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Hawaii residents call on Navy to address jet fuel water contamination

August 31, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — A lawsuit alleges the Navy “harbored toxic secrets” after jet fuel leaked from a storage facility in Hawaii operated by the Navy, contaminating locals’ drinking water and sickening hundreds of families.

“You’ve got American citizens being poisoned by an American asset on American soil,” Army Major Amanda Feindt, whose family is suing, told ABC News.

In November 2021, health officials and the Navy ordered residents of Pearl Harbor and the surrounding area to stop using tap water after dangerous levels of petroleum products were found in the Navy’s Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam water system. The source was pinpointed back to the jet fuel leak from the nearby Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility.

Hundreds of families reported petroleum odors coming from residential tap water supplied by the Navy water system, alongside reports of health issues caused by the contaminated drinking water.

The DOH had received almost 500 complaints of fuel or gasoline-like odor from people who receive water from the Navy water system.

Numerous families allege that they’re still battling long-term, chronic health issues in the lawsuit. A PGA golf professional says he has had five surgeries since and continues to battle internal bleeding. One family said it has been plagued with abdominal pain, vomiting, memory loss, skin rashes, brain fog, eye irritation, seizures, and teeth and gum issues, all according to the lawsuit.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, many people remain in temporary housing due to the drinking water crisis. Healani Sonoda-Pale, a Hawaii sovereignty activist, says many are still afraid to drink the water.

Activists are calling on the Navy to take action almost a year after the Hawaii Department of Health issued an emergency order against the military agency to address the closure and defueling of the Red Hill facility.

“If the Navy has committed to closing the facility, they need to move with the sense of urgency we as the Kanaka Maoli, native people of Hawaiʻi, feel they must,” said resident and protester Keoni DeFranco in an interview with ABC News.

“We have no other home,” DeFranco added.

“Thousands of O’ahu residents, most especially those still relying on the Navy water system, are still depending on bottled water for their daily needs,” Sonoda-Pale told ABC News. “The employees at the schools directly affected by the last leak are still cautious about their drinking water … even though the Board of Water Supply has said it is drinkable.”

Investigations by the U.S. Pacific Fleet found that the water contamination was a result of the Navy’s “ineffective immediate responses” to the fuel releases at Red Hill. It listed the Navy’s failures in resolving “deficiencies in the system design and construction, system knowledge and incident response training.”

It also said the agency failed to “learn from prior incidents that falls unacceptably short of Navy standards.” The facility leaked 27,000 gallons of fuel from a single tank in January 2014, according to environmental group Sierra Club of Hawaii.

The DOH ordered the Navy to immediately install a drinking water treatment system at the Red Hill Shaft and submit a work plan to assess system integrity. Within 30 days of completing the correction action, the Navy must then defuel the underground storage tanks there.

The EPA partnered with the Navy, Army and the Hawaii Department of Health to restore safe drinking water conditions to the affected residents and workers. The agency say they completed drinking water restoration in March 2022.

The Navy has since released a plan, stating that defueling the underground storage tanks may take until the end of 2024, identifying Dec. 31, 2024 as the earliest date “that is consistent with the safe defueling of the facility.”

However, that plan was rejected — deemed incomplete and “disappointing” by state officials.

Locals say 2024 is too long to wait for the promise of clean water.

“Until the facility is fully defueled and decommissioned, Oʻahuʻs aquifer will not be safe,” said DeFranco.

ABC News has reached out to the Navy for comment on the lawsuit and the demands but has yet to receive a response.

Activists and residents are asking for a new, improved plan for defueling that speeds up the timeline to ensure residents have safe water sooner.

“We fear the Navy will continue to backpedal, stall and drag out the timeline while our aquifer is currently experiencing petroleum contamination directly as a result of their neglect. Red Hill continues to be an ongoing threat to life on Oʻahu,” said DeFranco.

The Red Hill storage facility sits directly above the Southern Oʻahu Basal Aquifer.

According to the DOH, the Navy is responsible for ensuring safe water for nearby residents and ordered the agency to provide alternative drinking water for the roughly 93,000 people who may have been affected.

FDA authorizes new COVID-19 boosters ahead of fall booster campaign

August 31, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — New and updated COVID-19 booster shots were given an emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration Wednesday morning, paving the way for shots in arms as soon as next week.

The booster shots were updated to target two different COVID strains in one shot — the current omicron subvariants, BA.4 and BA.5, which make up 99% of new cases in the U.S., and the original strain of COVID-19.

This is the first time current COVID-19 vaccines have had a major upgrade. In the future, experts expect the vaccines could be updated periodically to match current strains — akin to the way the flu shot is slightly different each year.

Public health officials directed the vaccine companies to create a bivalent vaccine — a vaccine that targets two different strains — in the hopes that the compilation will provide broader protection against COVID this fall and winter, as infections could rise with flu season, the cold weather and more time indoors.

Before the shots are able to be administered to the public, an independent panel of experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet on Thursday to review the data on the booster shots.

If the panel votes in favor of recommending the shots, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky could give the final sign-off within days and shots could be administered after the holiday weekend.

The U.S. government has purchased about 171 million shots, between contracts with Pfizer and Moderna.

Pfizer’s updated vaccine is authorized for people 12 and older, while Moderna’s shot is for people 18 and older. A review of the new boosters for children under 12 is expected soon.

“The COVID-19 vaccines, including boosters, continue to save countless lives and prevent the most serious outcomes (hospitalization and death) of COVID-19,” FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said in a press release on Wednesday morning.

“As we head into fall and begin to spend more time indoors, we strongly encourage anyone who is eligible to consider receiving a booster dose with a bivalent COVID-19 vaccine to provide better protection against currently circulating variants,” he said.

Unlike the original vaccines and boosters, these new shots will not go through a lengthy clinical trial process where thousands of Americans are dosed with the vaccines to test their safety and long-term effectiveness. However, federal health officials stress that these new shots will still be just as safe as the original vaccines because the underlying vaccine platform, mRNA, is the same, and has been through many varying clinical trials.

“We have worked closely with the vaccine manufacturers to ensure the development of these updated boosters was done safely and efficiently. The FDA has extensive experience with strain changes for annual influenza vaccines. We are confident in the evidence supporting these authorizations,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a statement.

“The public can be assured that a great deal of care has been taken by the FDA to ensure that these bivalent COVID-19 vaccines meet our rigorous safety, effectiveness and manufacturing quality standards for emergency use authorization,” Marks added.

Part of that review was an evaluation of a clinical study of a different updated booster shot that vaccine companies had made during an earlier omicron wave. The clinical trial of that booster shot, which targeted the BA.1 variant and the original strain of COVID, was considered relevant enough to the bivalent vaccines targeting the BA.4 and BA.5 lineages that the FDA found it to be enough to authorize.

Health experts say that the decision not to use time-consuming clinical trials for each new shot is also a strategic move, in an effort to keep vaccines up to date with the rapidly evolving variants — a process that will likely mimic how the flu vaccine is altered each year.

It’s unclear what the demand for new booster shots will be. Across the country, more than half of those eligible to be boosted have yet to do so, according to data from the CDC.

Although the immunity provided by COVID-19 vaccines continues to wane with time, data published by the CDC shows that COVID-19 booster doses are still offering protection against severe forms of disease and death, particularly among older Americans.

Among people ages 50 years and older, the unvaccinated had a risk of dying from COVID-19 that was 14 times higher than their fully vaccinated and double-boosted peers.

California legislature passes bill that could transform worker bargaining

August 31, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — U.S. labor unions enjoy their highest level of approval in almost 60 years, as high-profile worker victories at Amazon and Starbucks have galvanized public support. However, union membership — the lifeblood of the labor movement — has fallen to a historic low.

The decline of labor power stems in part from federal labor law, since employers retain wide latitude to obstruct union campaigns, labor experts told ABC News. Businesses, in turn, often push down wages and weaken labor conditions in pursuit of a competitive advantage, exploiting the lack of worker representation at their firms, the experts said.

But a first-of-its-kind state bill that cleared the California legislature on Monday could circumvent those challenges and transform the future of worker bargaining, the analysts said.

If signed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, the law would allow hundreds of thousands of fast food workers to bargain collectively over the terms of their work at large companies across the sector, rather than be forced to form a union at a single workplace and negotiate with one employer at a time. Using a newly created state-level council, California could raise pay and improve working conditions for the industry.

“It’s really significant because it’s giving fast food workers a seat at the table on a sector-wide basis,” Sharon Block, the executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard University Law School, told ABC News.

“Once this is up and running, fast food companies can’t compete against each other based on who can drive down labor costs as much as possible to make themselves more profitable,” she added.

The bill made it through the California Senate by a margin of 21 to 12 on Monday, after the state assembly passed a version of the measure in January. It remains unclear whether Newsom will sign it into law.

The measure would create a 10-person council made up of industry and worker representatives, as well as two state officials, that could set standards across the sector on issues of health and safety, and impose an industry-wide minimum wage.

Angelica Hernandez, a crew manager at a Los Angeles-based McDonald’s, said she welcomes the potential to influence conditions at the company.

“They make us do the work of two to three people, and yet our salary is barely just enough for one person,” she told ABC News.

When Angelica began working at McDonald’s 17 years ago, she made around $7.50 or $8.50 per hour, she said. Now, she makes $17.75 per hour but still struggles to pay for what she needs, she said.

“Now, we’ll have a say to better represent what workers need across the industry,” she said.

McDonald’s did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.

The bill does have limitations. It puts a ceiling on a potential minimum wage for fast food workers at $22 next year. At that time, the statewide minimum wage will reach $15.50. Cost-of-living adjustments in the industry-wide minimum wage are required by the bill but would not go into effect until 2024.

Moreover, decisions made by the sector-wide council would only apply to large companies with 100 or more locations nationwide.

The bill marks a dramatic advance for the labor movement in its effort to organize workers, like those in fast food, who’ve struggled to improve conditions in their industries, said Mary Kay Henry, the president of the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, one of the nation’s largest unions and a major backer of the bill.

“We think this model is a gigantic step forward for workers who’ve been excluded since the beginning of time in our country,” Henry told ABC News.

SEIU supports efforts to spread the model to other states, including worker-friendly state houses in New York and Illinois, she said. Ultimately, she added, the union aims to enshrine the model into federal law.

“Over labor history, law has always followed the militant action of workers who are fearless and determined in making new models happen,” she said.

Some industry representatives have opposed the bill. Michelle Korsmo, president and CEO of the National Restaurant Association, a trade group, warned that it will lead to increased costs for the fast food sector, which will place a significant burden on small businesses.

“It’s rare that a state legislature passes a bill that would hurt small businesses, their employees, and their customers,” Korsmo said in a statement, adding that this bill “does just that.”

“This comes at a time when inflation is at record highs and families are struggling every month,” she said.

Some precedent exists for the bill — both domestically and abroad. Workers routinely negotiate on a sector-wide basis in some European countries, including, for instance, fast food workers in Denmark.

A similar model raised wages for fast food workers in New York, where a statewide labor board in 2015 set the minimum wage for the industry at $15 per hour. It marked one of the first major victories for the Fight for $15, a labor movement that aimed to raise wages and unionize the fast food sector.

New York’s wage board — a statute that allows a governor to call a commission to investigate and raise pay for a given sector — went into effect during the New Deal era.

“Folks discovered this thing still existed, dusted it off, and tried it,” Shaun Richman, a labor scholar at State University of New York’s Empire College, told ABC News. “It made SEIU true believers of this process.”

Now, California is on the verge of implementing a law that would allow fast food workers to negotiate for pay and better conditions on an ongoing basis.

“It’s replicable,” Richman said. “There’s a tremendous amount of potential to increase union power.”

Princess Diana remembered as ‘the people’s princess’ 25 years after her death

August 31, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(LONDON) — Twenty-five years after her death, the legacy of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, endures across the world.

Diana died in a car crash on Aug. 31, 1997, at the age of 36, while fleeing the paparazzi in Paris. Her death prompted worldwide mourning and messages of condolences from leaders across the globe.

On Wednesday, Diana’s sons Prince William and Prince Harry will mark the 25th anniversary of their mother’s death privately with their families, sources close to both princes confirm to ABC News.

Harry spoke recently about the anniversary at a charity event in Aspen, Colorado.

“I want it to be a day filled with memories of her incredible work and love for the way she did it,” he said. “I want it to be a day to share the spirit of my mum with my family, with my children, who I wish could have met her. Every day, I hope to do her proud.”

Diana’s legacy, including her charity and advocacy work, lives on both in books and popular media as well as in the minds of those who remember her.

“She was an incredible lady who changed the world for the better,” ABC News royal contributor Robert Jobson said while reflecting on Diana’s legacy with Good Morning America.

The people’s princess

Unlike royals before her, many felt that Diana had a unique way of connecting with those around her. In the years before her tragic death, she touched countless lives and helped give a voice to the voiceless.

Whether it was visiting hospices and schools, meeting with those who were dying or comforting victims of active land mines, Diana prioritized those who were in need, making them feel seen and heard.

“I make the trips at least three times a week, and spend up to four hours at a time with patients holding their hands and talking to them,” Diana once said about her work with the Royal Brompton Hospital, London, according to the charity organization The Diana Award. “Some of them will live and some of them will die, but they all need to be loved while they are here. I try to be there for them.”

Diana’s commitment to caring for others manifested itself early on, when she was a young girl attending West Heath Girls’ School in Sevenoaks, Kent. According to the royal family’s official website, Diana was given her school’s award for the “girl giving maximum help to the school and her schoolfellows.”

While being involved with philanthropic causes has always been part of the royal family’s duties, Diana took things a step further, traveling the world to refugee camps and soup kitchens and making sure she was present wherever there was great need.

One particularly memorable moment came in 1987, when Diana famously challenged the stigma surrounding AIDS by shaking hands with a terminally ill AIDS patient during a visit to London’s Middlesex Hospital. The interaction was brief but proved to the public that HIV/Aids was not passed from person to person through touch, a common misconception at the time.

Diana’s humanitarian efforts and empathy prompted former Prime Minister Tony Blair to describe her as “The People’s Princess” while paying tribute to her following the news of her death.

“She was a wonderful and a warm human being, although her own life was often sadly touched by tragedy,” Blair said at the time. “She touched the lives of so many others in Britain and throughout the world with joy and with comfort. How many times shall we remember her in how many different ways — with the sick, the dying, with children, with the needy? With just a look or a gesture that spoke so much more than words, she would reveal to all of us the depth of her compassion and her humanity.”

Mom, Diana’s most important role

In addition to her humanitarian efforts, Diana saw her most important role as being a mother.

She made it a priority to give both William and Harry as much of a normal life as possible. Many believed she broke the mold of royal motherhood in the process.

From visiting Disney World, to going to the movies, to sending William and Harry to school outside palace walls instead of to a governess, Diana set her own course and rebelled against the parenting precedents which she felt did not suit her or her sons.

In one famous instance, Diana insisted on bringing 9-month-old William with her on an official visit to Australia, instead of leaving him with nannies while she toured the Commonwealth.

“She was very informal and really enjoyed the laughter and the fun,” William said in the 2017 documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy. “But she understood that there was a real life outside of palace walls.”

Some may recall a video of Diana in 1991, taking part in a foot race during a field day at Wetherby School, a boys school in London that both William and Harry attended. In it, Diana is seen giving her all in the race with other parents, her blazer and skirt blowing around in the wind.

William and Harry’s upbringing greatly influenced the way they raise their own children.

William and his wife Kate, the duchess of Cambridge, enrolled their children Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis in school at an early age. It was announced recently that all three will attend a new school together, after the family moves to Windsor.

The royal couple also allow their kids to be kids, despite the rules set forth by the royal family, which have historically been quite strict.

In June, Charlotte and George were all smiles as they celebrated their great grandmother Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee, which marked her 70th year on the throne. Louis also stole the show during the traditional Trooping the Color ceremony, making silly faces and covering his ears during the military flyover, much to the public’s delight.

Harry and his wife Meghan, the duchess of Sussex, have also modeled their parenting style after that of Diana, choosing to raise their two children Archie and Lilibet in California, after stepping away from their roles as senior working royals in 2020.

“The highlight for me is sticking him on the back of the bicycle in his little baby seat and taking him on these bike rides, something which I never was able to do when I was young,” Harry told Oprah in an interview last year about raising Archie in California.

The family have also gravitated toward more low-key get-togethers when possible. Photos from Lilibet’s first birthday party, which was held at at Frogmore Cottage, the Sussexes’ home in the U.K., during the Jubilee weekend in June, showed a pared down celebration, with a representative for the family describing it as a casual, backyard picnic attended by close friends and family. The children enjoyed face paint and and cake, according to U.K.-based photographer Misan Harriman, who attended the gathering.

Continuing Diana’s legacy

In addition to giving William and Harry a normal life, Diana also made sure to introduce them to those who were going through difficult times in hospitals and homeless shelters.

“I want my boys to have an understanding of people’s emotions, their insecurities, people’s distress and their hopes and dreams,” Diana once said.

Diana’s legacy lives on in her sons who have followed closely in her footsteps, shining a spotlight on the issues that mattered most to her, including homelessness, HIV/AIDS and helping children and young people. They are also patrons of Diana’s many former charities.

Both William and Harry have made issues of mental health a special priority. In 2017, William campaigned for mental health awareness and told British GQ how it had taken him 20 years to process his mother’s death.

“I am in a better place about it than I have been for a long time, where I can talk about her more openly, talk about her more honestly and I can remember her better and publicly talk about her better,” he said at the time.

Harry, who last year became the chief impact officer for BetterUp, a Silicon Valley startup focused on coaching and mental health, has sought to downplay the stigma surrounding the issue, opening up about his own mental health struggles and how therapy has helped him.

Together, William and Harry are continuing their mother’s work by awarding young people around the world with the Diana Award, an annual honor bestowed on those working to change society for the better.

“My mother instilled in me and in all of us a drive to speak up and fight for a better world,” Harry said in a video last month honoring the 180 2022 Diana Award recipients. “Now as a husband and a parent, my mother’s voice is even stronger in my life. All of you have kept her voice alive by showing the world how each small action counts, how kindness is still valued, and how our world can be better if we choose to make it so.”

A year later, Afghan refugees grapple with new reality US exit created

August 31, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — When he was away in the U.K. studying international development and economics, Khalis Noori always envisioned returning home to Afghanistan and using his education to better his country.

But as he was setting up his new office in Afghanistan’s Ministry of Finance, Taliban fighters were encircling Kabul. Before he could put his degrees to work, he was forced to burn them along with his laptop and photographs from his wedding — a desperate bid to destroy any material he feared could be used to brand him as a traitor.

“We were told not to leave the house,” Noori said of the frantic hours following the Taliban’s takeover and the American military’s hasty withdrawal. “We were so worried that I didn’t sleep for two nights.”

Still, Noori says he was one of the lucky ones. A friend from his time working as a cultural adviser for the U.S. armed forces was soon able to secure safe passage out of Afghanistan for him and his wife.

After a chaotic evacuation through Kabul’s airport, they journeyed on to Qatar, then Germany, and then a military base in central Virginia before landing in the Washington area where for most of the past year, they’ve been attempting to build a new home in place that bears little resemblance to the one they had to leave.

Many are still waiting for that evacuation.

Despite the Biden administration promising to prioritize their protection, thousands of Afghans vulnerable to retribution from the Taliban for working alongside American troops are caught in a bureaucratic pipeline.

As of last month, State Department officials say nearly 75,000 applicants were still waiting to learn if they would qualify for a special immigrant visa (SIV), meant to be a direct pathway to green card for Afghans who were employed by the U.S. government. More than 10,000 had cleared the onerous vetting process, but had yet to be relocated.

The State Department does not track SIV applicants’ whereabouts and while many have fled to other countries, multiple nongovernmental organizations estimate the majority are still stranded in Afghanistan.

Afghan refugees in the U.S. also face a complicated path forward.

Since the end of last August, 94,000 people who fled Afghanistan have made their way to American soil, according to the Department of Homeland Security. For the vast majority, it’s only a temporary haven. Admitted on a two-year humanitarian parole and provided with relocation services for a period of between 30 and 90 days, these newcomers are tasked with the expensive and daunting task of applying for permanent status while rebuilding their lives under a cloud of uncertainty.

Noori wasted no time in adjusting. Instead of pursuing international development, he now helps other new arrivals from Afghanistan get on their feet as the director of field operations for Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS), which he describes as “challenging, but rewarding.”

While his enthusiasm for his new country and new work is apparent, Noori says he and many of the people he is trying to help are still mourning what they lost.

“I prepared myself — equipped myself — to go back to Afghanistan and be a part of that dream world leaders and the international community promised Afghans — democracy, rule of law, human rights, women’s rights. We were encouraged to stand for those values, and that’s what we did,” he said. “Losing your country, losing your loved ones, losing your career — everything you have worked for all your life. Myself, I see how that has changed me.”

Mohammad Nabi says he saw that dream turn to dust over the duration of a layover in Doha, Qatar. After working for the U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan for 15 years, he had begun to fear that the Taliban’s renewed strength posed a threat to him and his family. He made arrangements to leave Afghanistan with his wife and children, and together they boarded what would be the last commercial flight out of the country as he knew it. (ABC News is not using his real name at his request because he fears family members in Afghanistan could face retribution.)

“I saw on the news what happened in Kabul and it really shocked me because I had my family there — my parents are still there, my brothers and my sisters,” Nabi said.

He called home to say he planned to turn around to be with them, but they convinced him to travel on.

“That flight from Doha to D.C., I think those 13 or 14 hours were the most challenging hours of my life,” he said. “It was a very tough reality to deal with it. Everything that we worked hard for the last 20 years — everything a generation worked really, really hard to establish for themselves–it just vanished overnight.”

As a case manager for LIRS, Nabi says his most difficult work is trying reunite other fractured families, now a world apart.

“There are kids that are separated from their parents. There are wives that left their husbands and children back there. There are parents that left their kids,” he said. “The evacuation separated families so badly.”

“I had so many friends that they stayed back and didn’t get a chance to come that worked with the American government in Afghanistan. Some of them already had their visas, but they never got a chance to travel because everything happened overnight,” Nabi added. “They deserve to be here.”

Rasheed (who also asked that his real name not be used for fear of retribution), who worked as a U.S. Army contractor beginning in 2005, did make it out. But his wife and three children did not.

After receiving threats from the Taliban, Rasheed said he fled, thinking his family would be close behind — and they were. On Aug. 14, 2021, they completed their SIV interviews at the U.S. embassy in Kabul, the final step in the lengthy process. The next day, the embassy shuttered.

Rasheed says he feels powerless. So far, even direct appeals to the State Department have been fruitless.

“They’re telling we are in the process, they’ll get the evacuation. But nothing is happening,” he said.

ABC News reached out to the State Department for comment. A spokesperson declined to comment on Rasheed’s family’s case due to privacy concerns, but said the department’s goal is to “issue visas to every eligible SIV applicant as quickly as possible, while maintaining national security as our highest priority.”

“We cannot estimate how long it will take to process all remaining SIV cases, partly because certain steps of the application process are applicant-controlled, as is certain action even within steps that are government-controlled,” they added.

For Afghans in the U.S. on humanitarian parole, congressional attempts to streamline their path to permanent residency have sputtered. Last Spring, Senate Republicans rejected legislation, citing security concerns. Earlier this month, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a similar bill in both chambers of Congress, but it also faces an uphill climb.

Despite the legal limbo, life for Afghan refugees moves on, conforming to the unfamiliar rhythms of American society. As the new school year begins, Zakia Safi, another LIRS case manager, is primarily focused on helping Afghan children adapt to the classroom.

She says they learn quickly, taking to English and their new studies quickly, and that the high schoolers especially enjoy the camaraderie that comes from sharing a classroom.

“But it’s never going to be the same if your mom or sister isn’t here,” she adds.

Safi tries to fill the gaps, even accompanying pregnant mothers to the hospital so they don’t have to go through delivery alone.

“I’ve cut a couple of umbilical cords,” she laughs.

Beyond those newborns, Safi says she has seen other fresh starts that fill her with pride in the past year: refugees starting businesses, earning promotions and enrolling in college.

But many, wistful for the land they were forced to leave behind, say Afghanistan will always be home.

“If I ever get a chance to have my previous life back, I would love to take it,” said Nabi.

Fox News’ Sean Hannity set to be deposed as part of billion-dollar election lawsuit

August 31, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Fox News host Sean Hannity, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, is set to be deposed on Wednesday as part of a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit against his network.

The $1.6 billion dollar suit was filed against Fox News last March by the voting machine company Dominion, which was at the center of numerous unproven conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election.

According to the lawsuit’s court docket, Hannity’s deposition would be the latest in a string of scheduled depositions of some of Fox’s biggest names. Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Jeannine Pirro were scheduled to be deposed last week, and former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs was scheduled for earlier this week according to the docket, though it has not been confirmed if those depositions occurred.

Experts say the depositions could be “potentially very important,” and that they could play a key role in the direction of the case moving forward.

“The critical issue here is the state of mind of Fox and those individual people,” Floyd Abrams, one of the country’s leading experts on First Amendment law, told ABC News. “What did they say about Dominion, and did they believe it?”

“In order for Dominion to win, it has to show that what was said was not just false, but that it was known or suspected to be false,” said Abrams, who has argued over a dozen cases before the Supreme Court.

In its complaint against Fox, Dominion alleges that the network pushed “outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched” accusations that the voting company had rigged the 2020 election in order to “lure back viewers” so it could boost ratings and make a profit.

“Fox sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion the process,” Dominion said in its complaint.

In a statement, a Fox News spokesperson said, “We are confident we will prevail as freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected, in addition to the damages claims being outrageous, unsupported, and not rooted in sound financial analysis, serving as nothing more than a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs.”

Dan Webb, an attorney who was recently added to Fox’s legal team, has also said that Fox News was simply doing its duty by reporting on the allegations.

“There are very few events in the last 50 years in this country that I think are more newsworthy than our president alleging that our entire Democratic system was put on its head by a voting machine company stealing votes,” Webb told The Washington Post.

A Dominion spokesperson declined to comment.

Roy Gutterman, an expert on free speech at Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, said depositions in these kinds of cases can get heated.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually they get down to some very blunt questions: Did you know these statements you were putting on the air were false? What kinds of information were you basing that on?” Gutterman said.

“No one’s going into this deposition without being thoroughly prepared,” said Gutterman. “There will be lawyers from both sides of the room, and it can get pretty rancorous, but you have to answer the questions.”

The Fox News suit is part of a string of lawsuits Dominion has filed against those it says helped push false accusations that it helped sway the election — a group that includes several of Trump’s close allies.

Efforts by attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell to have the lawsuits against them thrown out were denied by a judge last summer.

Powell, who promised to “release the Kraken” in what turned out to be a series of unsuccessful legal challenges alleging voter fraud, had argued that that “no reasonable person” would have believed her theories were “truly statements of fact.”

After Dominion’s suit against Giuliani was filed last January, he called it “another act of intimidation by the hate-filled left-wing to wipe out and censor the exercise of free speech, as well as the ability of lawyers to defend their clients vigorously.”

At the first public hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, former Attorney General Bill Barr said in a clip played by the committee that the baseless allegations that Dominion machines switched votes from Joe Biden to Trump were “complete nonsense” and “amongst the most disturbing.”

“I told them it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on it, and they were doing a great disservice to the country,” Barr said of the Dominion conspiracy theories. “I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations, but they were made in such a sensational way that they obviously were influencing a lot of people.”

US Army grounds entire fleet of Chinook helicopters after engine fires

August 31, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The United States Army said Tuesday it has grounded its entire fleet of Chinook cargo helicopters after fuel leaks caused a “small number” of engine fires.

The Army has identified the cause of the leaks among an “isolated number” of Boeing H-47 Chinooks and is working to resolve the issue, according to Army spokeswoman Cynthia Smith.

“While no deaths or injuries occurred, the Army temporarily grounded the H-47 fleet out of an abundance of caution, until those corrective actions are complete,” Smith said in a statement Tuesday. “The safety of our Soldiers is the Army’s top priority, and we will ensure our aircraft remain safe and airworthy.”

A U.S. official told ABC News there are about 70 aircraft that teams are looking at because they have a part that is suspected to be connected to the problem.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report the grounding.

The Army has about 400 Chinooks in its fleet around the world, using them to transport troops and equipment as seen in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The CH-47F, one of the latest versions of the Chinook, is the Army’s only heavy-lift cargo helicopter supporting combat and other critical operations, according to the Army’s website.

DOJ alleges ‘obstructive conduct’ by Trump’s legal team in efforts to retrieve classified records

August 31, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department on Tuesday responded to former President Donald Trump’s call for a “special master” to review materials the FBI seized at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Trump’s lawyers have said the review is needed to deal with matters they argue may be covered by executive privilege.

In their 36-page filing, top department officials laid out in extraordinary detail their efforts to obtain highly classified records they allege were improperly stored at Mar-a-Lago since Trump’s departure from the White House, and the resistance, which they describe outright as obstructive conduct, that they were met with by Trump’s representatives in their efforts to have them handed over.

The government included multiple exhibits to support its argument, including one photo purporting to show an FBI photograph of documents recovered from a container in Trump’s personal office with colored cover sheets showing classification markings including TOP SECRET/SCI, with one showing a marking that appears to refer to information obtained by confidential human sources.

Officials revealed that after they issued a grand jury subpoena to Trump’s attorneys on May 11 to obtain all remaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, “the government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room [at Mar-a-Lago] and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation,” according to the filing.

“This included evidence indicating that boxes formerly in the Storage Room were not returned prior to counsel’s review,” officials added in the filing, referring to a lawyer for Trump who said all the records from the White House “were stored in one location,” the storage room, and “that there were no other records stored in any private office space or other location at the Premises and that all available boxes were searched.”

The DOJ said in its filing that the subpoena return date was May 24, but Trump’s team asked for an extension that the government initially denied before offering an extension until June 7. A lawyer for Trump contacted the DOJ on June 2 “and requested that FBI agents meet him the following day to pick up responsive documents,” according to the filing.

This gets to the June 3 visit by a small group of FBI agents and Jay Bratt, the head of DOJ’s counterintelligence division, which ABC News has widely reported on. In the filing, the DOJ said the information produced during this visit was “a single Redweld envelope, double-wrapped in tape, containing the documents,” suggesting that counsel for Trump was handling the documents in a manner that was classified.

“When producing the documents, neither counsel nor the custodian asserted that the former President had declassified the documents or asserted any claim of executive privilege,” the filing said. “Instead, counsel handled them in a manner that suggested counsel believed that the documents were classified: the production included a single Redweld envelope, double-wrapped in tape, containing the documents.”

In its filing, the DOJ also revealed that during this visit, Trump’s lawyers allowed a visit to the storage room but prohibited government personnel from looking through the boxes that remained in the storage room.

“Critically, however, the former President’s counsel explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room, giving no opportunity for the government to confirm that no documents with classification markings remained,” the filing said.

The DOJ said, “The individual present as the custodian of records produced and provided a signed certification letter.”

The Justice Department on Monday said its team tasked with identifying potential attorney-client privileged materials that were seized in the search on Aug. 8 has already completed its review and is in the process of addressing possible privilege disputes.

Judge Aileen Cannon has indicated she was leaning toward granting a request from Trump’s legal team to appoint a special master to intervene in the ongoing review of documents.

Trump’s lawyers have until Wednesday to file their response to a federal judge.

A hearing is currently set for Thursday at 1 p.m. in West Palm Beach where Judge Cannon will hear arguments from both sides on the request.

Debates over diversity in the classroom push teachers out of schools

August 31, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — At the end of the 2021 school year, sixth-grade teacher Anita Carson decided to resign.

Carson, of Polk County, Florida, told ABC News that she didn’t want to leave her students behind. But when new laws began to restrict what teachers could teach about diversity, she said it would make “an already hard job — even if you love it — really unmanageable.”

Across the country, legislation has forced strict limitations on classroom curriculum and discussions concerning race and LGBTQ issues.

Schools and libraries have reported a massive increase in book-banning efforts from legislators and parents on topics like racism, race, sexual orientation, gender and more.

The U.S. has 300,000 teacher and school staff vacancies according to the National Education Association. And the culture wars over censorship and diversity in the classroom have pushed out teachers like Carson from schools.

“We are seeing that teachers are personally targeted. They’re targeted in social media, they’re targeted in everyday life,” said Emily Kirkpatrick, the executive director of the National Council of Teachers of English. “It is leading towards an extinguishing of the passion of why teachers got into the profession in the first place.”

The fight over education

Several bills across the nation have broadly targeted race, gender and sexual orientation in classroom education.

Supporters of these bills say that students should not feel shame, guilt or discomfort based on school lessons. Many teachers have reported heavy vetting when it comes to books and curriculum; several math textbooks in Florida were rejected for allegedly having racial “indoctrination.”

“We can and should teach this history without labeling a young child as an oppressor or requiring he or she feel guilt or shame based on their race or sex,” said Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt when he signed an anti-race education bill in May 2021. “I refuse to tolerate otherwise during a time when we are already so polarized.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis shared similar sentiments when signing the now-blocked Stop WOKE Act, which limited education on race and was deemed unconstitutional by a judge.

“No one should be instructed to feel as if they are not equal or shamed because of their race,” DeSantis said in June. “In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida.”

Some teachers say these efforts will block them from discussing the nation’s past and present accurately.

They also say these efforts are eroding the quality of public education and making it harder for students and teachers from marginalized groups to succeed.

“We have a nationwide challenge with getting students to read and to want to read,” Kirkpatrick said. “Teachers work so hard to find books that will appeal to students and that students can identify with and relate to. And so what legislators are doing is making that extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible.”

Stories from teachers who left

Michael James, a former special education teacher in Escambia County, Florida, resigned after he alleged that pictures of historic Black figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Harriett Tubman were taken down from his classroom walls because they were inappropriate.

The district has refuted the claims, saying officials were “astounded by Mr. James’ allegations, as his demeanor in the classroom that day was very friendly and accommodating.”

The district claims officials told James he would have to change his board to accommodate state standards and that he obliged, though James said he did not agree to this.

James told ABC News that he taught in a diverse school district where 34.6% of students are Black and felt it was important that his students see themselves represented in the classroom.

“Bottom line — this is all about small precious children that need to be protected, loved and rigorously educated and not treated less than others in a higher income area or poorly because of race or income,” James said in a statement.

Similarly, 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year Willie Carver resigned from his position at Montgomery County High School after he says he faced harassment from parents and residents over his sexuality, as well as restrictions on what educators could teach about race.

“The last year began with me hearing administrators telling us not to teach racial things and us having to push back pretty hard,” Carver told ABC News. “I have very few students of color. It is all the more important for us to make sure they feel seen or that they feel represented. It’s also all the more important that my students who are white have experiences with perspectives outside of their own, especially when they’re faced with such racism at home, often, or in their communities.”

Carver, a gay man, also said his school district did little to defend him from attacks on his identity from a local woman who claimed he was “grooming” children in a student-run LGBTQ group.

Carver is now working as an academic adviser at the University of Kentucky.

Montgomery superintendent Matt Thompson told ABC News in an email, “Mr. Carver is a wonderful English and French teacher. We wish him well in his new endeavor.”

Carson, the former Florida teacher, now works as a community organizer for the local political advocacy group Equality Florida. The activist group fights against the very bills that pushed Carson to leave her work as an educator. She said if parents can come to understand what’s being taught in the classroom, kids would benefit.

“This idea that teachers are trying to hide things from parents when we’ve been spending decades, begging for parents’ involvement and having curriculum nights and parent conferences and constantly having events that parents can come to … it’s incredibly false and toxic,” Carson said.

She said these bills pit parents against teachers and severely limit conversations about how to best serve the students.

“I left teaching but I could not leave advocating for my kids and advocating for students,” Carson said.

Animal cookies sold at Target recalled for possible metal contamination

August 31, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a voluntary recall of fudge-coated animal cookies that were sold at Target stores across the U.S.

Stauffer’s voluntarily recalled its 44-ounce Market Pantry White Fudge Animal Cookies “because they may contain metal,” according to the FDA.

The affected products distributed to Target come in a bear-shaped clear plastic jug and have a best-by date of Feb. 21, 2023, with lot number Y052722 and UPC code 085239817698.

“The recall was initiated when metal (wire) was found inside a portion of the cookies,” the FDA wrote in the recall notice. “Foodborne foreign objects that are hard, sharp, and large are more likely to cause serious injury or dental injury. Foodborne foreign objects that are flexible, not sharp, and smaller in length are more likely to cause minor injuries such as transient choking or small lacerations in the gastrointestinal system.”

Consumers in possession of the product are “urged to stop consuming” it and return it to the place of purchase for a full refund.

The FDA hasn’t reported any injuries tied to the possible contamination.

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