(NEW YORK) — Billie Eilish is opening up about living with Tourette’s syndrome.
In a new episode of David Letterman’s series My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, the singer, who was diagnosed at the age of 11, spoke about her tics and living with the disorder.
During the interview, Eilish appeared to start “ticcing.” When Letterman asked about it, she said, “It’s really weird; I haven’t talked about it at all.”
She added, “I’m very happy to talk about it. I actually really like answering questions about it because it’s really interesting, and I am incredibly confused by it. I don’t get it.”
The “Happier Than Ever” singer then detailed her various tics, including wiggling her ear, raising her eyebrow, clicking her jaw, moving her head, opening her mouth and flexing various muscles in her arms.
“These are things you would never notice if you’re having a conversation with me, but for me, they’re very exhausting,” she said.
Eilish said she had been unhappy with her tics, but now, she told Letterman, they’re a “part” of her. “I have made friends with it, so now I’m pretty confident in it,” she said.
“So many people have it and you’d never know. A couple [other] artists have come forward and said, ‘I’ve always had Tourette’s,'” Eilish revealed. “And I’m not going to out them because they don’t want to talk about it. But that was really interesting to me because I was like, ‘You do? What?'”
(NEW YORK) — Police have identified a suspect in connection with the unprovoked fatal shooting of 48-year-old Daniel Enriquez on a Q train in New York City on Sunday, according to police sources.
The sources identified the wanted suspect as Andrew Abdullah, a 25-year-old man from Brooklyn with about 20 prior arrests, including an outstanding gun charge from last year. He also has prior arrests for assault, robbery, menacing and grand larceny, sources said.
Abdullah has three cases that are still pending, including an April arrest for fourth-degree criminal possession of stolen property for allegedly being found with a stolen motorcycle, as well as a June 2021 arrest for violating a protective order and March 2021 arrest for assault.
Detectives have also recovered the gun used in the shooting.
It is believed the suspect handed the gun to a homeless man as he fled the Canal Street station. The homeless man then apparently sold the gun for $10 to a third person, who reported it to police, the sources said.
The New York Police Department released surveillance photos Monday of the suspect believed to have shot Enriquez taken shortly after he exited the subway.
The motive for the shooting is still unknown.
In January 2020, Abdullah was arrested as part of a gun-related case and in May 2017 he was charged with second-degree attempted murder as part of an 83-count federal indictment of the Harlem-based street gangs Fast Money and Nine Block. Abdullah was sentenced to three years in federal prison, but served just four months before being released in 2019.
Witnesses say the suspect, alleged to be Abdullah, was pacing back and forth in the last car of a Manhattan-bound train around 11:45 a.m. when he pulled out a gun and fired it at Enriquez unprovoked, according to NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey.
The shooting comes a little over a month after a Brooklyn subway rider opened fire on a train car, wounding 10 people. The suspect in that shooting, Frank James, was arrested one day later in lower Manhattan.
Transit crime is up 62.5% in the city year-to-date from 2021, according to NYPD statistics.
(NEW YORK) — A baby formula shortage has escalated in recent months from a product recall to a national crisis, prompting emergency responses from business leaders and White House officials.
As of early May, 43% of U.S. baby formula was out of stock, according to the data firm Datasembly.
To help make up for the shortfall, the Biden administration on Sunday began flying in tens of thousands of pounds of baby formula from abroad in what it calls “Operation Fly Formula.” A day before, an apology in a Washington Post op-ed was issued by Robert Ford, the CEO of Abbott Nutrition, the nation’s largest baby formula producer.
The emergency has come on the heels of the voluntary shutdown in February of an Abbott factory in Sturgis, Michigan, where the company produces major brands of powdered formula like Similac and EleCare. The shutdown went into effect when four babies fell sick from bacterial disease after ingesting formula produced at the facility and two of the infants died. It remains unclear whether the bacteria that made the children ill came from the baby formula produced at the Michigan factory, but a Food and Drug Administration inspection of the facility found it fell short of adequate sanitation.
The root causes of the desperate situation stretch well beyond the last few months, supply chain experts told ABC News. Pandemic-induced supply chain disruptions led to barren store shelves, rigid international trade barriers impeded imports and market concentration left few alternate suppliers, they said.
“The scenario where you have a manufacturing problem that occurred at an Abbott facility in Michigan, those kinds of things happen all the time,” Nada Sanders, a professor of supply chain management at Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business, told ABC News. “Ultimately, we have very, very weak supply chains.”
Many families rely on baby formula for some portion of sustenance early in a child’s life. Almost 20% of babies consume infant formula before they reach two days of age, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a 2020 report. More than half of infants receive supplementary nutrition in addition to breastfeeding over their first three months, the report said. Some babies require formula to meet specific nutritional needs.
As with a host of products — from computer chips to lumber — the pandemic has snarled the supply chain for baby formula. Shortages of labor and raw materials have slowed production and hampered distribution, Sanders said. The disruption weakens the supply chain’s responsiveness to the sudden ups and downs of customer demand, she added.
“All of this is ultimately related to the COVID pandemic, and really two-and-a-half years of supply chain disruptions and backlogs of every kind possible,” Sanders said.
Even amid the widespread supply chain disruptions brought about by the coronavirus, few products have faced the crisis-level shortages observed with baby formula in recent weeks, said Sanders and Scott Lincicome, an economist at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute.
One reason why the baby formula market has proven especially susceptible to shortages is the trade barriers and public health regulations that prevent major inflow of the products from abroad, Lincicome said. The U.S. imposes steep tariffs on baby formula. Plus, the FDA requires foreign manufacturers to abide by nutritional and labeling requirements.
In turn, 98% of baby formula consumed in the U.S. is produced domestically. When the Abbott factory shut down, the market lacked an international supply to fill the gap. Last week, the FDA announced “increased flexibilities” for the importation of baby formula in an effort to alleviate the shortage.
But the supply problems aren’t confined to overseas producers, Sanders and Lincicome said. They pointed to a key problem that hinders the responsiveness of the domestic baby formula industry: business concentration. Abbott, the top producer, accounts for about 48% of the U.S. formula market. In all, four companies — Abbott, Nestle USA, Perrigo and Mead Johnson Nutrition — control roughly 90% of the market.
Some critics, including Lincicome, have attributed the small number of market players largely to a federal nutrition program for women, infants and children, known as WIC, which helps low-income families purchase baby formula. Roughly half of the baby formula bought in the U.S. goes through WIC, with about 1.2 million infants getting ahold of formula through the program. That scale grants WIC considerable power in the marketplace, Lincicome said.
WIC uses a system in which each state chooses a single company to be the sole provider of baby formula for all residents enrolled in the program. That approach reduces the price that WIC pays for baby formula, cutting the cost for taxpayers, Lincicome said. But the large size of each statewide contract prevents small companies from winning a bid and gaining a foothold, he added.
In response to the crisis, President Joe Biden signed a measure on Saturday that allows families enrolled in WIC to buy formula beyond what the program normally allows in emergency situations.
“Combine the trade wall with domestic concentration,” Lincicome said. “You have a situation where you end up having a few players in a closed market and when one of those players goes down, the other handful of players left can’t fill the gaps.”
He added: “And you lack access to global markets which might be able to fill that gap in the short term.”
Last week, Abbott and the FDA reached an agreement for the company to reopen the Michigan factory, which should eventually return U.S. baby formula supply back to normal, Sanders said. She predicted it would take three months to fully alleviate the shortage; Lincicome estimated eight weeks.
“Hopefully Abbott will be able to get their production out and get everything smoothly running and what’s taken by customers is replenished at the right cadence,” Sanders said. “Meaning no bumps.”
(NEW YORK) — Pfizer’s release of data showing its three-shot COVID-19 vaccine is 80% effective among children under the age of 5 is welcome news for parents anxious to get their young children vaccinated more than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) set to meet in June to review data from both Pfizer and Moderna, a COVID-19 vaccine could be widely available to everyone in the United States ages 6 months and older by July.
The news comes as the U.S. is experiencing another COVID-19 wave, with cases rising in nearly every state and official infection numbers up to more than 100,000 per day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In the U.S., 28% of 5- to 11-year-olds and 58% of 12- to 17-year-olds are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics’ analysis of CDC data.
“I think we all want to be done with this pandemic but unfortunately, it’s not quite done with us,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, vice-chair of the AAP’s committee on infectious diseases. “We are in a much different place than we were two years ago in terms of both the therapeutics that are available to treat the disease and the vaccines, showing a decreased spread of the disease and a decrease in hospitalizations.”
O’Leary, also a pediatrician and professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado and Children’s Hospital Colorado, spoke to ABC News’ Good Morning America to answer parents’ top trending questions about the COVID-19 vaccine and kids.
1. What does the Pfizer vaccine efficacy news mean?
Earlier this year, Pfizer moved forward with studying three doses of its COVID-19 vaccine for kids 6 months to under 5 years old after disappointing data on a two-dose vaccine.
The new data released by the company Monday shows the three-dose vaccine is effective in kids, which means the vaccine is one step closer to being authorized by the FDA, according to O’Leary.
“This was really the news we’ve been waiting for from Pfizer on whether or not this third dose was going to meet the requirements required from the FDA,” he said. “The immune response that the vaccine provided for the children in the trial was similar to the immune response that we saw in older adolescents and adults in who we know the vaccine is effective in preventing infection, hospitalization and death.”
In addition to being effective, the new data also shows the three-dose vaccine “appears to be safe,” O’Leary said.
2. What happens next for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for young kids?
Next month, FDA advisers will meet to discuss the COVID-19 vaccine applications for kids from both Pfizer and Moderna, which submitted its request to the FDA in April.
The FDA has tentatively scheduled the meetings for June 14 and 15, during which advisers will review applications for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for kids ages 5 to 17 and ages 6 months to under 6 years, as well as Pfizer’s vaccine for kids ages 6 months to under 5 years.
Within one or two days of the FDA meetings, the applications go to a CDC advisory committee. From there, the director of the CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, decides on whether or not to grant emergency use authorization for the vaccines.
With that timing, we could see a vaccine for kids under age 5 approved by the beginning of July, according to O’Leary.
Pfizer’s vaccine is currently available for people ages 5 and older, while Moderna’s vaccine is authorized for people ages 18 and older.
3. Do kids under 5 get the same vaccine as adults?
The dosage of the vaccine is different for children than it is for adults, but the vaccine itself is the same for everyone, according to O’Leary.
If authorized, Pfizer’s vaccine dosage for kids ages 6 months to under 5 years would be three shots of 3 micrograms each. Each dose is one-tenth the adult dose.
Moderna’s vaccine for kids under age 6, if authorized, would be a two-dose, 25-microgram shot, about one-quarter of the dose used for adults, given 28 days apart.
4. How do I know the COVID-19 vaccine is safe for my child?
Pfizer’s newly-released data on its three-dose vaccine for kids under age 5 showed “no significant safety” concerns, according to O’Leary.
The fact that a vaccine for the youngest children is coming after the vaccine has already been delivered to hundreds of millions of people around the world should bring comfort to parents, O’Leary said.
“There is no reason to expect in this age group that we’re going to have some kind of different safety profile than what we saw in children, for example, 5 and older, in whom millions and millions of doses have been given,” he said. “So we have a pretty good understanding of the safety profile.”
The CDC has also released multiple studies over the past year showing COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective for older children.
Overall, O’Leary said parents should remember that, based on data, the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine in protecting kids outweigh any potential risks.
“I think we all know that the disease is most severe in the elderly and people who have problems with their immune system, but that’s not to say that COVID-19 is a benign illness in children,” he said. “We’ve seen tens of thousands of hospitalizations in children, and the risk to children under 5, actually, for hospitalization is higher than it is for older children, so absolutely there is a need to protect those children with the vaccine.”
For parents of children of all ages who may be on the fence about getting their child vaccinated, O’Leary said to speak with your child’s pediatrician.
“The best thing you could do is make an appointment with your pediatrician and talk with them about about the vaccine,” he said. “I think it is important to get those kids vaccinated but, on the other hand, I do understand why parents have some questions, and your best source of information is going to be your child’s pediatrician.”
5. How long after having COVID-19 can my child get a vaccine?
If a child has not been vaccinated against COVID-19 and contracts the virus, they can get vaccinated “as soon as they’re out of their isolation period, based on when they were infected and had symptoms,” according to O’Leary.
“It doesn’t need to necessarily be the next day but, in general, as soon as as they can to provide that protection,” he said.
For people who are not vaccinated, CDC guidelines are to quarantine at home for five full days.
6. How do I know if my child needs a booster vaccine?
A booster dose of Pfizer’s vaccine was authorized earlier this month for children ages 5 to 11 years old.
A child in that age range must wait at least five months after completion of a primary series to receive the booster, according to the FDA.
“I do think it’s important,” O’Leary said of fully vaccinated people ages 5 and older receiving a booster dose. “The data have been fairly clear over the last several months, and particularly during this omicron wave, that this booster really matters in terms of prevention of the severe outcomes.”
7. What precautions should my family take until a vaccine for young kids is authorized?
O’Leary said families should continue to practice safety protocols including mask wearing for children ages 2 and older, hand-washing and social distancing.
“We know that crowded, indoor settings where people are not masked is one of the higher-risk places, so try to avoid those types of environments,” he said.
O’Leary also said parents should make sure their kids of all ages are up to date on all their vaccinations.
“Honestly, for children, a lot of the diseases, although we don’t see them anymore, are actually more severe in kids than COVID-19, things like measles,” he said. “Going into the summer is a perfect time to make an appointment with your pediatrician for a checkup and make sure your kids are up to date on their vaccines.”
(NEW YORK) — National attention turns next to the South as Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Texas voters head to the polls on Tuesday, rounding out a consequential string of May contests.
Months-long, sometimes contentious battles to be governor, attorney general, secretary of state and for U.S. Senate and House seats will come to a head. The results should give more insight into the strength of former President Donald Trump’s endorsement with the Republican base as well as conservative voters’ appetite for election lies.
The most-watched races will be in Georgia, an emerging battleground state, with primaries for governor and the Senate that will preview closely fought races come November’s midterms.
At the top of the ticket — where he hopes to stay — sits incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp, an establishment Republican who shot to national prominence after the 2020 election when he refused to promulgate Trump’s debunked theory of a stolen election. Happy to take up that drumbeat, though, is Kemp’s challenger David Perdue, a former senator who lost to Jon Ossoff but who has embraced a MAGA-edge in his campaigning to return to office.
Perdue has spent most of his time on the trail pushing for sweeping electoral change, parroting Trump’s debunked talking points about voter fraud and a somehow-stole election. Despite Trump’s endorsement, though, Perdue’s message hasn’t seemed to stick with primary voters, at least not according to recent polling that shows Kemp with a major lead.
Trump-backed “big lie” believers continue down-ballot with Republican secretary of state candidate Rep. Jody Hice, who has said he would look to decertify the last presidential election — an extraordinarily undemocratic move that further highlights the possible ramifications of such candidates taking control of election administration.
Polling puts Hice in a neck-and-neck battle with incumbent Ben Raffensperger, who like Kemp was a popular establishment Republican-turned-enemy of the former president for refusing to act on the 2020 election conspiracy.
Not only are these races a test of Trump’s endorsement, they will also indicate how enthusiastically Georgia GOP voters will embrace the election mistrust that has become central to Trump’s pitch.
Another high-profile race is the GOP Senate primary, with the Trump-approved Herschel Walker leading the pack. Walker — a businessman and college football legend in Georgia — has been press shy, in part perhaps due to his headline-making past, including allegations of violent behavior and his diagnosis with dissociative identity disorder, or D.I.D., a complex mental health condition characterized by some severe and potentially debilitating symptoms.
Walker has denied some of the past allegations of domestic violence, physical threats and stalking; others he claimed not to remember. His campaign referred ABC News to his 2008 memoir, which detailed his D.I.D. diagnosis, and a 2008 interview he did with ABC News in which he discussed its effects on his marriage.
Democrats have two candidates who are likely to sail to victory Tuesday, with Stacey Abrams again up for governor — eyeing a possible rematch with Kemp in November — and Sen. Raphael Warnock up for re-election.
Across state lines in Alabama will see similar primary matchups for governor and an open Senate seat.
The three-way contest for the Senate slot evolved significantly over the campaign cycle: Rep. Mo Brooks earned Trump’s endorsement early in the race, only to have Trump withdraw it two months ago following disagreements over 2020 election claims.
Trump’s rescinded backing could prove consequential as Brooks now trails in the polls behind Katie Britt — a former chief of staff for retiring GOP Sen. Richard Shelby. Businessman Mike Durant was polling ahead of both candidates at certain points during the race but is now behind Britt and Brooks after Brooks saw a final-hour surge in recent voter surveys.
Brooks may still be campaigning off of Trump’s name, however. Campaign mailers obtained by the Alabama Political Reporter feature quotes from Trump during the time he supported Brooks.
Earlier this month, Brooks said he wouldn’t cooperate with the House’s Jan. 6 committee and was subpoenaed shortly thereafter. (He had spoken at the rally earlier on Jan. 6, 2021, before deadly rioting broke out at the U.S. Capitol; he has continued to try to delegitimize the 2020 election results.)
“I wouldn’t help Nancy Pelosi and Liz Cheney cross the street — I’m definitely not going to help them and their partisan Witch Hunt Committee,” Brooks previously told ABC News. “At this moment in time, right before an Alabama U.S. Senate election, if they want to talk, they’re gonna have to send me a subpoena, which I will fight.”
Brooks’ soon-to-be vacant House seat is a contest between former Trump Assistant Army Secretary Casey Wardynski, endorsed by the House Freedom Caucus, and Madison County Commissioner Dale Strong. Strong has been outraising Wardynski.
Another matchup in Alabama will be between incumbent Republican Gov. Kay Ivey and several primary challengers. That race — previously expected to be won handily by Ivey — has grown more combative after a term where Ivey bent away from some GOP messaging surrounding COVID-19 and gas taxes.
Lindy Blanchard, a former Trump-appointed ambassador running in the primary, called Ivey a “tax-hiking Fauci-loving” liberal in a recent ad. Ivey is also being challenged by the son of former Gov. Fob James — businessman Tim James — as well as former Morgan County Commissioner Stacy Lee George, pastor Dean Odle and others.
In Arkansas, races are shaping up to be somewhat less competitive. Former Trump White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the clear front-runner in a race where she’s eclipsing her competitors in fundraising and also received Trump’s endorsement. She’s up against Doc Washburn, the former host of a radio show in Little Rock.
Trump-backed Sen. John Boozman is on track to be reelected against several primary challenges, including from Army veteran and former NFL player Jake Bequette.
And in Texas, voters will decide more of the their 2022 nominees on Tuesday, determining the results of the runoff elections from the March 1 primaries.
The GOP race for attorney general is between incumbent Ken Paxton and Land Commissioner George W. Bush, a member of the state’s most prominent political family.
Paxton’s vulnerability from scandals — including indictment for securities fraud, FBI investigations into malfeasance and marital infidelity, among others, even as he has denied all allegations — will be tested against the grandson of former President George H.W. Bush and nephew of former President George W. Bush in a party that is more and more anathema to the Bushes’ brand of conservatism.
Tuesday’s sole competitive Democratic race will be in Texas. Progressive Jessica Cisneros, endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., will face nine-term Congressman Henry Cuellar in the run-off election in the 28th district.
Sanders traveled to Texas to stump for Cisneros on Friday in a last-ditch effort to defeat Cuellar, the sole pro-life Democrat in Congress.
(NEW YORK) — The number of births increased in the United States for the first time in seven years, according to a new federal report.
Provisional data published Tuesday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics found there were 3,659,289 babies born in 2021, a 1% increase from 2020.
It also marks the first rise in births since 2014. Prior to this report, the number of births had been decreasing by an average of 2% per year.
The report did not explain why the number of births increased, but Pew Research Center polls have suggested Americans delayed having babies during the first year of the pandemic due to public health and economic uncertainty, so the rising number could be the result of a rebound.
“When it comes to changes in fertility behavior, we’re limited,” Dr. Brady Hamilton, from the NCHS Division of Vital Statistics and lead author of the report, told ABC News. “That’s where you need a survey about what’s behind the decision-making process.”
The report also showed the fertility rate — the number of live births per 1,000 women between the ages 15 and 44 — was 56.6. This is up from 56 in 2020 and the first increase since 2014, according to the CDC.
However, the total fertility rate — the number of births a hypothetical group of 1,000 people would have over their lifetimes — was 1,663.5 births per 1,000 women.
This is still below what experts refer to as replacement level, the level a population needs to replace itself, which is 2,100 births per 1,000 women.
The team found birth rates among women aged 25 and older increased while decreasing for those aged 24 and younger.
“That sort of suggests [that] when we saw the decline in births from 2019 to 2020, probably a lot of births were postponed,” Hamilton said. “People were waiting to see what happened [with the pandemic] and rates rose in older women as they may have proceeded to have that child.”
Among teenagers aged 15 to 19, the rate of birth declined 6% from 15.4 per 1,000 to 14.4 per 1,000 — a record low for this age group.
Teenage births have been continuously falling since 2007 by an average of about 7% through last year.
“When you look at it across time, that’s a 77% decline since 1991 and 65% decline since 2017. That’s astonishing,” Hamilton said. “That’s certainly good news. And it will be interesting to see when we go into next year if it continues on.”
Meanwhile, for tweens and teens aged 10 to 14, the rate of birth was 0.2 per 1,000, which is unchanged since 2015, the report found.
Additionally, researchers also looked at births by race and found that white and Hispanic women each saw the number of births increase by about 2% from 2020 to 2021.
Meanwhile, Black and Asian women saw the number of births decline by 2.4% and 2.5%, respectively, over the same period, while American Indian/Alaskan Native women saw their numbers fall by 3.2%.
The report also examined the type of delivery and how early the babies were born.
Data showed that 32.1% of babies were born via cesarean delivery in 2021, up from 31.8% in 2020 and the second increase in a row after the rates had declined from 2009 to 2019.
The percentage of C-sections increased among all racial and ethnic groups, with the highest seen among Black women, from 36.3% to 36.8%.
While C-sections can lower the risk of death in women with high-risk pregnancies, they are associated with complications such as infection or blood clots, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
The preterm birth rate also rose by 4% in 2021 from 10.09% to 10.48%, which is the highest reported rate since 2007. Increases were seen in babies born early preterm, which is before 34 weeks gestation, and later preterm, which is 34 to 37 weeks gestation.
Premature babies are at a greater risk for problems with feeding, breathing, vision and hearing, as well as behavioral issues.
“Whenever you see an increase in preterm births, that’s concerning,” Joyce Martin, from the Division of Vital Statistics and co-author of the report, told ABC News. “And we saw an increase in early-term babies, and they’re at greater risk than later-term babies of not surviving the first year of life.”
Martin said it’s not clear what’s behind the rise in preterm birth rates but said mothers younger than 18 and older than 35 are more likely to have premature babies.
“And we did see an increase in older moms’ birth rates. It’s not clear if it influences this change yet,” she said.
(NEW YORK) — When a disgruntled employee opened fire in the parking lot of a FedEx distribution facility in Indianapolis, Indiana, in April 2021, the shooter did so because he wanted to commit “suicidal murder,” an FBI report released Monday concludes.
That incident, according to the FBI, was one of deadliest mass killings that year.
As a whole, active-shooter incidents in the United States increased by more than 50% from 2020 to 2021, according to the report.
Over the past five years, active shooter incidents have steadily increased, the FBI said, with the most recent in Buffalo, New York, on May 14 when a gunman killed 10 Black people at a local supermarket.
That shooting is being investigated as a hate crime.
The new report, titled “Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2021,” says there were 61 mass shooting incidents in the U.S. in 2021, representing a nearly 100% increase in active shooter incidents from 2017, which saw 31.
The FBI defines an active shooter as one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. Implicit in this definition is the shooter’s use of a firearm.
The shootings occurred in 30 states, which saw 103 die and 140 wounded, according to the FBI, which says 12 of the shootings met the “mass killing” definition.
The FBI defines a mass killing as three or more killings in a single incident.
John Cohen, the former acting undersecretary for intelligence and analysis at the Department of Homeland Security, told ABC News that the United States is seeing a trend with active shooters.
“The U.S. is in the midst of a multiyear trend where we are experiencing an increase in mass shooters who are seeking to advance their ideological beliefs or based on a perceived personal grievance,” Cohen, now an ABC News contributor, said. “A growing subset of our population believes that violence is an acceptable way to express one’s ideological beliefs or seek redress for a perceived personal grievance.”
Nearly all of the shooters were male, and half the accused shooters were arrested by law enforcement. The FBI says 55% of the shootings took place in the afternoon and evening hours.
More than half of the shootings took place in areas of commerce.
“The locations range from grocery stores to manufacturing sites,” the FBI said.
The youngest shooter was 12 and the oldest was 67.
“For 2021, the FBI observed an emerging trend involving roving active shooters; specifically, shooters who shoot in multiple locations, either in one day or in various locations over several days,” the FBI concluded.
(WASHINGTON) — Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman tested positive for COVID-19 over the weekend, she announced Monday.
“I’m experiencing mild symptoms and will be working remotely from home per CDC guidance,” she tweeted. “I am thankful to the @StateDept MED team for taking excellent care of me and all our colleagues around the world during this pandemic.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Sherman were together for a meeting with Saudi Arabia’s deputy minister of defense in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.
Blinken, who recently recovered after testing positive for the virus earlier this month, is currently abroad with President Joe Biden in Asia.
It was initially unclear how frequently Sherman is testing, or if she is considered a close contact by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention standards to anyone currently in the delegation overseas.
Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — With seven people in the U.S. now confirmed or presumed to have monkeypox, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the risk remains low and there’s no evidence the virus has evolved to be more transmissible.
“This is not COVID,” Jennifer McQuiston, deputy director of the Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology at the CDC, said during a media briefing Monday.
There is one confirmed positive case in Massachusetts. There is one presumptive positive case in New York, one in Washington state, two in Utah and two in Florida.
The CDC said Monday that the government is in the process of releasing some vaccines from its national stockpile. There is no need to vaccinate the general public against monkeypox, officials said. Rather, those vaccines will be used among a small number people who have been exposed.
Still, CDC officials cautioned that more cases are likely, and the agency is now raising awareness among men who identify as gay or bisexual.
“I think that we need to pay close attention to the communities in which this might be circulating, so that we can communicate effectively with them and help bring this outbreak under control,” McQuiston said.
Monkeypox is not a sexually transmitted infection, and anyone can become infected regardless of sexual orientation.
The virus, a less-transmissible cousin of smallpox, is passed through close contact with another person, including hugging, touching or prolonged face-to-face contact.
An early cluster of monkeypox cases in London was among a nuclear family who lived in the same household.
But health officials say many early clusters in Europe and Canada happened among groups of men who have sex with men, with some ongoing transmission reported in this community.
“Anyone — anyone can develop and spread monkeypox infection,” Dr. John Brooks, medical epidemiologist, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at the CDC, said. “But, many of those affected in the current global outbreak identify as gay and bisexual men. We want to help people make the best-informed decisions to protect their health.”
Specifically, the CDC is now warning people to watch out for a distinctive rash in the genital region, which could be confused with an STI.
