(WASHINGTON) — There is no need for a disinformation board at the Department of Homeland Security, a DHS panel has concluded in its interim report on examining the board.
“We have concluded that there is no need for a Disinformation Governance Board,” the interim review panel, chaired by former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, said Tuesday.
In the spring, the Department of Homeland Security faced swift backlash from Republicans and civil liberties groups on creating a board to address privacy concerns that arise with disinformation campaigns when information is shared between departments, as well as to ensure it’s done appropriately, and also appointed a controversial leader — Nina Jankowicz — to chair the board.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas faced criticism for putting the board together and even admitted its rollout was sloppy.
Less than a month after it was put together, DHS put the board’s activity on pause and commissioned a review.
“Given the complete lack of information about this new initiative and the potential serious consequences of a government entity identifying and responding to ‘disinformation,’ we have serious concerns about the activities of this new Board, particularly under Ms. Jankowicz’s leadership,” Mike Turner and John Katko, Republican leaders of the House Committee on Homeland Security, wrote in a letter to Mayorkas in May.
The Homeland Security Advisory Council’s Disinformation Best Practices and Safeguards Subcommittee will issue a full report in early August “on how the Department can most effectively and appropriately address disinformation that poses a threat to the homeland, while increasing transparency and protecting free speech, civil rights, civil liberties and privacy.”
HSAC is a group of Homeland Security professionals picked by the secretary to offer advice on certain departmental issues.
(WASHINGTON) — For the first time in seven years, the country’s lead agency on protecting the public from crimes involving firearms, explosives and arson has a Senate-confirmed director.
Steve Dettelbach was sworn in on Tuesday by Attorney General Merrick Garland in front of his family and friends at the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives in Washington.
Dettelbach, a career prosecutor who previously served as the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, said it was “the honor of his professional life.” He is the first congressionally approved chief of the agency since 2015. President Joe Biden’s previous nominee was withdrawn in part because of outside opposition to his gun control politics.
Dettelbach — who also faced criticism from gun groups — was subsequently confirmed earlier this month in a 48-46 vote and drew praise from other law enforcement.
“You have not just my promise and my vow to fight with you, but you have my heart, my soul, you have everything that I can give to try to join you in this effort,” he told the assembled crowd on Tuesday.
He added that some of the major challenges facing the country today — including rates of gun violence, mass shootings and extremism — are also the issues the ATF can help with.
He pointed to the Highland Park, Illinois, parade massacre on the Fourth of July, when ATF helped trace the gun involved; and, he said, the agency assisted in finding evidence in the rubble of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
“It’s going to take all of us in this nation, in law enforcement,” to address the country’s ongoing threats of rising violence and mass shootings, Dettelbach said.
“The rule of law is the one thing that drives me — there is one set of laws that governs everyone in the nation, and nobody is above it,” he said.
The attorney general lauded Dettelbach and thanked him for returning to the Justice Department.
“He understands that ATF’s mission has never been more urgent than it is today,” Garland said. “Time and again this year, we have been tragically reminded of the essential role that ATF plays in the fight to protect our communities from gun violence.”
(NEW YORK) — Expectant mothers Shamony Gibson and Amber Rose Isaac both died from preventable childbirth complications, their families say, and the women’s deaths have had a devastating effect on their loved ones.
Gibson, 30, died just 13 days after the birth of her son in October 2019, when, according to Gibson’s family, her health concerns were ignored by medical providers. About six months later, in April 2020, Isaac, 26, died following an emergency C-section that the family says stemmed from medical negligence. Now, their partners and families are committed to bringing awareness and change to the alarming Black maternal mortality rate in the United States.
Directors Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee explore these two women’s stories, their families’ perseverance and the maternal health care crisis in “Aftershock”, an original documentary from Disney’s Onyx Collective and ABC News Studios, streaming Tuesday, July 19, on Hulu.
Following the deaths of two young women due to childbirth complications, two bereaved families galvanize activists, birth workers, and physicians to reckon with one of the most pressing American crises today: the U.S. maternal health crisis.
The documentary follows Omari Maynard and Bruce McIntyre, Gibson’s and Isaac’s partners who connected shortly after Issac’s death, bonding over their losses while learning to navigate their lives as grieving single fathers. They are joined in their fight for justice along with Shamony Gibson’s mother, Shawnee Benton Gibson, and medical professionals like Dr. Neel Shah, chief medical officer of Maven Clinic, the largest virtual clinic for women’s and family health.
“We are thrilled to partner with Disney’s Onyx Collective and ABC News to honor and uplift the lives of Shamony Gibson and Amber Rose Isaac,” Eiselt and Lewis Lee said. “We hope audiences will be as inspired and empowered as we are by their families’ trailblazing work to ensure the best birthing outcomes for all Americans.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every two in three pregnancy-related deaths is preventable. A 2020 report found that non-Hispanic Black women experienced a higher pregnancy-related mortality rate than other racial and ethnic groups, suffering at a rate nearly three times higher than Hispanic and non-Hispanic white women. For every 100,000 live births, there were 55.3 deaths among non-Hispanic Black women of all ages compared to 18.2 among Hispanic women and 19.1 among non-Hispanic white women. In New York, where Gibson and Isaac both lived, non-Hispanic Black women were 5 times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes than non-Hispanic white women according to a 2018 report from the New York State Department of Health.
“Aftershock” explores these disparities and the efforts of many to resolve them in a push for medical autonomy, accountability and freedom.
“‘Aftershock’” is an emotional and urgent story that demands our attention,” Tara Duncan, president of Onyx Collective, said. “Paula and Tonya have captured the resilience and will of Black families to ignite a positive impact on this national health crisis for women in America.”
ABC News’ Emma Egan and Eric M. Strauss contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A suspect was arrested this week in a young woman’s 1975 murder after a genetic genealogist — who called the cold case extremely difficult to solve — turned to a brand new investigative approach.
Lindy Sue Biechler, 19, was stabbed to death at her Manor Township, Pennsylvania, apartment on Dec. 5, 1975, according to the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office. She suffered 19 stab wounds to her neck, chest, back and abdomen, prosecutors said.
Biechler was found lying on her back with a knife sticking out of her neck, prosecutors said, adding that the knife was from Biechler’s own kitchen and a tea towel was wrapped around its handle.
Decades went by without an arrest in the gruesome crime.
When DNA analysis emerged in the 1990s, prosecutors said, the investigators submitted DNA from semen left on Biechler’s underwear to CODIS, the national law enforcement DNA database, but no match was ever found.
In 2020, CeCe Moore, a former ABC News contributor and the chief genetic genealogist at Parabon NanoLabs, began investigating the case with genetic genealogy, which uses an unknown suspect’s DNA to trace his or her family tree.
Genetic genealogy made headlines in 2018 when the novel investigative tool was used to find the Golden State Killer. Genetic genealogy takes an unknown suspect’s DNA left at a crime scene and identifies it using family members who voluntarily submit DNA samples to a DNA database; this allows police to create a much larger family tree than if they only used databases like CODIS.
As Moore began working on Biechler’s case, she was “extremely disappointed” when she uploaded the case file to a DNA database and only could find very, very distant relatives of the unknown suspect.
“Usually I’m able to identify common ancestors. But because the common ancestors between the matches and the suspect in this case were probably back in the 1700s [or] 1600s, I wasn’t able to approach it the way that I do most cases,” Moore told ABC News.
“It was really tugging at me, so I decided to develop a new approach,” she said. “There was a very clear migration pattern from a town in southern Italy called Gasperina, to Lancaster, Pennsylvania.”
Moore said she scoured Lancaster documents for months and landed on a local club of residents who were from Italy.
“Those membership cards listed when people were born. Because I knew that this suspect had roots in this small town Gasperina, I went through all of those cards and found the people who had immigrated from Gasperina to Lancaster,” Moore said.
She said she learned about 2,300 Italians lived in Lancaster at the time of the crime — which for her was a “manageable” number.
“About half are gonna be female. A certain percentage are gonna be too old or too young. I knew this person had to be fully Italian from Gasperina or close by,” Moore said.
“I worked through each and every one of those families that had migrated from that very specific town,” she said. “It was really only possible because of this very unique [membership card] record collection that Lancaster had.”
Moore said she compared those membership cards with Ellis Island records and World War I and II draft registration cards to identify the men who moved from Gasperina to Lancaster, and then worked to identify their descendants.
“I just quietly worked on it on my own time. I didn’t know if it would work,” Moore said.
After looking at all Italian families in Lancaster in 1975, Moore said she zeroed in on 68-year-old David Sinopoli. All of his grandparents were from Gasperina, Moore said, and he had previously lived in Biechler’s apartment complex, prosecutors said.
In February 2022, investigators surveilled Sinopoli and recovered a coffee cup he used and threw away at the Philadelphia International Airport, prosecutors said. Labs later confirmed the DNA on Sinopoli’s coffee cup matched the DNA from the semen on Biechler’s underwear, according to prosecutors.
Investigators also found that DNA in blood left on Biechler’s pantyhose was determined to be consistent with the semen from Biechler’s underwear, prosecutors said.
Sinopoli, who has lived in Lancaster since the murder, was arrested at his home on Sunday on a charge of criminal homicide, prosecutors announced Monday. His preliminary hearing is set for July 25. No defense attorney is listed.
Sinopoli “was not on our radar,” Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams said at a news conference. Sinopoli was “never cleared,” Adams said, but “none of the tips over the years had suggested him as a possible suspect.”
Biechler’s murder marked the first time Moore used this new approach, and she said she’s since used it successfully in two more cases.
Adams praised Moore and Parabon NanoLabs in a statement, saying the arrest wouldn’t have been possible without their help.
“There has been a never-ending pursuit of justice in this case that has led us to identifying and arresting Sinopoli,” Adams said. “Certainly, law enforcement never forgot about Lindy Sue, and this arrest marks the first step to obtaining justice for her and holding her killer responsible.”
David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images for 50 Best
(LONDON) — Chefs, restaurant owners, sommeliers and diners woke up to exciting culinary news on Tuesday as The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list crowned the Copenhagen-based Geranium its new winner.
The list is produced annually by the U.K.’s William Reed Business Media and based on a poll of international chefs, restaurateurs and critics.
“Geranium invites guests to taste nature while simultaneously observing it around them. The locally-inspired, seasonally-changing ‘Universe’ tasting menu takes place over a minimum of three hours with around 20 courses split evenly between appetizers, savory dishes and sweets,” World’s 50 Best wrote in its description of the winning restaurant.
Geranium’s leading chef and sommelier duo, Rasmus Kofoed and Søren Ledet, who operate out of the iconic eighth floor restaurant in the center of Copenhagen, overlooking Fælledparken, reached the zenith of their careers Monday night as they received the top award.
The two were hailed for their “constant reinvention and innovation.”
Moments after the win — which dethroned René Redzepi’s Copenhagen-based Noma — Kofoed, who leads kitchen operations, told World’s 50 Best, “It’s all that we could dream of.”
“The last year, especially after the lockdown when we reopened Geranium, we changed the menu completely and it was very difficult to change everything. Said goodbye to the signature dishes … but I felt a lot of freedom,” Kofoed said.
“It has been a great journey together with the team so we could all have a great experience,” he added, speaking directly to his “loyal and dedicated” team back in Copenhagen.
Ledet, who manages front of house, wine and drinks service, added that this year marked the duo’s 10th time attending the invite-only awards celebration.
“When you’ve been here as many years as we have, every year is so amazing to just meet everybody from the whole industry and friends we’ve gained, but to finally be standing where we are tonight is such a mind blowing experience,” he said.
Geranium has an already impressive history. In 2016, it became the first Danish restaurant to win three Michelin stars.
It also won the World’s 50 Best Restaurants’ Art of Hospitality Award in 2018, which was given this year to New York City’s husband and wife team Junghyun ‘JP’ and Ellia Park of the 14-seater hotspot, Atomix, located in Manhattan near Koreatown.
The ground-breaking Korean restaurant took home the number 33 spot on this year’s overall list and was one of only three U.S. restaurants selected, along with Le Bernardin in New York and SingleThread in Healdsburg, California.
In 2022, Kofoed made Geranium a “meat-free zone” to focus solely on local seafood and organic vegetables from biodynamic farms in Denmark and Scandinavia. The artful creations on the “Spring Universe” menu are served on nature-inspired crockery and include items like lightly smoked lumpfish roe with milk, kale and apple, as well as forest mushrooms with beer, smoked egg yolk, pickled hops and rye bread.
The wine list focuses on low-manipulation labels to complement Kofoed’s food, and the drink menu offers unique and refreshing juice pairings with creations like rhubarb with geranium and carrot.
The 20th edition of the annual World’s 50 Best Restaurants list was curated with the help of a 1,080-person panel of culinary experts, who provided an audited vote on top tier destinations for unique culinary experiences.
The annual rundown is considered by some a barometer for global gastronomic trends.
Top 5 World’s 50 Best Restaurants
No. 1 Geranium, Copenhagen
No. 2 Central, Lima
No. 3 Disfrutar, Barcelona
No. 4 DiverXO, Madrid
No. 5 Pujol, Mexico City
Check out the full list of winners here, including best sommelier Josep Roca, best female chef Leonor Espinosa of Leo in Bogotá, best pastry chef René Frank of Coda in Berlin and more from across the globe.
(PHILADELPHIA) — Philadelphia, which is battling an epidemic of gun violence, has reached 300 homicides for the year, police said.
The 300th victim was an 18-year-old man shot multiple times Monday night, according to ABC Philadelphia station WPVI. Three weapons were used and at least 54 pieces of ballistics were recovered at the scene, Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Frank Vanore told reporters.
Also among this year’s victims are a 16-year-old boy who was fatally shot three times in the face and a 17-year-old boy gunned down near his high school in the middle of the afternoon.
“Every act of gun violence is an unspeakable tragedy. The fact that our city has lost 300 souls to date this year is devastating,” Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney told reporters Tuesday. “The surging gun violence that we’ve seen in our city and cities across the country pains us all.”
At this time last year, the city had 304 homicide victims, police said. Last year Philadelphia reached a record high, ending the year with 562 homicides.
To the mayor, easy access to guns is the biggest issue.
“In Pennsylvania — unlike New Jersey or New York or California — it’s very, very easy to obtain a firearm. You and I could drive up to Bucks County [in Pennsylvania] this weekend and probably buy a bag of guns and sell them out of the trunk of my car,” Kenney told a reporter. “And that’s the major problem.”
The mayor stressed, “We implore everyone from elected officials to community members to work together to find solutions to solve this deeply complex issue.”
“To address the availability and ease of access to firearms, we’ll always be fighting an uphill battle. The police department is investigating these crimes and they continue to take a record number of illegal firearms off our streets, but they need the public’s help to solve these crimes,” he said.
With so many young people falling victim to gun violence or committing violence, Erica Atwood, senior director of the city’s Office of Policy and Strategic Initiatives for Criminal Justice and Public Safety, highlighted programs available for high-risk youths.
“These programs are centered in communities that are more vulnerable to gun violence, and are free and open to youth and young adults,” she said at the press briefing Tuesday. “Additionally, there are a number of community organizations that we have funded through our community expansion grants that serve young people in vulnerable communities.”
The city also aims to keep children safe through a curfew that’s in effect this summer for kids 17 and younger, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Curfew centers are now available, Atwood said. If “parents are working two and three jobs and don’t have the ability to have child care,” she said, the curfew center “provides an opportunity for us as a community to know where our kids are, and really kind of rebuild that connective tissue in neighborhoods to take care of one another.”
(NEW YORK) — Two shark sightings off Rockaway Beach have closed the entire stretch of some of New York City’s most famous beaches for swimming on Tuesday, according to the city’s parks department.
Rockaway Beach in Queens was closed to swimmers after sharks were spotted off both Beach 102nd Street and Beach 67th Street on Tuesday.
The NYC Parks Department said the beaches are closed to swimmers until it becomes safe to allow people back in the water.
NYPD Aviation is patrolling the area for sharks, according to the NYC Parks Department.
No attacks had been reported in the area as of Tuesday afternoon.
The Rockaway Beach closings come after a string of shark attacks off Long Island over the past few weeks.
From June 30 to July 13, five individuals suffered non-life-threatening injuries from shark attacks near Long Island beaches.
In response, Gov. Kathy Hochul directed state agencies to enhance shark monitoring at Long Island beaches on Monday.
Hochul directed state agencies to implement heightened patrols and surveillance of shark activity, including the use of drone and helicopter monitoring.
She added a direction to the agencies to expand public outreach efforts on shark safety resources and education in order to increase safety among beachgoers.
“As New Yorkers and visitors alike head to our beautiful Long Island beaches to enjoy the summer, our top priority is their safety,” Hochul said in Monday’s statement. “We are taking action to expand patrols for sharks and protect beachgoers from potentially dangerous situations. I encourage all New Yorkers to listen to local authorities and take precautions to help ensure safe and responsible beach trips this summer.”
The governor’s direction is set to increase drone resources for Long Island’s state beaches, and to increase the number of lifeguards on duty by 25%, according to her office.
As New Yorkers reach the halfway point of their summer season, shark sightings in the area seem to be growing.
There was only one report of a shark bite last summer — a lifeguard bitten in July — but there were 20 confirmed shark sightings off Long Island in 2021, a record for the area, according to Long Island officials.
That number was three times as many sightings as recorded in 2020, according to New York ABC station WABC.
(NEW YORK) — A New York man is determined not to give up when it comes to fighting the rare disease he’s been living with the last two years.
Anthony Di Laura first noticed something was unusual back in the summer of 2020.
“I was having stomach pain. I thought it was a stomachache. And I realized my belly button was protruding a little bit. No other symptoms,” Di Laura told “Good Morning America.” “It came, it went away after a week. But when it came back, my wife said, ‘Let’s go to the doctor. Let’s go to the gastroenterologist.'”
After visiting a gastroenterologist, Di Laura was referred to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, where he received a diagnosis in August 2020 of pseudomyxoma peritonei (PMP), a rare disease where mucus-secreting tumors grow in the abdominal area, according to the National Organization for Rare Disorders.
Since his diagnosis, Di Laura and his family have been on a roller coaster of highs and lows.
The 35-year-old and his wife Jackie Cucullo welcomed their first child, a son named JP, on New Year’s Day in 2021 and daughter Lila Rae just last month — two big life events for the couple, who call their children “miracle babies.”
“We tried for two years to get pregnant. And miraculously I did out of nowhere, right before starting in vitro,” Cucullo told “GMA.” “While Anthony was undergoing chemotherapy, I became pregnant again right before his health declined. And that is extremely rare in itself while someone is undergoing chemotherapy. So we feel blessed for our two children for sure.”
Di Laura had to endure chemotherapy for seven months and elected to undergo cytoreductive surgery with HIPEC — a major surgery with a type of heated chemotherapy — also nicknamed the “mother of all surgeries” or MOAS, three times with different doctors and medical teams, all in an effort to get better.
“It is the most miserable feeling in the world that nobody should ever go through,” Di Laura said of his day-to-day life. “Every day is a battle. Every day is a challenge.”
The chemo and surgeries didn’t yield the results Di Laura was hoping for and doctors began telling him that he was inoperable.
“This gets me every time. I hate talking about it. My last hospital stay … the shift doctor who was in charge came into our room and said, ‘What is your plan?’ I looked at him, I said, ‘What’s my plan? I want to get better.’ He goes, ‘Nobody will operate on you in this hospital … Your best bet is to go on hospice and live a comfortable life until the end.’ That’s what he said,” Di Laura recalled.
Throughout the journey, Di Laura, Cucullo and their family refused to give up hope. In March, the couple received promising news from someone through their PMP Pals support group.
“One of the women heard about another young man whose story was so ironically similar to Anthony’s,” Cucullo said. “They’re even close in age as well. [The woman] immediately called us and she said, ‘I dropped to my knees when I heard his story.'”
According to that support group contact, the other man was “the first person in this country to have a multi-visceral organ transplant” at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, with Dr. Anil Vaidya.
“[Vaidya] is from the U.K. [and] came here to essentially help people like my husband and various other people for other organ transplants,” Cucullo said. “On March 3, I made my first phone call to [the Cleveland Clinic] and that was when the process started for Anthony to be listed as an organ transplant recipient.”
Di Laura and Cucullo have since met the man, Andy Voge, and sought out his doctor, [Vaidya]. After multiple denials and appeals to their insurance company, Di Laura was finally approved to get on the transplant list last week, the first step to getting a modified multi-visceral transplant.
Di Laura’s insurance company, Empire BlueCross BlueShield, confirmed the company had overturned the previous denials for Di Laura to receive treatment at the Cleveland Clinic.
“Together with Mr. Di Laura’s medical team, our clinical team made the decision to cover Mr. Di Laura’s procedure with the surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic,” the company said in a statement to “GMA.” “The transplant surgeon provided additional information to demonstrate this procedure has shown early promise in case reports from the U.K. and could be the only option left that may improve health outcomes for Mr. Di Laura. We will continue to support him and his family as we move forward.”
Cucullo told “GMA” that, as of Monday, her husband had been officially added to the organ transplant list.
“The surgery needs to happen and the entire team [at the Cleveland Clinic] is very confident in Anthony’s success […],” Cucullo said. “Anthony and Andy alike can spread the word and they can be the torch holders to say, ‘This is a new way. We can beat this disease.’ As tough of a surgery it might be and a long recovery, this gives hope to thousands of people.”
No matter what happens, Di Laura said he hopes to impart one message to his children, above all others.
“Always fight. Always keep hope and never give up because somebody says it’s impossible,” he said.
“I’ve never taken no for an answer and I’m not going to start now when it’s going to save my life to live with my family,” he added. “So I want my kids to know that never give up in the face of anything because somebody says no. There will always be a way around it. There are always new ideas or always new inventions. There always will be an answer. You just can’t give up and that goes for everything in life.”
(NEW YORK) — The national average price for a gallon of gas fell below $4.50 on Tuesday for the first time since the middle of May, according to AAA data. The price crossed the milestone amid a sustained fall in gas prices over the past month, owing in part to a decline in global demand.
The national average price for a gallon of gas, which stands at $4.49, has fallen more than 10% since it reached a peak of $5.01 last month, according to data AAA provided to ABC News.
In California, the state with the highest average price, a gallon of gas costs $5.87, though that price has fallen more than 8% over the past month. In South Carolina, the state with the lowest average gas price, a gallon costs $3.99, AAA data showed.
Sky-high prices in the summer stemmed from a travel boom that brought more people to the pump, experts told ABC News in late May.
That spike in demand coincided with a shortage of crude oil supply amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which prompted a widespread industry exit from Russia that pushed millions of barrels of oil off the market, the experts said.
In March, the U.S. and its allies announced the collective release of 60 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves over the following months, which sought to alleviate some of the supply shortage and blunt price increases.
The fall in gas prices marks good news for federal policymakers, who have sought to dial back prices while averting a recession.
But the milestone for falling gas prices follows an overall spike in the price of goods last month. The consumer price index, or CPI, stood at 9.1% in June, a significant increase from 8.6% in May, according to a release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics last Wednesday. That is the largest 12-month increase since December 1981.
“Tackling inflation is my top priority,” President Joe Biden said last Wednesday after the data was released. “We need to make more progress, more quickly, in getting price increases under control.”
