(LOS ANGELES) — Evacuation warnings are in place for parts of Southern California as an incoming storm could bring potential mudslides and debris flows to burn scar areas, according to county officials.
“Anyone in these areas should be ready to leave at a moment’s notice,” Los Angeles County officials said in a statement.
The evacuation warnings are in effect for the following burn scar areas: Canyon, Bethany, Eaton, Palisades, Hurst, Kenneth, Sunset, Lidia, Franklin and Bridge, according to officials.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Thursday that emergency resources will be pre-deployed ahead of the storm to protect communities in the Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties from mudslides and debris flow.
This storm — which is a moderate atmospheric river building along a cold front — will begin to hit areas of Northern and Central California, Washington and Oregon on Thursday before slamming parts of Southern California.
Heavy rain will push through the Bay Area and Sacramento on Thursday morning, bringing up to 4 inches of rain in some areas, before traveling south to Los Angeles late Thursday into Friday morning.
Rain, heavy at times, will continue across Southern California on Friday and Saturday, with 1 to 3 inches of rain expected across much of Western California — although some localized areas at higher elevation could receive more.
Over just two days, Friday and Saturday, higher elevations around Santa Barbara could see 4 to 6 inches of rain, bringing the threat of rockslides, landslides and debris flow through the weekend and into next week as more rain continues over these saturated soils.
This system will also force below-average temperatures over Southern California, with scattered showers remaining a possibility on Sunday through at least Tuesday.
The Los Angeles County Fire Department said anyone living in burned or flood-prone areas should “stay away from flood channels, catch basins, canyons and waterways which are vulnerable to floods” and if people have to evacuate, to “return to your home only after local authorities have said it is safe to do so.”
The evacuation warnings in Southern California will be in effect through Sunday, officials said.
Representative LaMonica McIver, a Democrat from New Jersey, speaks to members of the media in Statuary Hall at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, June 25, 2025. Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(NEWARK, N.J.) — Congresswoman LaMonica McIver must face at least two of three federal charges accusing her of assaulting and impeding immigration officers outside a New Jersey detention center after federal judge on Thursday rejected her attempt to dismiss the case.
The New Jersey Democrat was charged with three counts of assaulting, resisting, impeding and interfering with federal officials following her May 9 visit to Delaney Hall, a privately owned, 1,000-bed facility in Newark that ICE uses as a detention center.
The government alleges McIver intervened as federal agents attempted to arrest Newark Mayor Ras Baraka.
U.S. District Judge Jamel Semper turned down McIver’s arguments that she is immune from prosecution under the Speech or Debate Clause.
“Impeding an arrest, whether lawful or unlawful, goes beyond any reasonable definition of oversight and, accordingly, exceeds the safe harbor of legislative immunity,” Semper wrote in an order published Thursday.
McIver’s actions as described in count one, which alleged she placed her arms around the mayor in an attempt to thwart his arrest and then slammed her forearm into a federal agent, were “wholly disconnected from the oversight she and the Representatives later conducted when touring the facility, where they engaged in protected fact-finding related to federal immigration policy,” the judge continued. “Defendant’s presence at Delaney Hall does not grant constitutional protection for every act performed in connection to that visit.”
Semper said he is still considering whether the Speech and Debate Clause might apply to count two — which alleged she forcibly struck an ICE officer following the arrest — noting, “the factual record is still being developed.”
The judge also rejected McIver’s argument that her case amounted to selective and vindictive prosecution by a Republican administration that called her visit to Delaney Hall a “reckless stunt.”
“Defendant has not demonstrated that her prosecution is a result of personal animus harbored by the prosecution,” Semper said.
McIver has pleaded not guilty. The trial was supposed to start this week but had been delayed pending the judge’s ruling.
She has alleged the prosecution is politically motivated, and her office called the charges “baseless.”
“This is Trump weaponizing the DOJ for people who speak out against him, for members and elected leaders who do their jobs to hold this administration accountable,” she said at a press event following her arraignment in June. “We will not be intimidated.”
Tensions escalated at the facility when a federal officer ordered Baraka to leave a secured area of the facility or face arrest, and pushing and shoving allegedly occurred, according to prosecutors.
Baraka was arrested at the facility and charged with trespassing, which was later dropped.
The U.S. Capitol is seen on the 40th day of a government shutdown on November 9, 2025 in Washington, DC. Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The longest government shutdown in U.S. history came to an end on Wednesday night, after six House Democrats joined Republicans to pass a funding package in a narrow 222-209 vote.
The Democrats’ defections helped push the bill over the finish line, as two Republicans opposed against the measure to reopen the government. President Donald Trump signed the bill in the Oval Office shortly after it was passed.
The moderate Democrats who voted yes were Jared Golden of Maine, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Adam Gray of California, Don Davis of North Carolina, Henry Cuellar of Texas and Tom Suozzi of New York.
They all cited the growing impacts of the shutdown on Americans as a reason why they moved to end the 43-day impasse, despite Democratic leadership opposing the funding package because it does not address their key demand of extending Affordable Care Act tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year.
“Tonight, I voted to end this partisan car crash of a shutdown. Nobody likes paying even more money to insurance companies — and the fight to stop runaway health insurance premiums won’t be won by holding hungry Americans hostage,” Gluesenkamp Perez said in a statement. “Americans can’t afford for their Representatives to get so caught up in landing a partisan win that they abandon their obligation to come together to solve the urgent problems that our nation faces.”
Gray said it was not a “perfect deal,” but one “born of compromise,” and touted how the bill will extend funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and SNAP for a full fiscal year.
“Some critics have asked why I supported the bill when it did not include an immediate extension of the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced premium tax credits. Here’s why: Protecting families from hunger today does not prevent us from lowering health care costs tomorrow,” he said.
“People are hurting right now — they are in pain!” Davis said after the vote.
When asked by ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott if the impacts of the shutdown outweighed everything else, Davis said “absolutely.”
“And it is listening and hearing from constituents who are deeply, deeply concerned. They’ve been affected in ways that we don’t even understand,” he told ABC News’ Scott.
“Parents are telling their kids to eat more at school because they don’t know if they’re going to be able to eat when they get home,” Davis continued, adding “This is real.”
But Democrats are now dealing with infighting after eight Senate Democrats and the six House Democrats broke ranks to end the shutdown without a deal on ACA subsidies. The agreement to end the shutdown included a promise from Senate Republican leadership to hold a vote on health care subsidies in the coming weeks, but Speaker Mike Johnson has not committed to such a vote in the House.
Democrats who voted to reopen the government said the fight will continue on the ACA, as premiums are set to skyrocket for recipients next year.
“Now, with the shutdown ended, Congress should take immediate action to extend expiring ACA premium tax credits that keep health insurance plans affordable for millions of Americans. We still have a window to pass bipartisan legislation to extend these credits,” Golden said.
Suozzi echoed that sentiment.
“Everyone knows that I have been preaching bipartisanship for years. I am relying on the representations of some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, that they want to get something done to extend the Premium Tax Credits,” Suozzi said.
“If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are willing to work together to address this health insurance affordability crisis by extending the premium tax credits, then we will have accomplished something meaningful,” the New York Democrat added. “If we are not successful, it will deal yet another blow to the already eroding trust in Washington, D.C., and it will be clear who failed to deliver.”
ABC News’ Arthur Jones II contributed to this report.
ABC News Correspondent Jim Avila. Randy Sager/ABC News
(NEW YORK) — Jim Avila, a former longtime ABC News senior correspondent, whose investigative journalism earned him several of the most prestigious awards in broadcast news, has died. He was 69.
His death after a long illness was announced internally by ABC News President Almin Karamehmedovic.
“Jim was a gifted journalist and a generous colleague,” Karamehmedovic said in an email to staff.
Avila had also a been 20/20 correspondent based in Los Angeles before departing from the network in 2021. He specialized in politics, justice, law and consumer investigations.
“As the Senior Law and Justice Correspondent, he has covered every major trial from Jerry Sandusky and Penn State to Michael Jackson, OJ Simpson and countless others,” according to his ABC News official biography. “He led reports on immigration, making several trips to the southern border to document stories of immigrants, and also covered the death of Freddie Gray and civil unrest in Baltimore.”
He covered the White House from 2012 to 2016, during President Barack Obama’s second term.
“He won the prestigious Merriman Award from the White House Correspondents Association for breaking the news that the United States and Cuba had reopened diplomatic relations,” the biography said.
He earned numerous awards, including two National Emmy Awards and five Edward R. Murrow Awards, the biography said. His work also won him the prestigious Cine Golden Eagle Award, the Mongerson Prize for Investigative Reporting and five Chicago-area Emmy Awards in the category of Spot News.
“In 1999, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists honored him with reporter of the year,” the biography said. “In addition, he garnered three Peter Lisagor Awards from the Headline Club of Chicago, winning for his coverage of the Peru drug wars and the death of Mayor Harold Washington, and was named Best Reporter of 1989.”
He was a named a 2019 honoree by National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ Hall of Fame.
Avila was most recently a senior investigative reporter at KGTV, the ABC affiliate in San Diego, where he continued “covering a wide range of stories with depth and fairness,” Karamehmedovic said.
Even after his health challenges began, Avila “continued to contribute to journalism through opinion writing and local reporting, sharing his experience and deep curiosity to tell the stories that mattered most to his community and viewers,” the email said.
“We send our heartfelt condolences to his family, including his three children, Jamie, Jenny, and Evan, and we thank him for his many contributions and unwavering commitment to seeking out the truth,” Karamehmedovic said.
James Comey speaks onstage at 92NY on May 30, 2023 in New York City. Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Attorneys for former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James have asked a judge to throw out their criminal indictments on the basis that the Trump-installed prosecutor who charged them was appointed unlawfully.
At a hearing Thursday, U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie pressed Justice Department lawyers on the government’s conduct in bringing indictments against Comey and James, which were brought just weeks apart at the direct urging of President Donald Trump after he removed a previous appointee overseeing the powerful U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia and replaced him with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide and former insurance lawyer with no prior prosecutorial experience.
Lawyers for Comey, who has pleaded not guilty to allegedly making false statements to Congress, and James, who has pleaded not guilty to mortgage fraud-related charges, argued that the cases against them are “fatally flawed” because Halligan’s appointment violates the Constitution’s Appointments Clause.
Judge Currie said she would plan to rule before Thanksgiving.
The legal challenge comes on the heels of other successful efforts to disqualify prosecutors that the Trump administration had attempted to install in at least three other U.S. attorneys offices in Los Angeles, Nevada and New Jersey beyond the 120-day limit set by federal law.
Judge Currie, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton from South Carolina, was appointed last month to oversee the challenge to Halligan’s appointment.
In legal briefs, attorneys for both Comey and James pointed to the unusual series of developments leading up to Halligan’s eventual appointment to lead the office after the ouster of Erik Siebert, who judges in the Eastern District of Virginia had unanimously voted to lead the office on an interim basis after his 120-day appointment by Attorney General Pam Bondi had expired.
Siebert, as ABC News previously reported, had resisted bringing the cases against both Comey and James after career prosecutors in the office determined evidence against them would likely fail to convince a jury of their guilt.
But just four days after Halligan was installed to lead the office, according to sources, she dismissed recommendations of prosecutors and personally presented the charges against Comey before a grand jury, which voted to indict him on two of three counts sought by Halligan. Just two weeks later, Halligan again personally appeared before a grand jury to seek James’ indictment.
“The President and Attorney General appointed the President’s personal lawyer as interim U.S. Attorney in violation of a clear statutory command so that the interim U.S. Attorney could indict an outspoken critic of the President just days before the relevant statute of limitations was set to expire,” Comey’s attorneys said in a filing last month.
The Justice Department has argued that the legal challenge to Halligan’s appointment is based on a misreading of statutes that govern presidential appointments and have accused Comey and James of seeking to exploit a “paperwork error” related to the law cited by Bondi when she initially appointed Halligan to lead the office.
In a legal brief earlier this month, prosecutors revealed that over a month after Halligan was appointed to lead the office, Bondi signed an additional order that sought to retroactively appoint Halligan as a “Special Attorney” specifically authorized to seek the indictments of Comey and James.
“The Attorney General has ratified Ms. Halligan’s appointment as Special Attorney with the authority to conduct criminal litigation in this district,” prosecutors said. “Because Ms. Halligan now has the indisputable authority to proceed with this prosecution, prospective relief would be inappropriate.”
In a reply brief filed last week, Comey’s attorneys accused the government of seeking to “retroactively transform” Halligan into an “authorized government attorney” and said their efforts to bolster the validity of her appointment were “unpersuasive.”
Critics say the indictments are part of a campaign of retribution by Trump against his perceived political foes, but Vice President JD Vance has said any such prosecutions are “driven by law and not by politics.”
Both James and Comey have urged Judge Currie to dismiss their indictments with prejudice, which would restrict from the government from bringing charges against them again if Halligan’s appointment were to be invalidated.
Luigi Mangione appears in court for a hearing on his state murder charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan Supreme Court on September 16, 2025 in New York City. (Curtis Means-Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Accused killer Luigi Mangione is taking aim at the Manhattan district attorney and New York police chief of detectives over the way they characterized a statement purportedly made by Mangione’s mother that killing the United Healthcare CEO was something she could see her son doing.
Mangione is accused of gunning down CEO Brian Thompson outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel in December 2024. Mangione was arrested in Pennsylvania after a five-day manhunt.
DA Alvin Bragg and Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny have referenced a tip the FBI received from a police sergeant in San Francisco, who had contacted the FBI after seeing a resemblance between the murder suspect and photos on Mangione’s social media.
During a December 2024 news conference, Kenny mentioned an alleged conversation between San Francisco police and Mangione’s mom.
“They had a conversation where she didn’t indicate that it was her son in the photograph, but she said it might be something that she could see him doing,” Kenny told reporters.
In a new court filing, Mangione’s defense attorneys said prosecutors turned over no evidence to substantiate the purported remark.
“To date, there has been no documentation provided in discovery that confirms the Chief of Detectives’ statement as to Mrs. Mangione’s alleged statement,” defense attorney Karen Agnifilo wrote. “If it is true that Mrs. Mangione never made this statement, then it is shocking and unconscionable that the District Attorney’s Office and the NYPD have never corrected this highly prejudicial false statement.”
If Mangione’s mother did, in fact, tell San Francisco police that shooting Thompson “might be something she could see him doing,” Agnifilo said the district attorney’s office should provide proof.
The defense asked the judge to declare the district attorney’s certification that it complied with discovery obligations insufficient. Prosecutors are expected to respond in a future court filing.
Mangione, who has pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges, is set to return to court next month.
Allegheny Mountains (Jeff Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
(NICHOLAS COUNTY, W. Va.) — A missing miner trapped in a flooded West Virginia coal mine for nearly a week has been found dead, according to West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey.
“At approximately 6:00 a.m. this morning, water levels inside the Rolling Thunder Mine in Nicholas County had receded sufficiently for rescue crews to safely enter. The team began their search, examining every section as they advanced underground. At 7:37 a.m., one two-man team located the body of the missing miner, foreman Steve Lipscomb,” Morrisey said in a statement posted on X.
Alpha Metallurgical Resources, the company that owns the mine where Lipscomb was trapped, also confirmed Lipscomb’s death in a statement obtained by ABC News.
“During routine operations, a crew in the underground mine encountered a sudden and substantial inflow of water. Tragically, Steven Lipscomb, 42, of Elkview, W. Va., was unable to reach safety. He was last seen attempting to ensure his crew made it out safely,” the statement reads.
“Our hearts are broken,” Andy Eidson, the CEO of Alpha Metallurgical Resources, said in the statement. “Steve joined our company in 2006 and was a dedicated employee, respected leader and friend to many. His actions to ensure the safety of his crew members were heroic. On behalf of the entire organization, we extend our prayers and deepest sympathies to his wife, two children and all who knew and cared for him.”
Rescuers had been searching for Lipscomb, whose name was not immediately released, since Saturday, when he became trapped in the flooded mine. Crews pumped 6,000 gallons of water per minute from the mine, Morrisey said earlier this week.
“The big strategic goal right now is to drain as much of the water as possible, so that can give the mine rescue individuals the opportunity to go in and further their search,” Gov. Morrisey said at a Wednesday press conference, adding that it was being drained at a rate of approximately one inch of water per hour. “Separately there’s an effort to open up a hole to be able to do the drill to ultimately have a capsule that goes down.”
Morrisey said on Monday that dive teams were working to find pockets of air where the miner might be located while the mine was being drained.
“This has been an around-the-clock response since Saturday, and we’re going to continue to do everything imaginable to help,” said Morrisey. “We’re going to continue to push, because we want to make sure that we give the miner every opportunity to live.”
Lipscomb’s death at Rolling Thunder Mine is the second mining fatality in West Virginia this month, following the death of another miner at a different mine last Thursday, according to Morrisey.
“Our coal miners are among the hardest-working and most courageous people in our state. They represent the strength, humility, and resolve that define West Virginia. We owe these men and women an enduring debt of gratitude for the sacrifices they make every day to power our communities and our nation,” Morrisey posted on Facebook earlier this month.
(NEW YORK) — Food banks and pantries have been experiencing historic demand since SNAP benefits halted on Nov. 1 for many Americans due to the federal government shutdown.
That halt affected nearly 42 million Americans, many of whom are older or low-income, and use benefits to help pay for groceries and other essentials.
President Donald Trump late Wednesday night signed a funding bill to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt earlier said that full SNAP benefits will be paid out once the shutdown was resolved.
However, food assistance workers said the restoration of food assistance can’t come soon enough as they struggle to fill in the gap left behind by SNAP.
Cyndi Kirkhart, executive director at Facing Hunger Food Bank, said she’s been working at the food bank for 11 years and has never seen the surge in people she is seeing now, and that it is higher than what she saw during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Facing Hunger Food Bank — which serves 17 counties in West Virginia, Ohio and eastern Kentucky — said some locations in the southern part of West Virginia have seen a 1,800% increase in the number of families visiting.
“Typically, we do mobile pantry distribution, which are cars [lining] up [and] we load their car up with food,” she told ABC News. “At the most, we’ll see 250 families. The past week, solidly, we have seen 900 families at each distribution, at each site.”
Kirkhart said their mobile pantries have seen such demand that instead of sending large box trucks to load up supplies at the food bank, she has had to send tractor-trailers. She added that she only has two tractor-trailers, which puts a lot of pressure on drivers to load up and visit multiple distribution sites.
Kirkhart said her organization encourages individuals to go to the food pantries for food rather than the bank, but they will still serve people who visit the bank.
“We’ll still have maybe, over the course of a month, 50 people that will show up directly at the food bank for an emergency food box,” she said. “And these past two weeks at least, we have had 60 a day. … It’s non-stop.”
In Washington state, food banks are also seeing an exponential increase in visitors. Jordan Beaudry, development and communications manager at North Help Line — which provides emergency services including food aid — said there has been a surge at the two food banks the organization serves that has been years in the making.
Starting in 2022, “we saw our numbers practically double overnight, and it’s just been a steady increase since then,” he told ABC News. “We’re serving twice as many folks as we did three years ago, and that is sort of setting the stage going into this latest round of SNAP cuts and the government shutdown. … We’ve seen just a massive increase in the amount of folks accessing services, particularly since the pause on SNAP benefits.”
The most recent demand began in October, when it was first announced that SNAP benefits may be halted in November, Beaudry said.
From July through September, the banks saw an average of 1,086 visitors per week for the first two weeks of the month, according to data provided by Beaudry. In October, the average for the first two weeks was 1,136 per week. Last week, the banks saw 1,329 visits.
At one of the food banks, Beaudry said the last Thursday in October was the highest number of people the organization has ever seen on a Thursday, with about a 14% increase in households visiting to receive food.
Similarly, Kristen Wild, president and CEO of hunger relief organization Operation Food Search, which serves 25 counties in Missouri and Illinois, said the pantries, shelters and community sites where the organization’s supplies are distributed are seeing increases in people visiting between 30% and 50%.
She described a distribution event last week during which Operation Food Search had prepared 700 meals to issue starting at 10 a.m. CT. An hour before the event, the line of cars was 500 long and more than 200 families had to be turned away.
“We’ve had agencies report to us that they have had to shut down earlier than their typical operating hours because they have run out of food,” she told ABC News. “We’re seeing agencies are being approached by people looking for food who’ve never needed to use a pantry in the past because the SNAP benefits were sufficient enough for them to get the food resources that they needed.”
The organization also runs a metro market program, which is like a mobile grocery store, that has seen a surge in customers.
The program charges for food at or below cost but has recently started issuing $15 vouchers to customers due to the increase in demand, Wild said. Workers have also had to replenish shelves multiple times throughout a two-hour metro market stop due to the increase in traffic.
Wild added that 90% of food assistance comes from federal programs like SNAP and about 10% comes from food banks and food pantries. The halt in SNAP benefits has forced food banks to go into “overdrive” to make up as much of the gap as possible.
“We’ve had terrific community support, both in terms of more food donations, more financial donations, so we can purchase more food, but we can’t make up for the full SNAP gap,” she said.
(NEW YORK) — The Supreme Court of India issued an order directing all states and union territories to remove stray dogs from public spaces — including schools, universities, hospitals, and transport hubs — sparking a debate about animal welfare.
The move came through a suo motu petition, where the court takes on a matter of public interest without any official petition, and was said to be in response to the alarming number of dog-bite incidents and the threat to human safety, particularly children.
The order called for dogs that are taken off the street for preventative medical treatments — including those related to rabies — to not be returned. They are meant to be shifted to a “designated shelter,” as per the judgement, because India’s 2023 law doesn’t allow culling.
The conditions and capacity of these shelters to host millions of India’s stray dogs has been questioned by activists and protestors.
Although some animal rights groups have noted a need for a solution to the problems caused by the dogs, some have also called the proposed approach into question.
The judgment announced on Nov. 7 cites several media reports and incidents, including one with a Welsh entrepreneur who was bitten by a stray dog during a morning run in Bengaluru, a city in India’s south.
India had an estimated 9 million dogs in their 2019 livestock census; other surveys done in 2021 estimated the number much higher, at 52 million. In 2024, the country recorded 3.7 million dog bite incidents and 54 human deaths from rabies. Estimated cases of rabies have declined by 75% between 2003 and 2023.
“These numbers have been falling steadily for two decades — the court orders do not seem to have taken this official and research data into consideration,” said Dr. Krithika Srinivasan, professor of political ecology at the University of Edinburgh.
Until now, India’s stray dog management was guided by the Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules, under which stray dogs were to be sterilized, vaccinated and dewormed before being released back into the same locality.
Though the recent judgment calls for the dogs not to be released back at all.
“Stable dog populations are less likely to bite and transmit rabies,” Srinivasan said. “When you start removing them, you create what ecologists call a perturbation effect.”
Ayesha Christina Benn, founder of Neighbourhood Woof and a longtime partner of the local urban body in implementing the ABC program, warned that infrastructure simply cannot handle the court’s directive.
Benn says the order isn’t practical. Delhi alone has a million dogs, and almost 20 centers to house them. “These centers themselves lack compliance,” Benn said. “We had to tear ours down and rebuild it to meet the norms.”
Her NGO currently receives the equivalent of about $11 per dog for sterilisation and vaccination — which is about two-thirds of the actual cost per dog. The government doesn’t have the necessary funds.
A similar directive was issued by the same court, in August, but on a smaller scale in Delhi National Capital Region. This directive was rescinded after protests from animal-rights groups.
In the current judgment, the court wants adequate fencing, boundary walls and gates around education institutes and hospitals within eight weeks.
Akanksha Majumdar, a lawyer by training, said, “The judgment is a step in the right direction, but detached from the ground reality.”
She runs an organization called The Philanthropist and the Happy Dog, which assists in the rescue and rehabilitation of community animals, including dogs and cats. Her group is “taking steps to file a review petition against the said order,” she said.
Srinivasan said she agreed that while the ABC policy’s implementation needs improvement, it has nonetheless been instrumental in bringing down rabies and dog population numbers in some regions.
She attributed the country’s progress to two key factors: the widespread availability of post-exposure prophylaxis for bite victims and the 2001 decision to end mass culling in favour of sterilisation and vaccination programmes.
Yet, despite the long-term decline, controversies around stray dogs have grown. Srinivasan warned that such incidents, while tragic, cannot be effectively addressed by policy decisions that are not based on long-term, nation-wide data and evidence that show which strategies have been successful.
Srinivasan said officials should focus on what has worked: Ensure human anti-rabies treatment is available across the country, avoid regular mass feeding of complete meals to prevent increases in dog population density in particular locations, and, of course, the vaccination-sterilization program.
And, to make them more effective, she said, officials should take the help of grassroots groups that work in the community and understand the dogs better.
(NEW YORK) — Airline disruptions continued across the U.S. on Thursday morning, with at least 989 flights canceled before about 5 a.m. ET, according to tracker FlightAware, as officials warned that it may take days for airports to get back up to speed.
It could take up to a week for air travel to return to normal operations after the government shutdown ends, Airlines for America President and CEO Chris Sununu said at a press briefing Wednesday afternoon.
The Federal Aviation Administration froze flight reductions on Wednesday that were initially set to increase on Thursday, as the number of canceled flights in the United States has steadily decreased this week.
The FAA issued an emergency order on Wednesday evening freezing the flight reductions at its current level of 6%.
Under a prior order, airlines had been required to reduce operations at 40 “high-impact airports” by 8% by Thursday and by 10% by Friday. The new order means those reductions will no longer increase.
With Thanksgiving just two weeks away, Sununu said he doesn’t see any impacts lasting into the holiday season.
“I don’t think any flights over the Thanksgiving week have actually been canceled yet. I think the airlines have been pretty tight working with the FAA looking a few days out to be sure,” said Sununu. “We’re still a good week plus away from that Thanksgiving week. There’s still plenty of time to make sure that everything over the Thanksgiving week goes off as originally planned.”
However, consumer confidence in travel declined during the shutdown and a survey by the American Hotel and Lodging Association found that nearly 20% of Americans have canceled or changed their Thanksgiving travel plans.
“Our poll has shown that that consumer confidence has impacted travel, and concerns about that have led to some changes with what we’re seeing is that 75% have lost or spent money as a result, already because of being affected negatively by travel and future intentions,” President and CEO of American Hotel and Lodging Association Rosanna Maietta said.
The 6% flight reductions will remain in place “as the FAA continues to assess the situation and determines when airlines and systems can safely and gradually return to normal operations,” the Department of Transportation said.
The order comes after more than 900 flights were canceled Wednesday in the U.S. as of approximately 8 p.m. ET, with departures from the busy hubs of Chicago, Denver and Atlanta leading the list of the most cancellations, according to FlightAware.
