August 18, 2020 • No Comments • National News

Dmitry Belyaev/iStockBy JON HAWORTH, ABC News

(NEW YORK) — California health officials have confirmed that an individual has tested positive for a case of the plague in the state — the first such case in five years.

El Dorado County health officials were notified by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) that a resident in South Lake Tahoe had tested positive for the plague and that it is thought that person, who is an avid walker, may have been bitten by an infected flea while walking their dog along the Truckee River Corridor, according to a statement released by El Dorado County.

The patient who tested positive for the plague is currently under the care of medical professionals and is recovering at their home.

El Dorado County’s Health and Human Services said that, once transmitted, symptoms of the plague usually show up within two weeks of exposure to an infected animal or flea and that the symptoms can include fever, nausea, weakness and swollen lymph nodes.

The plague is deadly but if it is detected early it can be effectively treated with antibiotics.

“Plague is naturally present in many parts of California, including higher elevation areas of El Dorado County. It’s important that individuals take precautions for themselves and their pets when outdoors, especially while walking, hiking and/or camping in areas where wild rodents are present. Human cases of plague are extremely rare but can be very serious,” said El Dorado County Public Health Officer Dr. Nancy Williams.

El Dorado County officials said that the CDPH routinely monitors rodent populations for plague activity in California.

From 2016 to 2019, authorities discovered a total of 20 rodents with of evidence of exposure to plague bacterium in the South Lake Tahoe area but there were no reports of plague-associated illnesses during that time.

“The last reported cases of plague in California were two human cases which were exposed to infected rodents or their fleas in Yosemite National Park in 2015,” the El Dorado County Health and Human Services said in a statement. “Both people were treated and recovered. These were the first reported human cases in the state since 2006.”

Since the announcement of the first case of the plague in five years, several areas of South Lake Tahoe now have signs posted both advising the public of the presence of plague as well as ways to prevent potential exposure, including not feeding wild animals, not touching sick or dead animals, protecting your pets with flea control products, wearing long pants and using insect repellent.

Just last month public health officials in Colorado announced that a squirrel in Colorado has tested positive for the bubonic plague which was the first such case in the state this year.

“Plague is an infectious disease caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, and can be contracted by humans and household animals if proper precautions are not taken,” officials from Jefferson County Public Health (JCPH) in Colorado said in a statement released to the public at the time.

“Arguably the most infamous plague outbreak was the so-called Black Death, a multi-century pandemic that swept through Asia and Europe,” according to National Geographic. “It was believed to start in China in 1334, spreading along trade routes and reaching Europe via Sicilian ports in the late 1340s. The plague killed an estimated 25 million people, almost a third of the continent’s population. The Black Death lingered on for centuries, particularly in cities. Outbreaks included the Great Plague of London (1665-66), in which 70,000 residents died.”

However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that there is now only an average of seven human plague cases per year and the World Health Organization says the mortality rate is estimated to be between 8-10%.

National Geographic is owned by Walt Disney, the parent company of ABC News.

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August 18, 2020 • No Comments • National News

Highlight Pro Skydiving TeamBy KATIE KINDELAN, ABC News

(NASHVILLE, Tenn.) — A team of all-female elite skydivers is taking to the skies to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

The 11 members of the Highlight Pro Skydiving Team will jump from the skies Tuesday in Nashville, Tennessee, which was the final state to ratify the 19th Amendment on Aug. 18, 1920.

“It was a moment in history that we wanted to highlight,” Melanie Curtis, co-captain of the Highlight team, told ABC News’ Good Morning America. “We’re using skydiving to capture attention and then bringing that attention to social justice initiatives, to women’s rights, to gender equality, to equality at large.”

Curtis and her 10 teammates will be making their fifth jump together on Tuesday in Nashville. They descend from the sky at each jump carrying flags with messages like “votes for women,” “shall not be denied” and “equality can’t wait.”

Their last jump took place in July in Seneca Falls, New York, the home of the first women’s rights convention.

“It was so phenomenal just to be in the presence of the place of history, where the birthplace was, and to see and be a part of this history,” said Melissa Nelson Lowe, a Highlight team member. “And it’s so exciting to be able to do something so valuable in this sport that I love and carry a message that’s so important.”

The Highlight jumps, which will also take place this year in New York City and Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, were supposed to be big, live events that drew hundreds or thousands of people, including young girls who could look up to the women in the sky.

When the coronavirus pandemic happened, the team decided to continue to jump but to livestream their jumps so that people around the world could watch at home.

“I just think about being a young girl myself and being inspired by athletes on TV and watching the Olympics,” said Nelson Lowe. “Even though we can’t have live events, I still feel that we can influence women and girls on what we’re doing and showcasing our sport.”

“The suffragists also faced a global pandemic when, in 1918, they faced the Spanish Flu,” added Curtis. “The irony of us facing that now is not lost on us.”

Curtis said she hopes that as people watch the Highlight team — whose uniforms are purple, white and gold, the colors of the women’s suffrage movement — they find inspiration and the courage to be “bold” and “brave,” like the leaders of the suffrage movement were a century ago.

“To really get what it took to secure the right to vote for women in the U.S., it was 72 years,” she said. “It takes so long to change hearts and minds and so it takes bold, brave moves and that’s the core mission of the team, to inspire women and girls to live a bold, brave life of their own design.”

“Women are underrepresented in skydiving and women are underrepresented in media and government, on boards of businesses,” Curtis added. “We see that under-representation everywhere so it’s not just skydiving for us, it’s more about those core values of what it looks like to be bold and brave and to use your voice and, right now, use your vote.”

The Highlight team’s women’s rights jumps can be viewed live on the team’s Facebook page.

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August 17, 2020 • No Comments • National News

iStock/KuzmaBY: CHRIS FRANCESCANI

(CHICAGO) — Despite “substantial abuses of discretion and operational failures,” the dismissal of charges against Jussie Smollett by Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx and her staff did not rise to the level of criminal wrongdoing, according to Special Prosecutor Dan K. Webb.

In Jan. 2019, the former “Empire” actor told police he was targeted in a racist and homophobic attack in which he claimed the attackers struck him, put a noose around his neck, and poured some sort of chemical substance on him.

After an investigation, police determined that Smollett staged the attack, hiring two brothers to help pull it off. He was charged and indicted, but Foxx’s office dropped all the charges in March, 2019. That prompted Webb’s appointment last summer by a judge to investigate what happened.

Webb said he concluded that Foxx shouldn’t legally have recused herself and appointed a deputy, Joseph Magats, to be acting state’s attorney and that when she learned of this “major legal defect” she “ignore[d]” advice on how to remedy the problem. The proper procedure was to “recuse the entire CCSAO and petition the court to appoint a special prosecutor.”

He also said that Foxx maintained contact with Smollett’s sister, Jurnee Smollett, even after learning on Feb. 8 that he was a suspect, and “then made false statements to the media claiming she ceased all communications with Ms. Smollett as soon as she learned that Mr. Smollett was a suspect.” Webb contends that Foxx was in contact with the sister until Feb 13, 2019.

In addition, Webb wrote that prosecutors in Foxx’s office “did not learn of any new evidence between when the CCSAO filed a 16-count indictment against Mr. Smollett on March 7, 2019, when the CCSAO believed it had a strong case against Mr. Smollett, and March 26, 2019, when the entire indictment was dismissed.”

Webb further contended in the report that under subpoena, key decision-makers in Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (CCSAO)’s dismissal of the case offered “significantly and meaningfully divergent explanations for how the resolution was reached.”

Foxx said in a statement that her office “categorically rejects the [special prosecutor]’s characterizations of its exercises of prosecutorial discretion and private or public statements as ‘abuses of discretion’ or false statements to the public,” and that “any implication that statements made by the CCSAO were deliberately inaccurate is untrue.” She said her office would submit a written response to the full report after receiving it.

‘An abundance of caution’

Foxx recused herself abruptly from the case on Feb. 19, 2019, out of “an abundance of caution … based on familiarity with potential witnesses in the case,” a spokesperson said at the time. Smollett was soon charged with felony disorderly conduct for filing a false police report, and turned himself in to police. On March, 8, 2019 a grand jury returned a 16 count indictment against him. Less than three weeks later, Foxx’s office dismissed all charges against Smollett.

The conclusions of Webb’s investigation into Foxx’s office completes the second half of the special prosecutor’s mandate.

He was appointed last year by Cook County Circuit Judge Michael Toomin to determine whether Smollett should be prosecuted again after Foxx’s office dismissed the charges and investigate the CCSAO’s handling of the case. Webb concluded that Smollet should.

In February, an Illinois grand jury presented with Webb’s findings indicted Smollett on six counts of disorderly conduct related to making four separate false reports to Chicago Police Department officers. Smollett’s trial has been delayed by the pandemic.

Foxx acknowledged in her statement that lessons were learned following the fallout from her decision to drop the charges against Smollett.

“As a result of the issues addressed in the press release, and of discussions of them beforehand, the CCSAO has already made a number of changes to its operations, including the hiring of a new CCSAO ethics officer and more separation of their function from the administration of the office, and strengthening the recusal plan with clear guidelines and explicit definitions of conflicts of interest.”

In March, Foxx won a Democratic primary and is expected to prevail against her Republican opponent in November, two years after winning a previous Democratic primary for which she went on to win 72% of the general election vote, according to the Chicago Tribune. She manages the second largest prosecutor’s office in the U.S., behind only the Los Angeles County District Attorney, according to the CCSAO website.

ABC News’ Josh Margolin, Stephanie Wash, Alex Perez, Karma Allen and Bill Hutchinson contributed to this report.

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