(WASHINGTON) — Hate crimes against people of Asian descent rose by 76% in 2020, according to newly republished data by the FBI.
The FBI previously issued hate crime data in August, but due to an error in reporting Ohio’s statistics, the data was incomplete. The FBI has now corrected the technical problem in Ohio’s reporting system.
In 2020, 279 hate crime incidents against individuals of Asian descent were reported, compared to 158 incidents reported in 2019.
More than 60% of hate crimes in the United States were carried out on the basis of an individual’s race, according to FBI data released Monday.
“Every hate crime is an attack on the community,” Jay Greenberg, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s criminal division, told ABC News’ Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas.
Greenberg said most hate crimes are directed at African Americans, but acknowledged there was an uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes due to COVID-19.
In total, there were 8,052 single-bias incidents — crimes motivated by one type of bias — involving 11,126 victims. Comparatively, there were 7,103 single-bias incidents involving 8,552 victims in 2019.
The FBI said 20% of the hate crimes targeted a person’s sexual orientation and 13% of the hate crimes that occurred in 2020 were due to religious bias.
More than half of the offenders were white, and 21% of the offenders were African American.
Greenberg said they are working to make sure there is trust not only in the FBI, but in local communities as well.
“Because a hate crime is defined as a violent or property crime with a bias motivation, that crime could be categorized a number of different ways,” he explained. “We would like the public to reach out to us if they believe that they are a victim of a hate crime. It’s not for the public to make that determination; we will work with our state and local partners and help determine how best to investigate that.”
When someone is a victim of a hate crime, people have different reactions, according to Regina Thompson, the head of the FBI’s victim services unit.
“Everybody has their own way of reacting and on their own timeline, so sometimes people will react immediately in the aftermath of a crime,” said Thompson, who was named head of the unit last year. “Sometimes they’ll go immediately into crisis and crisis intervention will be needed. Sometimes the full impact isn’t felt for hours, days, weeks, sometimes even months after the criminal event and the way that they react, there’s absolutely no normal.”
Greenberg said that while they don’t discuss the number of cases they are currently investigating, leaders at the FBI “have brought a renewed focus to enforcing the civil rights program consistently across all our offices, and we have seen the number of cases rise in the last year.”
The bureau takes a victim-centered approach to hate crimes, the two senior FBI officials explained.
“The FBI does have a victim services division that is focused on assisting and supporting the victims of federal crime and that when they are a victim of a federal crime, we are there to assist them and they can expect us to do that with understanding, dignity, fairness and respect,” Thompson said.
Thompson said that hate crimes are especially unique because it is a direct assault on someone’s identity and individuality.
“It really strikes at the fundamental core of who the person is, which makes it very different from some of the other violent crimes,” she explained. “It is an attack on something that is within the person’s identity, something that’s very immutable about them and often something that they can’t even change. So that has a very deep psychological effect.”
(NEW YORK) — Vaccines for children will “very likely” be available the first or second week of November, White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday.
“If all goes well, and we get the regulatory approval and the recommendation from the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], it’s entirely possible if not very likely that vaccines will be available for children from 5 to 11 within the first week or two of November,” Fauci told ABC This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos.
Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is nearly 91% effective against symptomatic illness in children ages 5-11, according to new data. A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel will meet Tuesday to discuss authorizing the vaccine for children, which is currently only available to those ages 12 and older.
The CDC issued recommendations for both Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccine boosters for certain populations on Thursday evening, clearing the way for millions of Americans to receive additional shots. The CDC’s authorization followed the FDA’s, which it issued Wednesday.
The CDC is also permitting mix-and-match booster doses — allowing people to get a different booster brand than was used for a primary vaccination.
Fauci said Sunday the new recommendations should not cause confusion, as they allow for flexibility in booster selection.
“We would hope that people, if available, would get the boost from the original product,” Fauci said. “But if not, there’s the flexibility of what we’re calling ‘mixing and matching.'”
Stephanopoulos pressed Fauci on whether receiving a different brand shot from the original dose yields better protection.
“I have read some studies that suggest that it’s actually better to mix. Like, say, if you got the Johnson & Johnson the first time around, it’s better to get Moderna the second time,” Stephanopoulos asked.
“If you look at the level of antibodies that are induced — if you originally had J&J, and you get, for example, a Moderna or a Pfizer, the level of antibodies, namely, the proteins that you would predict would protect you, those levels go up higher with the Moderna boost to J&J than the J&J boost,” Fauci responded. “However, it’s a little bit more complicated, because, in the clinical trial that J&J did, the clinical effect of the second dose of J&J was quite substantial.”
“So, it really becomes an issue of, what’s the most convenient? What do you feel is best for you?” Fauci added, recommending that people consult their physician.
Stephanopoulos also pressed Fauci on the controversy over to what extent the U.S. was funding bat coronavirus research in Wuhan after the NIH released a letter this week about a New York City-based nonprofit’s research on bat coronavirus spike proteins. The letter states that the subcontractor had not disclosed some results in a timely manner.
“Now, some critics and analysts have seized on that to say you and others have misled the public about U.S. funding of this so-called gain-of-function research. The NIH says that’s false. Our medical unit backs that up,” Stephanopoulos said. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has called for Fauci’s firing over the controversy.
“Well, I obviously totally disagree with Senator Paul. He’s absolutely incorrect. Neither I nor Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the NIH lied or misled about what we’ve done,” Fauci responded.
“What did we learn from the letter? Does it show that some of the research we were finding was riskier than we know?” Stephanopoulos pressed.
Fauci said they knew what the risk was and there’s “no denial” that they should have put their progress report in a timely manner, but that the implication that the research led to COVID-19 is “unconscionable” and “molecularly impossible.”
“There’s all of this concern about what’s gain-of-function or what’s not, with the implication that that research led to SARS-CoV-2, and COVID-19, which, George, unequivocally anybody that knows anything about viral biology and phylogeny of viruses know that it is molecularly impossible for those viruses that were worked on to turn into SARS-CoV-2 because they were distant enough molecularly that no matter what you did to them, they could never, ever become SARS-CoV-2,” Fauci explained.
“And yet when people talk about gain-of-function, they make that implication which I think is unconscionable to do, to say, ‘Well, maybe that research led to SARS-CoV-2’,” Fauci added. “You can ask any person of good faith who’s a virologist, and they will tell you, absolutely clearly, that that would be molecularly impossible.”
(VICTORIA, British Columbia) — Sixteen people have been evacuated from a container ship that caught fire off the coast of Canada, according to officials.
A fire broke out in 10 containers on the MV Zim Kingston near Victoria, British Columbia, on Saturday, according to the Canadian Coast Guard.
Crews mobilized to the location to rescue crew members and contain the fire. An emergency zone was set up for 2 nautical miles surrounding the ship, and rescue efforts continued into Sunday.
A navigational warning was issued overnight by the Canadian government reporting that the ship was on fire and expelling toxic gas. Two fallen containers are floating in the vicinity of the vessel.
Overnight, the tug Seaspan Raven cooled the hull of the MV Zim Kingston by spraying the hull with cold water. Due to the nature of chemicals on board the container ship, applying water directly to the fire is not an option.
Photos showed smoke billowing from a row of stacked containers that had collapsed.
There was no safety risk to people on land, according to the Canadian Coast Guard. No injuries were reported, according to a statement from Danaos Shipping Co, the company that manages the ship.
(NEW YORK) — Princess Mako, niece to Japan’s enthroned emperor, Naruhito, is planning to leave the imperial family, moving out of her family’s estate on Oct. 26 when her marriage to Fordham-educated Kei Komuro is officially registered.
Female members of Japan’s imperial family must renounce their royalty when marrying a commoner. After the high-profile scandal surrounding their courtship, Japanese royalty is being forced to consider not just its dwindling numbers but its future.
Komuro’s mother, involved in an unresolved financial dispute, has been portrayed as a gold digger in tabloids, which have harshly criticized the couple. Princess Mako, an imperial household spokesperson told ABC News, is now suffering from PTSD because of the scrutiny.
Some among the nation’s citizenry are questioning whether maintaining an emperor as a living symbol of the state is still necessary. In 2019, the aging but popular Emperor Akihito abdicated, citing his age and declining health. His son, Naruhito, assumed the throne to reserved fanfare.
The latest scandal surrounding the princess’ fiance has left a bad taste in the mouths of many. Naotaka Kimizuka, a professor at Kanto Gakuin University who specializes in modern British and European political diplomatic history, said the Princess Mako courtship kerfuffle will take a historic toll on the Chrysanthemum Throne, adding: “The pair have already disgraced the heritage of Japan’s imperial household.”
Although Princess Mako has pledged to make a clean break from royalty, refusing the taxpayer-funded, one-time entitlement of 150 million yen (about $1.35 million), distrust remains. Many citizens aren’t convinced they won’t still be on the hook, even after the princess and her husband move to New York.
“The taxpayers will be paying for this in one way or expected to another,” one Tokyo resident told ABC News. “If one is in the imperial family, they’ll always be in the imperial family.”
Japan’s royal family, believed to be the world’s oldest continuous hereditary monarchy, has seen its numbers dwindle. Currently, women can’t ascend to the throne, so royal women marry commoners due to a lack of viable imperial suitors. Children from those marriages are then excluded from the imperial family line.
Hirokazu Matsuno, a government spokesperson, said in response to the question of dwindling numbers among Japanese royals: “The marriage of Princess Mako is scheduled for the 26th of this month. We wish her happiness, and prosperity for the imperial family. An expert panel has been established to address the issue [of dwindling numbers] in the imperial family. Detailed discussions are ongoing.”
More than 80% of Japanese citizens, according to a Kyodo poll, said they’d readily accept either a male or female ascending to the throne, or even a male who descended just from a female member of the imperial family. Most conservatives, including Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, disagree. The question of female ascension is a common clash in Japan of liberal vs. conservative values.
Japan ranked 120th in a global gender-equality ranking of 156 countries, according to a 2021 World Economic Forum report. Attorney Kazuko Ito, secretary general of Human Rights Now, said she believes living human beings can never be a symbol.
“I think the treatment toward the royal family and system as a whole is inhuman,” she added. “Exclusion from the royal family might be a good thing for female family members since they will get freedom for the first time as a human being, not as a restricted virtual role model.”
Hideya Kawanishi, an associate professor of Japanese history at Nagoya University, believes that keeping together the imperial family helps keep together Japan.
“There is no doubt that the emperor of Japan is a symbol of Japan’s unity as a nation,” he said. “In fact, it can be said that the emperor is somehow holding together the fragmented Japanese society. I believe that the same phenomenon is occurring in the royal families of Europe, and that a monarchy is needed in the 21st century world and in Japan.”
(NEW YORK) — The supply chain issues the U.S. economy is currently facing are not only affecting consumers during the peak shopping season, but small businesses have also started to feel the effects of these shortages.
According to the most recent U.S. Census Small Business Pulse Survey, conducted between Oct. 11 and Oct. 17, 45% of businesses said they are having domestic supplier delays. The number is up from 26.7% during the first week of the year.
Supplies that small businesses rely on are becoming harder to find, especially since owners cannot always order in bulk or in advance like larger companies.
Rene Kirby, the owner of Marie’s Cafe in Baltimore, works to provide baked goods from her home and in pop-up shops in her community. With essential products not available on shelves, Kirby has been left searching for answers.
“We just can’t serve the same size beverages, or sometimes any beverages, because they don’t have the cups we need in stock,” said Kirby, adding that buying these essential products from other suppliers increases the price, making it “difficult for the consumer to buy these products.”
Jeremy Plemons, the owner of County Manners, a food truck based in southern Maryland, said he has been going to the same businesses for the past six years and has been shocked recently by the lack of products at his local stores. He said he has had trouble finding to-go boxes and forks, essential for his food truck business.
“It would be one thing if I couldn’t find french fries, we can change that, but when we got nothing to put it in, it’s heartbreaking and stressful,” Plemons said.
Plemons said he is looking to his community of restaurant owners to find a short-term solution for the most essential items he needs.
“We have been supporting each other a lot. If anyone needs anything, they know to call me, and I can always call them,” said Plemons, mentioning be might buy a shipping container with a fellow small business owner to stock up on essential, single-use items.
The Biden administration has worked on ways to mend issues with the supply chain, including expanding work hours to 24/7 at Los Angeles and Long Beach ports and agreeing with large private companies to expand their hours as well.
Easing the supply chain bottleneck is one step in the right direction, according to Ayman Omar, an associate professor of supply chain management at American University’s Kogod School of Business.
Omar describes the current situation as a “perfect storm.” Adding that “there is no one single point in time where the delays or disruptions started, it just exacerbated significantly because the volume of disruption is much higher,” pointing to the disruptions in multiple fronts, including the current shortage of truck drivers, stocking up on products, and delays in the shipping industry.
“The worst thing for a supply chain manager is inconsistency, getting 10 units one day 100 units the other day, drives supply chain managers insane,” adding that stocking up is also hurting small businesses “because a business is now ordering more of a product, another business might not get their product, it’s just a big domino effect.”
The outlook for small businesses is improving after many were forced to close during the COVID surge last winter. According to a survey conducted by Facebook and Small Business Roundtable, 16% of small to medium businesses in the U.S. remained close in July 2021, down from 22% in February. However, the speed of supply has not improved during the reopening phase of COVID, according to Omar.
“The infrastructure is at its breaking point, in terms of being able to deal with demand and distribution of supply,” said Omar. “The massive amount of demand that has shot up over the last five to 10 years, capacity has not kept up.”
Omar said he is optimistic about the short-term solution put forward by the Biden administration but added that in the long term, the answer could be “a partnership between private and public sectors” to share supply chain information to pinpoint the issue early on.
Karen Keating, president and CEO of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, said the issues have been ongoing since the beginning of the pandemic. However, she said small businesses are trying to be proactive to stay competitive.
“Small businesses may have less sophisticated purchasing options, but they do have more flexibility due to their size,” Keating said. She added that small businesses “communicate with customers and clients about the situation” and “stay in contact with their customers about possible disruptions and delays in their products and services” to keep up with current issues.
Kandace Loge, who owns Pidcock Glass, a four-employee business in Nelsonville, Ohio, said she has had trouble finding screen metal, an essential part of her work, since May, saying she’s often had to wait several months before being delivered her orders.
Loge, who has managed the company for almost 20 years, said her solution has been to be upfront with her customers.
“You have to be very honest with your customer; when they know that you are honest, they are usually very nice about it,” said Loge.
Loge has changed her supplier, which has also meant a change in product sizes and changes to the company’s usual workflow and equipment.
“I am now starting to adjust our budget and change the pricing on products,” said Loge.
For many business owners, the concern remains the same: Will they be able to find the products they need, and will it affect their cost of production?
Plemons said he has the same thought every time he goes shopping for his business: “What am I not going to be able to find today?”
(GEORGIA) — One person is dead and seven others injured after a shooting at an off-campus party near a Georgia university.
The incident occurred early Saturday morning in Fort Valley, near Fort Valley State University, authorities said.
Several students suffered non-life-threatening injuries, the university said.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which is investigating the shooting, shared a photo from the “active scene” on Twitter Saturday morning, showing a house located several blocks from the campus.
GBI also confirmed the deceased was not a Fort Valley State University student, though did not share further details.
The university’s campus was temporarily placed on lockdown “until campus police determined there was no threat to the campus community,” school officials said.
The lockdown has since been lifted.
The shooting occurred during the state university’s homecoming weekend.
School officials announced that its Saturday morning alumni breakfast and homecoming parade had been canceled. There will be “increased security protocols” at the homecoming game, scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday, it said.
“Our thoughts are with the students and their families as they recover,” the university said.
(LONDON) — Flanked by public health officials, the U.K. Health Secretary painted a bleak picture of the current state of the pandemic in Britain.
“Cases are rising,” Sajid Javid, told the nation this week. “And they could go yet as high as 100,000 a day. We’re also seeing greater pressure on the NHS (National Health Service) across the U.K. We’re now approaching 1,000 hospitalizations per day.”
Yet, despite growing calls from doctors’ associations and scientists across the U.K. — Javid resisted calls to introduce mandated prevention measures, such as mask wearing, which were dropped in England in July.
On Friday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson doubled down on that message, stressing the way forward was for as many eligible people as possible to take booster jabs, a rollout that experts warned is lagging behind demand.
Since July, when virtually all social distancing restrictions were relaxed in England, cases and hospitalizations have steadily increased, though at a rate far lower than previous waves of infections when the population did not have access to vaccines.
This week, the U.K. posted a worrying set of figures.
On Tuesday, the government recorded 223 COVID deaths, the highest since March.
The last time the country recorded less than 20,000 daily cases was July — and this week the latest weekly average stands at over 47,000 daily cases. Deaths, hospitalizations and cases are increasing week over week.
Just under 80% of the population over age 12 have received two doses of coronavirus vaccine, but the evidence suggests that the effectiveness wanes over time, and the U.K. has been slower to vaccinate children than other countries. Rising cases have been linked to the resumption of the school year, where children are not formally required to wear masks and self-isolation rules around COVID-positive schoolchildren have been relaxed.
The booster program, which Israeli officials credit as proving crucial in Israel’s success in getting infections under control this summer, has not been as effective as the first wave of vaccinations, he said. An estimated 5 million people have taken their boosters, but around half of all people eligible are yet to take up the call for a third shot of vaccine, according to a report in the Financial Times.
“The vaccine program has really fallen flat,” according to Professor Tim Spector, an epidemiologist and the lead investigator of the ZOE Covid Symptom app, which tracks coronavirus infections in the U.K “It’s peaked at around 66%, 67% [across the total population] and is hardly moving. And we know now we didn’t know then that that’s not enough. And I think we’re very much back to where we were in March 2020, in some ways.”
U.K. government data still shows that the mortality and hospitalization rates among unvaccinated people are still far higher than the vaccinated.
According to reports in the British media, the government does have a ‘Plan B’ over the winter, which would include reintroducing working from home, mask mandates and potential vaccine passports in nightclubs. “It remains the case we would only look to use that if the pressure on the NHS was looking to become unsustainable,” the prime minister’s spokesperson said in a statement to ABC News this week.
This week, the British Medical Association, a doctors’ trade union, described the government’s approach as “willfully negligent,” while the NHS Confederation has called for new measures to avoid “stumbling into winter crisis.”
Yet Prime Minister Johnson has held out so far against mandating restrictions, and has instead placed greater emphasis on vaccine boosters and the procurement of antiviral drugs. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have different rules than England, with Scotland, for example, mandating mask use and vaccine passports for nightclubs — policies that are part of Johnson’s yet-to-be-implemented ‘Plan B.’ Health Secretary Javid, while acknowledging there was significant pressure on the National Health Service, said the level was not yet “unsustainable.”
Complacency due to the success of the early vaccine rollout, as well as poor public health messaging, has contributed to the recent rise in cases, according to Spector.
“There’s been a total absence of public education, no reiteration of [changes in] symptoms [with the delta variant], no ideas about how to stop spreading it in schools,” he said. “You know, there’s no prevention. There’s no concept of prevention.”
In mid-July, polling from the Office of National Statistics reported that 63% of adults always or often maintained social distancing, but the same body reported that only 39% of adults were doing so in mid-October.
In terms of infections, the U.K. is now far outpacing other countries in Western and Central Europe. In its weekly epidemiological update, the World Health Organization reported that Europe is the only region where coronavirus infections are rising, by 7% over the past seven days, driven by infection rates in the U.K., Russia and Turkey.
Despite the growing concern, the health service is not yet overwhelmed by an influx of coronavirus patients.
“No, we’re not there, we’re not there yet,” Spector said. “But the point is that everyone scientifically, medically, is seeing these curves going up and inevitably these things get worse as you hit winter, and you hit other respiratory infections.”
According to the government’s latest seven-day average, 937 patients per day were hospitalized with COVID, with just over 8,000 currently receiving treatment. In January, meanwhile, prior to the vaccine rollout, daily hospitalizations peaked at over 4,000, while the highest number of patients in hospital reached over 39,000.
Instead, doctors and scientists are warning that with infections rising, there is potential for COVID to add to the winter burdens of an already stretched health service that has faced pressures even in pre-pandemic times.
“This time it genuinely does feel different,” Siva Anandaciva, the chief analyst at the King’s Fund, an independent health think tank, told ABC News. “I think that’s because there are a lot of familiar pressures that you always have … you’ve got the steady ticking up of winter viruses.”
Part of the pressure, he said, is the resumption of ordinary care for the massive backlog of patients waiting to be seen in hospitals, that has built up since the pandemic began. 5.7 million people in the U.K., almost 10% of the population, are on waiting lists for planned routine care, and in a worst case scenario this number could rise up to 14 million, Anandaciva said.
“COVID’s almost like an accelerant on a fire,” he said. “The NHS has always struggled over the winter, and these are pressures that are spread more wildly… It is a problem with COVID, but more fundamentally some of the demand for care coming back after a pause in services and also crucially some of the resourcing issues that have long plagued the NHS. Not having enough staff, not having enough resources.”
Facing pressure this winter, the government has announced new funding for the NHS, but it could be years before the health service begins to function at pre-pandemic levels, according to Anandaciva.
Spector was once critical of the government’s approach for “underreacting, then overreacting” to the pandemic with successive lockdowns, but now says he now doesn’t understand some of the inaction.
“It’s complacency to think that this, you know, this isn’t going to get worse,” he said. “I haven’t heard of anyone who says it’s going to get better next week. So that’s why I can’t understand why introducing some simple measures that don’t cost the economy anything, only have a political cost can’t be implemented.”
(KYIV, Ukraine) — It doesn’t take long to buy a fake COVID-19 vaccine certificate in Ukraine. Just typing the words into Google brings up a slew of advertisements offering a certificate “without visiting a doctor.”
A would-be customer sends their passport details, address and a phone number through the Telegram messenger app, and the next day, a document showing fake proof of vaccination with Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine arrives in the post, according to several people who have bought one of the fake certificates, and who spoke to ABC News on condition of anonymity because the practice is illegal. They said prices for the certificates can vary anywhere from $20 to $200 (USD) with some fetching as much as $380.
The COVID vaccination certificate black market is becoming a growing concern in Ukraine, which is suffering from a worsening third wave of the pandemic amid low vaccination numbers and as the government tries to impose restrictions on the unvaccinated. The number of people who have already bought fake certificates is unknown, but some Telegram app channel advertising them have thousands of subscribers.
Svitlana is one of them. She said she bought a fake certificate in September showing she was inoculated with Pfizer/BionTech’s vaccine.
“I don’t trust neither vaccines nor the government,” she told ABC News, explaining her decision and declining to give her last name.
The demand for fake vaccine certificates exists despite the ease of getting a free COVID vaccine in Ukraine. As of late September there are over 11 million doses of different coronavirus vaccines in Ukraine now for a population of 44.1 million, according to Ukraine’s health ministry. The vaccine is free for all Ukrainians and in Kyiv, walk-in vaccination centers are even open in some shopping malls.
But despite the availability of vaccines, Ukraine is among one of the least vaccinated countries in Europe, with only around 30.2% of the population having received one dose and 14.7% fully vaccinated, according to a vaccine tracker published by Bloomberg. In late September the health minister Viktor Lyashko said 34,000 doses of Pfizer would be dumped because they had expired.
The low numbers are the product of widespread vaccine hesitancy among Ukrainians: 56% don’t plan to get vaccinated at all, according to a poll from the Ilko Kucheriv Foundation, a well-known independent think tank that conducts sociological studies.
“We observe this trend globally, however in Ukraine, misinformation about vaccination is extremely politicized and is spread both among the general public and the medical community,” Murat Shahin, head of the UNICEF office in Ukraine told ABC News this month.
Another problem is lack of quality medical education on vaccination which leads to incorrect practices and confuses patients, Shahin said.
“We also observe a suboptimal level of trust to state institutions,” he said. “Meanwhile, people trust their relatives, local leaders and their doctors and nurses.”
Some of the social media channels offering fake vaccine certificates are part of that ecosystem pushing anti-vaccine sentiment, sharing anti-vax information and news stories, while urging people to buy fake certificates to avoid getting the shot.
According to the same Ilko Kucheriv Foundation poll, some are reluctant because they are not sure about the safety of the vaccines. Some of those who spoke to ABC News said they resist just because they are forced to vaccinate.
There is no mandatory vaccination in Ukraine, except for teachers and civil servants, meaning there is little pressure to vaccinate. But some companies are pressing their employees to vaccinate, threatening to cut salaries or reduce vacation days.
And a vaccine certificate is necessary to travel. Ukraine has created its own digital certificate in an app, called Diya (“Action”) that is valid in EU countries.
Wanting to go abroad, some Ukrainians are refusing the free shot of the real vaccine and instead are paying money for a fake certificate. On a site listing the phone number of one seller, users reviewed the service.
“We’ve just crossed the border in Rava Russka [in Poland], our border service scanned the certificate and let us go without any problems,” one wrote. “I took it to Germany. All worked,” another said.
Some services provide paper certificates. A fake official stamp is applied using the real names of doctors and clinics, based on samples posted by some of the Telegram channels offering them.
Getting the digital proof of vaccination without being vaccinated is more difficult. It is still possible for a bribe, according to some people ABC News talked to on condition of anonymity.
Some Ukrainians are simply paying doctors to sign off on their digital vaccine certificates, by entering them as vaccinated in Ukraine’s state vaccination register. After that, a digital certificate appears in the official Diya app, which is also valid in the EU.
Oleksiy Vyskyb, Ukraine’s deputy minister for digital transformation, told ABC News that some doctors were charging a fee to falsely enter people’s name into the state register showing vaccinated citizens.
One of the sellers confirmed that in a Telegram chat with an ABC reporter posing as a potential customer. ABC News did not actually purchase a fake certificate.
“We put the data into the register,” a person who identified themselves as a support manager responded when asked by the reporter how it would work.
Another channel said that the clinic where the false vaccination happens “dumps” two real doses of Pfizer and VaxZevria after pretending the client has received them.. They also offer “to save” these doses for the client to be vaccinated later if they change their mind before the vaccine expires two months later. Both options cost around $60.
According to some advertisements you can get a forged vaccination certificate even if you’re a foreigner. It will cost a bit more than for a Ukrainian citizen — $380 if you’re abroad, according to one ad.
Besides becoming part of a dangerous invisible pool of unvaccinated people that undermine restrictions and spread infection, those buying fake certificates may be unable to get a real shot later on since they are already recorded as having received one in the state registry, Shahin said.
Ukraine’s authorities say they are now trying to crackdown on the practice. Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, together with the country’s cyberpolice, said they have opened nearly 500 criminal proceedings relating to the selling of forged paper vaccination certificates and that more than 50 web resources have been blocked. So far, only three cases have been opened against doctors for allegedly entering false information into the register. Those detained face up to six years in prison. But government says it wants to increase the punishment.
This week, Ukraine imposed a full lockdown in four regions as Ukraine’s daily numbers continue to worsen, recently hitting its highest level since the country’s second wave in the spring. Ukrainian authorities reported 22,415 new confirmed infections and 546 deaths in the past 24 hours, the highest numbers since the start of the pandemic. Most experts also believe the real number of cases and deaths are likely higher, since not all are recorded with testing.
“People who use fake certificates create a dangerous space for others,” Maria Karchevych, Ukraine’s deputy health minister said at a press conference in Kyiv last week.
She said the fake COVID vaccine certificate industry also threatens Ukraine’s international image since Ukraine was among the first non-European Union countries to have its national vaccine pass recognized by the EU for travel.
“EU countries expect transparency and honesty in using such documents,” she said.
(MICHIGAN) — “Attack the grade here. Now mash the brake and modulate the throttle,” Al Oppenheiser, the chief engineer of GMC’s Hummer EV, guided me as I carefully steered the 9,000-lb. truck up a steep, rocky incline.
Oppenheiser and I were driving an early prototype of the $112,595 pickup truck along a course designed to test its on-road and off-road capabilities at General Motors’ proving grounds in Milford, Michigan.
Oppenheiser, a longtime GM employee and former chief engineer of the Camaro, dedicated nearly three years to building the all-electric Hummer. The leviathan conquers off-roading meccas, nimbly handles tight corners and illustrates how internal combustion engines are relics of the past.
Customer deliveries of the Hummer EV Edition 1 begin in December. First-year production is completely sold out though a GM spokesperson declined to say how many are being built. The next Hummer EV, a sport utility vehicle, launches in the first quarter of 2023.
The Hummer EV, which debuted a year ago, already has formidable competition in the red-hot EV truck market: Tesla’s Cybertruck, Rivian’s R1T, the Ford F-150 Lightning, the Fisker Alaska, Bollinger’s B1 and B2. In January, GM will also introduce an all-electric Sierra pickup truck, built with the same Ultium battery-pack technology as in the Hummer. Seeing GM and Ford workers pull up to production plants in brawny diesel and V8-powered trucks motivated Oppenheiser to develop a hardcore electric pickup.
“I would ask myself, ‘Why would these people buy an electric truck?'” Oppenheiser said. “A truck is a truck in our opinion. The off-roading world has been waiting to see what EV trucks can do.”
GM has invested billions in its third-generation EV platform and is targeting annual global EV sales of more than 1 million by 2025. Battery cells will be mass-produced at a $2.3 billion plant GM is building with its partner LG Chem in Lordstown, Ohio. The Ultium system could offer driving ranges of up to 400 miles on a full charge and 0 to 60 mph acceleration of 3.0 seconds, according to the Detroit automaker.
The Hummer EV gets an estimated range of 350 miles and the truck’s three electric motors make 1,000 horsepower and 11,500 lb-ft of torque. Top speed is 106 mph.
“You’re buying this vehicle for lots of reasons. One of them is 1,000 hp,” Oppenheiser said.
It took engineers 117 weeks to complete the development of the Hummer EV.
Ed Kim, an analyst and vice president at AutoPacific, has his doubts that traditional, die-hard truck owners are ready to shift to EVs. Power and torque — key features on any EV — matter greatly to this core group of buyers but, he argued, truck owners can be averse to change.
“The Hummer won’t have [Ford] F-Series volume here,” he told ABC News, referring to the top-selling truck in the U.S. for 44 straight years. “But GM does not have to sell a ton of Hummers for it to be a success. There are plenty of people out there ready to pay six figures for a high-image vehicle.”
He went on, “Every automaker has decided there is gold to be found in electric trucks. We’re seeing a saturation in truck EV space … there are too many too soon in the short term.”
AutoPacific forecasts U.S. EV sales to total 440,000 units this year, up from 262,000 in 2020 and 253,000 in 2019. That number will keep rising as consumers realize EVs are not disruptive to their daily habits, Kim said.
“Every year we see range going up, better performance … there is a rapid level of learning among automakers,” he noted. “We’ll still see battery hiccups here and there. Everyone is having growing pains. Battery chemistry is new to automakers and engineers are still figuring it out.”
GM’s engineering teams, seeking to maximum power and range in upcoming EVs, are hard at work on the next iteration of cell chemistries, according to Kevin Robinet, assistant chief engineer of GM’s battery electric propulsion systems.
“We’re already talking about battery improvements for mid-decade,” he told ABC News. “It’s an evolving tech. As energy density improves, batteries will weigh less and so will the vehicles.”
K.C. Colwell, Car and Driver’s deputy testing director, expects the Hummer to be a big part of GM’s ambitious EV product plan.
“This is a halo product for GMC and for the Ultium battery technology,” he told ABC News, adding, “GMC has not had a halo product since the Typhoon,” a high-performance SUV that GM produced from 1991 to 1993.
And the reborn Hummer, a shell of its boxy, gas-guzzling former self, may finally win over the environmentalists who once decried its hefty carbon footprint.
“It behaves more like a supercar than a pickup truck,” Colwell said. “GM is going after a completely different audience — the early adopters, the Tesla buyers.”
At the proving grounds, the Hummer EV tackled each drill with finesse, performing a full-turning circle (“You’d never be able to do this in a solid rear-axle truck,” Oppenheiser declared), maneuvering like a crab on dirt, slaloming through serpentine cones and accelerating instantaneously in “Watts to Freedom” launch control mode.
Getting Americans aboard the EV bandwagon will be a daunting task for legacy automakers like GM. But Oppenheiser, a “high-performance car guy” with over 2,000 hp in his garage, said the Hummer will convince others like himself that it’s possible.
(VIRGINIA) — With just over a week to go until the last day of voting in Virginia and New Jersey, former President Barack Obama is joining each state’s Democratic nominee for governor on the campaign trail Saturday, hoping to motivate the party’s base to turn out in their state’s off-year general elections.
Always held the year after a presidential election, the statewide and legislative races in both states are seen as bellwethers for the nation’s political landscape going into the midterms. A strong showing by Democrats could assuage party fears about 2022, but if Republicans make gains, it will serve as a warning shot for Democrats as they try to connect with voters in the post-Trump era.
Obama isn’t the first top surrogate to hit the trail with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who is hoping to secure Virginia’s top executive post for a second time after leaving office in 2018. First lady Jill Biden stumped with both Democrats last week, and Georgia’s Stacey Abrams and Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned with McAuliffe Sunday and Thursday, respectively.
“Let’s be clear about who this man is. He has the life experience, the professional experience, the experience in this state. … he walks his talk, he is a fighter,” Harris said of McAuliffe. “When you elect somebody or governor, you want to make sure you really know who they are. Well, we know who Terry is.”
Acknowledging how close the race is between McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin, she added, “We got to make it clear that we’re not taking anything for granted. You know, four years ago, there was a lot of folks who said, ‘Oh, if I don’t vote, everything will be alright. It wasn’t alright.”
McAuliffe also has an event planned with President Joe Biden in deep blue Arlington on Tuesday. While Biden and McAuliffe have been friends for over 40 years, the president hasn’t stumped with him since late July. Earlier this month, McAuliffe acknowledged Biden’s approval rating has taken a hit since then.
“We are facing a lot of headwinds from Washington, as you know. The president is unpopular today unfortunately here in Virginia, so we have got to plow through,” he said at a virtual rally.
Those headwinds appear to be hampering McAuliffe more than Murphy, according to public polling.
A September poll from Monmouth University showed Murphy with a 13-point lead over his Republican opponent, former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, among New Jersey registered voters. Ciattarelli has taken aim at Murphy’s handling of the COVID19 pandemic, arguing the Democrat’s policies have been too restrictive and the state’s economy has suffered for it. But according to Monmouth’s poll, half of registered voters have more trust in Murphy to handle the pandemic.
On the economy and taxes, issues that have been front and center in Ciattarelli’s campaign, the Republican fares better against Murphy.
In Virginia, however, the gubernatorial race is neck and neck. A Monmouth poll out Wednesday showed McAuliffe and Youngkin, a former private equity executive, tied among registered voters, and for the first time in the university’s polling of this race, Youngkin leads in one probabilistic likely electorate model.
