(NEW YORK)– Federal authorities are investigating a number of recent reported acts of sabotage on utility companies, a senior law enforcement source told ABC News.
The move comes in the wake of substations being riddled with bullets in North Carolina, leaving tens of thousands without power for days.
After the incident, the utility companies reached out to federal authorities in recent days to investigate, the source said.
The most recent potential case of sabotage occurred in South Carolina.
According to multiple law enforcement sources, an individual opened fire near a Duke Energy facility at the Wateree Hydro Station in Ridgeway.
The individual used what appeared to be a long gun and then sped away. No one was injured and there has been no reported damage to the station at this time.
A $75,000 reward has been offered in the North Carolina case, in Moore County, where two electrical substations were shot at.
“This was a malicious attack on an entire community, and it plunged tens of thousands of people into darkness. They knew what to do to disable this substation … But we know that people are very frustrated here, and that’s very understandable,” said the state’s governor, Roy Cooper.
No arrests have been made and no motive has been announced in that case.
(NEW YORK) — Walgreens has launched a new delivery service for the COVID-19 oral antiviral therapy Paxlovid in partnership with DoorDash and Uber to get the treatment “directly to the doorsteps of those who need it.”
Walgreens on Thursday said it has more than 8,000 locations offering same-day delivery services, available to anyone who lives within 15 miles of participating stores. Walgreens said that means real access to a lot of Americans — offering it to roughly 92% of the population.
That’s the whole point of this initiative, Walgreens said — increasing access to COVID treatments — with “a focus on reaching those in socially vulnerable or medically underserved areas at a time when COVID-19 cases are beginning to rise again across the United States.”
Paxlovid, from Pfizer, is one of the few treatments still expected to hold up against currently circulating subvariants and comes as coronavirus hospitalizations are trending upward in the elderly.
The drug stops the virus from replicating in the body and works best when taken within five days of getting symptoms. It has proven highly effective at reducing the risk of hospitalization and preventing higher-risk patients from getting even sicker.
To use Walgreens’ new delivery service, eligible patients must have a Paxlovid prescription from a health care provider.
After the pharmacy has filled the prescription, and before it gets picked up, individuals can go online to select Same Day Delivery by visiting Walgreens.com/PrescriptionDelivery, using the Walgreens app or by calling their local store.
To use Same Day Rx Delivery, customers must be opted into Prescription Status Alerts, which will appear as an option if an order is before a particular store’s cutoff time on a given day. Walgreens noted that certain health plans do not cover or participate in Same Day Rx Delivery, and it advised customers to check with individual health plan providers for further details. They also noted that while most prescriptions are “expected to be delivered same day, some deliveries may not be eligible for delivery due to prescription type, delivery address, holidays, weather or other delivery constraints.”
“The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated health disparities and emphasized the need to address long-standing barriers, including access to treatments,” Anita Patel, PharmD, vice president of pharmacy services development at Walgreens, said in a statement. “Our pharmacy teams will continue to play a trusted and essential role in helping to keep people protected from COVID-19, including getting people vaccinated, tested and treated as safely, equitably and effectively as possible.”
(NEW YORK) — Doctors should ask patients with heart failure if they’re using any supplements, specific diets, or other types of complementary and alternative medicines to help manage potential benefits and risks, the American Heart Association said in a scientific statement published Thursday.
Research shows that about a third of people with heart failure use complementary and alternative medicines, a category that refers to non-traditional treatments used along with or instead of prescribed medications, to manage their conditions. However, most people don’t bring them up with their doctors, experts said.
“Many patients do not routinely report the use of alternative therapies to health care providers, and health care professionals do not routinely ask about or monitor dietary supplements,” Sheryl Chow, the chair of the AHA scientific statement writing committee and an associate professor at the Western University of Health Sciences in California, told ABC News.
That’s a concern because research shows that some alternative treatments can be risky for people with heart failure and may interact with prescribed medications. If providers don’t know what patients are using, they can’t address any potential risk or safety concerns, Chow said.
The AHA reviewed the published data from studies on the efficacy and safety of commonly used complementary and alternative medicines in patients with heart failure. Its scientific statement highlighted the ones that might be beneficial, might be harmful, and have mixed evidence. Fish oil has the strongest evidence of benefit and might help the heart pump better in people with heart failure, for example. Yoga and tai chi might help blood pressure, the study showed.
Other supplements can be riskier, according to researchers. For example, high doses of vitamin D could interact with some common heart failure medications like calcium channel blockers. Some research shows vitamin E is associated with an increased risk of hospitalization for heart failure.
Patients, though, tend to think that alternative medicine can’t be harmful, said Rich Krasuski, a cardiologist at the Duke University School of Medicine who’s done research surveying heart patients on alternative medicine.
“I think patients look at natural or naturally occurring substances as somehow being safer for them than taking a pharmacologic agent,” he told ABC News.
Providers who work with heart failure patients also may not realize that those patients are likely to use complementary or alternative therapies, Krasuski said. Doctors know that people with back pain or cancer tend to seek out alternatives, he says.
“In heart failure, we don’t often think about that,” he said.
Chow hopes the AHA statement helps close the awareness gaps around complementary and alternative medicine in heart failure patients, and gives both providers and patients an easy reference to turn to around the issue.
“Patients aren’t reporting when they use the therapies, but even if they are reporting it, what do providers do with that information?” Chow said. “In general, I feel like health care professionals don’t have great resources for their patients.”
That’s why Krasuski said he’s glad to see this type of statement from the AHA. Rather than dig through research to find information about a specific supplement a patient might be taking, he’ll be able to refer back to this document.
It’d also be a good starting point for the conversations about alternative medicine with patients, he said. The conversations aren’t necessarily to discourage or discount alternative treatments. As long as a supplement or food group isn’t affecting proven medications, Krasuski said he doesn’t have a problem with patient’s using them.
“It’s important to recognize that these are all approaches that patients take,” he said. “I think to improve their health, it’s important that we not only address traditional but also non-traditional types of therapy.”
(EVERETT, Wash.) — After 54 years of production, the most recognizable and iconic commercial aircraft is fading into the sunset as Boeing prepares to deliver its final 747 aircraft.
Late Tuesday night, the 1,574th 747 rolled out of the Everett, Washington, hanger where the 747 was first produced in 1967.
In 1970, Pan Am became the launch customer of the double-decker jumbo jet, forever changing the way people moved around the world.
“For more than half a century, tens of thousands of dedicated Boeing employees have designed and built this magnificent airplane that has truly changed the world. We are proud that this plane will continue to fly across the globe for years to come,” Kim Smith, Boeing vice president and general manager, 747 and 767 programs, said in a press release.
At 250 feet-long, donning a massive hump at its front, the 747 can carry 400-500 passengers and became an unmissable behemoth crisscrossing the globe for more than 50 years. The plane quickly became a sign of luxury travel, with some airlines adding bars, lounges and even pianos on the upper deck.
The last 747 won’t carry passengers but will be used as a freight aircraft for Atlas Air.
U.S. passenger airlines stopped flying the 747 in 2017 as more efficient, twin-engine, wide-body aircraft became more practical.
The last passenger 747 went to Korean Air in 2017. German airline Lufthansa currently operates the most 747 passenger planes.
Air Force One is the most famous 747 and first flew during the George H.W. Bush presidency. Two, already-manufactured 747s are currently undergoing retrofitting and will replace the current aging Air Force One aircraft in about four years.
(NEW YORK) — Prince Harry and Meghan’s docuseries is here.
The highly-anticipated first three episodes of the six-part series, titled Harry & Meghan, were released Thursday at 3 a.m., EST, on Netflix.
The duke and duchess of Sussex open up in the docuseries about everything from their love story to their decision two years ago to step down from their senior royal roles.
The docuseries, directed by Oscar-nominated Liz Garbus, is billed as a “first-hand account of Harry and Meghan’s story, told with never before seen personal archive.” It opens by noting that interviews for the docuseries were completed by August, one month before the death of Harry’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II.
The docuseries also says from the beginning that members of Britain’s royal family, “declined to comment on the content within this series.”
Here is a look at the docuseries’ biggest moments so far, along with what to know:
Harry and Meghan met through Instagram, a mutual friend
For the first time, the Sussexes share extensive details of the start of their relationship in 2016, when Meghan was an actress on the TV show Suits.
Harry revealed he saw Meghan on a mutual friend’s Instagram page, and asked to be connected.
They had their first date in July 2016 at Soho House in London, followed by a second dinner date at the same location.
After two dates, Harry and Meghan went on a five-day trip to Botswana, where they spent time just the two of them.
“We had to get to know each other before the rest of the world and the media sort of joined in,” Harry said.
He later adds, “When I got to know Meghan more and more, I’m like, ‘Now, I’m really falling in love with this girl,’ so despite my fear, I just opened my heart to see what’s going to happen.”
Harry says Meghan reminds him of Princess Diana
In one clip, Meghan is seen holding a baby who appears to be their son Archie in what appears to be a nursery and showing him a photo of Harry’s mom Princess Diana, whom she tells him is “Grandma Diana.”
Later, Harry describes the similarities he sees between his wife and Diana, who died in 1997.
“So much of what Meghan is and how she is, is so similar to my mom,” Harry said. “She has the same compassion. She has the same empathy. She has the same confidence. She has this warmth about her.”
Harry gives a glimpse into pressures of royal life
The docuseries is also a rare look into Britain’s royal family, from Harry and Meghan’s perspective.
Harry is the fifth in line to the British throne. His father is King Charles III and his older brother Prince William is the heir to the throne.
Charles, William and other members of the royal family have not publicly commented on the Sussexes’ docuseries.
Docuseries generates controversy before its debut
In addition to generating headlines because of Harry’s royal ties and the couple’s willingness to speak out about the royal institution, the docuseries faced other controversies even before its debut.
When Netflix released trailers for Harry & Meghan, some U.K. tabloids claimed the docuseries was misleading, stating that some of the footage used in the trailers showed press and paparazzi from moments unrelated to Harry and Meghan.
An image of photographers shown in the trailer, cited as an example, is in fact from 2011, five years before the couple started dating. Another snippet from the trailer showing paparazzi swarming a vehicle appears to have been shot in 2019 outside the apartment of Michael Cohen, former President Donald Trump’s ex-lawyer.
Harry and Meghan have not commented on the docuseries since its release. Netflix has also not commented on the recent criticism.
The timing of the first trailer’s release was also controversial as it dropped just before William and his wife Kate, the princess of Wales, arrived in Boston for their first trip to the U.S. in eight years.
The two couples, who last reunited publicly in September for Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, did not see each other during William and Kate’s U.S. trip.
Docuseries is made ‘in association’ with Sussexes’ production company
The final three episodes of Prince Harry and Meghan’s docuseries will be released on Netflix on Dec. 15.
The Netflix docuseries is part of a deal with the company the couple inked in 2020, shortly after they stepped down from their royal roles. The Sussexes now helm a California-based production company, Archewell Productions.
(WASHINGTON) — The House on Thursday is set to pass a bill to codify federal recognition of same-sex and interracial marriages, bringing the landmark legislation one step closer to landing on President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature.
Ensuring same-sex marriage rights are protected between states became a top priority for Democrats in light of the Supreme Court’s June decision to overrule its precedent in 1973’s Roe v. Wade guaranteeing a constitutional right to abortion.
Justice Clarence Thomas indicated in a concurring opinion at the time that he would like to see the court reverse the 2015 ruling Obergefell v. Hodges guaranteeing the national right to same-sex marriage, which was decided on similar grounds as Roe.
The Respect for Marriage Act, which is poised to pass the House with bipartisan support, would not codify Obergefell and set a national requirement that all states must license same-sex marriages. But it would require individual states to recognize a same-sex (or interracial) marriage that was lawfully performed in another state.
The Senate passed the bill last week, 61-36 — marking a victory for Democrats during the lame-duck after months of negotiations with Republicans. Twelve members of the GOP voted in support of the legislation.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has said she is “particularly happy” the Respect for Marriage Act will be one of the last bills she signs in her role.
A signing ceremony is scheduled for Thursday following the bill’s expected passage that will include Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Rep. David Cicilline, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Rep. Jerry Nadler and Sen. Susan Collins.
“It has strong bipartisan support in the House and in the Senate. I think it’s a great step forward for us,” Pelosi said at a news conference last week.
Biden is prepared to sign the measure after it passes the House. In a statement after Senate passage last week, he said he will “promptly and proudly sign it into law.”
The House passed a similar version of this legislation earlier this year, with 47 Republicans supporting it. The Senate version includes new language to ease some GOP concerns about religious freedom.
(PHILADELPHIA) — A little boy killed more than 60 years ago has finally been identified thanks to police work and DNA analysis, the Philadelphia Police Department said.
On Feb. 25, 1957, a young boy was found dead in a box in northeast Philadelphia.
The case, known as “the boy in the box,” is Philadelphia’s oldest unsolved homicide.
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw will be joined by officials including Philadelphia County Medical Examiner Dr. Constance DiAngelo and Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick of Identifinders International to announce the boy’s identity at an 11 a.m. news conference Thursday.
(WASHINGTON) — Just days before the 10th anniversary of the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting, and six months after a similar massacre in Uvalde, Texas, President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gathered Wednesday night with families of some of the victims at the 10th annual National Vigil for All Victims of Gun Violence.
“I know that feeling,” Biden, whose own son died of cancer, said of the grieving process. “It’s like a black hole in the middle of your chest that you’re being dragged into and you don’t know if there’s ever a way out.”
Pelosi also addressed the gathering, taking aim at legislators who stand against gun reform.
“As we say to our colleagues, your political survival is nothing compared to the survival of our children,” Pelosi said. “How can you not see that and take the hard vote?”
Among those gathered were families from Uvalde, where 19 students and two of their teachers were killed during a shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24.
They descended on Washington, D.C., this week to renew their push for additional gun safety legislation, including a proposed ban on assault weapons that is heading for debate in the Senate.
“We are trying to put pressure on the Senate to put the bill to the floor to vote even if it’s just for accountability,” Kimberly Rubio, whose daughter Lexi was killed in Uvalde, told ABC News Tuesday at a silent protest on Capitol grounds. “We want to see where senators stand so their constituents can take that into consideration.”
H.R. 1808, which would ban assault-style weapons for civilians, passed in the House of Representatives in July, only weeks after the Uvalde massacre.
Rubio has been vocal in her support for gun reform, including a proposal to raise the minimum age to purchase a rifle to 21. She addressed the crowd at the Wednesday night vigil after Biden.
“I feel numb most days. I’m operating on fumes,” Rubio told the mourners.
“This is my reality. Speaking here because my 10-year-old daughter was murdered in her classroom,” she said. “If not my child, whose? If not now, when? Lexi was the light of our lives and that is obviously now in the darkness.”
Jazmin Cazares, 17, whose sister Jacklyn Cazares was killed at Robb Elementary, told the vigil: “There’s so much more to be done.”
“Today we’re here to remember Jackie, her classmates, her teachers and to remember every single person whose lives were cut short due to senseless gun violence,” Jazmin Cazares said.
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church by Capitol Hill was filled with many of the nation’s leading gun reform activists, including the Newtown Action Alliance, and survivors from the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which occurred on Dec. 14, 2012.
Jackie Hagerty, who survived Sandy Hook, said, “We are asked to be brave as we had under our desks while too many elected officials lack the courage to pass common sense gun laws.”
The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which also passed one month after the Uvalde shooting, was the first gun reform signed into law in 28 years. But activists are demanding more.
Po Murray, co-founder and chairwoman of Newtown Action Alliance, introduced the president and Pelosi on Wednesday night, saying, “More than 400,000 Americans have been killed by guns in every corner of our country… Gun violence is a public health emergency.”
Incoming Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida, the first member of Gen Z elected to Congress, said gun violence is a defining characteristic of the lives of America’s youth.
“We are the generation of mass shootings. It feels like in high school I went through more school shooting drills than fire drills,” Frost told the crowd. “This is the reality for students in America.”
At the vigil, Biden called it “commonsense” to ban assault weapons, limit the number of bullets allowed in a cartridge and restrict the types of weapons that can be bought and sold.
He said that the federal government had banned assault weapons before.
“We can do it again,” he said.
Biden praised the attendees for turning “pain into purpose.”
“Scripture says, ‘The light shines in darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,'” Biden said. “All of you here tonight, you are the light. You are literally the light. And your loved ones, and your friends, they’re the light.”
“How many of you ask yourself, ‘What would my son or daughter want me to do at this moment?'” Biden said. “They’re in your heart, they’re part of you, they’re always going to be with you.”
“We ask God,” he said, “give us the strength to finish the work left undone, and on behalf of the lives we’ve lost and all the lives we can save.”
The vigil, organized by the Newtown Action Alliance, was held one week before the 10-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook school shooting, when a gunman armed with a semi-automatic rifle killed 20 first-graders and six adults.
Earlier this year, Congress passed the most comprehensive federal gun safety law in decades.
The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — crafted in the wake of the devastating mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas — includes funding for mental health services and community safety programs.
It also closed the so-called “boyfriend loophole” to prevent convicted domestic abusers from purchasing a firearm for five years, and enhanced background checks for gun buyers age 21 and younger.
Biden celebrated the legislation as a “monumental” achievement but said there was more work to do to confront the tidal wave of gun violence across the country.
Biden has pushed for a ban on assault weapons, universal background checks and raising the minimum age to purchase guns from 18 to 21.
After five people were killed at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs last month, Biden again called to get “weapons of war off our streets.”
(NEW YORK) — New York Attorney General Letitia James on Wednesday urged a federal judge in Florida to reject a lawsuit against her by a “disgruntled” Donald Trump.
Trump, in the suit, is seeking emergency protection for the revocable trust in which he parked his ownership of the Trump Organization. He accused James of seeking to invade his privacy by asking for documents about the trust as part of her $250 million civil lawsuit filed in September against the former president and his family.
The state attorney general’s office, in a new court filing Wednesday, said Trump deserves no relief from the court.
“There is no emergency requiring the Court to grant the extraordinary relief of a temporary injunction,” James’ filing said. “Instead, there is a just a disgruntled litigant, Donald J. Trump, who impermissibly seeks to evade the jurisdiction of a New York state court that is presiding over an enforcement action alleging pervasive fraud and illegality by him and others in the conduct of his New York-based business and has issued a number of rulings that he considers unfavorable.”
James has alleged Trump improperly adjusted the values of his real estate holdings to suit his business interests of the moment. His counterclaim in Florida, she said, is an attempted “end-run around the jurisdiction of the New York state court” where her lawsuit is filed.
Trump has denied all wrongdoing.
James defended her pursuit of information about the trust because, her filing said, it owns all of the assets that are valued in Trump’s financial disclosures. James has alleged those disclosures were fraudulent because they inflated Trump’s net worth and tricked banks into giving the former president more favorable loan terms than he deserved.
Fearing the alleged fraud was still going on, James last month convinced a judge to impose an independent monitor to oversee aspects of the Trump Organization’s business, including the preparation of Trump’s financial disclosures.
Trump argued the details of his trust should remain shielded from James because she would “widely publish” them, violating his right to privacy.
“Such a conclusory allegation is legally insufficient to support a motion for a preliminary injunction and belied by the documentary record,” James’ filing said. “Moreover, Mr. Trump fails to acknowledge that appropriate reasonable redactions are available to him in order to mitigate against any purported, albeit speculative, harm related to his estate planning information.”
The case, originally filed in Florida state court, was removed to federal court last month and assigned to a judge who has previously sanctioned Trump’s legal team for filing a frivolous lawsuit.
(NEW YORK) — A respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, vaccine for older adults could be on the horizon after Pfizer announced Wednesday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would fast-track review of its experimental vaccine.
The federal health agency will make a decision by May 2023 and, if it decides to approve, it will be the first vaccine available in the country to protect against the virus that has swept the country.
“This is huge,” Dr. Gregory Poland, head of the Mayo Clinic’s vaccine research group, told ABC News. “This will be a turning point because of the burden of disease. No one needs to die or be hospitalized for this disease, again, if they take the vaccine and if they have a healthy enough immune system to respond.”
Here is everything we know about the vaccine and the review process:
How does RSV affect older adults?
Although RSV is known as a children’s disease, this is not the case, and the virus can affect adults too.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, older adults aged 65 and above are at high risk for severe infection, particularly those with chronic lung or heart conditions and weakened immune systems.
“Older adults are at greater risk than young adults for serious complications from RSV because our immune systems weaken when we are older,” the CDC website states.
Data from the agency shows senior citizens are being hospitalized with the virus at this point in the season at a rate much higher than seen in seasons past.
As of the week ending Nov. 26, the latest date for which data is available, adults aged 65 and older are being hospitalized at a weekly rate of 2.7 per 100,000.
Although the raw number might seem small, it is much higher than usually seen at this time of year. CDC data going back to the 2014-15 season shows the rate has never been higher than 1.0 per 100,000 in early November.
What’s more, an estimated 60,000 to 120,000 older adults are hospitalized every year and between 6,000 and 10,000 die.
Why has there not been a vaccine before?
This is not the first time researchers have attempted to develop an RSV vaccine.
In the late 1960s, a vaccine was produced in which the virus was inactivated with formalin, a chemical that kills viruses. The shot was given to children in Washington, D.C., but 80% of those immunized became sick and two children died.
Studies found that the vaccine did not generate enough antibodies to fight off the virus and instead triggered an overactive immune system response.
“That stymied vaccine development for 50, 60 years in this field,” Poland said.
How does the vaccine work?
In 2013, researchers at the National Institutes of Health studied a protein from the virus called the F protein, which attaches to human cells and infects people.
They found a way to freeze the protein in the form it takes before it’s ready to attach to cells, known as prefusion form.
The Pfizer vaccine contains this prefusion form of the protein. It also is bivalent, meaning it helps protect against both the A and B strains, which are the two most common strains of the virus.
How effective is the vaccine?
Pfizer ran a phase III clinical trial testing its vaccine in adults aged 60 and older against a placebo.
In late August, the company announced that its vaccine was 66.7% effective in preventing lower respiratory tract illness and 85.7% effective at preventing severe disease.
Additionally, Pfizer said there were no safety concerns and that the vaccine was “well tolerated” among participants.
“This is outstanding,” Poland said. “We have literally gone from a vaccine that harmed people inadvertently, a shutdown in RSV vaccine research to now a phase III large global trial that showed this vaccine has excellent efficacy and preventing lower respiratory tract disease.”
What is next?
Pfizer has submitted what is known as a Biologics License Application, which is tens of thousands of pages long.
The FDA will internally review and analyze the data and make a decision on whether the vaccine is potentially ready to be marketed, Poland explained.
If the FDA decides it is ready to be marketed, it will call a meeting of its independent advisory panel, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.
During this meeting, the company will present its data, the FDA will present its analysis, there will be public commentary and the committee will discuss several questions about the vaccine including whether this is the right age group and if the vaccine is safe and efficacious.
If the committee votes to recommend authorization, the FDA will either agree with the advisory panel and authorize the vaccine or not, which should occur by May 2023.
Following this, the final step will be a similar meeting among the CDC’s advisory committee and the CDC deciding to follow or go against the recommendation.
If the vaccine is approved, it will likely be available by fall 2023.
