(NEW YORK) — The chair of former President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee, Tom Barrack, pleaded not guilty Monday to charges he used his connection to Trump to illegally lobby for the United Arab Emirates.
Barrack flew across the country from California, where he was arrested last week, for his arraignment in Brooklyn federal court.
Barrack was released on a $250 million bond, secured by $5 million in cash. The judge ordered that his travel be limited to New York, California and Colorado, where he will live pending trial.
He was also ordered to take only commercial flights, with no private jets, and is prohibited from making any foreign financial transactions or from making domestic transactions above $50 thousand.
The bail package was requested by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan Reilly, who asked for a bail package “substantially similar” to what was imposed on Barrack in California.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) —The probability of record-shattering heat waves is increasing due to climate change, according to scientists who are measuring temperature predictions in a new way.
Researchers that looked into rate of warming, rather than how much warming has occurred, found that record-shattering heat waves occur in spurts during periods of accelerated climate warming, according to a study published Monday in Nature Climate Change.
Similar events as the back-to-back heat waves that have been occurring in the Western U.S., including triple-digit temperatures in the typically cool and wet Pacific Northwest, will become the norm if climate changes continue as business as usual, Erich Fischer, a climate scientist at ETH Zurich and the author of the study, told ABC News.
Under a high-emissions scenario, record-shattering heat extremes are two to seven times more probable from 2021 to 2050 and three to 21 times more probable between 2051 and 2080, according to the scientists.
Even if human-induced global warming was stabilized by aggressive mitigation, the frequency and intensity of heat waves would still be higher, but the probability of record-shattering events would be “notably reduced,” scientists said.
The models initially found climate records decreasing until temperatures began ramping up in the 1980s with a much higher rate of warming, Fischer said. It was then that scientists began seeing a sudden number of heat records as well as a “very high speed of pace” of records shattering temperature ceilings.
“Without climate change, we should expect these records to become rarer and rarer,” Fischer said, comparing the current climate to “an athlete on steroids,” adding, “If the world record would be broken by that by the high margin, that would be very suspicious.”
While the impact of climate change on heat waves is typically quantified by historical context — or how much a current or future event compares to itself in a world with less or no climate change — the changes can be marginal when measured in such a manner, the researchers said. Any given heat wave today would be hotter and more frequent than it would have been in the past.
Instead, looking at how heat extremes surpass or “shatter” the previous heat wave record could provide better insight into the driving mechanisms behind heat extremes — and offer a crucial factor for officials to consider when planning strategies on how to deal with the new normal, the researchers said.
“The take-home message of our study is that it really is no longer enough to just look at past records or past measurements of weather…” Fischer said. “We need to prepare for something different.”
(NEW YORK) — It was lunchtime when a gun altered Crystal Turner’s life.
“I got the call at 12, noon,” Turner recalled to ABC News. “My 29-year-old daughter Jenea and my 23-year-old son Donell were murdered together.”
Jenea Harvison and her brother, Donell McDonald, were gunned down in Columbus, Ohio, by Harvison’s estranged husband, Roy Harvison, who is now serving a life sentence for aggravated murder.
“We know there are millions of other families now who have similar stories and similar experiences,” Turner said.
Jeannie She’s family is one of them. Her father survived the 2019 mass shooting at the Virginia Beach municipal building at left 12 dead.
“Even now it feels completely surreal for something so severe to hit so close to home,” She told ABC News. “On the other hand, I’m fully aware of the pain that so many families experienced that night. This trauma sticks with people forever.”
DeAndra Dycus understands. Dycus’ son, Dre Knox, was struck by a stray bullet in Indianapolis.
“He was 13 years old. Some young men started shooting outside the home and struck my son in the back of the head. A stray bullet flew through a window and left Dre as a non-verbal quadriplegic,” Dycus said.
Dre lived but, as his mom said, his life was taken.
“We have to bathe him. We have to dress him. We have to lift him out of bed to put him in his wheelchair. We have to change diapers,” Dycus told ABC News. “I have lost who Dre was and who we hoped he was going to be.”
As the country tries to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, with its unfair burdens and incomprehensible death toll, it is sickened anew by gun violence, with its unfair burdens and ever-growing death toll.
Between 2014 and 2019, an average of 38,826 Americans were killed by guns annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those, 23,437 — or 60% — were suicides.
Of late, police say, the increase in shootings is mainly due to urban gangs, but there are also variants, involving mass shootings, domestic violence and suicide. Much of it, experts say, is exacerbated by the health and economic strains wrought by COVID-19 and powered by the uniquely American affinity for and access to guns.
“You can’t shoot somebody without a gun,” said New York Police Commissioner Dermot Shea. “Identifying who’s carrying guns, the cops going out there and making the arrests, taking the guns off the street is great. Really what we need is the individual carrying the gun off the street.”
In Shea’s New York City, there was a 100% increase in shootings in 2020 from the year prior. Accidental shootings, domestic violence, suicide, stray bullets and mass casualty all contributed to it, but Shea said the biggest drivers of gun violence are gangs.
“Domestic, road rage, we certainly have seen those incidents. Accidental shootings, playing with a gun, and a friend shoots a friend, we’ve seen all of it with a little more frequency. But if you step back and look at the big picture, that is such a small percentage of what we see regarding gun violence,” Shea told ABC News.
“The vast majority of what we see is still gang-related,” Shea added. “It could be over turf, it could be over drug money. Oftentimes, tragically, it’s over nothing.”
There is no official count of how many Americans own guns but there are an estimated 400 million guns in the United States, the most heavily armed nation in the world. In the last quarter-century the Supreme Court has taken a broad view of the Second Amendment, which enshrines the right to bear arms.
“I certainly don’t think it was inevitable to the founders that this is where we would be, because the Second Amendment was not intended at the time to mean that people could use guns to commit acts of violence that was not in self-defense,” said Mary McCord, executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law.
Until the Supreme Court’s Heller decision in 2008 permitted near-universal gun ownership for self-defense, McCord said the Second Amendment had been interpreted only to allow people to bear arms as part of a government-regulated, politically accountable militia.
“Even in that massive change to the way we understand the Second Amendment did the Supreme Court suggest that there was a right to bear arms to commit acts of violence, that there was a right for anyone to have a firearm for any purpose whatsoever,” she said.
This story is part of the series “Gun Violence in America” by ABC News Radio. Each day this week we’re exploring a different topic, from what we mean when we say “gun violence” — it’s not just mass shootings — to what can be done about it. You can hear an extended version of each report as an episode of the ABC News Radio Specials podcast. Subscribe and listen on any of the following podcast apps:
(NEW YORK) — The United States is facing a COVID-19 summer surge as the delta variant spreads.
More than 610,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Just 57% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
COVID-19 has infected more than 194 million people worldwide and killed over 4.1 million.
Here’s how the news is developing Monday. All times Eastern:
Jul 26, 9:11 am
Symptomatic breakthrough infections rare, CDC data estimates
New data shows how rare COVID-19 breakthrough infections likely are.
With more than 156 million Americans fully vaccinated, about 153,000 symptomatic breakthrough cases are estimated to have occurred as of last week, representing approximately 0.098% of those fully vaccinated, according to an unpublished internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention document obtained by ABC News. These estimates reflect only the adult population and do not include asymptomatic breakthrough infections.
But in Provincetown, on Massachusetts’ Cape Cod, at least 551 COVID-19 infections, many of them breakthroughs, were confirmed after the July Fourth weekend. Of the Massachusetts residents who tested positive as a result of the Provincetown cluster, 69% reported to be fully vaccinated, according to local officials.
Most people were symptomatic. Apart from three hospitalizations, symptoms from cases associated with this cluster were known to be mild and without complication, said Alex Morse, the town manager for Provincetown.
(NEW YORK) — The rapid rebound in leisure travel is fueling a nationwide rental car shortage and price hikes at the pump.
If you’re planning on hitting the road this summer, here’s what experts say you can do to avoid any potential speed bumps:
Don’t wait to rent a car
At the height of the pandemic, rental car companies sold off half of their fleets, and when demand came roaring back they had trouble getting their hands on new cars due to the semiconductor shortage.
“We are in the heart of the car rental apocalypse right now,” Jonathan Weinberg, founder and CEO of AutoSlash.com, said. “And I’d love to say that we’re going to see it get better sometime soon, but it doesn’t look like it.”
He explained rental car locations in destinations like Hawaii, Alaska or anywhere near the national parks are completely sold out of cars right now. And if you can find a car, the rates are two to three times the normal rate.
Travel booking app Hopper said demand for rental cars is up 495% since January, and rental car prices are up 95% from the start of the year.
Given all the challenges, Weinberg recommended travelers start planning now if they need to rent a car anytime this summer, and certainly if they want to get away for Labor Day.
“We recommend people check pricing for rental cars before they book their airfare and hotels,” he said.
Avoid trying to book a rental car during peak travel times
If you are still working remotely or have flexible travel dates, AAA spokesperson Ellen Edmund said you are more likely to find a rental car.
“You might have more luck booking a car on the weekdays versus the weekends,” she said. “It’s just a little more planning this year.”
She also recommended working with a travel agent who can tell you what weeks might have a little lower travel volume.
“If you’re flexible with your dates, and you can consider different times, it will go a really long way in helping,” Edmund said.
Consider renting a U-Haul or van
Some travelers have turned to renting U-Hauls or vans given the rental car shortage.
“The times call for being creative,” Weinberg said.
Car rental company Hertz has a lot of cargo vans available, which they are giving customers a sizable discount on compared to traditional rental cars.
The only downside to consider is these vans only have two seats, and they are very large, so they might not be the best option if you are relying on city parking at your destination.
Look into peer-to-peer renting platforms like Turo
If there are no available cars at traditional rental car companies, or the prices are too high, you can try platforms like Turo that allow you to rent cars straight from the vehicle’s owner.
Many travelers in Hawaii have told ABC News that Turo was the only way they could get a car for a reasonable price.
But Weinberg urges potential renters to be cautious.
“We’ve heard some horror stories,” he said. “People being left high and dry who had reservations then at the last minute the host cancels on them because they realize that they can get more money from someone else.”
Budget for higher gas prices
Early on in the pandemic, national gas prices were sitting at around $2 per gallon on average for regular, but earlier this week they reached $3.17, according to AAA.
“What’s really driving this is higher demand as we see people hitting the roads for summer vacation,” Edmund told ABC News. “We are seeing demand at some of the highest rates in a few years.”
AAA expects gas prices to remain at around $3 throughout the summer, which is the highest rate they have seen in a “few years.”
“We’ve seen travelers offset these costs with cheaper activities once they reach their destination or packing food instead of eating out as much,” she said.
Consider planning a trip to a city that has public transportation or ride-share options
If the cost of a rental car and gas is daunting, you can consider traveling to a destination like New York City or Washington, D.C., that has a variety of public transportation options.
Most trains and buses are running their pre-pandemic schedules, but masks are required until September.
You can also try calculating how much ride-share apps like Uber or Lyft would cost if you used them during your trip instead of renting a car. Depending on how much you leave your hotel, or the distance of your activities, it might be cheaper.
(NEW YORK) — Although reports of breakthrough COVID-19 cases occurring among fully vaccinated Americans are garnering much attention, as the country experiences a viral resurgence, new data illustrates just how rare these breakthrough infections are likely to be, and further shows that the vast majority of those becoming severely ill are the unvaccinated.
“While anecdotal cases and clusters can conjure concern around the vaccine, when put in the larger context of how many people have been vaccinated and the sheer volume of cases in the unvaccinated population, we recognize that the vaccines are working and how rare breakthroughs actually are,” said Dr. John Brownstein, the chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.
With more than 156 million Americans fully vaccinated, nationwide, approximately 153,000 symptomatic breakthrough cases are estimated to have occurred as of last week, representing approximately 0.098% of those fully vaccinated, according to an unpublished internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention document obtained by ABC News. These estimates reflect only the adult population and do not include asymptomatic breakthrough infections.
Substantial vaccination coverage amid increasing COVID-19 case rates are driving an increase in “expected” symptomatic breakthrough infections in recent weeks, the CDC wrote in the document.
Experts stress that no vaccine can provide 100% protection, but they are still very effective at preventing severe illness and death.
“The risk to fully vaccinated people is dramatically less than that to unvaccinated individuals. The occurrence of breakthrough cases is expected and, at this point, is not at a level that should raise any concerns about the performance of the currently available vaccines,” Matthew Ferrari, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Pennsylvania State University, told ABC News.
“Some vaccinated folks may still get infected, some may still transmit. And the more vaccinated people there are, the more breakthrough cases we’ll see,” he added.
Coronavirus cases are now at their highest point since early May, according to CDC data, with the U.S. average nearly quadrupling since June to 47,000 new cases a day, largely driven by the highly infectious delta variant, which now accounts for more than 83% of new cases nationwide.
Virus-related hospitalizations have also increased, with more than 27,000 patients hospitalized around the country, though that number is still significantly lower than in January, when over 125,000 patients were receiving care at one time.
According to the White House COVID-19 Task Force, severe breakthrough infections remain rare, and nearly all of these hospitalized patients — 97% — are unvaccinated.
Earlier this week, the popular summer destination of Provincetown, Massachusetts, was thrust into the spotlight after at least 430 COVID-19 infections were confirmed, many of them breakthroughs, following a busy July Fourth weekend.
Confirmed cases among Massachusetts residents, stemming from the Provincetown cluster, have been found to be predominantly symptomatic, with 69% of affected individuals reported to be fully vaccinated, according to local officials. Apart from three hospitalizations — two in state and one out of state — symptoms from cases associated with this cluster are known to be mild and without complication, Alex Morse, the town manager for Provincetown, said.
“The transmissibility of the delta variant raises the likelihood of sporadic ‘super spreader’ events among vaccinated people, especially when indoors and in close proximity without masks. These events raise the risk to those unvaccinated while the vast majority of the breakthrough cases will be mild or asymptomatic,” Brownstein added.
Statewide in Massachusetts, state health officials report there have been at least 5,166 breakthrough infections as of July 17. More than 4,800 of these infections resulted in no hospitalization or death. A total of 80 of these breakthrough cases resulted in death, representing 0.0015% of individuals fully vaccinated — and 272 cases resulted in hospitalization, representing 0.006% of those fully vaccinated.
The hospitalizations and deaths that do occur among fully vaccinated individuals tend to occur among people who are older or those with serious underlying medical conditions for whom the vaccines may have reduced efficacy, experts said.
Ankoor Shah, principal senior deputy director at the Washington D.C. Department of Health, said during a Thursday press conference that the district had 200 fully vaccinated breakthrough cases of COVID-19, out of a total record nearly 376,000 fully vaccinated people, representing “only point .05 percent, which just strengthens our confidence on how great these vaccines are.”
And in New Jersey, the total number of breakthrough cases, so far, is 5,678 out of a total of 4.8 million people vaccinated by July 12, according to state data. Forty-nine fully vaccinated individuals have died as a result of COVID-19.
“It is important to point out that 49 deaths due to COVID-19 among 4.8 million fully vaccinated state residents is slightly greater than one in 100,000 fully vaccinated individuals. That means vaccines are about 99.999% effective in preventing deaths due to COVID-19,” Dr. Ed Lifshitz of the New Jersey Department of Health said in a statement to ABC News.
Additionally, 27 of these individuals had pre-existing conditions, Lifshitz said, and many had more than one condition.
Of concern to some experts is the decline in daily COVID-19 tests, which makes it more difficult to track the spread of the virus. The nation is now recording just under 600,000 COVID-19 tests a day, which has ticked up slightly in recent weeks but is still much lower than at the country’s peak in January, when U.S. was recording over 2 million tests a day. In addition, the CDC has, since May, ceased reporting asymptomatic or mild breakthrough cases.
According to Brownstein, the combination of the overall testing decline, the mild nondescript nature of breakthrough infections, and the general perception that vaccines are protective, means that any count of breakthrough infections is likely an underestimate.
Hence, he said, “given the efficacy of the vaccines, we recognize that even more cases will be asymptomatic, so these data only show part of the story. While asymptomatic cases are not of clinical relevance, they do help understand important patterns of transmission in the community.”
Experts concur that even with lower case levels than this past winter, the pandemic is not yet over, and it is critical to track the disease in order to attempt to slow its spread.
In a recent editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association, experts urged the CDC to “re-energize” its testing services in light of the highly transmissible delta variant, “because without vigorous testing, the nation cannot be sure whether declining cases are a function of decreased numbers of infections or reduced numbers of tests.”
“As long as the virus is circulating, with or without causing illness, it can change and mutate, including into new strains that may be even harder to control,” Samuel V. Scarpino, managing director of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation, told ABC News.
“To get ahead of the pandemic we need to track the virus more closely and collect high-quality information on how and where COVID-19 is changing,” he said. “This high-quality, detailed information is crucial for COVID-19 and future pandemics.”
(NEW YORK) — Lakisha L. Simmons, Ph.D., was a 36-year-old working mom of two young sons when she got divorced in 2017.
“I stayed in the family home with the boys and all of the bills were suddenly mine, all alone,” Simmons told Good Morning America. “That brought back rushing all of the feelings [of financial insecurity] from when I was a girl, that I was alone and in this world trying to figure it out by myself again.”
Simmons said she decided to “get serious” about her finances, a decision that changed the course of her life.
Now 41, Simmons, of Nashville, Tennessee, retired this year from her job as a college analytics professor. A self-taught investor, Simmons has amassed a nearly $1 million fortune and opened her own business, BRAVE Consulting, where she focuses on helping women of color obtain financial freedom.
“With the divorce, I thought I have to buckle down and get serious or I’m paycheck to paycheck and I can’t do that with two little people depending on me,” said Simmons. “I thought I can’t ever let this happen again.”
Here are the steps Simmons says she took to reach her own financial freedom.
1. I buckled down on budgeting: “I did the budgeting when we were married but the budget was loose and I knew I had to buckle down,” said Simmons. “I created a Google sheet and I started entering from the top down, which was my paycheck, my gross salary.”
“Then I went to the next section and added in every single expense that I had to pay every month,” she said. “Then I was able to look at that list and realistically say what is nonessential and I cut it, like cable and spending for clothes and shoes.”
2. I sold my family home and moved to a townhome: “The biggest expense on my list was my mortgage, so that had to go,” said Simmons. “I sold the house and moved into an apartment and that saved me $1,200 per month. I ended up buying a townhouse and the mortgage is less money than what my rent was and it’s way less than what the mortgage on the house was.”
Simmons said selling her house taught her a lesson about budgeting by determining what you value.
“If you value a house on a hill that’s on an acre of land, then cut other ways and keep your family home,” she said. “For me, I didn’t value the home. It was a burden and so it had to go.”
3. I discovered the FIRE method: Simmons says that when she took a close look at what she valued, that included independence and more time for her children and herself, which ultimately led her to realize she wanted to retire early.
She says following the FIRE method, or Financial Independence, Retire Early, helped her reach that point.
There are different variations of the FIRE method, including the “lean FIRE,” which Simmons followed and which requires extreme frugality and lifestyle changes to retire early, and the “fat FIRE,” which involves people maintaining their original standard of living but investing and saving up to retire early.
Simmons’ detailed budgeting allowed her to be able to know her yearly expenses, which she then used to plan how much money she would need to save to retire early.
4. I educated myself on investing: Simmons already had some money invested when she started budgeting, but she doubled down on teaching herself how to maximize her extra cash instead of leaving it in bank accounts.
She maxed out her 401(k) retirement account, contributed to a Roth IRA and also began contributing to a 457(b) account, another tax-advantaged retirement account she learned she was eligible for as a teacher.
She also invested any extra money in the S&P 500 index fund, where it could continue to grow.
“If you educate yourself about how the stock market works and you only invest money that you don’t need right now, after you’ve fully funded your emergency savings account, you’ll get a return over the long term,” said Simmons. “This is my strategy as a single woman.”
5. I continually cut down my monthly expenses: Simmons says the Google sheet she created at the start of her budgeting journey is something she constantly fine-tunes.
“I look at it once or twice a week and look line-by-line and say, ‘How can I reduce this amount?,'” she said. “For example, the first thing I cut was the cable and then I went to my grocery bill and looked for lower-cost grocery stores. Then I cut my mobile phone bill and now my pre-paid bill is only $180 for the entire year.”
Simmons values time with her children, so she said she takes them on experiences like bike rides, picnics and local getaways instead of focusing on material items.
“What I want people to understand is that I never feel deprived,” she said. “It’s not depriving yourself. It’s just looking at what you value.”
6. I started side hustles: As Simmons went along in her financial journey, she found ways to make extra money by teaching others what she had learned.
In addition to launching BRAVE Consulting, where she offers group workshops and online tools, Simmons also wrote a book, The Unlikely AchieveHer: 11 Steps to a Happy and Prosperous Life.
She also works with Personal Capitol, an online financial company, as a Financial Hero, helping with the company’s financial education efforts.
“The mindset I’m instilling in my sons now is, ‘What can you do to create your own money?,'” said Simmons. “It is all worth it.”
(NEW YORK) — Some 150 miles from Tokyo’s Olympic venues, calendars that line the walls of empty classrooms remain frozen on a date more than a decade in the past: March 11, 2011.
Images from an abandoned elementary school in Futaba, Japan, are an eerie reminder of the uneven recovery efforts 10 years after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake triggered a catastrophic tsunami and caused the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
About 164,000 people were forced to evacuate in the aftermath of the meltdown at the now-infamous Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. Many never returned home.
As the Japanese government doggedly forges ahead with the delayed and beleaguered Olympic Games this year, some advocates say initial promises that the situation in Fukushima is “under control” are false. Some also say the “Recovery Olympics” branding exploits residents who feel forgotten, and cleanup of the Dai-ichi power plant will take decades longer than government estimates.
Japanese officials insist radiation levels in reopened parts of Fukushima prefecture — which is set to host baseball and softball for the Summer Games — are safe for visitors, and many independent monitors agree. But what many say is a lack of transparency has eroded public trust, and a new debate rages over the what to do with the more than 1 million tons of “treated” radioactive wastewater piling up in storage tanks at the damaged nuclear power plant.
Here is how the legacy of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe looms large over the Tokyo Olympics.
A ‘Made in Japan’ disaster
Kiyoshi Kurokawa, the chairman of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (a group mandated by Japanese legislators to examine what went wrong and make recommendations), told ABC News that recovery efforts are far from complete and a permanent plan for how to dispose of contaminated waste is not in place.
“It has a long way to go,” Kurokawa told ABC News of Fukushima’s recovery. “It’s a very tragic thing — and there are just certain people that cannot go back.”
“The issue is, what is the long-term prospectus of how to contain Fukushima Dai-ichi, and I’m not so sure TEPCO [Tokyo Electric Power Company] has a clear long-term plan of what to do,” Kurokawa added. “They’re doing at least their best effort, but I think cleaning up radioactivity is a mess, and particularly with Fukushima Dai-ichi’s issues.”
While the quasi-state-owned power firm that runs the embattled nuclear power plant has suggested a 30- to 40-year timeline for decommissioning, Kurokawa said conflicting research estimates it could take at least “100 years.”
In his team’s scathing report on what went wrong, delivered to Japanese lawmakers in the aftermath of the event, Kurokawa calls the nuclear catastrophe a “profoundly manmade disaster — that could and should have been foreseen and prevented.”
Kurokawa blasted cultural factors in the nation with the world’s third-largest gross domestic product that he says ultimately resulted in more suffering.
“What must be admitted — very painfully — is that this was a disaster ‘Made in Japan,'” Kurokawa wrote in the English version of the executive summary. “Its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the program’; our groupism; and our insularity.”
While they are separate issues, similar criticisms have been leveled at Japanese officials still insistent upon hosting the Olympics despite a global pandemic.
“The biggest issue from our point of view has been this historical lack of adequate transparency on the part of TEPCO and also the Japanese government,” Azby Brown, a researcher for the nuclear monitoring nonprofit organization Safecast, told ABC News, “and this is from the beginning and may actually predate the accident.”
“We see some similar things happening regarding the coronavirus response and even among the negotiations or the discussions regarding the Olympics and what measures will be taken to protect the safety of people who come here for that,” Brown added. “So, it’s all part of a similar phenomenon within Japanese institutions and bureaucracies and government.”
‘Recovery is far from reality’ ahead of so-called ‘Recovery Olympics’
Before the COVID-19 pandemic engulfed the world, the Japanese government originally painted the 2020 Olympic Games as the “Recovery Olympics,” meant to showcase how the nation rebuilt in the decade following the cataclysmic triple disaster of 2011.
The global health crisis and mounting costs associated with hosting the international event during a once-in-a-century pandemic has led to dwindling public support for holding the games, but these concerns appear to have largely fallen on deaf ears. Many locals have expressed fears that it could lead to a surge in coronavirus cases as vaccination rates in Japan lag far behind its peers in the developed world.
For some residents or evacuees of Fukushima, however, hosting the Olympics at a cost of some $12.6 billion is a painful reminder of government-spending priorities.
“Some people feel abandoned not only by the government but also by the nation,” Kazuya Hirano, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, told ABC News. “They also feel used for the promotion of the government slogan, the ‘Recovery Olympics.'”
Hirano — whose research has focused on the continued social, political and health effects of the disaster — said that the government terminated financial support for evacuees in 2017, but most have not returned home.
“Reconstruction does not make much sense as most former Fukushima residents who were affected by the disaster have not returned or have no intention to return because they are worried about the radiation for their families as well as themselves,” Hirano said. “Most people have already settled in new places.”
Safecast’s Brown said that he feels some people in the region take pride in hosting Olympic events, as it provides something to be optimistic about.
“But for them to try to use this as a way to showcase recovery, it was a sketchy idea from the beginning and I think now it’s probably certainly backfired,” he said. “Instead, it will only highlight the problems and the lack of recovery.”
“We spend a lot of time with people in communities we help,” Brown said. “They’re all totally skeptical of these big-picture things, like to spend millions and millions on Olympics. They are saying we need more support for concrete things — actual support for small businesses, actual support for single parents.”
With “real, concrete things” still not adequately taken care of in Fukushima, Brown said many residents view the billions of dollars pumped into the Olympics as “just misspent funds.”
In his 2013 speech pitching Tokyo as a host city, then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told members of the International Olympic Committee that the situation in Fukushima is “under control” and “has never done and will never do any damage to Tokyo.”
His words have drawn ire from Fukushima residents for years.
In July 2020, Katsunobu Sakurai — who was mayor of Minamiosama, Fukushima, at the time of the catastrophe — blasted the “Recovery Olympics” branding in an interview with the one of the country’s biggest newspapers.
“No matter how much you tout the games as a sign of recovery, the overall picture of only Tokyo prospering while the recovery of the disaster-hit areas in the Tohoku region remains undone will not change,” he told the Mainichi newspaper, referring to the region that is home to Fukushima. “I’ve been to Tokyo many times, and saw that there were more crane trucks at the construction site of the athletes’ village than in the disaster-hit areas.”
“It was obvious at a glance where the national government was placing its resources,” he added.
How safe is the area now?
The Japanese government has been slowly lifting evacuation orders and “restricted areas” over the years, removing top soil and declaring new swaths of land safe for residents to return to in the lead up to the Summer Games. Currently, a vast majority of Fukushima is considered safe to visit — only about 230 square miles remain in designated evacuation zones, or 2.7% of the total area of Fukushima prefecture.
Fukushima’s Azuma Baseball stadium, about 42 miles from the Dai-ichi power plant, is set to host baseball and softball competitions for the Tokyo Olympics.
In a symbolic move, the Olympic torch relay kicked off at the J-Village National Training Center, a sports complex just 12 miles south of the Dai-ichi plant. The complex served as a front-line base for first responders in the aftermath of the meltdown.
“That place, the base of operations dealing with the nuclear accident, has now been reborn into Japan’s largest holy site of soccer, filled with children’s smiling faces,” Abe said of J-Village in a January 2020 speech. The former prime minister and fierce champion of hosting the games also reminisced how a man born in Hiroshima on the day the atomic bomb was dropped carried the Olympic flame in Tokyo’s 1964 Olympics, sending a message to the world that “Japan had achieved reconstruction” following World War II.
While the government has assured visitors the designated areas in Fukushima are safe, some independent monitoring organizations, including Greenpeace Japan, have reported finding radioactive hotspots with readings that don’t align with figures released by the officials.
Kurokawa and Brown agreed that the risk of dangerous levels of radiation exposure in reopened areas of Fukushima is low, but residents’ trust in official statements also remains low.
“More or less, I think it’s very clean and if there’s any sort of radioactivity, there are some warnings around there, so I think local people know where it is safe and where may not be as safe,” Kurokawa told ABC News. He added that he believes people can “reasonably trust” municipal radiation data even if they have doubts about TEPCO-released figures.
Brown added that barring intentionally scaling a fence and entering a prohibited zone, radiation in most areas welcoming Olympic guests is relatively low.
“Before coronavirus there was a question if it was safe to have Olympic events in Fukushima. We were involved in that and had people involved who measured at the stadium, talked to people,” Brown said. “Our opinion was that … the risk of an overseas visitor going to Fukushima was similar to the radiation risk they got on their flight over.”
“That is not an exaggeration and is not trying to minimize risk in general,” he added. “You get a very hefty dose on an overseas flight.”
‘Transparency is the foundation of trust’
Earlier this year, Japan’s government announced plans to start releasing “treated” radioactive wastewater from the Dai-ichi plant into the Pacific Ocean in approximately two years. The move had already been delayed due to protests, drawing ire from local fisherman as well as Japan’s neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said this decision is “unavoidable” in order to “make progress in the decommissioning of Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant and achieve the reconstruction of Fukushima.”
The wastewater has been stored in tanks at the wrecked power plant for years, and space is reaching full capacity, the prime minister added. As of January 2021, there were approximately 1,061 tanks on the site of the power plant, carrying 1.24 million tons of treated water. Suga said he doesn’t think the plan reflects a “contradiction” to Abe’s former pledge to Olympic officials that the Fukushima situation was “under control.”
The water has been treated, but still contains minute amounts of the harder-to-remove radioactive isotope tritium. In a failed bid to gain public support for the plan, the Japanese government created a rosy-cheeked so-called “Little Mr. Tritium” mascot. The cute character that looked like something out of a children’s book was scrapped from government websites in a single day after community backlash.
“The gap between the gravity of the problems we face and the levity of the character is huge,” a local fisherman told Japan’s Kyodo News Agency.
Suga promised they would reduce the tritium concentration to “one-fortieth or less of the domestic regulatory standard value,” or levels small enough to be largely considered safe by the nuclear energy community.
While nuclear operators around the world release small amounts of tritium into the ocean as part of standard operating procedures, Brown told ABC News that it’s a “false comparison to say that Fukushima Dai-ichi is the same.”
“What we’re dealing with is a stopgap emergency response to a horrific nuclear disaster,” he said, noting that the release is not being done as part of the designed operation of the plant.
“Another criticism of ours is that there should be a process, a full environmental impact assessment before the decision is made,” Brown said. While a limited assessment was carried out, he added, “It has not been done transparently.”
“We think that if it is done the way they said they are going to do it, then the impact on health and the environment can be very low,” he added. “But the point is there has been such bad faith all along that none of us should take it on their word. We believe it needs to be independently verified.”
Kurokawa added that while the tritium debate has dominated discussion, there’s evidence that there could be trace amounts of other radioactive elements in the wastewater destined for the Pacific.
“I just testified in the parliament, there are other sort of radioactivities in addition to tritium,” he said. “But nobody talks much about this.”
While he said he genuinely believes the levels are within accepted norms, it sill must be disclosed.
“It’s safe, but you have to say it,” he said.
Kurokawa is advocating for TEPCO and the Japanese government to invest in a highly transparent, bilingual website that is constantly being updated with the latest data and plans for Fukushima.
“I think all the data has to be available because in this connected world, transparency is a foundation of trust,” he said. “You just cannot hide it.”
The city of Minamiosama, where Sakurai was mayor, was among the hardest-hit by the disaster. Kurokawa and his team’s report found that 44% of evacuees from Fukushima were residents of this city. Data indicates that even after it was declared safe, it still suffered a mass exodus of its young people.
“The Japanese government has prepared for the Olympics while upholding the ‘disaster recovery’ label, even though a recovery is far from reality,” Sakurai said to the Mainichi newspaper in July 2020. “It is superficial to declare a recovery with no actual progress.”
“The government is now talking of an Olympics that could be a sign of humanity’s triumph over the pandemic, but vaccines have not yet been put into practical use, and the world has not yet been freed from the risk of infection,” he added. “There is no chance of success by trying to box in reality to meet the labels the government upholds. The idea of a ‘coronavirus Olympics’ may also likely end as a mere fantasy.”
(SEATTLE) — Two people were arrested after a Washington state sheriff’s deputy was fatally shot in the line of duty Friday night.
After an “exhaustive search,” a 28-year-old man, Abran Raya-Leon, and a 35-year-old woman, Misty M. Raya, were arrested on unrelated felony warrants, Vancouver, Washington, police said in a press release on Saturday night.
Another man, Guillermo O. Raya, 26, is still being sought, police said.
The deputy involved in the shooting that unfolded around 7 p.m. has been identified as Clark County Sheriff’s Office Detective Sergeant Jeremy Brown.
Brown was in his vehicle conducting surveillance at 3508 NE 109th Avenue, according to police. Other units in the area on the same detail were unable to reach Brown on radio, and around the same time, a citizen reported hearing gunshots, saw a man bleeding inside a vehicle and called 911, police said.
Two men and a woman fled the area by vehicle and were pursued by police, officials said. Their vehicle crashed near Padden Parkway and Interstate 205. Police said the three then fled on foot.
Police said Guillermo O. Raya is considered armed and dangerous, and a warrant has been issued for his arrest in connection with the shooting.
“This is a difficult time for the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, law enforcement agencies in Clark County and the surrounding Clark County, Portland metro area. Clark County law enforcement appreciates the support and understanding of the community in these tough times,” the department said in a news release.
The investigation is continuing and nothing further is releasable at this time, police said.
(DETROIT) — Nearly 140,000 customers in Michigan are without power this morning after storms hit the Detroit area Saturday night.
Poweroutage.us reports 138,990 customers in the state lack power.
Ferocious storms whipped through the Detroit metro area and led to a tornado watch for other areas including Armada, ABC News affiliate, WXYZ reported.
In the storm’s wake, trees, houses and businesses sustained major damage.
“It appears there might have been a tornado, we have to wait for officials to make that determination, Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel told WXYZ. “There’s a substantial amount of damage to businesses, houses, power lines down.”
The Detroit Police Department issued an alert for area residents, cautioning them roadways are flooded and not to drive through standing water.
The storm comes amid a tumultuous weather season in the United States as wildfires and drought ravage the West, and unprecedented rainfall and floods plague the Northeast as well as other areas of the country.
Wildfllife is also feeling the effects of the severe weather. Baby birds have been jumping out of their nests to escape the heat and falling to the ground, on the West Coast. A bear and her cubs jumped into a home’s pool to cool off from the recent scorching temperatures in the Pacific Northwest.
ABC News’ Ben Stein and Will McDuffie contributed to this report.
