(NEW YORK) — The Walt Disney World Resort is adding two 75-megawatt solar arrays to its renewable energy portfolio that, combined with existing infrastructure, will provide 40% of the park’s electricity.
The announcement comes at a time when energy prices across the country, coupled with record-high inflation, are soaring and climate change is pressuring consumers to reduce emissions.
“This latest step will help us further accomplish our goal of net zero emissions by 2030,” Jeff Vahle, president of the Walt Disney World Resort, told ABC News. “Our commitment to the environment goes beyond imagining a brighter, more sustainable future by putting possibility into practice to ensure a happier, healthier planet for all.”
The Walt Disney World Resort currently has two solar arrays, including one shaped like a giant Mickey, that generate a total of 55-megawatts of solar power and provide 10% of the park’s energy.
The two new solar installations won’t be located on park property; they will be built in Gilchrist and Polk Counties, covering more than 1,000 acres. Both are expected to come online by early 2023. By placing the solar facilities elsewhere in Florida, the Walt Disney World Resort will not need to rely on sunny skies in one area for reliable solar energy. The addition will also make Disney World the largest commercial consumer of solar power in the state of Florida.
The two new solar arrays will be capable of producing more than 375,000 megawatt hours of energy in its first year, which is the equivalent of removing 29,500 vehicles from the road annually.
The Walt Disney Co. is the parent company of ABC News.
(WASHINGTON) — The killings of Ukrainian civilians committed by Russian forces in Ukraine is a war crime, President Joe Biden said Monday — repeating his accusation that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “war criminal” who needs to be held “accountable.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of “genocide” on Sunday after hundreds of Ukrainian civilians were found killed in Bucha, a suburb of the capital Kyiv that was retaken by Ukrainian forces. Some of the civilians were buried in mass graves, while others were found dead in the street with their hands tied behind their backs.
The U.S. has stopped short of using the term “genocide” because of its strict legal definition and the heavy implications it carries.
“This guy is brutal and what’s happening with Bucha is outrageous. And everyone’s seeing it,” Biden said.
“We have to continue to provide Ukraine with the weapons they need to continue the fight, and we have to gather all the detail so this can be an actual — have a war crimes trial,” Biden told reporters Monday, but when asked if it were genocide, he said, “No, I think it is a war crime.”
Still, Biden’s call for for a possible war crimes trial raises the pressure on the international community’s response to Russia’s war, which has killed thousands and displaced more than 10 million people.
Biden said he would seek more sanctions against Putin and his government over the atrocities in Bucha, although it’s unclear if more economic pressure will do anything to bring an end to Putin’s campaign, which has shifted away from the Kyiv area to the south and east.
(WASHINGTON) — Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s first nominee to the Supreme Court, is expected to pass a major milestone Monday on her way to expected Senate confirmation later this week.
The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote Monday on whether to send Jackson’s nomination to the full Senate, setting up a final confirmation vote possibly on Friday.
While confirmation is nearly certain for Jackson, it’s unclear how many Republicans will cross the aisle to vote for her.
So far, only one, Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins, has said she would vote for Jackson — and Collins does not sit on the Judiciary Committee.
Ranking Member Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, announced after the committee kicked off its business Monday morning that he will vote no on Jackson’s nomination, paving the way for the 22-member, evenly-split committee to end in a tie vote.
An 11-11 tie will force Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to file a discharge motion to bring the nomination before the full Senate in order to get it out of committee. That motion comes with four hours of floor debate, where some Republicans are expected to try to slow down the process.
If Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska or Mitt Romney of Utah were to vote to advance Jackson’s nomination out of committee on the full floor vote, it may signal how they will vote later in the week when the Senate formally considers Jackson’s nomination to the high court.
But even without Republican support, Democrats have the power to push her nomination forward. The final vote, while bipartisan, will likely be narrower than what the White House had hoped for.
“What I know is she will get enough votes to get confirmed,” White House chief of staff Ron Klain told ABC News’ This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. “In the end, I suppose, that’s the only thing that matters. But I wish more Republicans would look at the case here, look at the record and vote to confirm Judge Jackson.”
With a two-week Easter in sight for senators, Democrats are hoping for a final vote before the weekend.
If confirmed, Jackson would be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.
(NEW YORK) — Russian forces are continuing their attempted push through Ukraine from multiple directions, while Ukrainians, led by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, are putting up “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.
The attack began Feb. 24, when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation.” Heavy shelling and missile attacks, many on civilian buildings, continue in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, as well as other major cities like Kharkiv and Mariupol.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Apr 04, 10:22 am
Russia may launch major offensive in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said Monday it is monitoring large movements of Russian troops and reinforcements in eastern Ukraine.
The General Staff said it expects Russian forces to launch a possibly major offensive in the Donbas region within the next 24 hours, particularly against the city of Severodonetsk, which is the administrative center of the government-controlled areas of the Luhansk Oblast.
Meanwhile, Donetsk Oblast Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko has urged civilians to evacuate now, even from areas not close to the front lines.
Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his recognition of two breakaway areas of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region that share a border with Russia — the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics. Russia-backed separatist forces have controlled these parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhanks oblasts since 2014.
Apr 04, 10:04 am
Zelenskyy visits bombed city of Bucha
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited on Monday the decimated city of Bucha, where Ukrainian officials have accused Russian troops of committing war crimes against civilians.
Zelenskyy toured the Kyiv suburb that was retaken by Ukrainian forces in recent days. Zelenskyy went to a road in the city littered with destroyed Russian equipment and he spoke to local residents.
Zelenskyy repeated accusations that Russia committed war crimes and genocide after Ukrainian officials said 410 people believed to have been civilians were found dead, many with their hands bound behind their backs and shot at close range.
Russian officials have denied the accusation and have requested the U.N. Security Council investigate.
Apr 04, 9:34 am
Ukraine accuses Russian brigade of war crimes, releases names of troops
Ukraine has accused a brigade of the Russian Ground Forces of committing war crimes in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, northwest of Kyiv.
The Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense published online Monday what it said was a list with the names of hundreds of personnel of Russia’s 64th Motor Rifle Brigade whom they believe were directly responsible for atrocities in Bucha. Ukrainian officials have said there is evidence of other Russian units being involved.
Ukrainian authorities announced Sunday that 410 civilians were found dead in recently recaptured towns near the capital as part of an investigation into possible war crimes by Russian forces. Images emerged showing bodies, some of which showed signs of torture, in civilian clothes strewn in streets and in mass graves across Bucha, northwest of Kyiv. ABC News journalists on the ground saw some of the dead, including a family that locals said were executed with their hands bound.
Russia has denied the claims.
-ABC News’ Natalia Kushnir and Fidel Pavlenko
Apr 04, 9:23 am
Russian oligarch’s yacht seized in Spain
A yacht that belongs to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg was seized Monday in Marina Real in the Spanish port of Palma de Mallorca, two U.S. law enforcement sources told ABC News.
The yacht was seized by Spanish authorities and KleptoCapture, the U.S. Department of Justice task force charged with finding assets of oligarchs trying to evade sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Vekselberg was among the oligarchs sanctioned previously by the United States in 2018 after Russia invaded Crimea.
The task force is trying to find yachts, airplanes and other moveable properties before the oligarchs can move them to jurisdictions where it might be more difficult for U.S. authorities to investigate.
-ABC News’ Luke Barr and Aaron Katersky
Apr 04, 8:20 am
Russia accuses Ukraine of ‘fake attack’ in Bucha
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has accused Ukrainian forces of staging an attack in Bucha, northwest of Kyiv, where images have emerged showing bodies in civilian clothes lying in the streets and in mass graves.
“The other day, another fake attack was launched in the city of Bucha, Kyiv region, after Russian military personnel left from there in accordance with the plans and agreements reached,” Lavrov told reporters in Moscow on Monday. “A few days later, a staging was arranged there, which was dispersed through all channels and social networks by Ukrainian representatives and their Western patrons.”
According to Lavrov, Russian forces vacated the area on March 30.
“On March 31, the mayor [of Bucha] solemnly said that everything was fine there,” he added. “And two days later, we saw how the same production was organized on the streets, which they are now trying to use for anti-Russian purposes.”
Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venedyktova announced Sunday that 410 civilians were found dead in recently recaptured towns near the capital as part of an investigation into possible war crimes by Russian forces. Some photos taken Sunday in Bucha show unarmed individuals who appear to have been executed with their hands or legs bound. A number of world leaders have accused Russia of committing the atrocities.
Apr 04, 7:41 am
Kremlin reacts to images of dead bodies in Bucha
Russia responded on Monday to accusations that its troops have deliberately killed civilians in Ukraine, after images emerged showing bodies in civilian clothes scattered in areas on the outskirts of the capital that were recently recaptured from Russian forces.
Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venedyktova said Sunday that 410 civilians were found dead in towns near Kyiv.
During a daily press briefing on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia “categorically dismiss[es] any accusations” of its role in civilian killings and that Moscow does not trust the evidence in Bucha.
“This information should be seriously doubted,” Peskov told reporters. “From what we have seen, the video materials cannot be trusted to a large extent, as our specialists from the Defense Ministry have detected signs of video forgery and other kinds of fakes.”
The Kremlin demands that “international leaders do not jump to conclusions, do not make hasty unsupported accusations but at least seek information from various sources and at least listen to our arguments,” Peskov said.
“The facts, the chronology of events also do not speak in favor of the credibility of these claims,” he added.
Russia will reiterate its calls to discuss the matter at the United Nations Security Council on Monday, according to Peskov.
“We believe that the issue should be discussed at the highest level, so we have proposed that it be discussed at the Security Council. We are aware that the initiative has been blocked,” he said. “Our diplomats will continue active efforts towards putting this item on the Security Council’s agenda. This issue is too serious.”
“The initiative aimed to put the item on the Security Council agenda demonstrates that Russia wants and actually demands its discussion at the international level,” he added.
Apr 04, 7:11 am
Russia seeks UN Security Council meeting on Bucha for Monday
Russia said it will repeat its request for the United Nations Security Council to meet on Monday over what Moscow described as “criminal provocations by Ukrainian soldiers and radicals” in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.
The United Kingdom’s mission to the U.N., which assumed the presidency of the 15-member Security Council for April, has said the group will hold a scheduled discussion on Ukraine on Tuesday, rather than meet on Monday as requested by Russia.
“Yesterday, in the worst English tradition, the British presidency of the U.N. Security Council did not give consent to holding a meeting of the Security Council on the situation in Bucha,” Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement via Telegram on Monday. “Russia today will again demand the convening of the U.N. Security Council in connection with the criminal provocations of the Ukrainian military and radicals in this city.”
Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venedyktova announced Sunday that 410 civilians were found dead in recently recaptured towns near the capital as part of an investigation into possible war crimes by Russian forces. Images emerged showing bodies in civilian clothes strewn in the streets of Bucha, northwest of Kyiv.
Russia’s deputy representative to the U.N. Security Council, Dmitry Polyansky, said via Twitter on Sunday that Moscow had requested a meeting to be held on Monday “in connection with the monstrous provocation of Ukrainian radicals in Bucha.”
Apr 04, 6:01 am
Russian troops, Wagner mercenaries move into Ukraine’s Donbas region
Russian forces are continuing to consolidate and reorganize as they refocus their offensive into the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, the U.K. Ministry of Defense said in an intelligence update Monday.
“Russian troops, including mercenaries from the Russian state-linked Wagner private military company, are being moved into the area,” the ministry added.
Wagner is the best-known of an array of Russian mercenary groups and has ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian company has deployed fighters to countries in the Middle East and Africa. U.S. Department of Defense spokesperson John Kirby told reporters last month that Wagner “has an interest in increasing their footprint in Ukraine.”
Apr 03, 10:37 pm
Zelenskyy speaks at Grammys: ‘Our musicians wear body armor instead of tuxedos’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a brief speech at the on Sunday night.
Zelenskyy, in a video message, said war is the opposite of music, but hopes soon the silence of death will be filled with the sound of music.
“The war doesn’t let us choose who survives and who stays in eternal silence. Our musicians wear body armor instead of tuxedos,” Zelenskyy told the audience. “They sing to the wounded. In hospitals. Even to those who can’t hear them. But the music will break through anyway.”
Apr 03, 8:14 pm
7 dead, 34 wounded in Kharkiv shelling, 70% of Chernihiv destroyed
At least seven civilians are dead and 34 are wounded following shelling in Kharkiv, the region’s prosecutor’s office announced Sunday.
The shelling occurred Sunday evening in the city’s Slobidskyi district, according to the Kharkiv regional military administration Oleg Sinehubov, who added that children are among the victims.
Meanwhile, in Chernihiv, around 70% of the city has been destroyed, according to Mayor Vladyslav Atroshenko, who was speaking on Ukrainian TV.
He added that businesses are not operating. Ukrainian soldiers have been able to liberate several villages in the Chernihiv region in the past couple of days.
-ABC News’ Christine Theodorou
Apr 03, 4:20 pm
‘Concentrated evil has come,’ Zelenskyy addresses civilian deaths in Bucha
Following graphic images of casualties coming out of Bucha, Ukraine, after Russian military withdrawal, Ukrainian President President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has strong words about he called, “concentrated evil, in his daily address Sunday. Here are excerpts from that address:
“Hundreds of people were killed. Tortured, executed civilians. Corpses on the streets. Mined area. Even the bodies of the dead were mined!”
“Concentrated evil has come to our land. Murderers. Torturers. Rapists. Looters. Who call themselves the army. And who deserve only death after what they did.”
“I want every mother of every Russian soldier to see the bodies of the killed people in Bucha, in Irpin, in Hostomel. What did they do? Why were they killed? What did the man who was riding his bicycle down the street do? Why were ordinary civilians in an ordinary peaceful city tortured to death? Why were women strangled after their earrings were ripped out of their ears? How could women be raped and killed in front of children? How could their corpses be desecrated even after death? Why did they crush the bodies of people with tanks? What did the Ukrainian city of Bucha do to your Russia? How did all this become possible?”
“All partners of Ukraine will be informed in detail about what happened in the temporarily occupied territory of our state. War crimes in Bucha and other cities during the Russian occupation will also be considered by the UN Security Council on Tuesday.”
Zelenslyy also invited former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Ukraine to witness the carnage.
“We do not blame the West. We do not blame anyone but the specific Russian military who did this against our people,” Zelenskyy, who has pleaded with the U.S. and NATO allies to create a no-fly zone over Ukraine, a measure so far, that President Joe Biden and other Western leaders have refused to do, said.
(NEW YORK) — California was the first state to mandate that high schools start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. Pediatrician Dr. Bert Mandelbaum hopes New Jersey will be the second.
New Jersey is one of several states exploring later school start times, as educators and health professionals grapple with concerns about the pandemic’s impact on youth’s mental health.
“I think we’re at the right time that people are willing to listen and do the right thing for kids,” Mandelbaum, who chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics New Jersey chapter’s Task Force on Adolescent Sleep & School Start Times, told ABC News. “I think the pandemic heightened everyone’s awareness of the mental health needs.”
The task force has advocated for later start times for several years as a way to promote healthy sleep habits among adolescents, though Mandelbaum believes the pandemic’s toll helped lead to state lawmakers last month introducing legislation that proposes pushing statewide high school start times in New Jersey to no earlier than 8.30 a.m., starting in the 2024-2025 school year. State Democrats said the bill was “beginning the work of addressing this national youth mental health crisis.”
At a ‘tipping point’
Other states that have introduced similar bills during the pandemic include New York, where the proposal is at the committee level, and Tennessee, where it’s been referred to summer study. The Tennessee AAP chapter voiced its support for the bill amid a “national emergency in children’s mental health.”
Several school districts are also shifting to later start times, including Denver and Philadelphia.
“I feel like we have reached a tipping point,” Phyllis Payne, implementation director for Start School Later, an organization that advocates for later school start times, told ABC News.
The AAP, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine are among several health authorities that support later start times to allow students to get optimal sleep — which for teenagers is between 8 and 10 hours a night.
The CDC has found that most middle and high school students don’t get enough sleep, making them more likely to have poor school performance, engage in unhealthy risk behaviors and suffer from depressive symptoms, it said.
Later school start times would better align with adolescents’ biological sleep rhythms, which cause them to go to bed later, experts say.
Research has found that in high schools with delayed start times, from 8:30 a.m. on, students got more sleep, academic outcomes and attendance rates improved, and car crashes involving teen drivers decreased.
“A lot of high schools start at 7 a.m. or 7:30 — that puts these kids in this really terrible position,” Kimberly Fenn, an associate professor of psychology and director of the Sleep and Learning Lab at Michigan State University, told ABC News. “Any amount they can shift back is going to benefit the students.”
Early start times also often limit light exposure in the morning, which can have an impact on student learning, according to Rebecca Spencer, an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“When we’re instead waking up to darkness, we lack that external alerting signal, that bright light that it takes to signal it is time to be awake and helps you focus,” Spencer told ABC News. “So if you take that away from kids, it presents as grogginess and inattentiveness, but it has broad ramifications. It’s gonna tell you how they’re going to perform cognitively. It’s gonna tell you how their behavior is going to be, behavior and mood in the classroom.”
For this reason, among others, many sleep experts have spoken out against a potential move to permanent daylight saving time, which Congress is currently considering instead of changing the clocks twice a year.
“My guess is that sleep scientists as a whole would say, OK, we should stop the bouncing back and forth. But going with standard time, from a sleep perspective, is the better way to go so that you have that light in the morning more often,” Spencer said. “That helps their cognitive function.”
‘Change is challenging’
The Edina School District was the first district in the U.S. to change to a later starting time for their high school, shifting from 7:20 am. to 8:30 a.m. in the 1996-1997 school year, according to research from the University of Minnesota.
Since then other school districts throughout the country have made similar shifts, though advocates for later start times believe tackling the issue at the state level will help address logistical concerns around making the move, such as for parents’ work schedules and programming school athletics.
“I think that we are at a point now where we’re recognizing that this really is the right thing to do,” Payne said. “But change is challenging. People don’t like change.”
The California School Boards Association had opposed California’s law due to logistical concerns for families when it passed in 2019. Ahead of the state’s shift to a later school start time, which goes into effect in July, one teacher argued in CalMatters that the policy is a “disaster in the making” for an already overwhelmed education system. In response, a physician specializing in sleep medicine and an advocate for student health argued that the shift “has never been more urgent” due to the pandemic’s toll on youth mental health.
Mandelbaum, who said he got involved in advocating for later school start times to promote the science behind the policy, has only heard of one instance where a school district that made the shift reverted to its old, earlier schedule. But it “failed because of poor implementation” — highlighting the need for all stakeholders to be involved early on in the proposal process, he said.
For Mandelbaum, the pandemic has shown that schools can adapt quickly to change.
“Schools went virtual within a weekend,” he said. “The idea that we can do big things is there.”
(WASHINGTON) — As consumers continue to feel the crunch at the grocery store checkout, eggs are the latest product predicted to surge in price.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), 21 states have confirmed cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza, commonly referred to as bird flu, causing disease in both commercial and backyard poultry.
While no humans have tested positive for the disease, it has led to the death of more than 17 million birds, the USDA said.
Prices are expected to climb amid the seasonal demand during Easter and Passover with the outbreak expected to make prices even more expensive.
Companies including Hormel Foods, the parent company of Jennie-O Turkey Store, addressed the potential impact on the poultry supply chain.
“Jennie-O Turkey Store has been preparing for this situation and took extensive precautions to protect the health of the turkeys in its supply chain,” the company said. “Jennie-O Turkey Store will continue to work with the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Minnesota Board of Animal Health, Minnesota Department of Agriculture, as well as poultry industry associations on this issue. USDA and the National Turkey Federation are monitoring and responding to the situation and remind consumers that HPAI does not pose a food safety concern.”
According to the World Health Organization and the CDC, properly cooked poultry is perfectly safe to eat. Additionally, the CDC said there’s no evidence to suggest that the virus can be transmitted to humans from poultry that is cooked properly.
Supermarkets around the country have alerted shoppers that prices are likely to continue going up. Eggs now average $2.88 per dozen, up 52% since the first confirmed case of avian influenza in February, the highest since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
ABC News chief business correspondent Rebecca Jarvis reported that grocers have bought more stock to prepare for the upcoming spring holidays, but that industry analysts aren’t concerned about shortages.
Jarvis also recommended looking into apps that can save on grocery bills such as Ibotta and Checkout 51 that give customers cashback on groceries. The app Basket compares food prices to find the least expensive option in the area.
(CHICAGO) — A baby girl who has been living in a Chicago hospital with her parents for the last six months while waiting for a new heart finally received one last week.
Elodie Carmen Baker received a heart transplant at The Heart Center at Lurie Children’s Hospital on March 27. Elodie was about 7 weeks old when she was diagnosed with a rare heart condition in August 2021 called dilated cardiomyopathy. She had been on the waitlist for a new heart for over 200 days.
Elodie’s mother, Kate Baker, still remembers the moment she knew something was wrong.
“Our pregnancy was normal and we had an uncomplicated delivery and actually went home with Elodie,” the first-time mom said in an interview with Good Morning America. “So she was with us in Minnesota at home for seven weeks and one night, she wouldn’t feed. I was nursing and she let out this cry and my heart just sank and I said to (my husband) Collin, ‘Something’s wrong. We need to take her in.'”
At the emergency room, Baker said doctors initially didn’t see anything that stood out to them.
“I think they were considering maybe sending us home but they said, ‘Let’s just get an X-ray to be sure,'” she said. “Then the X-ray came back. They saw her heart was enlarged and that was on Aug. 21. And we haven’t been home since.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children and adults with dilated cardiomyopathy have an enlarged heart chamber (ventricle), which can make the muscle unable to pump blood throughout the body sufficiently. There are other types of cardiomyopathy as well as varying symptoms of disease, and some may not even see symptoms arise during their lifetime.
Dr. Anna Joong, the medical director of the pediatric ventricular assist device program at Lurie Children’s, has been caring for Elodie for the past several months.
“In Elodie’s case, the genetic test did not reveal an answer for why she developed this kind of cardiomyopathy and in that situation, it’s called idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy, meaning at this point in time, we don’t really know why this happened to her,” Joong told GMA.
Doctors would later tell the Bakers that their daughter would need a new heart. “The muscle in hers is really weak. And so it’s expanded over time, it hasn’t been able to push the blood out, pump it out to the rest of the body and so it’s dilated, and now hers looks more like a pancake,” Baker said.
Two months after the diagnosis, Elodie was flown to Lurie Children’s Hospital in Illinois from her home state of Minnesota, where she underwent surgery to have a Berlin EXCOR pediatric ventricular assist device (VAD) placed.
The VAD essentially acted as a heart for Elodie, pumping blood for her while she waited for a transplant.
“Her heart was so sick, that the IV medicines just weren’t enough and she needed a VAD,” Joong said. “We use this device as a way to bridge her to transplant so it’s a way to support her heart, to help get her stronger in the time that she’s waiting for her donor heart.”
As Elodie waited for a new heart, she started eating more, both with and without a feeding tube. Nora Hammond, a nurse practitioner at Lurie’s who has also cared for Elodie, explained to GMA, “Post-VAD, Elodie was able to tolerate feeds through a feeding tube to provide her with the calories she needed to grow, but also was able to try a lot of foods by mouth which she loved! Lots of avocado.”
Elodie also participated in various therapies to help her get stronger day by day — from occupational and physical to speech therapy — and along the way, she has reached many of the milestones typical for a baby her age.
“She has learned how to sit. She’s starting to crawl. She’s starting to stand … and she’s done all those things on the Berlin, which is truly incredible,” her mother said.
Dr. Michael Mongé, surgical director of the Heart Failure/Heart Transplant Program at Lurie Children’s, operated on Elodie and noted that Elodie’s care has been an enormous collective effort. “The entire team of physical therapists, hematologists, cardiologists, intensive care doctors, surgeons, all participated in her care, which I think really contributed to how well she has done both since arrival here at Lurie and following VAD implant.”
Elodie has been recovering following her transplant and is receiving medication as well.
“She will continue to use a (feeding) tube after transplant but after she recovers, will slowly try to decrease the amount of food through the tube to encourage her to be able to meet caloric needs by mouth,” Hammond told GMA.
“The breathing tube was able to come out within hours of coming out of the operating room. Her new heart works beautifully and is really strong,” Joong added. “She is getting routine immunosuppression medications to prevent rejection. She has already been transferred out of ICU level care and is sitting up. She is one strong kid and we are so grateful to the donor family.”
Joong, Mongé and the Bakers all hope that Elodie’s story will inspire others to consider organ donation, especially since April is National Donate Life Month, an initiative by the nonprofit Donate Life America to raise awareness about giving the gift of an organ or tissue.
“We’ve both been donors our whole lives. But I’ve never thought much about it. It’s just a box that I’ve checked when I renewed my driver’s license,” Kate Baker said. “Now, we spend a lot of time educating ourselves on the subject and we try to use our CaringBridge site to raise awareness.”
“(Elodie’s story) highlights the importance of organ donation and people being organ donors. The waitlist times have increased over time,” Mongé added.
“The number of organs available each year is relatively constant whereas more and more children continue to get admitted to the hospital and in heart failure. So it really is important to stress the need for people to be organ donors so that people like Elodie can receive a transplant,” Mongé said.
(HONG KONG) — Hong Kong’s divisive leader, Carrie Lam, announced on Monday that she will not run for a second five-year term, ending her 42-year political career.
Lam presided over the city during its most politically turbulent years, which included the often-violent 2019 protests, the implementation of the National Security Law and most recently, her government’s haphazard response to an omicron variant surge that took more than 8,000 lives since January.
Lam’s term has left the former British colony a changed city from a free-wheeling bastion of free-speech and pre-eminent international financial center on Chinese soil to an isolated muted city strangled by both COVID restrictions and a relentless crackdown on dissent.
The chief executive said she informed Beijing at last year’s annual National People’s Congress meeting in March that she wouldn’t be running again.
Lam, 64, told reporters on Monday that she was prioritizing spending time with her family: “They think it is time for me to go home … This is what I have told the Central People’s Government. And they have expressed understanding.”
Hong Kong’s stock exchange climbed as much as 2% following her announcement.
Lam, Hong Kong’s first female leader, thanked mainland Chinese authorities for their support during her tenure, saying she had faced “unprecedented pressure” due to the 2019 anti-government protests and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lam oversaw the implementation of a controversial security law that quashed dissent in the former British colony. A widespread crackdown on activism followed. Pro-democracy media outlets have been shut down and most opposition figures are now in jail or in self-exile. Lam faced U.S. sanctions for her role in the crackdown.
In recent weeks and months, Lam has drawn ire from the business community for Hong Kong’s rigid COVID policies and border measures, which have left the financial hub isolated since 2020.
When taking up the post back in 2017, Lam — a devout Catholic — said that God had called upon her: “From day one, I have said this opportunity is given by God.”
In her acceptance speech, Lam said: “Hong Kong, our home, is suffering from quite a serious divisiveness and has accumulated a lot of frustrations. My priority will be to heal the divide.”
Her successor will be picked in May by a select election committee made up of Beijing loyalists. Local media are reporting that John Lee, the former security minister who led the response to the protests, is favored, but he has yet to declare his candidacy. Finance chief Paul Chan is also a potential front runner.
“Compared to this term of government, the next government will be seeing a more stable political environment,” Lam said on Monday.
(WASHINGTON) — Hunter Biden is apparently spending his father’s presidency living in luxury in Malibu — and so is his taxpayer-funded security detail.
The Secret Service detail protecting the president’s controversial son has been paying more than $30,000 a month to rent out a swanky Malibu, California, mansion for nearly a year, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.
The agency responsible for protecting the president and his family — among other ranking government officials — selected the property in order to be located as close as possible to Biden’s own rented mansion where he is paying about $20,000 a month according to property listings, sources told ABC News.
Retired senior Secret Service agent Don Mihalek, now an ABC News contributor, said the arrangement is “the cost of doing business for the Secret Service,” adding that under the federal law, the agency has a mandated protective responsibility for the president, the first family, and anybody else the president designates for protection.
“Typically, wherever a protectee sets up their residence, the Secret Service is forced to find someplace to rent nearby at market value,” Mihalek said, noting that the agency is also renting out properties to protect President Joe Biden’s residences in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
“This isn’t new,” Mihalek said. “The Service has had to do this in past administrations, and unfortunately, the housing market right now has driven the prices up substantially.”
A White House official referred ABC News to the Secret Service for comment. Asked about the cost of the protection, a representative for the Secret Service said only: “Due to the need to maintain operational security, the U.S. Secret Service does not comment on the means, methods, or resources used to conduct our protective operations.”
A representative for Hunter Biden did not respond to requests for comment from ABC News.
Hunter Biden’s California lifestyle is coming into focus just as the federal probe into his tax affairs has intensified, as sources familiar with the matter recently told ABC News.
An increasing number of witnesses have appeared before a grand jury impaneled in Wilmington, Delaware, in recent months, the sources said, and have been asked about payments Hunter Biden received while serving on the board of directors of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma, in addition to other questions about how Biden paid off tax obligations in recent years.
“In retrospect, look, I think that it was poor judgment on my part,” Hunter Biden told ABC News anchor Amy Robach in October 2019, regarding serving on the board of Burisma and the impact of his foreign business dealings on his father’s political career. “Is that I think that it was poor judgment because I don’t believe now, when I look back on it — I know that there was — did nothing wrong at all. However, was it poor judgment to be in the middle of something that is … a swamp in — in — in many ways? Yeah.”
The younger Biden, along with other members of the Biden family, began to receive around-the-clock protection from the Secret Service when Joe Biden became the Democratic presidential nominee in June 2020. The family was provided a more robust security detail once the elder Biden won the presidency, which is customary for all immediate members of a president’s family.
In Malibu, Hunter Biden’s digs include a four-bedroom, three-bathroom “resort-style” home with an open floor plan, vaulted high ceilings, chef’s kitchen and French doors, according to a description on its property listing. The mansion also features a “spacious park-like yard” with a pool, a spa, a built-in barbecue bar, and alfresco dining, according to the listing.
The property is located on 0.7 acres atop a hill, and boasts “enchanting” 180-degree panoramic ocean views, the listing says.
Next door is where sources say Biden’s team of Secret Service agents are living and working.
The Spanish-style estate that the Secret Service has rented sits on a 0.7-acre lot above the Malibu coast and also features “gorgeous ocean views,” according to its listing.
With six bedrooms, six bathrooms, a gym, a tasting room, a built-in barbecue, a pool, a spa, and a spiral staircase that leads up to a “castle-like tower to the master retreat with wet bar,” the luxury mansion boasts “resort style living at its finest” and is “a perfect retreat for discerning clientele,” its listing says.
The cost of protecting first families has raised eyebrows in the past.
In the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, the Secret Service requested $60 million of additional funding to protect Trump and his family, with about $27 million of that going to protecting them at their private residency at the Trump Tower in New York City, according to internal agency documents obtained by the Washington Post at that time.
Throughout Trump’s presidency, his family business came under fire for bringing in revenue from the Secret Service by charging for space at various Trump properties across the globe that agents used while protecting Trump and his family members.
The total amount that the Secret Service has paid to Trump’s family business to date is difficult to pin down, but according to an analysis by the Washington Post, records that have been released so far show that the Secret Service has spent at least $1.2 million at various Trump properties while protecting the Trump family, from $650 per night for a room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club to $17,000 a month for a cottage at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey.
Numerous overseas business trips taken by Trump’s elder sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, also came under scrutiny during Trump’s presidency for costing the Secret Service hundreds of thousands of dollars each time, records show. And the security detail that protected Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner cost taxpayers $3,000 a month for the rental of a studio apartment across from the couple’s Washington, D.C., home throughout Trump’s presidency, sources confirmed to ABC News at the time.
During the Obama presidency, both of President Barack Obama’s daughters lived in the White House and the president himself visited his private residence in Chicago only a handful of times — but his family made regular visits to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts and took family trips to Honolulu during Christmas, costing the Secret Service millions of dollars each time.
According to spending records obtained by the right-leaning watchdog group Judicial Watch, the Obama family’s trip to Martha’s Vineyard in August 2016 cost the Secret Service a whopping $2.7 million, including $2.5 million in hotels and $90,000 in rental cars, while the family’s final Christmas trip to Honolulu in late 2016 cost the agency $1.9 million, including $1.8 million in hotels.
First Lady Michelle Obama’s trips to Aspen in 2014, 2015 and 2016 cost the Secret Service more than $319,000 in taxpayer money, including nearly $166,000 incurred from the 2016 trip, records obtained by the group show.
And Joe Biden, as vice president during Obama’s presidency, collected $2,200 a month in payments from the Secret Service by renting out a cottage on his Delaware property for the agents protecting him, according to past media reports and federal spending records.
Of the high cost sometimes associated with protecting presidential family members, Mihalek said, “I think it’s all relative.”
“Hunter’s out in Malibu, which is not a low-cost area,” said Mihalek. “And the Trump kids, too, they didn’t live in low-cost areas.”
Mihalek said that for the Secret Service to do their job effectively, they have to have a command post near the protectee — even if it costs more.
“The Secret Service couldn’t have a command post in the next town over,” he said. “It’d do them no good.”
Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at progressive good-government group Public Citizen, told ABC News that Secret Service Protection is necessary for the president and the president’s family — but that they should recognize that the agency is there for their own protection and help lower the cost to taxpayers by reducing unnecessary travel or by sharing their own properties free of charge.
“Ivanka and Jared should have opened up their house to the Secret Service, just as Hunter Biden should do at his Malibu residence,” Holman said.
“Hunter should recognize the exorbitant cost of his own protection in the exclusive Malibu neighborhood, and cooperate with the Secret Service to bring down the expenses,” said Holman. “A cost of $30,000 a month for the Secret Service to rent a home in Malibu next to Hunter is an unconscionable burden to taxpayers, all for the personal benefit of Hunter Biden. Hunter should realize this and accommodate his security detail in his own home.”
(DALLAS) — At least 12 people were shot, one fatally, when gunfire erupted at a concert in Dallas early Sunday, police said.
Three of the victims are juveniles, according to the Dallas Police Department.
The episode occurred several hours before another mass shooting broke out in downtown Sacramento, California, in which six people were killed and at least 10 others were injured.
Dallas police said investigators are working to identify the suspect or suspects in the concert shooting, but no one had been taken into custody as of Sunday afternoon.
“A preliminary investigation determined that at the event, one individual fired a gun into the air, then another unknown individual fired a gun in the crowd’s direction,” the Dallas Police Department said in a statement.
The person killed was identified by police as 26-year-old Kealon Dejuane Gilmore. Police said Gilmore was found lying near the stage with a gunshot wound to the head and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Eleven other people were injured in the shooting and taken to hospitals in private vehicles. One of the victims was in critical condition while the others were in stable condition, police said.
The shooting broke out about 12:13 a.m. at a venue in south Dallas. Police said the shooting occurred at an event billed as a trail ride and concert.
“Upon arrival, officers learned that multiple victims were shot while attending a concert,” police said in a statement.
The shooting occurred at the concert that was supposed to be headlined by Big Boogie, a rapper from Memphis, Tennessee. A notice posted on the entertainer’s Instagram page said the shooting occurred before Big Boogie arrived at the venue, according to ABC affiliate station WFAA in Dallas.
A flyer for the outdoor show said the gates were to open at noon on Saturday and that horses and ATVs were welcomed. Children aged 10 and under were to be admitted for free, the flier read.
Dallas police officers were expected to be at the concert for security and the event’s promoters noted that they were “not responsible for accidents or theft.”
A witness told WFAA that the event was “jam-packed” with people and that concert-goers started to run in all directions seeking cover and preventing police and emergency vehicle from quickly entering the scene to treat victims.
Police said the investigation is ongoing and that a motive remains unclear.
A reward of up to $5,000 is being offered by Crime Stoppers for information leading to arrests and indictments of the perpetrators, police said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
