Richard Belzer, stand-up comedian, best-selling author, and Law & Order veteran, has died, his literary agent David Vigliano confirms to ABC News. A cause of death is not yet known.
Belzer was one of the few actors to play the same character across several television shows: His cynical, conspiracy theory-loving Detective John Munch began on the NBC cop drama Homicide: Life on the Street from 1993 to 1999 before being spun off to Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, in which he appeared from 1999 to 2013.
The character, however, popped up in shows ranging from The X-Files to Arrested Development.
Belzer got his start in comedy, working alongside Saturday Night Live legends like John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Bill Murray in the National Lampoon Radio Hour in from 1973 to 1975, and appeared on camera in shows from Sesame Street to Saturday Night Live, for which he served as a warm-up comedian in the show’s early days.
Belzer also appeared in movies including Fame, Scarface, and Night Shift, as well as music videos for Mike + The Mechanics and Pat Benatar, and over the years often returned to the radio mic, at one point hosting a show for the liberal network Air America.
The actor also wrote four books regarding conspiracies, from the JFK Assassination to the 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370and the novelsI Am Not a Cop! and I Am Not a Psychic!.
Belzer was memorialized on Twitter by original Saturday Night Live cast member Laraine Newman, who noted, “…I loved this guy so much. He was one of my first friends when I got to New York to do SNL. We used to go out to dinner every week at Sheepshead Bay for lobster. One of the funniest people ever. A master at crowd work. RIP dearest.”
His SVU co-star Mariska Hargitay wrote on Instagram, “Goodbye my dear, dear friend. I will miss you, your unique light, and your singular take on this strange world. I feel blessed to have known you and adored you and worked with you, side by side, for so many years.”
Sarah Reingewirtz/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images
(LOS ANGELES) — A long-serving Catholic bishop known as a “peacemaker” was fatally shot in a Los Angeles home on Saturday, prompting police to launch a murder investigation, officials said.
Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell, who had been a priest and then a bishop during his 45 years with the church, died “unexpectedly,” José H. Gomez, the archbishop of Los Angeles, said in a statement.
He’d been known as a “man of deep prayer,” Gomez said.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s investigators said they received a medical emergency call at 12:57 a.m. Sunday and deputies responded to a home in the unincorporated neighborhood of Hacienda Heights. There, they found the 69-year-old O’Connell unresponsive and bleeding from a gunshot wound to the upper torso. He was pronounced dead at the scene, officials said.
No arrests have been announced.
It’s unclear how long O’Connell had been dead before sheriff’s deputies arrived at the home.
Detectives were piecing together the circumstances of the homicide on Sunday and working to determine the identity of the O’Connell’s killer.
“He was a peacemaker with a heart for the poor and the immigrant, and he had a passion for building a community where the sanctity and dignity of every human life was honored and protected,” Gomez said.
Upon hearing of O’Connell’s death, parishioners went to the crime scene and said prayers in front of the home.
“It broke me and I was scared to tell my wife because my wife loved him so much,” parishioner Johnny Flores told ABC Los Angeles station KABC.
Another parishioner, Glendy Perez, described O’Connell as “a humble soul.”
“He was not the type that would have confrontations with nobody,” Perez told KABC. “He was very loving, and he had like a gift of healing. When you would attend his ceremonies, it was like a gift of healing.”
O’Connell, who was born in Ireland, was named an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles by Pope Francis in 2015.
O’Connell studied for the priesthood at All Hallows College in Dublin and was ordained in 1979 to serve in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. After ordination, he served as associate pastor and pastor at several parishes in Los Angeles.
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Sunday pushed the Biden administration to provide more aid to Ukraine after Vice President Kamala Harris said Russia was committing “crimes against humanity” in its invasion.
“I believe a decision will be imminent here when we get back to Washington that the administration will start training Ukrainian pilots on the F-16” fighter jet, Graham, a prominent defense hawk, told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz in an exclusive interview from the Munich Security Conference.
That would represent a major escalation of U.S. support and one which President Joe Biden has signaled reluctance to commit to. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, appearing separately on “This Week,” didn’t say whether F-16s had been approved but noted that proper training for the Ukrainians was also important.
“Let me just stress this: How can you call this war by Russia a crime against humanity … and not give the victim of their crime against humanity the defensive weapons they need to stop the crime? So, we need to do two things quickly: make Russia a state sponsor of terrorism under U.S. law, which would make it harder for China to give weapons to Russia, and we need to start training Ukrainian pilots on the F-16 now,” Graham said.
World leaders have been meeting in Munich for an annual gathering to discuss global security on the eve of the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with Harris underscoring the need to stand up to authoritarian nations using “brute force.”
“In the case of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, we have examined the evidence, we know the legal standards, and there is no doubt: These are crimes against humanity,” she said in remarks to the security conference on Saturday, rebuking Russia’s repeated denials that it targets civilians and commits other atrocities.
When pressed by Raddatz on “This Week” over whether providing F-16 jets and long-range missiles to Ukraine would provoke Russian President Vladimir Putin, Graham said he was more concerned with removing Russia from Ukraine all together.
“I’m not worried about provoking Putin. I want to beat him. And how do you beat him? You beat him by giving the Ukrainians the military capability to drive the Russians out of Ukraine,” he said, adding, “I see solidarity across the aisle in America and across the seas.”
“Let’s make sure we beat Putin in Ukraine, because he will not stop if we do not,” Graham said.
He said that a defeat for Russia included them returning the Crimean Peninsula they illegally annexed in 2014. Graham pointed to a post-Soviet Union agreement in the ’90s with Ukraine and other countries in which Ukraine agreed to hand over its nuclear weapons in exchange for a guaranteed set of borders.
“To not honor that commitment would be tricking the Ukraine, would be rewarding Putin for rewriting agreements involving nuclear weapons,” he said.
He also doubled down on his hawkish views by calling for international tribunals to be established to try Putin himself, as well as other Russian officials.
“You label Putin’s Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism [and] you create international tribunals so we actually can try Putin and his cronies in the international court like we did after World War II,” he said.
He said boosting aid to Ukraine would send a warning over any ambitions Beijing may have to invade Taiwan and that the international community should be prepared to punish China for sending lethal aid to Moscow, as Blinken said on “This Week” they are considering.
“Now if that happens, the world needs to come down hard on China. … Any country that comes to their aid should pay a heavy price,” Graham said.
“That’s why we should designate Russia state sponsored terrorism, because if you do that under U.S. law and China provides lethal weapons, they will get sanctioned,” he said.
China’s Foreign Ministry insisted in a new statement that its relationship with Russia was “strategic” and “built on the basis of non-alliance, non-confrontation and non-targeting of third countries.” Graham urged them not to become more involved.
“To the Chinese, if you jump on the Putin train now, you’re dumber than dirt. It would be like buying a ticket on the Titanic after you saw the movie. Don’t do this. The most catastrophic thing that could happen to the U.S.-China relationship, in my opinion, is for China to give lethal weapons to Putin and his crime against humanity,” he said. “That would change everything forever.”
Separately, Raddatz asked Graham for his response to a recent Georgia grand jury report that reaffirmed no “widespread fraud” was found in the 2020 presidential election. Graham was subpoenaed and testified after a phone call he had with Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, about the 2020 election, before it was certified.
Graham told Raddatz he had “no concerns about my testimony” and said he agreed that there wasn’t major fraud, noting that he voted to certify the race.
(NEW YORK) — Don’t be fooled by the mild winter weather in some places — a massive storm is on its way to wreak havoc in several states as it treks across the country.
The next storm gearing up to affect the U.S. will start in the Northwest on Tuesday morning, bringing heavy snow to the mountains of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, forecasts show.
The storm system will then strengthen as it moves southeast into America’s Heartland.
By Wednesday, there will be a wide swath of snow from the Rocky Mountains to the Great Lakes region, delivering possible blizzards to the northern Plains and upper Midwest.
The National Weather Service has begun to issue winter weather alerts in those regions as the large storm system develops.
Many regions are projected to receive up to 2 feet of snow through Friday morning, but projected totals could increase as the storm gets closer.
Heavy rain and thunderstorms will also be possible in the South on Tuesday and and Wednesday, forecasts show.
However, the Northeast will continue to experience an unseasonably mild winter. The storm system will trek to the Northeast, bringing a wintry mix, but not much snow accumulation is expected in cities along the I-95 corridor.
(WASHINGTON) — Over an hourlong conversation this weekend, the top diplomats from China and the U.S. zigzagged through an agenda filled with contentious topics, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken issuing blunt warnings to his counterpart regarding Beijing’s expansive spy balloon program and fears the country could step up its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We had a very direct, very clear conversation about the Chinese surveillance balloon being sent over our territory in violation of our sovereignty, in violation of international law,” Blinken told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz in an interview just after his closed-door talk. “I told Wang Yi, my Chinese counterpart, that that action was unacceptable and must never happen again.”
The meeting, which came together in the late hours of Saturday evening on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, was the first in-person interaction between Blinken and China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi since a suspected Chinese surveillance aircraft was spotted hovering over American airspace, prompting Blinken to scuttle plans for a visit to Beijing at the last minute.
The lengthy discussion showcased deep fractures between the two superpowers and prompted fears that what’s often described as the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship could be deteriorating to dangerous lows.
On “This Week” on Sunday, Blinken also made clear that U.S. concerns about China extend beyond espionage, saying he had voiced his “growing concern” that Beijing may be considering providing military aid to Russia to support its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, a focal point of the summit in Munich.
“China has been engaged in providing rhetorical, political, diplomatic support to Russia,” Blinken said. “But we have information that gives us concern that they are considering providing lethal support to Russia in the war against Ukraine. And it was important for me to share very clearly with Wang Yi that this would be a serious problem.”
Whether Wang will heed that warning remains unclear. U.S. officials, including Blinken, were hesitant to characterize China’s side of the conversation but said that no apology was offered for the surveillance balloon incident.
In fact, in the days since the aircraft was shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, China has only doubled down on its claims that the balloon was a harmless, unmanned civilian vehicle — an explanation that directly conflicts with U.S. assessments.
In the hours before his meeting with Blinken, Wang described the Biden administration’s response as “absurd and hysterical.”
Raddatz pressed Blinken on the view among some U.S. officials that the path the balloon took over the continental United States may not have been the original plan.
“Martha, I can’t speak to their original intent,” Blinken said. But he stressed that once the balloon was over the country, “the balloon attempted to surveil very critical, important military installations.”
In an initial readout of Wang’s engagement with Blinken, Beijing said Wang “expressed China’s solemn position on the so-called airship incident, demanding that the United States change its course and face up to and solve the damage caused by the indiscriminate use of force.”
A subsequent readout provided by China’s Foreign Ministry took a sterner view of both the balloon altercation and China’s ties to Russia.
“If the US continues to dramatize, hype up or escalate the situation, it will be met in kind for as long as it takes. All consequences arising thereof shall be borne by the US side,” Chinese officials said of the balloon.
The officials said that in Wang’s meeting with Blinken, on Russia and Ukraine, Wang “stressed … China adheres to principles and stays committed to promoting peace talks.” The Chinese said their relationship with Russia was a “comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination” but insisted it “is built on the basis of non-alliance, non-confrontation and non-targeting of third countries.”
In the days that followed the balloon shoot-down earlier this month, the State Department declassified intelligence that China has overflown surveillance balloons above 40 countries, something Blinken said on “This Week” was top of mind for many officials in Munich.
“There’s a real concern that I’m hearing here from other countries, from allies and partners alike, about this program. And I think countries are — I was gonna say ‘pleased,’ pleased is the wrong word — they appreciate the fact that we’ve exposed it,” Blinken told Raddatz.
Another key focus of the conference was sustaining support for Ukraine as the country girds itself for another Russian offensive.
Kyiv has requested F-16 fighter jets, and while the U.S. hasn’t ruled out the possibility, Blinken signaled the administration wasn’t ready to hand over the aircraft just yet.
“We’re in very close collaboration and coordination with the Ukrainians precisely on this question of what do they need at any given time. But what’s very important is this: What we should not do, any of us, is to focus or get fixated on any particular weapons system because the weapon system itself, as important as it is, is not is not sufficient. You have to make sure that Ukrainians are trained on the systems that are being provided,” Blinken said. “If they’re not trained on them, they can’t use them.”
(GAZIANTEP, Turkey) — It was only a matter of time before the region surrounding Turkey and Syria experienced “the big one,” according to experts.
Tens of thousands of people died in a pair of cataclysmic earthquakes that rocked the region on Feb. 6. First, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Gaziantep, in southeastern Turkey along the border of Syria, followed by a 7.5-magnitude quake nine hours later about 100 miles north of the first, with hundreds of aftershocks in between and beyond.
The quakes took down thousands of buildings in the two countries, killing at least 42,000 people.
While individual earthquake activity is difficult to predict, it was never out of the realm of possibility that a large earthquake would be on the horizon in the region, experts told ABC News.
Turkey lies at the crossroads of tectonic plate activity
The complex tectonic activity that lies beneath essentially ensured that a devastatingly strong earthquake would eventually rock the region, the scientists said.
There are four tectonic plates, massive slabs of rock made of up Earth’s lithosphere, that interact in Turkey. The Arabian and African plates are moving to the north and interacting with the Eurasian plate, which is essentially in place as a boundary to the north, Joshua Russell, a professor of seismology at Syracuse University, told ABC News.
“That stress is essentially squeezing Turkey out to the west into the Aegean,” Alexander Stewart, a professor of geology at St. Lawrence University, told ABC News.
Picture a banana being squeezed out from between the peels, and that is essentially how Turkey is being exuded out into the Aegean Sea as a result of the plate interactions, Stewart said.
What makes Turkey even more vulnerable is the movement from the Anatolian plate is essentially slipping along the fault lines of the North Anatolian fault zone, the most seismically active fault zone in the world, Stewart said.
However, it was the East Anatolian fault zone responsible for the most recent deadly quake, which extends down, through Syria. The energy released from the “rock-to-rock slippage” of the plates onto the East Anatolian fault, which is less active than the North Anatolian fault, is more catastrophic than earthquakes that are releasing the stress on a more consistent basis, Stewart said.
Although the earthquake had a significant magnitude, the readings, which measures the amplitude of the wave forms, or how much fault is moving, on the seismograph don’t tell the full story of the strength of the earthquake.
The earthquake involved a break on fault extended for 300 kilometers, or more than 186 miles, Susan Hough, a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, told ABC News.
“The bigger the fault, the bigger the earthquake,” Russell said, adding that the shallower the earthquake, the more ground motion that occurs.
When the quake happens, it does not shake all at once. From the epicenter, the rupture travels down the fold at about 3 kilometers per second, Hough said. So if it continues for 300 kilometers, it’s actually moving for 100 seconds, Hough said.
So in addition to the very long duration of the quake, it’s also impacting a “huge” area, Hough said.
Stewart estimated that Turkey is in the top 20% of regions in the world that would experience devastation due to earthquakes.
A 7.3-magnitude earthquake in Fukushima, Japan, in March 2022 only killed four people. The magnitude of the earthquake was not “out of the ordinary,” but although Japan is an earthquake-prone region, the country’s economic system is able to provide and engineer structures to withstand moderate earthquake magnitudes.
The same can’t be said for regions like eastern Turkey and Haiti.
In 1936, the North Anatolian fault ruptured beneath Marmara Sea, which also led to tens of thousands of deaths. It was then that building codes began to be instated in the country. Another earthquake in 1999 prompted additional building codes, but they are not enforced, Stewart said.
“It takes a long time to re retrofit buildings, and it’s expensive,” Russell said.
Could a similar earthquake happen in the U.S.?
The West Coast of the continental U.S., as well as Alaska, are prone to earthquakes as well, the experts said.
One of the most destructive earthquakes to occur in the U.S. happened in 1906 when nearly 300 miles of the San Andreas fault ruptured, resulting in an estimated 7.9-magnitude earthquake that killed at least 3,000 people in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1933, the Newport-Inglewood Fault cased a 6.4-magnitude earthquake in Long Beach, California, resulting in extensive damage and killing up to 120 people.
The Long Beach earthquake “taught engineers a lot about how strongly the ground can shake from a 6.5,” Hough said.
For decades, California has planned its engineering and building codes based on historical seismicity to survive earthquakes of similar magnitudes, the experts said. In addition, single family homes tend to be more resilient to earthquakes than high-rise apartment buildings, Hough said.
Highways in California, especially bridges and overpasses, have also been retrofitted with steel to protect drivers in the event of an earthquake, Hough said.
“In general, California, the overall resilience is is better than in Turkey,” Hough said.
Settlements along fault lines often have high population density because faults tend to present a nice place to live, Hough said. There’s typically surrounding water, mountains and more rain, and people will cluster around those regions, she said.
This can prove problematic, because the closer you are to the moving fault, the more shaking you will experience, Hough said.
“You have the settlements right on top of the fold, and then if you have the construction issues on top of that, it’s kind of a perfect storm for big damage,” she said.
However, biggest earthquakes in the U.S. tend to occur in Alaska.
“No one lives up there,” so those quakes are not publicized as much, Stewart said. But since those earthquakes are so large, they can present other rippling effects, such as tsunamis, Hough said.
Although the U.S. would not experience a death toll of similar caliber to Turkey and Syria, there would be severe economic damage, Stewart said.
“Our efforts in retrofitting and engineering to protect lives in Japan and North America is very high, but it is not going to minimize economic loss,” he said.
Courtesy of New Hanover County Public Library, North Carolina Room.
(WILMINGTON, N.C.) — Athalia Howe was just 12 years old when she, her sister and mother were forced to seek refuge in a cemetery as armed white supremacists terrorized Wilmington, North Carolina, in the fall of 1898. Separated from her father, they were unsure if he was still alive until days later when they reunited.
Decades after the incident, Howe had a flashback to that time. She grabbed the wrist of her great-granddaughter, Cynthia Brown, and screamed, “If it ever happens again, run! Don’t let it happen to you!”
“She had a very stark, distant look in her eyes,” Brown told ABC News, remembering the encounter. “I was very thrown. I didn’t know what to make of it. After that, no one talked about it, no one explained it.”
It would be years before she finally learned from family members what her great-grandmother was referencing: the Wilmington Coup of 1898, the only successful coup d’état in American history.
Nearly 125 years later, the wounds of the deadly campaign still run deep in the city, with many residents saying Wilmington never made amends for the tragedy. Residents and activists continue to work towards uncovering that history and finding redress for the descendants of Black residents impacted by the violence.
The coup was spearheaded by Josephus Daniels, publisher of several influential newspapers in the state, and Furnifold Simmons, chairman of the state’s Democratic Party, to overthrow the elected biracial government in Wilmington, according to historians.
The plot, titled the “White Supremacy Campaign,” utilized propaganda, fiery speeches and intimidation by the Red Shirts, a militia group named for the red tunics they wore, to prevent Black and white Republican voters from turning out for the 1898 state and federal elections, historians say.
The plot succeeded and they effectively stole the election. But in Wilmington, several Black politicians still held office and the coup leaders did not want to wait until the following year to vote them out.
Two days later, on Nov. 10, 1898, a mob of nearly 2,000 white men torched the offices of Wilmington’s only Black newspaper, The Daily Record, and began indiscriminately shooting at Black residents across the city. At least 200 people were killed in the violence, although historians say the true number is hard to pinpoint. White leaders later spun the violence as a “race riot” that the militia needed to control.
In the following weeks, as many as 2,100 Black residents abandoned the city, historians say.
Amid the chaos, Alfred Waddell, a former confederate general and one of the leaders of the campaign, forced the resignation of several local officials and installed himself as mayor of Wilmington.
As a result of the violence, Jim Crow segregationist laws became entrenched in North Carolina and echoes of the event still manifest themselves over a century later. The Black population, once boasting the majority in Wilmington, now only makes up 17 percent of the city, according to the latest Census data from 2020.
What happened in Wilmington also became a model for other massacres like the one in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921.
“The violence in Wilmington became an example to other locations of how to have a riot and get away with killing people in the street based on race,” LeRae Umfleet, a lead researcher for a 2006 state report on the coup, told ABC News. “People from Atlanta spoke to people from Wilmington and asked them, ‘How did you do this, how were you able to neutralize the black vote? How was it that there was so many people killed, and no one was ever held accountable?'”
Brown grew up in Wilmington during segregation, but said she had a “romantic idea” of the community around her. As she learned about the history of the coup, that sentiment turned into anger and frustration.
“There was a generational robbery of values, of understanding one’s family tree, one’s family legacy. I realized there were people who had a snip if you will,” Brown said. “There was a disconnect for them because they had lost family history…family assets and family members.”
Brown said she recalls going to the public library after school with a friend to try and learn more about what happened. The library refused to show them any records even though they were stored there, Brown said.
She moved away for college, eager to leave the city behind, but returned to Wilmington after her mother suddenly passed away. It was then she says that she became more involved in community programs and working to preserve the history of the events of 1898.
Laura Ginther, a member of the New Hanover County Community Remembrance Project (NHCCRP), a group working to memorialize the victims of the massacre, calls Wilmington “a microcosm for every prejudice that can exist.”
“The students who go to the schools in the primarily Black areas of the town, their scores on education are worse. Their access to healthcare is worse, there’s no grocery store in the area,” she said.
The 2021 Cape Fear Inclusive Economy Report, a study that looks at the inclusivity of the economy in the Cape Fear region where Wilmington is located, found that 30 percent of Black residents fall below the federal poverty line compared to 11.9 percent of White residents. It also found that the median White household income is a little more than double that of the median Black income.
Kim Cook, a professor of sociology and criminology at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and a restorative justice practitioner moved to the city in 2005 and said she was “distressed” by the “palpable” segregation. For a long time, she couldn’t understand the division until she learned about the events of 1898.
Now, she works with groups like NHCCRP and Coming to the Table, a national organization focused on healing the racial wounds of America’s past.
“The wound hasn’t healed,” she said. “I’ve been calling for a truth and reconciliation process in Wilmington for years that has fallen on deaf ears.”
As the 125th anniversary of the incident approaches, Wilmington residents are calling on the North Carolina legislature to hold true to the recommendations made in the 2006 report on the incident. The residents feel like nothing has been done beyond a grassroots level.
Some of the recommendations were put into legislative proposals, but most died in committee. The North Carolina Democratic Party issued an apology in 2007, acknowledging the party’s role in the coup and renouncing the past leaders.
Meanwhile, organizations like Third Person Project have worked to preserve and digitize copies of The Daily Record. The group also works in conjunction with the Equal Justice Initiative and other advocates to find descendants of victims and those who fled Wilmington using genealogical data.
Activists like Sonya Patrick are pushing for legislation to provide reparations for the descendants of those affected by the riot. She said change needs to be made to improve opportunities for Black residents of the city.
“When we don’t take action, and we don’t try to change things, that’s saying that we’re satisfied with the massacre, we’re satisfied with what happened,” Patrick said. “We should never be satisfied with that type of injustice.”
(NEW YORK) — Abbott is being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as the Federal Trade Commission, in relation to their infant formula business, the company disclosed in a new SEC filing.
Abbott said in a filing Friday that they received a subpoena from the SEC’s Enforcement Division in December 2022 requesting “information about its powder infant-formula business and related public disclosures.”
In January, Abbott “received a civil investigative demand” from the FTC seeking information in connection with the agency’s investigation of companies that bid for infant formula contracts with the federal Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program through USDA.
Abbott’s disclosure of these inquiries come after the Justice Department had already launched a criminal investigation into Abbott’s infant formula manufacturing conduct, a source familiar with the matter told ABC News, after contamination concerns triggered a massive recall and shutdown at their Sturgis, Michigan, plant last year.
An Abbott spokesperson told ABC News they are “cooperating with the government investigations.”
An FTC spokesperson declined to comment to ABC News on Saturday.
ABC News has also reached out to the SEC for comment and have not yet heard back.
The discovery of Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria inside Abbott’s Sturgis plant prompted a massive voluntary formula recall last February, after four babies who had consumed Abbott’s formula contracted a Cronobacter infection. Two of the infants subsequently died, although Abbott maintains there has not been conclusive evidence that its formula caused the infant illnesses, since none of the Cronobacter strains found at their plant matched the two samples genetically sequenced from the sickened infants.
Ultimately, it was the combined findings of Cronobacter inside Abbott’s plant — along with operational deficiencies identified by federal investigators and consumer complaints — which led to the plant’s closure.
After inspecting Abbott’s Sturgis facility last year, FDA chief Dr. Robert Califf described the “shocking” and “egregiously unsanitary conditions” investigators had found.
“Standing water; cracks in the key equipment that present the potential for bacterial contamination to persist, particularly in the presence of moisture; leaks on the roof; a previous citation for inadequate hand washing,” Califf testified before Congress in May. “Many signs of a disappointing lack of attention to the culture of safety, in this product that is so essential to the lives of our most precious people.”
Abbott’s recall ricocheted across American groceries and families’ pantries, exacerbating an already mounting supply issue, and forcing families to scramble for what their babies needed for months.
During the height of the severe shortage last May, the FTC had already launched an inquiry into the formula crisis, probing potential unfair and illicit enterprises which may be exploiting parents’ desperation amid the crisis.
The news of these latest inquiries into Abbott also follows the recent health expert analysis which called out major formula companies, Abbott included, for “exploitative” marketing and aggressive lobbying practices.
(PHILADELPHIA) — A Temple University police officer was fatally shot in the head when trying to arrest a robbery suspect in north Philadelphia on Saturday night, officials said.
He was later pronounced dead at Temple University Hospital, the university said.
The suspect fled, and no arrests have been made.
Temple President Jason Wingard said he was “heartbroken,” in a statement.
“There are simply no words that can make sense of this tragedy,” he said.
The death of the officer, whose identity officials were not yet disclosing out of respect for his family, was the first for a Temple University officer in the line of duty, Jennifer Griffin, the university’s vice president for public safety, said at a news conference Saturday night.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro offered his condolences on the death of the officer.
“Lori and I are devastated for the family of the Temple University police officer who was killed in the line of duty tonight, bravely serving his community. We’re sending prayers to his loved ones, Temple Police, and the entire @TempleUniv community. May his memory be a blessing,” Shapiro tweeted Saturday.
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said he was “heartbroken and outraged” by the death and pledged that “The City will continue to work with Temple Police to support them during this difficult time.”
Temple University alerted shortly after 7 p.m. Saturday that a shooting was reported on the 1700 block of Montgomery Avenue.
“Use caution. Avoid the area. Police are responding,” the school tweeted.
ABC News’ Will McDuffie contributed to this report.
“Our Baby girl is here and ready to Pardi haha,” he shared on his socials Saturday morning, adding “DAD joke!”
Presley Fawn Pardi was born at 5:05 a.m. on February 18, weighing 7 pounds 12 ounces and measuring 20.25 inches, according to Jon’s post.
Jon and wife Summer‘s first child was about a week late. “Just gonna keep posting pics until we get the real deal,” Summer shared on Friday, along with a photo showing off her baby bump.
