(COLUMBUS, Ga.) — Police in Columbus, Georgia, responded to the shooting at a local Shell gas station Friday night to find nine children, including a five-year-old child, injured with gunshot wounds.
The Columbus Police Department has made no arrests in the case, and the nine victims are being treated for non-life-threatening injuries at a local hospital. Police were dispatched to the crime scene at 10:11 p.m. Friday.
“The rash of gun violence involving our youth is impacting communities across the country,” Columbus Police Chief Freddie Blackmon said in a statement.
According to the Columbus police, they arrived at the gas station to see “a large group of people” and the victims. The victims range in age from five to 17 years old and include seven males and two females.
The mass shooting follows a deadly attack in Arkabutla, Mississippi, where a shooter killed six people on Friday before his arrest. The Georgia shooting is the 74th mass shooting this year in the United States, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive.
“It is going to take a community effort to combat gun violence in our city,” Blackmon said. “The entire village has a responsibility because incidents like this impacts all of us.”
(MUNICH) — Vice President Kamala Harris said Saturday the U.S. has determined Russia committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine during a speech in Munich in which she spoke of 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. The United States has formally determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity,” Harris said in her remarks at the Munich Security Conference.
Harris also made clear in her remarks that the world must set the example with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discourage any other autocracies from trying to go down a similar path.
“No nation is safe in a world where one country can violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of another where crimes against humanity are committed with impunity, where a country with imperialist ambitions can go unchecked,” Harris said.
Harris also appeared to make a veiled reference to China and the threat of it retaking Taiwan by force.
“We have remained strong and we must stay strong. Because if Putin were to succeed, with his attack on these fundamental principles other nations could feel emboldened to follow his violent example. Other authoritarian powers could seek to bend the world to their will through coercion, disinformation, and even brute force. The international order upon which we all rely could be at risk,” she later added.
Harris directly called out China in her remarks as well, criticizing them for “deepening their relationship with Moscow” since the start of the war.
“Looking ahead, any steps by China to provide lethal support to Russia would only reward aggression, continue the killing and further undermine a rules-based order,” Harris warned.
Harris praised the bipartisan members of Congress present at the conference, noting her confidence that “their support for Ukraine would continue.”
She also underscored the strong global commitment to the fight in Ukraine, noting that while there would be “dark days” ahead for the country, they would ultimately be victorious.
“[I]f Putin thinks he can wait us out, he is badly mistaken. Time is not on his side. To be sure, Ukrainians will continue to be tried and tested just as they have been over this past year. Transatlantic Unity will continue to be tried and tested. And I am certain that Ukraine will rise to the task that the United States and Europe will rise to the task,” Harris said.
(NEW YORK) — The doorbell at 224 West 4th Street in Manhattan’s West Village doesn’t work, which is why Will Fann is leaving a note on the door. That note is one of the only handwritten things at the Fat Cat Fab Lab on a recent Saturday, because the space is hosting a gathering of computer keyboard enthusiasts.
Fann tells ABC Audio that meetups like this are usually pretty informal.
“It’s usually just bring your keyboard – or just show up – talk to other people about, like, what you’re doing, what you’re planning to build, what you have built [and] show off whatever keyboard you want to show off,” he said.
The event is hosted by Fann, alongside one of the Lab’s board members, Mars Kennedy, who said the mechanical keyboard community is sizable.
“The first time I ran this meetup, I actually had to cap attendance because we just can’t fit that many people in this space,” said Kennedy.
For this meet, keyboard enthusiasts congregate under a multicolored lighting fixture styled to look like an alien spacecraft. Huddled around wooden tables, attendees browse a diverse selection of customized keyboards. Notecards are perched above each one, with words like “Royal Kludge,” “Kailh tactiles” and “float mount” detailing each board’s specifications (like any hobby, mechanical keyboard enthusiasm brings with it a fair amount of lingo).
Most modern keyboards, like the ones that come with laptops and desktop computers, are “membrane” keyboards. A large rubber pad sits under the entire keyboard, and pressing each key into that “membrane” completes an electrical circuit. Doing so sends a message to the computer that a keystroke is happening.
The boards on display at this meetup are “mechanical” keyboards, which complete the same electrical circuit, but instead of using a rubber membrane, each key uses individual “switches.” Subtle differences in those mechanical components can vastly impact the typing experience.
“They’re little plastic cubes with a cross-shaped stem on it,” said John Poblador, a software consultant who brought two keyboards to the meet. “And the internals of the cross-shaped stem is actually what determines the feel.”
Poblador also said different switches make different sounds. But that’s just the start of what keyboard customizers can get up to.
One of the boards on display is pink and shaped like a cat’s head, while another sports a black and gray color scheme, with keys styled to look like skulls. Another purple and white board features keys split into two distinct clusters: what’s known as an “Alice” layout. There’s even a board dedicated to coffee – the Arabic lettering a reference to arabica coffee beans.
Not all keyboards are for typing, either. Gordon Biggs showed off his homemade keypad, which he says has a WiFi chip inside.
“Various keys do different sort of home automation things,” he said, like “turning on and off lights, that kind of thing.”
Biggs says he first became interested in mechanical keyboards in 2019. But his interest really took off as pandemic lockdowns set in the following year.
“I can build this keyboard, and that’s a, like, nice tactile thing that I can control in this moment,” he says. “Then also finding this community of other keyboard enthusiasts where we could all kind of connect online when we were all stuck at home, and that was also very nice.”
It’s a similar story for several keyboard enthusiasts at the meet.
“I started kind of during the COVID era, so 2020. And that’s when the hobby boomed,” says Poblador. “Everyone’s at home or working from home and they want to upgrade their office set up and all that stuff… everyone is obsessed with standing desks and Herman Miller chairs, whatever. Well, what about this thing that you were literally touching for, let’s say, eight hours a day?”
But it’s not all about ergonomics, said Biggs.
“I think you have people coming at it from like a vintage computing aspect,” he said. “Where it’s like, ‘this is a modern keyboard switch that mimics the feel of or sound or whatever of an old keyboard from the ’80s.'”
In fact, analog tech appears to be having a moment. VHS cassettes, for example, are fetching big money at auction, with a collector shelling out $75,000 for a near-mint tape of “Back to the Future” last year. Vinyl records, led by Taylor Swift’s “Midnights,” accounted for 43% of all album sales last year, outselling CDs for the second year in a row, according to Luminate.
Biggs said, for him, mechanical keyboards are more about the thrill of tinkering with a machine, mixing style and functionality to create something unique.
“I think it’s about sort of like, being able to get a tool that works really well for you,” he said.
All told, about 40 people showed up to the meet – a good turnout, according to the organizers. This particular event was considered a “mini-meet.” Biggs is in charge of organizing larger gatherings. For his next meetup, in April, he’s expecting about 150 people to attend.
(NEW YORK) — When a group of Tesla workers at a factory in Buffalo launched a union organizing effort this week, it thrust employees into a high-profile standoff with a company led by CEO Elon Musk, one of the wealthiest people in the world.
A day later, on Wednesday, Tesla fired more than 30 workers at the facility, some of whom were involved in the organizing effort, the union said in a complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board.
“We all saw people getting marched out,” Nick Piazza, 32, a participant in the union drive who works at the warehouse labeling videos to improve Tesla’s self-driving software, told ABC News. “I’m heartbroken by it.”
“The timing is very suspicious,” he added. “We feel it’s a scare tactic. But it emboldens me.”
In a blog post on Thursday, Tesla rejected allegations that there were retaliatory firings at the Buffalo facility. The company laid off 4% of the autopilot labeling staff as part of a routine performance review that takes place every six months, the company said.
According to Tesla, only one out of the 27 impacted employees was officially identified as part of the union campaign.
Tesla identified the affected employees on Feb. 3, approximately 10 days before the launch of the union campaign, the company added.
The labor campaign at Tesla follows a resurgence in union organizing last year that brought landmark victories at major corporations like Amazon and Starbucks, carrying over similar grievances about insufficient pay and closely tracked performance.
The newly formed union of Tesla workers, called Tesla Workers United, is affiliated with Workers United, the labor organization that gained prominence last year for helping Starbucks workers unionize more than 260 stores nationwide.
The union drive at Tesla faces formidable challenges, however, since a campaign encompassing thousands of workers will prove more difficult than an organizing drive at a Starbucks store, for instance, which typically employs a few dozen workers, experts told ABC News.
On top of that, workers will likely encounter a well-resourced effort to dissuade them from unionizing, a modern-day corporate playbook for responding to labor drives that in some cases includes employee termination, the experts said.
“We’re seeing a big upsurge of workers interested in joining a union,” Susan Schurman, a labor studies professor at Rutgers University, told ABC News. “The question is just do they feel strongly enough to take the risk of trying to organize, understanding that one of the risks is that they’re going to be fired?”
Tesla did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
The organizing committee, which counts between 40 and 50 members, has so far focused on issues of pay and job security, Piazza added.
“It’s really hard to support a family in this economy,” he said. “Some people are really struggling.”
Workers also have taken issue with digital surveillance that closely tracks their performance, Piazza said. Such worker monitoring is “somewhat standard” in the industry, he said, but the technology overlooks some parts of the job, such as time spent coordinating with coworkers.
Roughly 800 employees at the Buffalo facility work labeling video for self-driving software, but at least a thousand additional workers at the warehouse do other tasks, Piazza said. The union aims to organize all of the workers, he said, claiming that the employees in other departments appear receptive.
Tesla and Musk appeared to oppose a previous union campaign among workers at a factory in Fremont, California. In 2021, the National Labor Relations Board ordered Tesla to ask Musk to delete an anti-union message posted on Twitter a few years prior.
“Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union,” Musk tweeted in 2018. “Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?”
Musk did not delete the tweet and Tesla is challenging the NLRB order in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
While federal labor law protects unionizing workers from retaliation, the penalties are weak and the measures afford wide latitude for some anti-union tactics, such as mandatory meetings meant to deter workers, some labor observers say.
“The penalties are so slight that most employers consider it the cost of doing business,” said Schurman, of Rutgers University.
Anne Lofaso, a labor professor at West Virginia University, said she expects that Musk will respond forcefully to the union campaign but the approach could backfire.
“I find it hard to believe Elon Musk will be quiet through this,” she said. “If he starts to scare workers or over-respond, people get angry and say ‘fine, I’ll sign a card.'”
Organizing at a company led by Musk has induced some anxiety, Piazza said, adding that he doesn’t view the union campaign as adversarial.
“It can be quite intimidating with Musk being such a huge public figure,” Piazza said.
“Most of us like the company and like our jobs,” he added. “We just think we deserve a seat at the table.”
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S military has announced that it has concluded its search for flying objects shot down over Deadhorse, Alaska, and Lake Huron.
The first object was shot down on Feb. 10th over Alaska while the second was shot down over Lake Huron on Feb. 12 and no debris was found in either of these cases, according to a joint statement released by NORCOM and NORAD.
“The U.S. military, federal agencies, and Canadian partners concluded systematic searches of each area using a variety of capabilities, including airborne imagery and sensors, surface sensors and inspections, and surface scans, and did not locate debris,” read the statement from NORAD published on social media. “The Secretary of Defense concurred with the recommendations.”
President Joe Biden addressed the U.S. response to the aerial objects in a speech from the White House Thursday after facing calls from lawmakers on Capitol Hill for greater transparency.
Biden said he would “make no apologies for taking down” the Chinese surveillance balloon, calling it a “violation of our sovereignty.”
The other three objects were taken down “out of an abundance of caution,” Biden said, and don’t appear to be spy vehicles from China or any other foreign country.
“The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation, or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research,” he said.
Air and maritime safety perimeters have been lifted both in Deadhorse, Alaska, and in Lake Huron following the conclusion of the search for debris, according to NORAD, while federal authorities said their investigation into the balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina is currently ongoing.
“Recovery operations concluded Feb. 16 off the coast of South Carolina, after U.S. Navy assets assigned to U.S. Northern Command successfully located and retrieved debris from the high-altitude PRC surveillance balloon shot down Feb. 4, 2023,” NORAD said in its latest statement. “Final pieces of debris are being transferred to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Laboratory in Virginia for counterintelligence exploitation, as has occurred with the previous surface and subsurface debris recovered. U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard vessels have departed the area.”
Several agencies are currently conducting a review to study broader policy implications for the U.S. detection and analyzation of unidentified aerial objects, and Biden said the review’s findings will guide how the administration operates going forward.
“But make no mistake, if any object presents a threat to the safety and security of the American people, I will take it down,” Biden said.
ABC News’ Luis Martinez and Davone Morales contributed to this report.
(LIVERMORE, Calif.) — A 26-year-old was shot outside a Tesla Distribution Center in Livermore, California, on Friday, according to police.
Livermore Police responded to a report of a shooting on the roadway outside of a Tesla Distribution Center. When they arrived on scene, officers found one victim shot.
The suspect fled the area. The victim was transported to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
An investigation into the shooting is ongoing.
Tesla did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Kellie Pickler and Kyle Jacobs in 2017; Taylor Hill/FilmMagic
Kyle Jacobs, producer, songwriter and husband of Kellie Pickler, was found dead in their home in Nashville on Friday. He was 49.
According to a report from the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, the fire department went to Kellie’s home on Friday afternoon and found Jacobs dead “from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in an upstairs bedroom/office.” His death is being investigated as a suicide.
The MNPD’s report says Kellie’s assistant called 911 after she and Kellie tried and failed to open the door to their upstairs bedroom.
Jacobs and Kellie, an American Idol alumna who’s scored hits like “Best Days of Your Life” and “Didn’t You Know How Much I Loved You,” married in 2011 after dating for two and a half years. The two co-starred in the 2015 CMT reality show I Love Kellie Pickler.
Jacobs was a songwriter and producer who co-wrote Garth Brooks‘ “More Than a Memory” and Tim McGraw’s “Still.” He also produced Lee Brice‘s number-one hits “Hard to Love,” “I Drive Your Truck,” “Drinking Class” and “Rumor,” and in 2014, he won an ACM Award as the producer of “I Drive Your Truck.” In addition, he worked with Kelly Clarkson, Scotty McCreery and Darius Rucker.
If you are in crisis or know someone in crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or by visiting 988lifeline.org. You can also contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.
(TATE COUNTY, Miss.) — Six people are dead after a “series of shootings” in Tate County, Mississippi, on Friday, authorities said.
A suspect has been taken into custody, the governor said.
The shootings occurred at three different locations in Arkabutla — outside a convenience store and in two homes — according to Tate County Sheriff Brad Lance.
The gunman first entered the store, then fatally shot a man in a vehicle outside in what appears to be a random attack, Lance said.
A woman was fatally shot inside a home about two to three miles away from the store, Lance said. Her husband was struck with a weapon but survived, the sheriff said.
The third scene was behind the suspect’s house, at a home down an access road, according to Lance. Two people were found dead in the house and two more were found dead on the access road outside the residence, Lance said.
The suspect — identified as Richard Dale Crum, 52, of Arkabutla — was arrested outside his home without incident, Lance said. He allegedly had two handguns and a shotgun.
Crum has been charged with one count of first-degree murder, with additional charges for the other victims expected to be filed in the coming days, the sheriff’s office said.
Crum is being held without bond in the Tate County Jail. It is unclear if he has an attorney who can speak on his behalf.
The sheriff’s office said it is in the “very early stages” of the investigation.
Investigators believe the suspect has no connection to the victim at the convenience store and are working to determine if he was related to or knew any of the other five victims, Lance said.
(New York) — The Labor Department has detailed an investigation that found one of the nation’s largest food safety sanitation services providers illegally employed more than 100 children in hazardous work conditions across 13 facilities in eight states.
DOL said its investigation into Packers Sanitation Services Inc., based in Wisconsin, found that at least 102 children ages 13-17 were illegally employed using hazardous chemicals and equipment such back saws, brisket saws, and head splitters — often on overnight shifts.
The department said investigators learned that three minors suffered injuries while working for PSSI, including one 13-year-old who suffered chemical burns.
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the department fined the company $15,138 for each minor illegally employed.
The total penalty paid by the company totaled $1,544,076 and is the maximum civil penalty allowed by federal law, DOL said.
Overall, the company paid $1.5 million in civil penalties for the employment of 102 children in 13 facilities across Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Tennessee, and Texas.
“Our investigation found Packers Sanitation Services’ systems flagged some young workers as minors, but the company ignored the flags,” said Wage and Hour Regional Administrator Michael Lazzeri in Chicago. When the Wage and Hour Division arrived with warrants, the adults — who had recruited, hired, and supervised these children — tried to derail our efforts to investigate their employment practices,” Lazzeri said.
DOL spokesperson Rhonda Burke told ABC News that company managers directed department investigators to not take pictures or video, sat across from employees while they were being interviewed, remained in the area of interviews even after being asked to leave, instructed one minor to only stay for five minutes, and moved an item into the recycle bin of their computer after being asked for access to it.
“The child labor violations in this case were systemic and reached across eight states, and clearly indicate a corporate-wide failure by Packers Sanitation Services at all levels,” Principal Deputy Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division Jessica Looman said in a statement. “These children should never have been employed in meat packing plants and this can only happen when employers do not take responsibility to prevent child labor violations from occurring in the first place.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Senate on Tuesday confirmed the 100th judicial appointment by President Joe Biden and as of Thursday the chamber had confirmed 105 of his nominees, exceeding the pace set by predecessors George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
Since the Trump administration, confirming judges has been a major focus of the Senate’s Democratic majority — who can now move even more quickly with an outright majority on the Judiciary Committee — and Biden’s choices will alter the demographic and professional makeup of the judiciary branch.
He and Democrats have celebrated this, saying it increases representation. Conservatives take a different view, arguing personal backgrounds shouldn’t be emphasized in judges because it risks tainting how their decisions are viewed.
Biden’s appointees include the Supreme Court’s first Black justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, as well as 23 people of color to U.S. circuit — or appellate — courts, including 17 women of color, Democrats said earlier this week.
More than three-quarters of Biden’s confirmed nominees are women and more than two-thirds of them are non-white, according to Senate Democrats, who also tout how Biden’s choices for the judiciary stretch beyond prosecutors to include public defenders, civil rights attorneys and more.
Before the Biden administration, nine Black female judges total had been confirmed to a U.S. circuit court and no president had ever successfully appointed more than three, Senate Democrats said. As of February 2022, 70 of the 3,843 federal judges in U.S. history had ever been Black women, according to data cited by the Pew Research Center.
DeAndrea Benjamin, confirmed on Tuesday to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, is the 12th Black woman to be confirmed to a federal appellate court under Biden.
Judge Gina Méndez-Miró became the 100th confirmation, on Tuesday, and joined the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico. Democrats said Méndez-Miró is the first openly LGBTQ judge on the court, and her confirmation flips the makeup of active judges on the court to a majority of Democratic appointees.
In U.S. district courts, analogous to federal trial courts, the Senate has confirmed more than 60 judges under Biden, more than 50 of whom have been women and more than 10 of whom have been men of color, Democrats said.
How Biden’s pace of judges compares
While Biden is currently pacing ahead of his three immediate predecessors — and tied with Reagan for the fastest first-year confirmations in four decades — he is not on track to outpace President Trump’s overall rate.
Trump confirmed 234 federal judges by the end of his term. And both he and former President Obama appointed multiple Supreme Court justices — Trump, three; Obama, two — though Obama also sought to appoint a third justice but was blocked by Senate Republicans in the final year of his term, drawing outcry from Democrats.
According to the Heritage Foundation, which tracks presidential judiciary appointments, Bush had 103 judges confirmed at this point in his administration, Obama had 67 and Trump had 88. Before them, President Bill Clinton had 128 by this point.
“Comparisons can be tricky since the factors that affect the confirmation pace can vary greatly from period to period,” said Thomas Jipping, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
Jipping pointed to the “number and location of current vacancies, competing legislative priorities, the pace of nominations being sent to the Senate, etc.”
“Since vacancies have been much lower under Biden than under Trump, the fact that Biden’s appointment pace is faster means that his nominations team, and Senate Democrats on and off the Judiciary Committee, have been prioritizing judicial appointments,” Jipping told ABC News.
He said that, so far and “since 1981, presidents appoint an average of just under four judges per month and Biden is just over that average.”
Because Democrats expanded their Senate majority to 51 seats in the 2022 midterms, they also now hold an outright majority on the Judiciary Committee rather than an even split with Republicans, which will make it easier for them to vote on and approve nominees.
Changing the makeup of the courts
Biden and leading Democratic lawmakers have described their goal for judicial appointments in terms of representation as well as qualifications.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday that “our effort to bring balance to the courts has been one of this Senate’s truly great successes. … We will continue to build on our success and help ensure the confirmation of highly qualified, demographically and professionally diverse judges.”
Biden echoed that when announcing he was nominating Jackson as a justice: “For too long, our government, our courts haven’t looked like America.”
Schumer told ABC News in a statement after the 100th confirmation that “when Americans can look at our courts and see people who look like them and come from their backgrounds and share similar experiences, the better off our judicial system is.”
Jipping, with the Heritage Foundation, disagreed with this argument, contending that it distorts the goal of good jurists.
“The Biden administration is pushing people to think of the judiciary as a ‘representative’ branch of government, which is the opposite of the impartial, independent judiciary that has been so important and distinctive in America,” he said. “It encourages people to believe that cases are decided by judges and their personal views rather than the law. It politicizes people’s expectations.”
“The most important factor in appointing judges should be the kind of judge a nominee will be, how he or she understands the power and proper role of the judiciary, not the race or sexual orientation,” he said.
