(BRISTOL COUNTY, Mass.) — The Bristol County Sheriff’s Office in Massachusetts is the first law enforcement agency in the country to implement a K-9 unit with canines able to detect COVID-19.
“Today, festivals are happening, restaurants are full and concert venues are packed,” said Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson in a statement published Thursday. “We’ve made so much progress, and our new COVID-19 detection program is one way the people of Bristol County can stay ahead of the curve.”
Huntah, a 9-month old female black lab, and Duke, a 9-month-old male golden lab/retriever mix, are the two canines that have now joined the Bristol County K-9 unit after completing a COVID-19 detection training program developed by the International Forensic Research Institute at Florida International University.
The program, which uses masks worn by COVID-19 positive patients, kills the virus with an ultraviolet light, leaving the smell of the virus for dogs to detect.
The canines are then trained to sniff out the virus odor, or detect the change in metabolism of a person infected with COVID-19 without the risk of infection, making the program safe for dogs during the training process.
With this training, the dogs are able to detect the coronavirus with over 90% accuracy, Dr. Ken Furton, provost and executive vice president at Florida International University, told ABC Radio’s “Perspective” podcast in February.
“More than nine times out of 10, when the odor is there or a positive mask is there, the dogs alert and they get very few false positives,” Furton said. “So they’re very, very accurate, actually more accurate than even PCR testing in the laboratory.”
According to the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office, Huntah and Duke will be used to detect the virus in schools, town buildings, nursing homes and medical facilities. Captain Paul Douglas sees these two new additions to the K-9 unit as a “decontamination tool” to keep these spaces safe against the virus.
“The dogs can detect the COVID odor on a counter or table if it was recently touched by a COVID-positive individual, or even detect the odor on a tissue used by someone with COVID,” Douglas said.
With this detection program developed by scientists, trained dogs will be able to detect all variants of COVID-19, including the delta variant.
“This is all science,” Douglas said during a canine graduation ceremony on Wednesday. “This program was developed by professors, doctors and scientists at FIU, and we couldn’t be more proud or excited to execute it here in Bristol County.”
(NEW YORK) — Over 55 million Americans are at risk for flash flooding this weekend as severe weather heads toward the Northeast.
Portions of the Northeast are nearly five times wetter than average for July so far. New York and Boston both could approach all-time wettest July before the month’s end.
Tornadoes and damaging winds are also possible in the Northeast today.
A slow moving frontal system is bringing very heavy rain from the central U.S. to the East Coast. Over 3 inches of rain caused flash flooding in the Detroit region on Friday. Over 5 inches of rain was reported in Indiana, nearly 6 inches of rain was reported in Illinois, and over 10 inches of rain was reported in Kansas.
The system is moving east this morning and will bring more heavy rain to parts of the Ohio Valley and ultimately into the Northeast. Severe storms, including the risk for possible tornadoes and damaging winds will be possible from Maryland to New York today, including Philadelphia and New York City.
Flash flood watches are in effect from Indiana to Massachusetts. The rainfall threat across parts of the Northeast is particularly concerning. The region is well above average for rainfall.
New York City has had 8.49 inches of rain so far for the month of July. To put that in context, New York City’s average rainfall for all of July is 4.60 inches. The wettest July on record in New York city is 11.89 inches.
Boston has had 8.92 inches of rain so far in July. Boston currently is having it’s third-wettest July on record. The wettest July on record in Boston is 11.69 inches.
The precipitation forecast for storms Saturday and Sunday shows locally over 3 inches of rain. While not a certainty, it is looking possible, that Northeast cities will be approaching or exceeding their wettest July on record — and that may happen this weekend, in spots.
Flash flooding is a concern. As the ground is very saturated, the heavy rain will likely cause flash flooding very quickly.
Meanwhile, in the West, a heat wave is persisting across parts of the region, but it is not nearly as bad as the last few heat waves have been. In fact, there are only a couple of records being threatened over the next few days.
More concerning is the risk of dry lightning across California and Western Nevada on Sunday night. Dry lightning can quickly start wildfires, that will quickly burn out of control.
Additionally, more monsoon-related flooding will be possible across Arizona and New Mexico.
Here are the updated fire numbers:
Beckwourth Complex Fire
Size: 105,163 acres
70% contained
Near Beckwourth, CA
Bootleg Fire
Size: 273,582 acres
22% contained
Near Beatty, OR
River Fire
9,500 acres
59% contained
Mariposa County, CA
Snake River Complex Fire
102,866 acres
31% contained
Outside of Lewiston, ID
Red Apple Fire
11,111 acres
51% contained
Central Washington
(SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico) — With the peak of hurricane season less than two months away, many Puerto Ricans are concerned about the stability of the island’s electric grid — a problem-plagued system that left millions without power during Hurricane Maria.
After suffering multiple natural disasters in recent years including two hurricanes and thousands of earthquakes, the island’s already troubled electric system has been left damaged, leading to the grid becoming unstable.
“We all have to keep in mind that we have a very fragile electrical grid,” the island’s governor, Pedro Pierluisi, told ABC News. Some residents are also concerned about the company that is now running the electric distribution system, LUMA Energy.
LUMA took over the island’s transmission and distribution system on June 1 — the same day hurricane season started.
The system was previously managed by the governmental entity called Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), which still manages electric generation.
Pierluisi blamed the current problems with the electric system on PREPA for not maintaining the grid.
“PREPA was not giving adequate maintenance to substations, to the electrical poles, electrical lines and Luma inherited that,” he told ABC News.
LUMA’s 1st month
The privatization of the country’s electric grid was announced three years ago by former Gov. Ricardo Rosello.
LUMA’s contract with the government was announced during his successor, Wanda Vazquez’s administration, but Pierluisi supported it once he took office in January 2021.
While blackouts and power outages weren’t infrequent in some areas of Puerto Rico before LUMA, some residents say conditions have worsened since the new company has been in control.
Sylvia Giansante, a resident in San Juan, said “power outages were not frequent,” but that changed in the last month. But “ever since last month,” she said, “the power goes out every two days.”
Giansante said she has three damaged air conditioning units due to the unstable power system and the frequent blackouts.
In the last month, Puerto Rico has seen multiple power outages and a major blackout caused by an explosion in one of the island’s electric substations. The Monacillo substation, where the explosion occurred, is located in San Juan and is run by LUMA Energy.
Aside from these incidents, thousands on the island have reported ongoing power outages in that time, with some lasting a couple of hours and others up to days.“The week of the explosion, we were without power for five days,” Giansante said.
A local police report said the substation explosion was due to a failure in the electric system. After rumors circulated that the explosion could have been intentionally set, federal authorities responded to the incident.
The FBI said in a statement to ABC News that their position is “one of support in assessing the events and related circumstances to determine if it was the result of an accident or of a criminal act.”
While the FBI’s spokesperson didn’t confirm an investigation they say “the people of Puerto Rico can rest assured that, should evidence of criminal action under our jurisdiction be found, we would pursue it to its fullest extent.”
Many residents in the island have been against LUMA’s takeover since the beginning of the transition process. They oppose the terms of the contract with the government and some are against privatizing the essential service.
Dozens of protests have been reported across the island demanding the cancellation of the contract between Puerto Rico’s government and the company.
Residents concerns amid hurricane season
Karina Claudio-Betancourt lives in a community called Barrio Obrero located in Santurce, Puerto Rico. She says there was a live cable hanging in her street early in June and she called LUMA every day to report the situation.
“In the beginning, we made a lot of calls, and no answers,” Claudio-Betancourt said. “I wrote to them via Twitter and Facebook.”
LUMA’s external affairs adviser, Jose Perez Velez, told ABC News that the delay in responding to calls at the beginning of the month could have been related to a cyberattack the company suffered in their first week which affected their client service.
Once Claudio-Betancourt was able to communicate with LUMA, their response was “we’re working on it, we’re going to refer it to a supervisor, ” she says.
According to the 33-year-old woman it took LUMA three weeks after she made her first claim to address the situation.
With the ongoing hurricane season, residents say they are concerned about the company’s slow response to power outages.
“It’s scary,” Claudio-Betancourt said. “It’s really a situation of life and death to lose electricity, and I don’t see them responding quickly enough.”
An investigation from the Center for Investigative Journalism of Puerto Rico indicated that most of the deaths in Hurricane Maria can be linked to the lack of electricity.
When Hurricane Maria slammed the island in 2017, it knocked out the power and all communications in the entire island. It took nearly a year to restore the electricity to the whole island. The official death toll linked to the storm is 2,975, according to Puerto Rico’s government.
Before hurricane season started this year, the Puerto Rican government held a press conference on May 26 addressing the contingency plan for any potential storm.
In that presser, LUMA’s CEO Wayne Stensby said the company was ready to work alongside the government to deal with any potential natural disaster.
In a public motion with the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau, LUMA stated that the company has enough inventory including trucks and employees to deal with a Category 2 storm. A report with more details on an emergency plan was also submitted by LUMA.
“We are ready to put the customers first as our obligations,” Stensby said during the presser on May 26.
But in recent weeks, residents including Claudio-Betancourt said they have been told by employees at the call center that LUMA does not have enough equipment to deal with rural areas in the island.
Claudio-Betancourt has a residence in Las Marias, Puerto Rico located in the center westside of the island. Her residence has been without power for weeks. She called to report the situation, but LUMA was not able to address the complaint, she said.
“They said, ‘We don’t have enough linemen in that area.’ Then I went personally to the offices in San Sebastian, and they said to me, ‘We don’t have the trucks to fix the electricity,'” Claudio-Betancourt told ABC News.
The LUMA representative, Perez Velez, reiterated that the company has the people and the tools to deal with the ongoing outages.
“We are prepared. We have the capacity and the people to handle the necessities in our island. We are going to deal with any possible atmospheric event in the most organized way,” he told ABC News.
Amid the wave of complaints against the new company, Gov. Pierluisi told ABC News his team has been talking to LUMA Energy to make check-ins and demand answers if needed.
“We will be vigilant, we will do the oversight, and there is a good plan in place to handle a disaster,” Pierluisi said.
Although the governor believes that LUMA Energy has more resources compared to when PREPA ran the transmission and distribution of the system, he admitted the company needs more equipment.
“They’re doing alliances as we speak, they’re doing MOUs [memorandum of understanding] with mayors to supplement what they’re doing, and they are also doing alliances with electrical companies and elsewhere in the states to assist them. If God forbid, we get another natural disaster here in Puerto Rico,” the governor added.
Despite LUMA’s declarations and the governor’s words, residents are still skeptical about the island’s electric system stability and the response they could get during a potential emergency.
“Maria was Category 4. What are they going to do if Category 4 comes? Are they going to leave us to die?” Claudio-Betancourt asked.
(LONDON) — England, which has faced more than 14 months of lockdowns as the COVID-19 pandemic raged and waned, is set to fully reopen July 19, despite a rising caseload in one of the most vaccinated places in the world.
While the other nations of the U.K. — Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — are responsible for setting their own restrictions, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has moved forward with the plan to end social distancing in England, having already delayed reopening by a month.
The vulnerable section of the population has been told by the government “follow the same guidance as everyone else,” but they “may wish to think particularly carefully about additional precautions you might wish to continue to take.”
Everyone on the “Shielded Patient List” (some 3.7 million) should have been offered a vaccine, the government said.
As of July 15, 261,832 cases had been recorded in the previous seven days, a 32.6% increase from the previous week. In the seven days preceding July 11, according the latest available data, there were 3,933 hospitalizations – an increase of 46.8% from the week before, according to official government data.
The delta variant, which is more transmissible than the original coronavirus strain, is now responsible for around 95% of new cases in the U.K., according to The Lancet.
Experts warn that the reopening could lead to a surge in cases, but others say that how much they will increase is a question, which is one reason officials say there may be no good time to do it.
‘Proceed now with caution’
Ahead of the full reopening, mass events have been held including the European Championships, with tens of thousands attending soccer games in London. Social distancing collapsed during celebrations for England’s path to the final.
The relaxation will put an end to limits on social gatherings and mandated mask use, though some businesses and transport authorities have indicated mask use will continue to be mandatory.
The new Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, warned on BBC radio that lifting the restrictions could lead to 100,000 cases a day this summer. However, Javid has said that the success of the vaccine program – which has seen 67.1% of the adult population fully vaccinated – appears to have partially broken the link between cases and hospitalizations.
“When you look at hospitalizations and deaths, deaths, for example, [they are] are one thirtieth of what they were the last time we saw case numbers of that type,” Javid told Sky News this month. Javid announced that he tested positive on Saturday, and will now be isolating, although he said his symptoms were mild and he was fully vaccinated.
Some sections of the British media have dubbed the upcoming date as “Freedom Day.” But Johnson stressed that while restrictions are being lifted, personal responsibility remains. He said that while cases are rising, they are at the “middle range of [government scientists’] projections for infections and at the lower end of their projections for mortality.”
“But it is absolutely vital that we proceed now with caution,” he said earlier this week. “And I cannot say this powerfully or emphatically enough. This pandemic is not over. This disease coronavirus continues to carry risks for you and your family. We cannot simply revert instantly from Monday, the 19th of July to life as it was before COVID. We will stick to our plan to lift legal restrictions and to lift social distancing.”
Several leading doctors co-authored an open letter in The Lancet, warning that that the easing of restrictions is “dangerous and premature.” And the government’s approach contrasts with that of Israel, a similarly vaccinated population, which has moved to reimpose some social distancing restrictions after a rise in cases. At an international summit on Friday, over 1,200 scientists and public health experts backed the letter in The Lancet, warning that the reopening had the potential to allow vaccine resistant variants to emerge that could be exported to the rest of the world.
In an interview with ABC News this week, World Health Organization spokesperson Dr. Margaret Harris warned that “the big numbers” of cases were coming from Europe and the Americas, lamenting the “extraordinary belief in many of you, particularly the north, the northern hemisphere, in the U.S. and in Europe, that somehow it’s over.”
Won’t disappear any time soon
While the vaccines have partially stemmed the number of hospitalizations and deaths, both long COVID and the possibility of new variants are potential concerns for any government looking to go down the same course, according to David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
“Well, I think the first thing to understand is that this disease is becoming endemic and when it becomes endemic, that means it circulates in the population on a permanent basis,” according to Heymann.
Fundamentally, that means the epidemiology of the virus is changing in the U.K., with younger people more likely to be infected and hospitalized due to being lower down on the priority list of vaccines, he said.
“Now, people have to learn how to do their own risk assessment as they’ve learned for other infectious diseases like sexually transmitted infections,” he said. “And they need then to do the proper strategies to protect themselves and to protect others.”
Whatever happens, the novel coronavirus will not disappear anytime soon, even in vaccinated populations, he said.
“It will not end even if there are 70% of the people vaccinated or more or 70% with immunity, it will still have an opportunity to circulate in those populations and it will be reintroduced from time to time. So we’re looking at a virus which is establishing itself and many countries are taking different approaches. We just don’t know which approach will be best.”
Much will depend on whether the rate of hospitalizations and deaths rise once again to a point where they become intolerable, although the government has yet to provide a number which would provoke new restrictions. For now though, the government appears set on the full reopening of society in England, with the other nations of the U.K. set to chart a more cautious path.
“To those who say ‘why take this step now’ I say ‘if not now, when?” Javid told the U.K. parliament this month. “There will never be a perfect time to take this step because we simply cannot eradicate this virus.”
(WASHINGTON) — Six people were injured and one 6-year-old girl killed in a shooting that took place in Washington, D.C., Friday night.
The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia released a video statement regarding the shooting, which took place shortly after 11 p.m.
Executive Assistant Chief Ashan M. Benedict said police heard shots of gunfire at 2900 Block of Martin Luther King, Jr., Avenue, Southeast, and rushed to the scene to find six victims injured: three male adults, two female adults and one child.
The 6-year-old girl was shot and killed at the scene and was later pronounced dead at a local hospital, Benedict said.
The five adults were being treated at area hospitals Friday night with non-life-threatening injuries.
The shooters are unknown, and police are asking for the public’s help in identifying them.
“We’re asking for the public’s assistance to bring these shooters to justice,” Benedict said.
(AUSTIN) — A federal judge in Texas ruled Friday that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program was unlawful in a significant blow to the Obama-era approach that shielded young people brought to the country illegally from deportation.
U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen sided with a group of nine states led by Texas and concluded that the creation of the DACA program violated federal administrative law. Hanen emphasized in his decision that his ruling does not compel immigration authorities to arrest and deport recipients, but it does make them eligible.
DACA was created by former President Barack Obama in 2012 to provide relief for the growing population of undocumented immigrant minors, sometimes called Dreamers, who had little to no say in their immigration process due to their youth. It’s estimated there are about 650,000 people who hold DACA status, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Lawyers with the Texas Attorney General’s Office argued that the Obama administration overextended its executive authority in creating the program. They were joined in the lawsuit by Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina and West Virginia.
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represented a group of DACA recipients in defending the program, argued in a prior hearing on the matter that Texas shouldn’t be successful in its lawsuit because none of the states were harmed by the existence of DACA.
The DACA program has maintained bipartisan political support even as Republican-led states have moved to end it. A solid majority — 75% — of Republicans favor allowing recipients the chance to obtain citizenship along with 92% of Democrats, according to a 2018 Gallup survey.
Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said DACA is the only way the president can exercise discretion.
“When you’re dealing with the number of people that the immigration system has to deal with, you have to make resource decisions,” Saenz said. “It’s hard to imagine an efficient way of doing it otherwise.”
The Biden administration could act to change the program in a way that would satisfy Hanen’s ruling, but still, the future for many DACA recipients will likely face the Supreme Court once again.
The ruling also ramps up pressure on Biden to achieve a legislative victory for DACA recipients, possibly through the reconciliation process.
In response to the news, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in a tweet, said it was “more important than ever for Congress to pass permanent protections for Dreamers and provide a pathway to citizenship.”
ABC News’ Ben Siegel and Justin Fishel contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The director of President Joe Biden’s Domestic Policy Council, Susan Rice, has divested herself of millions of dollars’ worth of holdings in a company that’s leading a contentious pipeline project supported by the Biden administration.
According to newly released financial disclosure reports and a White House official, Rice has liquidated nearly $2.7 million worth of shares she and her husband owned in Enbridge, a Canadian company building the Line 3 pipeline, which would carry hundreds of thousands of barrels of Canadian oil through Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Last month, the Biden administration gave a public boost to the Trump-era pipeline project, calling for the dismissal of a court challenge brought by environmental groups seeking to protect Minnesota watershed and tribal lands from the pipeline.
The Enbridge stock sale is part of a series of large divestments that Rice, one of the wealthiest members of the Biden White House, has recently made or is planning to make in the coming days. Divesting is a common measure that newly appointed public officials take to ensure that their government duties don’t overlap with their personal interests.
A certificate of divestiture issued by the Office of Government Ethics last week shows Rice’s plans to sell holdings in more than three dozen companies and several investment funds that she and her family own — assets currently worth a total of more than $30 million.
Enbridge’s stock price has been on an upward trend since November, and the value of Rice’s holdings in the company has increased from roughly $2.4 million when she joined the Biden administration earlier this year to nearly $2.7 million as of Friday.
It’s unclear if Rice netted any capital gains from the sale of her Enbridge shares, but those who divest assets under a certificate of divestiture are allowed to defer taxes on capital gains.
A White House official told ABC News that during the transition period leading up to Biden’s inauguration, Rice had agreed to divest from all of the listed assets. In the meantime, while waiting for her certificate of divestiture to be issued, she recused herself from matters involving companies in which she had investments.
The official said that as of early this week Rice had divested all of her Canadian assets, including the Enbridge holdings and more than $14 million worth of shares in Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd., as well as many U.S. assets.
Her remaining U.S. stocks are in the process of being divested, a process that will be finished before July 27, the official said.
Among the other assets she is divesting, according to her disclosure reports, are $1 million worth of shares in Johnson & Johnson, more than $823,000 worth of shares in Apple, and nearly $289,000 worth of shares in Comcast.
She will retain major holdings in Canadian banks, including $5 million to $25 million each in the Royal Bank of Canada and the Toronto-Dominion Bank, according to her disclosure reports.
Rice’s certificate of divestiture was first reported by the Daily Poster.
As ABC News previously reported, several other senior members of the Biden administration similarly divested themselves of their assets to comply with ethics rules earlier this year.
Biden’s White House climate envoy John Kerry was issued a certificate of divestiture in March for liquidating $4 million to $15 million in assets from more than 400 companies, including energy-sector interests. In May, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm divested $1.6 million worth of shares in electric vehicle producer Proterra.
Kedric Payne, general counsel and Senior Director of Ethics at the good-government group Campaign Legal Center, said that considering the large number of diverse stocks that Rice is divesting, it’s difficult to say whether the timing of the Biden administration’s support for the Line 3 pipeline project and Rice’s divestiture raises any questions.
But he said that Rice’s divestment from those assets shows the highest level of effort to avoid a conflict of interest.
“Ethics laws allow an official to resolve conflicts of interest with recusals, waivers, and blind trusts, but divesting assets is typically the most extreme remedy,” Payne said. “When officials are transparent about conflicts and sell their relevant assets to avoid such conflicts, the ethics laws are working as intended.”
(WASHINGTON) — One day after the surgeon general warned Americans about what he called the “urgent threat of health misinformation,” President Joe Biden didn’t mince words when asked for his message to platforms like Facebook about COVID-19 misinformation.
“They’re killing people,” he said.
As the president was leaving the White House for Camp David on Friday afternoon, he was asked, specifically, “On COVID misinformation, what’s your message to platforms like Facebook?”
Biden answered, “They’re killing people. I mean, it really — look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people.”
It was the only question Biden took before boarding Marine One to leave town for the weekend and follows comments by other Biden administration officials warning of the dangers of misinformation in combatting COVID-19.
On Thursday, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued the first public health advisory of the Biden administration to addresses an epidemic of misinformation and disinformation and its harmful impact on public health. The Biden administration is now calling on social media companies to take further action to combat misinformation around the COVID-19 vaccine.
Ahead of Biden’s departure, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was pressed Friday by ABC News Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott over whether Facebook was doing enough to combat the issue.
“Clearly not,” Psaki said, “because we’re talking about additional steps that should be taken.”
“We’re dealing with a life-or-death issue here. And so, everybody has a role to play in making sure there’s accurate information,” she added. “It’s clear there are more that can be taken.”
The decision to elevate misinformation comes as some Republicans have used the government’s coronavirus response and vaccine messaging as a political wedge.
It also comes amid the government’s current push to boost stalling vaccination rates while the delta variant takes hold of the country’s unvaccinated, in what Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky called “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” on Friday.
The Biden administration has doubled down on their efforts to get more people vaccinated — particularly after the country missed the president’s goal of getting 70% of adults with at least one dose by July 4.
The surgeon general’s new advisory specifically digs into social media platforms as having greatly contributed to the “unprecedented speed and scale” of misinformation’s spread and Murthy calls on technology and social media companies to “take more responsibility to stop online spread of health misinformation.”
It argues that misinformation, particularly on social media websites like Facebook, has hindered vaccination efforts, sown mistrust, caused people to reject public health measures, use unproven treatments, prolonged the pandemic and put lives at risk.
“Simply put, health misinformation has cost us lives,” Murthy said from the White House Thursday.
(MOSCOW) — Trevor Reed, one of two American former Marines that U.S. officials say is being held hostage by Russia, has been transferred to a prison camp a few hundred miles from Moscow, according to a prison rights monitoring group.
Reed, 30, and the other ex-Marine, Paul Whelan, have spent about two years in detention in Russia imprisoned on charges their families and American officials say were fabricated by Russia in order to seize them as bargaining chips.
President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the two Americans’ detention and the possibility of a prisoner swap to free them at their summit in Switzerland last month.
Reed has now been moved to a prison camp in Mordovia, a region about 350 miles from Moscow, Alexey Melnikov, an official at Moscow’s Public Monitoring Commission confirmed to ABC News on Friday. The other former Marine, Whelan, has already spent nearly a year in a camp in the same region, known for its high number of prisons.
“Trevor Reed was removed this morning from Moscow’s Investigative Isolation Jail No. 5 to one of the Republic of Mordovia’s camps,” said Melnikov, whose commission is empowered by the Russian government to inspect prison conditions.
What to know about 2 former US Marines held by Russia ahead of Putin-Biden summit
Melnikov said he did not know which camp in Mordovia Reed had been sent to and that it is not yet clear if it will be the same camp where Whelan is held, which is a prison used to house foreign convicts.
Reed fell into the hands of Russian police in the summer of 2019 following a drunken party in Moscow where he was visiting his girlfriend.
Police initially said they were taking him to sober up at the station but after agents from Russia’s FSB intelligence agency arrived to question him Reed was charged with assaulting a police officer, according to his family. He was put on trial on the charges that U.S. officials have said were absurd. A court in July 2020 sentenced Reed to nine years in prison.
Reed, whose family lives in Texas, spent nearly two years in detention in Moscow pre-trial jails. But last month, a court rejected his appeal against the sentence, clearing the way for him to be moved to a prison camp.
From early in their detention, Russia has suggested trading Reed and Whelan for Russians serving prison sentences in the United States.
Hope for a potential trade have risen recently following Biden and Putin’s summit in Geneva, where both sides signaled a willingness to discuss finding a possible deal.
Since 2019, Russian officials have named several Russians they would like to see released, including Viktor Bout, one of the world’s most notorious arms dealers, and Konstantin Yaroshenko, a pilot jailed on drug smuggling charges.
Russia state media has more recently highlighted another Russian citizen jailed in the U.S., Roman Seleznev, who is serving a 27-year sentence on criminal hacking charges.
Bout’s release has been seen as a non-starter for American officials because of the severity of his crimes. But Yaroshenko and Seleznev are seen as more likely to be included in any trade.
Yaroshenko was arrested in a 2010 Drug Enforcement Agency sting in Liberia during which he agreed to ship cocaine to Africa and the U.S. He is serving a 20-year sentence.
Seleznev was captured by U.S. law enforcement agents in Maldives in 2014 and convicted of running a massive hacking scheme to steal credit card data from small businesses in the U.S.
All three men are suspected to have links to Russian intelligence. During Seleznev’s trial, prosecutors provided documents alleging that Seleznev was tipped off to an earlier FBI investigation against him by Russia’s Federal Security Service or FSB, after FBI agents met with the Russian agency.
The Biden administration has said freeing Reed and Whelan is a priority, and last month, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow John Sullivan said he expected there would be talks with the Russian government on them both.
Reed’s family had hoped he would remain in Moscow until a deal to free him was negotiated.
The Russian news service Interfax cited an anonymous source as saying that Reed’s transfer did not mean a trade for him was less likely. The move instead may just be the Russian judicial process continuing. Russian prisoners are usually moved a few weeks after an appeal is turned down.
“Reed’s transfer to a penitentiary absolutely does not mean that his possible exchange for a Russian is no longer on the table. He may still be extradited to the United States if the relevant consensus is reached with the U.S. side,” the source told Interfax.
Whelan, 51, was security executive for the auto parts company BorgWarner when he was arrested in late December 2018 in his hotel room by FSB agents while visiting Moscow for a friend’s wedding. He was accused of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in prison in a closed trial on charges his family and U.S. officials have said were fabricated.
Whelan spoke to ABC News by phone from the former Gulag camp last November.
“It’s pretty grim. Quite dilapidated,” Whelan said. “There’s probably like 50 to 60 of us in the building. So we kind of live on top of each other.”
He said the inmates work eight-hour shifts in a workshop he described as “Dickensian” and that they are only permitted to shower twice a week. But other prisoners treated him well he said, nicknaming him “Tourist.”
(PORT-AU-PRINCE) — Mamyrah Prosper moved to the U.S. in 1998 with some of her family members. But while she came looking for opportunities, it’s Haiti that she calls home.
The Africana studies professor and mother of one often visits her family and friends on the island. But she says that these days, even before the assassination of the country’s President Jovenal Moïse a week ago, the country is scarier than it used to be.
“I arrived in Haiti at the end of May, so well before the assassination, which, I guess, we could have said was not quite surprising. … There were several massacres that took place at the beginning of June,” she told ABC News, referring to an influx of gang violence that has displaced thousands of residents. “So, before the Jovenal assassination, that was really what was weighing on everybody’s mind: ‘What’s happening next?’”
“You have an entire city that is controlled by gangs that are able to circulate very freely… And so, people were generally feeling extremely scared to even do very basic things like go find food, which is something we all must do inevitably,” she added.
Moïse’s death has thrown the country further into turmoil. Having spent years working to dig itself out of economic and political strife, the president’s assassination has created a power vacuum and made residents vulnerable to the widespread fear they’ve long faced.
A week ago, Moïse was home in the capital of Port-au-Prince sleeping with his wife when mercenaries entered the fortified home and killed the president, leaving the first lady critically wounded.
More than two dozen people, mostly foreigners, have been accused of playing a role in the assassination. However, authorities have arrested Haitian-born Florida resident Emmanuel Sanon, 63, accusing him of acting as the middleman between the alleged assassins and the unnamed masterminds.
Haiti’s national Police Chief Léon Charles said Wednesday that Sanon, a longtime critic of the Haitian government, wanted to take it over himself. He said that Sanon arrived on the island via private aircraft in June and accused the Miami doctor of contracting with a security company to enlist the services of the men who are now under arrest, including 18 Colombians and three Americans — one of whom occasionally worked as an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.
Sanon told police he had no knowledge of the attack, CNN reported on Wednesday.
In the wake of the assassination, Haitian officials declared a state of emergency and Martial Law, the latter of which was lifted by the weekend. However, with the country still reeling, many were hesitant to leave home.
“Life has been very hard,” Francois Jean, a shoe seller in Port-au-Prince, told ABC News in French on Sunday. The father of four said he hadn’t eaten in three days. “Since Wednesday up until today, I haven’t made a dime. … It’s just today that I see the activity has restarted, and even though it has restarted, the people don’t have any money.”
Makeson Pierre, a shoe-shiner, says he’s facing the same struggles and that he would improve his situation if he could.
“The country is difficult,” he told ABC News in French. “We have no water to bathe. We have no food to eat; we’re hungry. … See how I’m cleaning these shoes here. Yeah, if I could find something else to do, I would do it. … I’d like to get out of this situation.”
The shortages don’t just apply to food, though. At a gas station on Sunday, a group of people could be seen clambering for their turn at the pump.
“You have to fight to find gas,” a father told ABC News in French. “The opportunity to get gas is spontaneous.”
He noted that many of the people at the pump would have probably been at church instead.
The predominantly Catholic country is also highly religious, and at the same pump, Helene Jean appeared in her Sunday’s best, with her Bible still in her purse.
“I came from church and when I saw that they were giving fuel here, I went home and went back to get the gallon [containers] and came back to get some fuel,” she told ABC News in French.
Prosper said there is a lack of opportunities for everyday Haitians struggling for a better way of life. She’s among a younger generation of Haitians and Haitian Americans asking for the international community to support Haitian-led solutions to the country’s problems.
“If the U.S. people should do anything, right, it’s to support the actual Haitians who are embedded in their communities and have been organizing for decades — Haitians who say we are ready to take on the role that people have already chosen for us to do,” Prosper said.
“It’s actually the international intervention that has prevented Haiti from being able to determine what it wants to do,” she continued.
Many activists like Prosper have long criticized the way foreign humanitarian aid is distributed in Haiti. She says that the aid, though necessary for providing vital support to the country, has instead motivated further violence and corruption in the government and business sectors.
A century-long debt and the current struggle for power
Once a wealthy French colony built off the backs of enslaved laborers producing sugar and coffee, the country fell into economic hardship after a slave revolt that resulted in their independence in 1804.
But it paid a price for becoming the world’s oldest Black republic: France demanded the new nation pay indemnity for overthrowing the French slaveholders. The debt of 90 million gold francs — estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars today — was so high that the country spent over 100 years paying it off. In the years since there have been growing calls for France to pay that money back.
Over the years, Haiti, currently the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, had gone through periods of dictatorship, most notably that of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier in the mid-1900s. The country was dealt a severe blow in 2010 when a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck, killing an estimated 250,000 people. The country again faced another natural disaster with Hurricane Matthew in 2016.
The president’s assassination has further entrenched the turmoil occurring in Haitian cities, even though many Haitians did not view Moïse favorably.
With the line of succession remaining unclear, Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph has stepped up to lead the country’s scattered government with help from its military and national police force even as he faces opposition from its Senate. Joseph has declared a “state of siege” and has indicated he’d only assume control of the nation until a new president is elected — presidential and legislative elections had been slated for later this year.
Moïse’s political opponents had argued that his five-year presidential term had ended in February. The late president had argued that he had another year left after a disputed 2016 election pushed his inauguration to 2017.
He’d been governing by decree since January 2020 after the country failed to hold legislative elections and the legislature’s mandate expired. Opposition leaders accused him of trying to restore Haiti to a dictatorship. Then, earlier this year, the late president ordered three supreme court justices to retire and arrested nearly two dozen people, including government officials, for allegedly plotting a coup.
Moïse told a Spanish-language newspaper in January that he feared people wanted to kill him. The Haitian ambassador to the U.S. Bocchit Edmond told reporters following the president’s death that there was “no warning” ahead of his assassination.
The escalating constitutional crisis had sparked protests and intensified gang violence amid the COVID-19 outbreak throughout the country.
As a result of the political chaos, some activists and politicians are living in fear of being targeted by gangs. Ralph Francois is a social entrepreneur and CEO of Cocread, an organization focused on building sustainable communities in Haiti.
In January, he organized a protest demanding the government step up the search for his kidnapped friend. Then, two months ago, Francois told ABC News that he fled Haiti after learning that a gang had allegedly attempted to kidnap him.
“That day, I was supposed to be there but … because I had a Skype meeting where we had to plan — doing a demonstration for one of our friends that had been kidnapped that day,” he said. “So my neighbor was kidnapped. It’s like a whole house, and I live upstairs and she lives downstairs. She had two daughters. … It was shocking.”
Francois described the situation in Haiti as a “monster” the government can’t control and said that it has culminated in the president’s assassination.
“Our president has been killed … in a humiliat[ing] way, in his room,” he said. “So, if the president is not safe in Haiti, who’s safe? How can we trust the government who failed to protect us — who failed to protect the president — to engage us in the political process and bring serenity and security? They don’t have credibility for that.”
Haitian activists and educators are demanding better leadership, hoping it’ll help put an end to the country’s political corruption.
“Even though the situation of employment in Haiti is difficult, for women, it’s especially difficult,” Shawma Aurelier, executive director of Port-au-Prince-based women’s empowerment organization SOFA, told ABC News through a translator.
She said the president’s assassination will cause more people to lose hope in changing the country’s future.
“They come to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to leave Haiti,” she said.
“It will be very difficult for Haiti to be rebuilt if all the residents and persons living in the country should decide the best solution is to leave,” she added.
Support from afar
Families and friends of Haiti’s residents are currently the largest source of external financial aid sent to the struggling country.
In Miami, much of the staff at the Chef Creole restaurant in the Little Haiti neighborhood send money to loved ones back home. Eslane Charles has been working there and told ABC News through a translator that she’s been supporting her parents and children from across the Caribbean.
“She said it’s tough,” said Wilkinson Sejour, chef and owner of the restaurant, translating for Charles. “Although you send money, it’s never enough.”
Sejour sees his restaurant as an economic engine for his employees and their families and said they need the money now more than ever.
“As soon as they get paid, they are dashing out of the restaurant so they can go to a local supermarket to do a money transfer,” he said.
Sejour said he’s noticed the glimmer of hope in his fellow Haitians and Haitian Americans grow dimmer recently as all the money they send seems to have no impact on the country’s outlook. But he implored people not to get discouraged.
“I know it’s depressing sometimes when people give and give and give … and they feel that their giving is not doing anything,” he said. “And I’m saying, on behalf of Little Haiti, on behalf of mini Haitis, on behalf of big Haiti herself, please don’t lose hope on us. Continue giving us everything that your conscious and your heart will allow you to give. And with the grace of Christ, we’ll be all right.”
Self-determination in Haiti
Francois, the first Haitian to be a Yale World Fellow, says he intends to return to and live in Haiti with his friends and family members. He said the next generation of young Haitian leaders like himself have been ready to take on the responsibility of making a better Haiti.
“We are ready. We are ready to take the lead and make sure that Haiti could become a land of security, a land of prosperity for its children because we have to,” he said. “I spent my whole life in Haiti. I work[ed] hard for that, and I don’t see myself living in other countries and I’m sure that there are other people in my generation who see that also.”
“I want the international community to listen to Haitians’ self-determination, to listen to civil societies,” he added. “To stop looking at Haiti as a land where we have two sides of political opponents fighting for power. It is more than that.”Prosper says she recognizes the privilege she has in being able to travel in and out of the country amid its many conflicts but said she remains optimistic that there will soon be a stronger Haitian-led solution to the country’s problems.
“I have no other choice but to be optimistic … when the people who are experiencing the hardship — and who are really faced with very dangerous situations — continue to have hope and are always fired up for the next fight,” she said. “So, I only have hope.”
