from like-minded G-20 leaders, Matthew Goodman, a senior vice president for economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said on a call with reporters ahead of the president’s trip.
Chinese, Russian leaders to skip attending in person
China’s President Xi Jinping will be participating in the G-20 summit virtually and will not attend the COP26 climate conference in Scotland. It’s a blow to the ambitions of the U.S. and other nations seeking to curb emissions given that China is the largest carbon emitter and home to half of the coal-fired power plants in the world.
At a time when some experts worry that Chinese military tests could prompt a new Cold War-style arms race, could the in-person meetings Biden has in Europe on the sidelines of the summits help align the U.S. and its allies against what the Biden administration has called “the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century?”
Bruen, the former diplomat and Obama administration official, called Xi Jinping’s absence a “strategic mistake” that would work in Biden’s favor.
“The one thing that Joe Biden can do better than almost any other modern American president is to charm the socks off of even his deepest skeptics,” he said. “I would see this this as a moment for Biden to really try and use the powers of personal charm to advance what he wants when it comes to getting our fellow allies, and those that care about these issues, to do more than just say in private that they’re concerned.”
Another notable in-person absence: Russian President Vladimir Putin.
(NEW YORK) — With Halloween just days away, kids across the country are gearing up for candy and fun, while many parents are wondering how to keep their kids safe amid the coronavirus pandemic, especially while kids younger than 12 wait to be eligible for a vaccine.
The good news for families is this Halloween can be celebrated with more ease than last year, according to the nation’s top infectious disease expert.
White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said in a CNN interview earlier this month that kids can “go out there and enjoy Halloween,” an approach he attributed to the fact that more and more people are now vaccinated against COVID-19 and that most Halloween activities, including trick-or-treating, are held outdoors.
“It’s a good time to reflect on why it’s important to get vaccinated,” he said, urging unvaccinated adults and teens to get shots before Halloween. “But go out there and enjoy Halloween.”
“This is a time that children love,” Fauci added. “It’s a very important part of the year for children.”
Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital, is the father of two young children. He said he also plans to have a more “normal” Halloween with his kids this year, complete with outdoor trick-or-treating.
“It’s safe to say that trick-or-treating is an activity that all kids can partake in,” said Brownstein, who is also an ABC News contributor. “Kids can feel quite excited by the fact that I think they will have a generally normal Halloween compared to last year.”
Here are four questions answered by Brownstein about how to have a safe Halloween this year.
1. Does my child need to wear a mask while trick-or-treating this year?
In most cases, no, according to Brownstein.
“Every parent has to make their own sort of risk calculation, but given where we are in this pandemic, I think, generally, mask wearing outside is probably unnecessary,” he said, noting that data from nearly two years of the pandemic show that outdoor activities are “generally safe,” even for children who are not yet vaccinated.
“Of course, every family should make decisions that are right for them and the underlying risks of their kids and household members,” Brownstein added. “And luckily, Halloween costumes can make mask-wearing less stigmatizing.”
2. Are indoor Halloween events safe for my kids to attend?
While Brownstein is planning to trick-or-treat outdoors with his kids, he said they are planning to wait another year before attending big, indoor Halloween events.
“The bigger questions that come into play around indoor activities may involve unvaccinated people,” he said. “That’s where masking and good ventilation may be more appropriate.”
Brownstein added that people who do choose to attend indoor Halloween events this year should make sure people at the event are vaccinated if they are eligible. He also suggests relying on additional layers of protection like social distancing and COVID-19 testing, in addition to masking and good ventilation.
3. Should my family use rapid tests? Are they reliable?
Brownstein said that in addition to vaccination, another major difference between this Halloween and last is that rapid tests are now widely available for use and are particularly smart for indoor events.
“Because rapid tests are becoming more and more pervasive, we should all be using them as a tool to limit the risk to unvaccinated people or the risk of breakthrough infections,” said Brownstein. “Within a short time frame of an event, taking a rapid test, while not 100% foolproof, will give some good reassurance that you’re not putting other people at risk by joining an indoor event.”
“I have a bunch on hand at home, ready to use as needed, so I think those are incredibly effective,” he said.
4. Does a ‘normal’ Halloween mean we’ll also have a ‘normal’ Thanksgiving and Christmas?
Brownstein said he is hopeful that more and more families and friends will be able to spend the holidays safely together this year, but stressed the importance of maintaining good public health practices to keep everyone safe, especially since the upcoming holidays typically involve more travel and time spent indoors.
“While this holiday means that we can gather more seamlessly and in a slightly more normal way, there are small things that we can all do to try to limit transmission,” he said, citing masking as a critical tool. “Transmission takes place through droplets and aerosols so whatever we can do to limit transmission will ultimately have a direct impact on whether we see a surge post-holiday.”
He added, “As we know, those surges can lead to even more significant public health measures that we’re all trying to avoid, so the small things we do during the holiday can mean even a more enjoyable life post-holiday.”
(NEW YORK) — Earlier this year, multiple Facebook employees questioned the apparent restrictions on well-known Palestinian activist Mohammed El-Kurd’s Instagram account, according to internal Facebook documents shared with ABC News and a group of other news organizations.
The document, titled “Concerns with added restrictions/demotions on content pertaining to Palestine,” shows concern among some employees over content moderation decisions during the May escalation of violence in Gaza and the West Bank.
The documents were disclosed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former employee, and provided to Congress in redacted form by Haugen’s legal counsel. They were provided to ABC News by a congressional staffer.
Facebook’s independent Oversight Board called for an investigation into whether moderation disproportionately targeted Palestinians last month.
The document also points to frustration by employees who were, in the moment, unable to pin down exactly why an activist’s online reach was being limited.
In the post, the Facebook employee, whose name was redacted, warned the Instagram Stories of El-Kurd, a prominent activist in the East Jerusalem area of Sheikh Jarrah, were apparently being “demoted” in error. Demotion refers to the practice of limiting the reach of a post judged to violate Facebook’s rules.
And El-Kurd’s account wasn’t the only one facing apparent restrictions, according to the document’s author.
“Can we investigate the reasons why posts and stories pertaining to Palestine lately have had limited reach and engagement, especially when more people than ever from around the world are watching the situation unfold?” the author wrote.
While the employee’s post is not dated, it includes an unredacted link to a May 12 tweet by El-Kurd, which includes a photo of an Instagram error message.
“I keep getting messages like this one. My Instagram story views went down from 150k to like 50k. So much of what I post is disappearing. Why are you silencing Palestinians?” his tweet read.
At the time of El-Kurd’s May 12 tweet, violence had already broken out over the forced evictions of Palestinians in East Jerusalem. In the resulting crisis, according to the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, around 245 Palestinians, including 63 children, were “seemingly killed by Israeli Defense Forces.” Rocket attacks by Palestinian armed groups resulted in 13 deaths in Israel, including two children, according to Human Rights Watch.
A Facebook spokesperson noted that in May, Instagram experienced a technical glitch affecting the Stories of millions of users, including many Palestinians. The issue was quickly fixed, the company said. Facebook also acknowledged reports that users felt Stories about the conflict were having an unexpectedly limited reach, which the company said was due to a change to the way stories are prioritized that privileged original posts over re-shares. That change was later reversed, the company said Thursday.
According to the internal document about El-Kurd, the activist had previously been the subject of “false positives,” the mistaken removal or limiting of a piece of content.
This ran counter to a new effort within Facebook, according to the document.
“There have been false positive[s] reported against his account in the past and now that we (FB) have taken a stance to minimize our over-enforcing on content from Palestine — due to the necessity of allowing folks on the ground to share what’s going on — there should be no reason his content is getting removed or restricted,” the document read.
A follow-up comment added to the undated post points to confusion and delays in resolving the problem.
“I’d really like to understand what exactly is breaking down here and why. What is being done to fix it given that this is an issue that was brought up a week ago?” the unidentified commenter wrote.
Another commenter chimed in, reporting that they had investigated the issue and not found any restrictions put in place by the “Inauthentic Behavior” team. Inauthentic Behavior is a term used within Facebook for a range of violations, including the use of false identities and the artificial boosting of a post’s popularity.
As employees continued to look for a cause of the possible crackdown on El-Kurd’s account, other comments expressed frustration.
“Also getting reports about this from friends and the conversations are harder and harder as days pass without a root cause being found and tackled internally,” another comment read.
It’s not clear, according to the document, whether a cause was ever found.
“We’re sorry to anyone who felt they couldn’t bring attention to important events,” Facebook spokesperson Drew Pusateri said in a statement to ABC News Thursday.
El-Kurd has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment.
In the wake of that crisis, nearly 200 Facebook employees signed an open letter calling on Facebook to address claims of censorship against pro-Palestinian voices on the platform, according to a report by the Financial Times.
Facebook’s Oversight Board called for an independent review into “allegations that Facebook has disproportionately removed or demoted content from Palestinian users and content in Arabic,” in a Sept. 14 statement. The board also called for a probe into whether Facebook was “not doing enough to remove content that incites violence against Israeli civilians.”
The Oversight Board said Facebook had wrongfully taken down a post, which mentioned a Palestinian militant group but which did not contain any incitement to violence.
(NEW YORK) — Children 5 to 11 may be able to start getting vaccines as early as Wednesday, marking a major milestone in the ongoing fight against COVID-19 in the United States.
An advisory panel with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is scheduled to meet Nov. 2 and vote on whether to recommend the Pfizer vaccine for the approximately 28 million U.S. children aged 5 to 11.
It will then be up to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky to make the final decision, one she’s expected to make quickly.
That potentially quick turnaround has left many parents scrambling to answer vaccine-related questions about how it could affect their kids.
The nation’s top health experts though have said that getting more kids vaccinated will be key to managing the pandemic in the U.S.
“If we can create a situation where more of these kids are not getting infected, we should be able to drive this pandemic down, which is what we really hope to do, even as we face the cold [weather] and other concerns about whether we might see another surge,” Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said Tuesday on Good Morning America. “We don’t want that, and this would be one significant step forward in getting our country really in a better place.”
GMA spoke with leading pediatricians from across the country, and here are some of their answers to five questions about vaccines for children 5 to 11.
1. Why does a child need a COVID vaccine?
Getting kids vaccinated against COVID-19 helps protect them against serious illness, according to Dr. Mark Kline, physician-in-chief at Children’s Hospital New Orleans.
“The idea that children don’t get very sick from COVID was a myth,” he said. “The delta variant that hit us so hard over the summer really disabused us of that myth once and for all.”
Over 1 million children were diagnosed with COVID-19 in the past six weeks, adding to the total of more than 6 million children who have tested positive since start of the pandemic, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
While it’s true kids often have more mild cases of COVID-19, they can still get “very sick” from the virus, according to Dr. Mobeen Rathore, division chief of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Florida College of Medicine.
“Many children, as we saw this last surge, do get very sick,” he said. “They do get in the hospital, they do get into the ICU, and they can be on a breathing machine — and, unfortunately, they can die.”
More than 700 children and teens under 18 have died of COVID-19 in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic, according to the CDC.
2. How do we know a vaccine is safe for kids under 12?
Pfizer has conducted clinical trials with its COVID-19 vaccine on kids ages 5 to 11 since last year, and the company’s most recent data shows that it was nearly 91% effective against symptomatic illness.
The vaccine also appeared safe. None of the children in the clinical trials experienced a rare heart inflammation side effect known as myocarditis, which has been associated with the mRNA vaccines in very rare cases, mostly among young men.
“We learned a lot from the vaccination of 12-to-18-year-olds, especially about rare side effects like myocarditis,” said Dr. Andrew Nowalk, a clinical specialist in pediatric infectious diseases at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “The vaccine trials that were done in the 5-to-11-year-olds looked at a range of doses, including the higher dose that we used in the adolescents and adults and then lower doses, and the lower dose was found to be very effective with fewer side effects and that’s what the vaccine is being based on.”
“I think this is a tribute to our dedication to vaccine safety throughout all of these trials,” he said.
3. Is the vaccine dose for kids different than for adults
For kids, the Pfizer vaccine will be smaller, one-third of the adolescent and adult dose.
Like adults and adolescents, kids ages 5 to 11 will be fully vaccinated after two shots. Their vaccine is proposed to be given in two 10-microgram doses administered 21 days apart.
The smaller doses will allow kids to develop a strong immunity while minimizing possible side effects, according to Dr. Alok Patel, a pediatric hospitalist at University of California, San Francisco.
“The thought there is, this will actually give those young robust immune systems enough information to tank up those antibody levels,” he said. “But also at a smaller dose, it’s going to reduce the chances of immune reactogenicity. It’s going to make it a safer vaccine.”
When it comes to dosing, differing immune systems among people of different ages help explain why the cutoffs for vaccine eligibility rest on age and not body size.
“You don’t need to worry that your 11-year-old is going to be under-dosed if they get the the smaller pediatric dose,” said Dr. Allison Bartlett, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital. “Conversely, we’ve had plenty of small 12 and 13 and 75-year-old people get the full adult dose and are doing just fine.”
In addition to the COVID-19 vaccine, other immunizations are also scheduled and administered based on age and not weight. This is partially due to the fact that the body’s immune responses to vaccinations and infection are known to be different based on age.
4. Will the vaccine affect kids’ development?
“There’s no evidence that this vaccine has any effect on the development,” said Rathore. “There’s also no biologically plausible reason that it would affect the development of your child, and the reason for that it is a protein that, once it does its job in the body, it goes away.”
There is also currently no clinical evidence to suggest any of the COVID-19 vaccines can have long-term effects on puberty or fertility.
Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use mRNA technology, which doesn’t enter the nucleus of the cells and doesn’t alter human DNA. Instead, it provides a genetic “instruction manual” that prompts cells to create proteins that look like the outside of the virus — a way for the body to learn and develop defenses against infection.
5. Why should I get my child vaccinated now?
The pediatricians GMA spoke with collectively agreed it is important for parents to get their child ages 5 to 11 vaccinated as soon as they are eligible in order to help protect their child’s health, and to help protect the health of others.
“I would say that the most important reason not to wait is kids are dying from COVID right now in the United States,” said Nowalk. “We’ve actually had more pediatric deaths in the last couple of months than at any other time during this epidemic.”
Kline, of Children’s Hospital New Orleans, said he hopes his grandchildren will be among the first in line for a vaccine once eligible.
“I don’t see any virtue in waiting and putting children further at risk for preventable illness or even death,” Kline added. “The advice that I’m giving to parents that I counsel in the clinic, and the advice that I have given to my own daughters about my grandchildren is, the moment those vaccines are available at the pharmacy or at the pediatricians office, they should avail themselves of the opportunity to get the vaccine.”
If parents have questions and concerns, they should talk with their health care provider, advised Dr. Robert Frenck, lead investigator of the pediatric COVID-19 vaccine trials at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
“What every parent is trying to do is to protect their child and to make sure their child is healthy and happy,” said Frenck. “And while doing something new or different can be scary, we have a lot of information around the COVID-19 vaccines that we have a good safety profile.”
Parents should reach out to health care providers and ask questions to make sure they’re comfortable, Frenck added.
“I hope that you’ll find that the right decision is to vaccinate your children,” he said, “because this is really what we need to get things back to normal.”
(MANCHESTER, Md.) — A recreational youth football game in Maryland that devolved into a brawl among at least 30 people has resulted in accusations of racism and charges against two white adults are accused of assaulting two Black minors from the opposing team.
The game between the Olney Bears, a team with predominantly Black and Hispanic children, and the North Carroll Colts, which predominantly was composed of white children, took place in Christmas Tree Park in Manchester, Maryland, on Sept. 25.
Police and North Carroll Rec Council officials say they have so far found no evidence that racism played a part in the scuffle.
Multiple parents who spoke with ABC News described a tense environment that was heightened because parents from both teams were on the same sideline.
Olney was winning when a heated disagreement over a referee’s call exacerbated tensions and referees called off the game early, according to police and multiple witnesses who added that the brawl broke out as coaches, parents and players walked off the field.
“[The game] disgustingly ended with approximately 30 persons in a melee, which is a very rare occurrence,” Manchester Police Chief John Hess told ABC News on Sunday. “The single officer on scene at the start was forced to use pepper spray to defuse the situation because his clear verbal commands were ignored, and the melee was escalating as he was waiting for multiple support units to arrive.”
NAACP calls on athletes not to sign with Texas teams over voting, abortion laws
Criminal charges and disciplinary action
According to court documents and police, Nicole Starr Ellis, 31 and Keith Gregory Lockner, 32, each were charged with second-degree assault against two 13-year-old Black players.
According to the District Court of Maryland for Carroll County, a trial is scheduled for Dec. 7. Joseph Ashley, an attorney representing Ellis, told ABC News on Wednesday that his client denies “all allegation of uttering racial epitaphs and of assaulting anyone.” Attorney Frank Turney, who’s representing Lockner, declined to comment to ABC News on Thursday.
According to court documents obtained by ABC News, a 13-year-old Olney player whose name was withheld to protect his identity, allegedly was punched by Lockner. Ellis is accused of assaulting KC Robinson, the son of Olney head coach Kirk Robinson.
The Carroll County Youth Football League to which both teams belong told ABC News that the executive board launched an investigation last month that’s so far led to the expulsion or suspension of several individuals associated with both teams.
“As additional details emerge the CCYFL will continue to evaluate and take further actions as necessary,” the executive board said in a statement to ABC News. “The League has a zero-tolerance policy for any physical altercations on its sidelines and unfortunately the decisions made by a few adults has impacted the season.”
The league would not disclose the names of those who faced disciplinary action, but Kirk Robinson confirmed that he was one of them.
According to Robinson, he initially was suspended for two games for using foul language during the game after he disagreed with a refereeing decision, but later he was banned for life from coaching in the league or attending games.
Robinson told ABC News he thinks that decision is unfair because he was defending his family.
“My job is to protect the kids that are on the field … and I’m paying the consequences for it,” he added. “You can’t tell me that any adult is going to be OK with — whether their child’s Black or white — being assaulted by another adult.”
Robinson’s wife, Amanda Robinson, told ABC News she witnessed the alleged assault against the first child.
LaTasha Robinson, KC Robinson’s mother, said that following confrontations involving Ellis, Lockner and parents of Olney players, there was pushing and shoving as they walked through the crowd. Amid the commotion, she said KC fell to the ground after he was allegedly assaulted by Ellis.
“He was upset, he was hurt,” LaTasha Robinson said. “You don’t just swing into a crowd and there’s kids there.”
Allegations of racism
Several individuals associated with the Olney team who were present at the game, including family members of the two 13-year-olds who were allegedly assaulted, claimed that their children were subjected to racial slurs by North Carroll players and parents.
Tamisha, the sister of the first child who was allegedly assaulted, told ABC News that her brother was crying so hard afterward that he “couldn’t even catch his breath.”
Tamisha said that her brother scored two touchdowns, and as tensions were getting high before the scuffle broke out, he and his teammates were being taunted throughout the game by individuals associated with North Carroll.
“I went over to him originally … and I just asked him if he was OK, and he said, ‘They’re calling me the N-word, they’re calling us the N-word, They’re taunting us.’ And I said, don’t worry about that, go to your coaches, just stay with them,” she said.
Hess told ABC News there is no evidence of racial slurs on various spectator videos obtained by police, but it’s unclear how much footage is out there and the criminal case is still open.
North Carroll Rec Council President Andy Kiler told ABC News on Sunday that the North Carroll Colts executive board took disciplinary action against several individuals, but “racist remarks have not been found, which includes an investigation by police that included video and conversations with those at the event.”
“NCRC takes all accusations of any type of discrimination very seriously, and we do not tolerate that type of behavior within our programs,” he added. “Our review has concluded unless new information is brought to our attention.”
(NEW YORK) — Britain’s Prince Andrew faces a deadline Friday to file a response to a sexual assault lawsuit filed against him in New York by an alleged victim of deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Virginia Giuffre, 38, claims she was directed by Epstein and his former associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, to have sex with the prince at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion and elsewhere in 2001, before she turned 18.
Prince Andrew and Maxwell have both denied Giuffre’s allegations.
According to a letter filed earlier this week by Andrew Brettler, a California-based attorney for the prince, the second son of Queen Elizabeth II, intends to file a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
During a telephonic hearing in the case earlier this month, Brettler assailed Giuffre’s lawsuit as “baseless, non-viable and potentially unlawful.”
Among the royal’s arguments for dismissal is his claim that a settlement agreement Giuffre signed with Epstein in 2009 “releases [the prince] and others from any and all liability, including any purported liability arising from the claims Ms. Giuffre asserted against Prince Andrew here.”
But Giuffre’s attorneys contend that the prince’s attempt to rely on the previous settlement agreement with Epstein to forestall the case is destined to fail.
“There is no evidence from any of the parties to the release, or Prince Andrew, that the release was ever intended to include Prince Andrew, and we believe the evidence will be that it wasn’t,” wrote Giuffre’s lawyer, David Boies, in a court filing earlier this month.
The prince’s legal team recently received a copy of the 2009 settlement from Giuffre’s attorneys, but it will not be filed publicly this week. The deal’s contents have been placed under seal by another judge in a related lawsuit. Any references to the particulars of the agreement are expected to be redacted from the prince’s submissions to the court.
Giuffre’s lawsuit, filed on Aug. 9, seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and accuses Andrew, 61, of sexual assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
“Twenty years ago, Prince Andrew’s wealth, power, position, and connections enabled him to abuse a frightened, vulnerable child with no one there to protect her. It is long past the time for him to be held to account,” the lawsuit states.
Giuffre, now a 38-year-old mother living in Australia, first accused the prince of sexual abuse in public court filings in December 2014, in a case brought by alleged Epstein victims against the U.S. Department of Justice. That lawsuit challenged Epstein’s lenient deal with federal prosecutors in Florida in 2008.
Her claims were met then with vehement denials from Maxwell and from Buckingham Palace on behalf of the prince.
“It is emphatically denied that [Prince Andrew] had any form of sexual contact or relationship with [Giuffre]. The allegations made are false and without any foundation,” the palace said in a statement.
After Epstein’s death while awaiting trial on child sex-trafficking charges, the prince once again found himself under scrutiny for his prior association with the disgraced financier.
In a 2019 interview with the BBC, Andrew denied having sexual contact with Giuffre and claimed to have no recollection of ever meeting her.
“I’ve said consistently and frequently that we never had any sort of sexual contact whatever,” the prince said, responding to a question about allegations from Giuffre.
U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who is overseeing Giuffre’s case, has scheduled the next hearing for Nov. 3.
