(WASHINGTON) — Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said Sunday that U.S. Central Command Gen. Kenneth McKenzie’s acknowledgement that the Aug. 29 drone strike near the Kabul airport was “a mistake” was the correct response.
“I thought what Gen. McKenzie did was right,” Mullen told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz.
Ten civilians were killed in the strike, which the U.S. believed was targeting a terrorist, but instead killed an aid worker, seven children and others in the area.
“We now assess that it is unlikely that the vehicle and those who died were associated with ISIS-Khorasan or were a direct threat to U.S. forces,” McKenzie said Friday.
“I offer my profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed,” he added.
“How can such a huge mistake happen?” Raddatz asked the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“We’ve done this for years … we’ve had drone strikes that were very effective over many years and didn’t kill any civilians and we’ve also had drone strikes which did,” Mullen said.
He added that the over-the-horizon-capability — or airstrikes that don’t require troops to be based in the country — is there, but the strike’s execution being in a “confused environment” contributed to the difficulty of the situation.
“And should there be accountability for this?” Raddatz asked Mullen.
“I absolutely think there should,” Mullen responded.
He also added that there should be accountability for the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, adding, “I hope that there is.”
Separately, Mullen also spoke about the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley in light of revelations in Washington Post journalists, Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s new book, “Peril.” According to the book, Milley secretly reached out to China‘s military leaders in the waning months of Donald Trump’s presidency and assured them that Trump would not attack to stay in office.
Mullen echoed other leaders who said that communicating “with counterparts around the world is routine” and he added that he was encouraged the line of communication with China remained open during the tumultuous time.
“There was a time when we had no communications with China, or we’d have a problem with China, they’d cut off all mil-to-mil connections,” Mullen said.
However, Mullen said that the reported assurance Milley gave to China that he would call them in the event of a strike, wasn’t routine, and on that point, he told Raddatz, “Yes, well, I’m hopeful that actually — that part of it isn’t true.”
Mullen said that he was more concerned China would be worried about a U.S. nuclear attack.
“It speaks to the need to have these open communications, so that we don’t miscalculate,” he said.
Milley reportedly went so far as to make sure he was alerted if Trump ever took steps to launch an attack on China. As a military adviser to the president, he’s otherwise outside of the chain of command.
Mullen cited the extra precaution as “fairly routine … for something this serious.”
Mullen also said that he sympathized with the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“I don’t know if anyone has been in a more difficult situation than Mark Milley,” Mullen said. “I know him well enough to know that he would really try to do the best thing for our country. And I think he did that.”
(SAN FRANCISCO) — Wildfires swirling around California’s giant sequoia trees are prompting more evacuations as they spread toward communities surrounding the forests.
Residents in Ponderosa and Quaking Aspen in Tulare County have been ordered to evacuate immediately now that the Windy Fire had fanned to more than 18,000 acres surrounding the Sequoia National Forest and was 0% contained on Sunday morning.
Other communities in Tulare County, such as Johnsondale and Camp Whitsett, had been ordered to evacuate several days earlier due to the Windy Fire, while the KNP Complex Fire, which is also threatening the historic sequoia forests, prompted evacuations in the Three Rivers community.
The KNP Complex Fire had grown to nearly 22,000 acres by Sunday morning and was also 0% contained.
Fire crews were seen earlier this week wrapping cabins and other structures in Sequoia National Forest in foil to protect them as the wildfires continue to spread. The historic trees are thousands of years old and grew to be hundreds of feet tall.
The sequoia trees are increasingly being threatened by drought, climate change and extreme fire.
Last year, the Castle Fire wiped out 10% of the world’s native sequoias, according to the National Park Service.
Firefighters faced high temperatures and dry conditions as they battled the blaze over the weekend, and the dangerous fire conditions are expected to continue in the region.
Parts of Sequoia National Forest and Sequoia National Park are closed to the public due to the fires.
ABC News’ Meredith Deliso contributed to this report.
(LAKE WORTH, TX.) — Two homes have been heavily damaged after a military training aircraft crashed in Lake Worth, Texas, according to the Fort Worth Fire Department.
Two to three patients are being treated at this time, fire officials said.
Additional details were not immediately available.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NORTH PORT, Fla.) — A search for Brian Laundrie, the boyfriend of 22-year-old Gabby Petito, resumed on Sunday in a 24,565-acre preserve in Florida as authorities more than 2,300 miles away combed Grand Teton National Park for clues on the whereabouts of the woman who went missing during the couple’s cross-country road trip.
North Port, Florida, police said a team of officers picked up the search for Laundrie in the Carlton Reserve north of Laundrie’s home in North Port. The search began on Saturday but was suspended overnight due to darkness.
“A team of more than 50 looking for anything of note after his (Laundrie’s) parents say this is where he went,” North Port police said in a post on Twitter Sunday morning.
Laundrie has been named by police as a “person of interest” in Petito’s disappearance. The 23-year-old Laundrie, who returned home more than two weeks ago without Petito and has refused to speak to the police, has not been seen since Tuesday, according to law enforcement officials.
“Be advised that the whereabouts of Brian Laundrie are currently unknown,” an attorney for the family said Friday. “The FBI is currently at the Laundrie residence removing property to assist in locating Brian. As of now the FBI is now looking for both Gabby and Brian.”
North Port police officers accompanied by FBI agents, drones, K-9 and bloodhounds are involved in the search for Laundrie, police said during a briefing Saturday afternoon. Authorities took clothing from the family home Friday to help canine units, North Port Police spokesperson Josh Taylor said.
A tip from the family drove law enforcement to the Carlton Reserve, Taylor said. Laundrie’s family told police on Friday that they last saw him on Tuesday with a backpack and he told them he was going to the massive preserve, which he would frequent for hikes, according to Taylor.
“Our goal is to get answers. We love to be able to find Gabby. And right now we need to find Brian, too. Not only is he missing, but he potentially holds some key information in helping us find Gabby,” Taylor told ABC News on Saturday night. “We have to locate him. We’re hopeful to bring him in because I think he does have some information that will really lead us to Gabby. And that is the primary objective, to find this little girl.”
In response to the news that Laundrie’s whereabouts were unknown, a lawyer for the Petito family said in a statement: “All of Gabby’s family want the world to know that Brian is not missing, he is hiding. Gabby is missing.”
The search for Laundrie is the latest twist in the case that has grabbed national attention as the couple had been traveling across the country since June in Petito’s 2012 Ford Transit and documenting the trip on social media. Laundrie returned home in Petito’s van to North Port, on Sept. 1 without his girlfriend, according to police.
Petito’s parents reported her missing on Sept. 11 after not speaking with her for two weeks.
As the search for Petito continues, FBI Denver said in an update Saturday evening that authorities are “conducting ground surveys” at the Spread Creek Dispersed Camping Area in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park. The FBI asked for anyone who saw the couple’s white van, with Florida license plate QFTG03, to contact the FBI.
The FBI specifically said it would like to talk to anyone who was at the Spread Creek Dispersed Camping Area from Aug. 27 to 30 and may have seen the couple or their van. The agency said it would not comment on the specifics of the information in its investigation.
North Port police were also forced to clear up a rumor about finding a body in the Carlton Reserve that spread on social media Saturday, saying it was “completely fake.”
Petito was last seen on Aug. 24 leaving a hotel room in Utah. The next day, she spoke to her mother, Nichole Schmidt, telling her that their next stops would be at Grand Teton and Yellowstone, Schmidt told ABC News.
Schmidt received two text messages from her daughter’s phone in the days after speaking to her, but it was unclear whether they were actually sent by Petito.
“Many people are wondering why Mr. Laundrie would not make a statement or speak with law enforcement in the face of Ms. Petito’s absence,” the attorney representing the Laundrie family, Steven P. Bertolino, said in a statement last week. “In my experience, intimate partners are often the first person law enforcement focuses their attention on in cases like this, and the warning that ‘any statement will be used against you’ is true, regardless of whether my client had anything to do with Ms. Petito’s disappearance. As such, on the advice of counsel, Mr. Laundrie is not speaking on this matter.”
The North Port Police Department said Friday afternoon it had entered the family’s home, where Brian was believed to be staying, to speak with the family “at their request.”
The police later tweeted Friday, “The conversation at the Laundrie home is complete. Once we have the details, a statement will be made. We ask for calm! Please let us work through this and information will be forthcoming.”
It was after that tweet that the family lawyer released the statement saying the location of Brian Laundrie was unknown.
“We’ve been trying to reach the family all week. This is the first time we’ve had communication with them, and now they’re telling us that he’s been gone for essentially the last four days,” Taylor said in an interview with “Good Morning America” Saturday.
Laundrie’s family told police about where he went after becoming “concerned about his whereabouts” and wanted to file a missing person’s report, Taylor told reporters Saturday.
Laundrie’s car was at the Carlton Reserve but then found again at the family’s home, police said. When pressed by reporters as to how the car would have gotten back without a sign of Laundrie, Taylor said, “We are going by [the family’s] word.”
People had gathered outside the Laundrie home throughout the day Friday, some with bullhorns, chanting “Where is Gabby?” and calling on Brian Laundrie or the family to talk to authorities. Those people were moved from the lawn to the sidewalk as they chanted toward the house.
Brian’s sister, Cassandra Laundrie, spoke to ABC News on Thursday night, saying she had spoken to police about Petito’s disappearance but was mostly learning details from the news.
“Obviously, me and my family want Gabby to be found safe,” she said. “She is like a sister and my children love her, and all I want is for her to come home safe and sound and this be just a big misunderstanding.”
The Grand County Sheriff’s Office in Moab, Utah, said last week that Petito and Laundrie did not appear to be connected to the murders of two women at a campground in mid-August. The sheriff’s office said on Thursday it had been in contact with Florida authorities about investigating a possible connection to the double murder.
The two women were last seen leaving a bar on Aug. 13, one day after authorities were called about a disagreement between Petito and Laundrie while they were traveling in Moab.
The couple’s white van had been pulled over after a witness called police about an altercation between the two at the Arches National Park. Moab police released body camera footage of the couple admitting they had been arguing and that Petito had slapped Laundrie, according to a police report. The couple told police that Laundrie had not hit Petito.
There was “insufficient evidence existed to justify criminal charges,” Moab Police Department Chief Bret Edge said in a statement Tuesday.
ABC News’ Alondra Valle, Julia Jacobo, Joshua Hoyos and Matt Foster contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — After the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory panel rejected a plan on Friday to offer Pfizer COVID-19 booster shots for all Americans, White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci defended the White House’s earlier plan to begin rolling out the shots this month.
“The plan was that we have to be ready to do this as soon as the decision is made and when you have a plan, you put a date on it and you say we want to be able to get ready to roll out on the week of September the 20th,” Fauci said Sunday. “So giving that date, I don’t think was confusing. We needed a date to be able to say, let’s get ready to roll this out, pending the decision of the deliberation by the FDA and ultimately the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).”
ABC “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz pressed Fauci on whether the White House’s premature announcement created any confusion.
“You yourself have said how important consistency and messaging can be, and you mentioned earlier President Biden talked about planning for a September 20th rollout for all Americans. I know he said ‘planning,’ I know he said it depends on the FDA, but isn’t a timeline like that just confusing to people?” Raddatz asked.
“These are the kinds of things that when you make a decision, you don’t snap your finger and it gets rolled out the next day and that’s, I think, the thing that the people in the United States need to understand,” he responded.
The panel did suggest that extra Pfizer shots should be given to those 65 and older or those at high risk of severe COVID-19. The panel also said it supports giving boosters to health care and other front-line workers, including teachers. A final decision is expected within days.
Additional vaccine doses, although not quite a booster, had already been approved by the CDC for the roughly 7 million immunocompromised Americans who didn’t have an optimal response to the first round of mRNA vaccines.
Fauci said on Sunday that in three to four weeks — as more data from Israel and the U.S. emerge — the FDA advisory panel will continue to reexamine and modify recommendations for boosters.
“The story is not over because more and more data is coming in and will be coming in,” Fauci said.
He also said data on potential booster shots from Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines is only “a couple of weeks away” and that the information will be examined in the same manner as Pfizer’s data.
COVID-19 cases in the U.S. continue to soar. The country has reported more than 1.02 million cases over the last week and the U.S. recorded more than 10,000 confirmed COVID-19 related deaths in one week, according to federal data.
With many students back in the classroom in person, pediatric COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations remain at one of their highest points of the pandemic and Raddatz asked Fauci when a vaccine might be available for children.
“It will certainly be this fall,” Fauci responded. “What we’re going to almost certainly see is that sometime in the next few weeks — as we get into October — we’ll be able to see the vaccines for children get enough data to be presented for safety and immunogenicity.”
“But in the fall, you know, rather than specifically saying what week, sometime in the mid- to late-fall, we will be seeing enough data from the children from 11 down to 5 to be able to make a decision to vaccinate them,” Fauci added.
(SUNLAND PARK, N.M.) — Each year on the last Sunday of October thousands of worshipers take a pilgrimage to Mount Cristo Rey — a mountain located in Sunland Park, New Mexico, that overlooks El Paso, Texas, the border wall, the United States and Mexico.
At the mountain’s peak is a magnificent 29-foot limestone statue of Jesus Christ — a monument erected in 1934 that has become a shrine for the faithful. And for decades, thousands of believers have climbed the steep and rugged terrain to ask for a miracle.
Rebecca Escarciga Lehman is one of them.
Lehman was born and raised in California, but her parents are from El Paso. As a child, she spent her summers there and was very close to her family, particularly to her aunt Esperanza Salas Escandon or as she called her “Tia Guera.”
“She provided guidance and support in the years following my own mother’s serious illness and continued through my late teens and young adulthood. She had encouraged me to participate in the Mount Cristo Rey pilgrimage … to strengthen my faith, to pray for God’s guidance and blessings for our families,” Lehman said.
But before Lehman made arrangements to go on a pilgrimage to Mount Cristo Rey, her aunt got seriously ill.
“When I visited her in the hospital, she was not clinically awake, but I promised her that I would go to the mountain in her honor,” Lehman said.
“Lord, take care of her, you know what’s best. We want her here. But don’t let her suffer,” she said, recalling her prayers at the time. “I said I will be going to Mount Cristo Rey as she requested from here on forward.”
Tia Guera died shortly after but for the past twenty years, Lehman has been making the pilgrimage to Cristo Rey each year — only missing the trip when she was pregnant and in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic led to the cancellation of the annual event.
“I pray the rosary on my way up,” she said, adding that the climb down the mountain is a time to catch up with family members who accompany her.
For Lehman, El Paso has become her spiritual anchor and the pilgrimage is about renewing her faith and being there for family.
Her cousin Ruben Escandon, the son of Tia Guera, has been visiting Cristo Rey since he was a child and his grandparents on both sides of his family helped develop Mount Cristo Rey.
According to Escandon, the monument was inspired by Fr. Lourdes Costa, a local parish priest in El Paso’s Smeltertown, who had a vision of erecting a monument to Christ in 1933 as he looked out his back window. Initially, a wooden cross was erected, but Costa commissioned a friend, sculptor Urbici Soler, to create it.
The statue was completed by 1939 and since then, the monument and the hike trail have been maintained by volunteers – local El Pasoans whose family history is connected to the story of Cristo Rey.
“[When you climb up the mountain] you start thinking about the people that built it, the people that volunteered their hard work and labor back in the thirties and, and the people that have maintained it up until this point,” Escandon said.
Escandon’s grandparents grew up in Smeltertown, a former residential community in El Paso, where hundreds of volunteers carried supplies up the mountain to build the statue’s base and labored for years to build the road that made it possible to place the statue of Christ at the mountain’s peak.
Escandon is a third-generation volunteer and is the spokesman for the Mount Cristo Rey Restoration Committee — an organization that works to maintain and preserve the statue of Christ, which is often vandalized, as well as the trail that leads to it.
“It’s a jewel … a spiritual beacon that draws people here from pretty much all over the country,” he said.
He regularly leads groups up the mountain, organizes the annual pilgrimage, which has drawn up to 20,000 participants, and welcomes visitors from around the country, including Lehman who makes the trip from California to El Paso to spend time with family and keep her promise to Tia Guera.
And according to Lehman, although you can see the border wall from Mount Cristo Rey, when you look up the landscape blends together and you can no longer see where Mexico begins and where the U.S ends.
“As you’re walking, you feel, you see the elevation physically … it feels like you’re lifting yourself up above the earth and the worldly issues and the problems,” Rebecca Escarciga Lehman said.
“All the garbage and stuff and the political things and everything that’s going on, and everybody being so different, you’re up here and it’s gone,” she added. “For me, each rise kind of felt like all that stuff is going further away and I’m realizing what is really at the core of importance, which is faith and family, community, no matter who you are.”
ABC News’ James Scholz contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — When Dr. Keila Rodriguez comes home, her 3-year-old daughter knows she has to wait to hug her mom.
“After the pandemic started, I would tell her, ‘You can’t hug mom right now, I have to shower and I have to change because I was around sick people all day and I don’t want to get you sick,” the Texas pediatrician told ABC News. “She knows now — I come home and she says, ‘Mom, how are you? I’m so happy to see you.’ But she’ll stay far away and she’ll say, ‘Go shower and change because I want hugs.”
Rodriguez’s hometown of McAllen, in the Rio Grande Valley, was especially hard-hit by COVID-19. Multiple people in her father’s family died from the virus, she said.
“It quickly became personal for everybody in the community,” she said. “Almost everybody knew somebody who had been very, very sick or died.”
Just as the family started to regain a sense of normalcy, the delta variant surged.
In recent weeks, record numbers of COVID-19 cases in children have been reported and pediatric intensive care units in parts of the country are reaching levels not seen before during the pandemic — just as children are heading back to the classroom.
Rodriguez, like many pediatricians across the country, is worried and overwhelmed, and trying not to get angry.
The pediatricians with children ABC News spoke to said they have fears about the current surge not only for patients but their families, especially as other communicable diseases spread. And they are using their platforms to try to get out the word about vaccination and mitigation.
“It’s such a difficult time emotionally, mentally, physically,” Rodriguez said.
Record cases in children
COVID-19 cases in children are at record levels. There were over 243,000 pediatric cases reported between Sept. 2 and Sept. 9, the second-highest figure reported during the pandemic, according to the most recent report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. The highest number of weekly cases was reported the prior week, topping 251,000, according to the organizations. Hospitalizations have also soared.
“When you tell a parent their child is positive for COVID, you see the fear in their eyes,” Dr. David Reeves, a pediatrician for Memorial Hospital at Gulfport in Gulfport, Mississippi, told ABC News. “Luckily, most children are not that ill with it, but we’re certainly seeing more severe illness with the delta wave.”
Still, children continue to be at lower risk for getting seriously ill or dying from COVID-19, a recent U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found, noting that an increase in pediatric hospitalizations this summer has coincided with the rampant spread of the virus. The CDC said it could not determine with the available data whether the rise in hospitalizations was due to an increase in COVID-19 transmission or any greater illness caused by delta.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Associations have warned there is an urgent need to collect more data on the long-term consequences of the pandemic on children, “including ways the virus may harm the long-term physical health of infected children, as well as its emotional and mental health effects.”
‘Worse place than we were last year’
Dr. Rebekah Diamond has cared for children hospitalized with COVID-19, and then multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C, since the start of the pandemic as a hospital pediatrician at Columbia University / NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in New York City. She’s also seen the impacts on children’s mental health and loss of social supports tied to the pandemic.
“There’s a lot of talk about if COVID is bad for kids, which I just think is kind of an unhelpful and kind of really frustrating question because we know COVID is bad for kids. We know the pandemic is bad for kids,” she told ABC News.
Diamond, who has a 3-year-old daughter, said she felt a “huge amount of anxiety” caring for COVID-19 patients at the beginning of the pandemic, worried she might bring the virus home or spread it to her family.
“Navigating this pandemic, as a doctor, as a parent, I haven’t met a single doctor who has said, Yeah, it’s been a breeze,” Diamond said. “I certainly haven’t met a single parent, who, especially at this point, isn’t feeling some level of just extreme fatigue or stress or burnout, or just a variety of emotions — anger, grief, anxiety, it’s all there. And I would say, I’m right there with everyone.”
As COVID-19 cases have risen across the country due to the highly transmissible delta variant, the past few weeks “have been so destablizing,” Diamond said.
“It feels like we’re in almost a worse place than we were last year with our kids,” she said.
Navigating childcare continues to be especially fraught. Diamond said it is “really breaking my heart as a parent and the pediatrician” as parents continue to navigate difficult choices during the pandemic around childcare and school.
“It feels like we can’t control everything, but the degree to which we are having this crisis right now is largely preventable,” she said. “And I just know that parents feel totally let down. I can’t blame them.”
More concerned ‘than ever’
Dr. Katherine King, a pediatric infectious disease physician scientist who works at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, Texas, has seen cases surge in her area, just as she was preparing for the new school year.
“I have to say that I’m more concerned about the situation now than I ever have been because the rates of infection in our community are higher than ever,” she told ABC News.
King said she has done “everything we can to try to limit exposures.” She pulled her 8-year-old daughter out of summer camp as COVID-19 cases were increasing in the community and masking and social distancing practices were subpar. Instead of a big party for her daughter’s birthday this summer, they had something small in their backyard.
But two weeks before the start of school, her daughter was exposed after a fully vaccinated neighbor tested positive, King said.
“I went through the whole concern and worry that she might test positive and would she be able to start school on time,” said King, noting that her daughter ultimately tested negative twice.
“I felt like I was really going through it with everyone else in terms of all the anxiety about the many exposures that are happening in the community right now and all the concerns we have about whether our kids can be in school,” she said.
The worries have only continued since school started amid a delta surge in Houston. On the second day of school, King got an email from her daughter’s school that someone in the class had been exposed to COVID-19, who ultimately tested negative. On a recent Friday, the school sent students home with a go-bag in case they weren’t able to return the following Monday.
By two weeks into the school year, King had already heard of two nearby schools needing to shift to remote due to COVID-19 cases.
“Unfortunately I think we’re in this place right now where there’s so many cases and so many contacts that it’s becoming really impractical for the schools to stay open, and particularly in the areas of town where masking has not been made a requirement,” she said.
Since the week ending Aug. 8, there have been over 126,000 COVID-19 cases in students reported from Texas public schools — including over 40,000 during the week ending Sept. 5.
“I am expecting that this school year we’re going to have more disruptions than we did last,” King said. “So as a parent, this means that we’re constantly kind of on edge.”
Using their platforms
Rodriguez, King and Diamond have been using their platforms as pediatricians to help educate and inform people during the pandemic and push back against misinformation.
Rodriguez published a children’s book last year, “When the World is Sick: A Story About Staying Safe and the Coronavirus,” about talking to children about COVID-19 and how to stay safe, and plans to write more books.
“It fills my cup, the way people say about things that fulfill them,” she said. “It just really makes me happy and fulfilled to help the community.”
Both Rodriguez and Diamond have taken to Instagram to engage with parents and their questions throughout the pandemic.
“It’s been really gratifying for me to put myself out there and show parents that as pediatricians, we really do know what you’re going through,” said Diamond, who has a forthcoming book, “Parent Like A Pediatrician.” “Not everyone’s struggles are the same, but we’ve seen you throughout this pandemic, I’ve seen parents throughout this pandemic, and I think what it does is it just makes me feel all the more protective and even angry on behalf of parents because I’ve seen that journey, not just for me, since last March.”
King has advocated for vaccination to reduce transmission and prevent prolonged illness related to COVID-19 infection. She plans to have her daughter vaccinated as soon as she is eligible.
“I was one of first to get the vaccine myself, and I hope my daughter will be one of the first children to get it when it becomes available,” King said, noting that that could come before the end of the year. “We will be eager to have her vaccinated as soon as we can. We can see the direct effects of vaccination, ZIP code by ZIP code in the United States.”
Masking mandates have become a lightning rod issue this school year. Though mask use is crucial to prevent the spread of the virus, particularly for those still too young to get the vaccine, the doctors said.
“The only thing that will traumatize kids about masks for the next few months is continuing to make it a debate conversation, when the conversation really should be — what kind of safety and support are we giving children for the next few months so that they feel safe in home, they feel safe in school, they feel that if they get COVID they will do well, that will keep the hospitals open and staffed appropriately,” Diamond said. “The things you can control are how you frame your own peace of mind and your own comfort and safety and how you model all of this to your kids.”
King urges people to “buckle down again” amid surging COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, to which she has a front-row seat.
“It’s so hard to sometimes really incorporate statistics and numbers into our lives and really feel what that means, but it’s really easy for me because I go to work every day and I can see with my own eyes what coronavirus can do to a child and the impact it can have on a family,” she said. “So it’s very clear to me how valuable it is to try to control this virus and to try to avoid it.”
ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos contributed to this report.
(LOS ANGELES) — Efforts to combat misinformation intensified on Twitter during the days leading up to Tuesday’s recall election to replace California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who appears to have retained his gubernatorial seat, according to an ABC News projection of the election results.
Since the 2020 presidential election, there’s been more awareness of the damaging effects of the spread of misinformation on social media with fears that increasing numbers of people are engaging with false content.
The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, which provides record management and election services, said it took to Twitter to counter misleading information and provide context to viral posts leading up to the recall election. The department said it also used Twitter to clear up confusion over casting ballots, ballot status and the color of ballot boxes.
For example: in response to a viral photo reposted on Twitter showing an election worker wearing a “Trump 2020” hat and shirt, the department clarified on Tuesday that the person was later contacted and was “no longer working at the vote center.” The photo racked up more than 34,000 likes and more than 8,000 retweets by Thursday, according to statistics on the post, with some Twitter users debating the legality of an election worker wearing political clothing.
The department’s response also garnered notable engagement on Twitter and was referenced by other users, further spreading the update that the department removed the worker.
Mike Sanchez, spokesperson for the LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, said the worker broke the department’s internal policy requiring nonpartisan clothing for employees, adding that the worker was released after he refused to change.
First Draft director Claire Wardle said the department’s Twitter activity was “a very good sign” that organizations are making an effort to combat misinformation, even before it goes viral.
First Draft is an organization that describes itself as working to “protect communities from harmful misinformation” through knowledge, research and training.
Wardle said the department took an approach known as “prebunking,” which includes correcting false claims, answering questions early on and providing explanations.
“All of that is helping people get a much better sense about what to trust and what not to trust,” Wardle said.
Wardle said an important part of the process is to give context to posts that may not be fake, but could still be misleading and damaging.
On the weekend before the recall election, the department said it fielded numerous questions after an “equipment issue” reportedly caused some voters to have trouble casting their ballots.
Throughout the weekend, the department posted on Twitter that voters who encountered the issue were given provisional ballots and that the equipment was replaced. The department’s repeated reinforcement of accurate information may have helped resolve confusion on the issue, it says, preventing it from spiraling into full-fledged falsehoods.
Conservative radio host Larry Elder, the frontrunner to replace Newsom if recalled, made unsubstantiated claims of possible voter fraud during the recall election, saying there could be “shenanigans” similar to some unsubstantiated claims of a rigged 2020 presidential election.
The country clerk, in real-time on social media, addressed concerns or questions pertaining to the recall election, arguably helping to ward off their evolving into a misinformation wildfire spreading through the internet. The department said in one instance, it answered a Twitter user’s question about the equipment issue within five minutes. Other responses came several hours later or the next day.
Sanchez, in addition to being a spokesperson, led the team that monitored social media platforms during the recall election. He said while the majority of posts were general voting inquiries, the team took action when it identified misleading and inaccurate information.
“We provide resources and try to quell those who are aiming to mislead or misguide and — or in some cases interfere — with the election and the information that goes along with obviously educating voters,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez said the department has been actively monitoring and engaging with social media for years, including during the 2020 presidential election. Last year, the department was countering misinformation about ballots, he said, and even calming fears about fire alarms.
“These [social media platforms] are very powerful tools. Our voters are on them. We should be on them as well and leverage their ability to reach masses,” Sanchez said.
Twitter has made strong statements against election misinformation on its platform and has implemented a labeling policy. “However, the volume and speed at which misinformation has the potential to spread online means that this alone is not enough. Twitter said in January that it was piloting a new approach to addressing misinformation on the platform, alongside its labeling policy, to “broaden the range of voices” involved in the process.”
Wardle pointed to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection as a catalyst that may have influenced organizations to focus more on battling political misinformation. Wardle said the 2020 election and events that followed were an example of “the harm that can be done if you leave misinformation to flourish.”
“It’s a really critical time now to try and rebuild trust in the electoral system,” Wardle said.
While there is a spotlight on election misinformation this year, policing online misinformation is not a new strategy.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency launched its rumor control page ahead of last year’s presidential election, with the goal to help voters “distinguish between rumors and facts on election security issues.”
Public figures in key battleground states also used Twitter to dispel falsehoods during the presidential election.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel warned voters in 2020 about misinformation related to robocalls and voters with outstanding warrants. The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office utilized an election task force last year, which also highlighted misleading information.
(NEW YORK) — After spending more than a year behind bars, the man who inspired the acclaimed 2004 film “Hotel Rwanda” is due to learn his fate.
A Rwandan judge is set to deliver a verdict on Monday in the closely watched trial of former hotelier Paul Rusesabagina and 20 co-defendants, who are accused of terrorism-related offenses. A decision in the high-profile case was expected a month ago but was postponed, with no reason given for the delay.
Rusesabagina, who was tried on 13 charges including murder and financing terrorism, could face 25 years to life in prison if convicted. He has maintained his innocence, while his family and attorneys have condemned the trial as a “sham.”
“We are happy that the charade of the trial is ending,” the Rusesabagina family told ABC News in a statement ahead of the verdict. “We assume they will finish the sham by finding him guilty on Monday. We have told the world over and over that there is no fair trial process in Rwanda, and the past months have shown that. There is no independent judiciary, and there will be no justice for our father. All we can do now is make this clear to everyone — a dictator will be jailing a humanitarian.”
Rusesabagina, a 67-year-old married father of six, was the manager of the Hotel des Mille Collines in Kigali during the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when divisions between the East African nation’s two main ethnic groups came to a head. The Rwandan government, controlled by extremist members of the Hutu ethnic majority, launched a systemic campaign with its allied Hutu militias to wipe out the Tutsi ethnic minority, slaughtering more than 800,000 people over the course of 100 days, mostly Tutsis and the moderate Hutus who tried to protect them, according to estimates from the United Nations.
More than 1,200 people took shelter in the Hotel des Mille Collines during what is often described as the darkest chapter of Rwanda’s history. Rusesabagina, who is of both Hutu and Tutsi descent, said he used his job and connections with the Hutu elite to protect the hotel’s guests from massacre. The events were later immortalized in “Hotel Rwanda,” with American actor Don Cheadle’s portrayal of Rusesabagina earning an Academy Award nomination for best actor in 2005.
After the movie’s release, Rusesabagina rose to fame and was lauded as a hero. He also became a prominent and outspoken critic of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who has been in office for the last two decades.
Rusesabagina, who fled Rwanda with his family in 1996 and is now a Belgian citizen and permanent U.S. resident, traveled to Dubai on Aug. 27, 2020, to meet up with a Burundi-born pastor who Rusesabagina alleges had invited him to speak at churches in Burundi about his experience during the Rwandan genocide. Later that night, the pair hopped on a private jet that Rusesabagina believed would take them to Burundi’s capital, according to Rusesabagina’s international legal team.
Rusesabagina did not know that the pastor was working as an informant for the Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) and had tricked him into boarding a chartered flight to Kigali.
Rwandan prosecutors allege that Rusesabagina wanted to go to Burundi to coordinate with rebel groups based there and in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The charges that Rusesabagina faces stem from his leadership of an exiled opposition coalition called the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change, known by its French acronym MRCD. In 2018, there were a series of deadly attacks on villages in southern Rwanda, near the country’s border with Burundi, and Rwandan authorities inculpated the National Liberation Front, or FLN, which is the armed wing of the MRCD. In a video statement released later that year, Rusesabagina pledged his “unreserved support” for the FLN, declared the Rwandan government to be “the enemy of the Rwandan people” and called for “any means possible to bring about change.”
Rusesabagina has acknowledged that the MRCD had an armed wing but denied his involvement. The 20 other defendants in the trial are accused of being FLN organizers and fighters.
Rusesabagina’s whereabouts were unknown for several days until Rwandan authorities paraded him in handcuffs during a press conference at the RIB’s headquarters in Kigali on Aug. 31, 2020. Rusesabagina alleges he was bound and blindfolded by RIB agents who took him from the plane to an undisclosed location where he was gagged and tortured before being jailed, according to an affidavit that includes a memorialization of a conversation between Rusesabagina and one of his Rwandan lawyers. The RIB has denied the claims.
Since then, Rusesabagina has been held at a prison in Rwanda’s capital, including more than eight months in solitary confinement, according to his international legal team. The U.N.’s Nelson Mandela Rules state that keeping someone in solitary confinement for more than 15 consecutive days is torture.
Rusesabagina’s family and legal representatives have accused Rwandan authorities of kidnapping him and bringing him to the country illegally. The Rwandan government has admitted to paying for the plane that took Rusesabagina to Kigali, but Kagame said there was no wrongdoing because he was “brought here on the basis of what he believed and wanted to do.”
Rusesabagina’s trial in his home country has captured worldwide attention since it began in February, with his family and attorneys calling on the international community to intervene. They said his privileged documents are routinely confiscated in prison and he has been denied access to his international legal team, including his lead counsel, Kate Gibson, who has previously represented Rwandan accused before the U.N. International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda.
“Paul Rusesabagina’s inevitable conviction is the end of a script that was written even before he was kidnapped in August 2020,” Gibson told ABC News in a statement ahead of Monday’s verdict. “The only thing that has been surprising in watching this horror show unfold over the last year, has been the brazenness and openness with which the Rwandan authorities have been willing to systematically violate all of the fair trial rights to which Paul was entitled.”
“The Rwandans had every opportunity to showcase their judicial system and put on the fairest of fair trials,” she added. “They did the opposite.”
Rusesabagina’s family and lawyers have also expressed concern about his health and treatment behind bars. They said he is a cancer survivor who suffers from hypertension and cardiovascular disease, and that he has been denied his prescribed medication.
“If the international community does not step in,” the family said, “he will probably be in jail for the rest of his life.”
(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — After three days in space, the first all-civilian flight into Earth’s orbit splashed down successfully Saturday night.
The Dragon capsule returned to Earth just after 7 p.m. ET.
The capsule was traveling at 17,500 mph when it deorbited, slowed down to around 350 mph when the parachute deployed at 18,000 feet and slowed to 119 mph before it hit the ocean.
It splashed down in its preferred location in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Cape Canaveral. They had been prepared to pivot to the Gulf of Mexico, if needed.
SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission made history as the farthest any civilian has traveled from Earth — 367 miles above it — even farther than the International Space Station.
There is always risk launching into space and coming home. While the crew has been trained by SpaceX, they are not professional astronauts.
Saturday’s splashdown was the third SpaceX Dragon-crewed capsule to splash down from orbit, but the first with no professional astronaut on board.
Billionaire Jared Isaacman, 38, an experienced pilot, is commanding the mission. He founded a payment process company called Shift4 Payments and purchased all four seats on the flight for an estimated $220 million.
Isaacman wanted this mission to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Before the launch he personally donated $100 million to help end child cancer.
He reserved one seat for 29-year-old St. Jude ambassador Hayley Arceneaux. Arceneaux was treated at St. Jude as a child and returned to work there as a physician assistant. She is now the youngest American to go to space as well as the first pediatric cancer survivor.
Dr. Sian Proctor, 51, the third occupant, made history as well as the fourth African American woman astronaut to travel into space.
Rounding out the crew was Chris Sembroski, 41, an Iraq war veteran and engineer with Lockheed Martin.
They all spoke with children currently being treated at St. Jude live from space on Friday.
“What kind of sleeping bag do you have?” one child asked Arceneaux.
“So if you’ve ever been camping, we pretty much have those same kind of sleeping bags,” she said. “We were in our sleeping bags on top of our chairs, but we were floating on top of the chair and we had a seat belt around our sleeping bag. So we didn’t fly away when we were sleeping.”
“Can you take pictures in space?” another child asked Proctor.
“We absolutely can take pictures in space,” she responded. “And we’ve been taking a lot of those pictures and video so we can capture this moment and share it with everybody when we come home.”
Since liftoff, the mission has raised an additional $500,000 for the research hospital.
The crew has also been busy conducting experiments including using a portable ultrasound to measure their corneas and optic nerves for indications on intracranial pressure.
“We’ve also been taking several swabs of different parts of our body to evaluate the microbiome and how that changes in these three days in space,” Arceanaux said.
ABC News’ Gio Benitez and Gina Sunseri contributed to this report.
