skyNext/iStockBy MINA KAJI, GIO BENITEZ, and SAM SWEENEY, ABC News
(NEW YORK) — A mother and her six children were kicked off of a JetBlue Airways flight Wednesday after her 2-year-old daughter refused to wear a mask.
“It was extremely traumatizing for me and my family,” the mother, Chaya Bruck, 39, from Brooklyn, said in an interview with ABC News.
Bruck said she tried to put a mask on her youngest child, Dina, but she pulled it off.
“Should I tie her hands, what should I do?” Bruck asked the JetBlue flight attendant according to a video of the incident. “We have to deplane,” the attendant responded, explaining that the airline has a zero tolerance policy.
Other passengers onboard the flight to New York from Orlando attempted to stick up for Bruck, according to the video and passengers.
“All of the passengers were up, screaming, and hollering saying ‘that’s not fair, don’t do that to that mother,'” passenger Anny Taveras, from Kissimmee, Florida, told ABC News. The flight eventually took off after everyone deplaned.
U.S. airlines continue to strengthen their mask requirements, and have even banned passengers who don’t comply.
JetBlue, along with most major airlines, requires any child age 2 and over to wear a face covering in order to fly, the airline said in a statement.
A JetBlue spokesperson said the airline’s policy was last updated on Aug. 10 “to ensure everyone is wearing a face covering — adults and children alike” and is consistent with CDC guidelines, which say children under 2 should not wear masks.
However, Taveras and Bruck claim that during the announcements, the flight attendant said children who cannot wear a mask are exempt.
Another passenger, Chardette Poinsette, who was traveling with her young son, claims her family was also kicked off the flight.
“I stuck up for her, and I think I was the one who stood out the most because what I was saying was correct,” Poinsette said.
MORE: Airlines may ban passengers who refuse to wear masks Both Bruck and Poinsette’s families flew home on different U.S. airlines.
“I need some time to recover from this,” Bruck said. “My kids need to recover from this.”
ABC News’ Amanda Maile and Jennifer Leong contributed to this report.
Alena Kravchenko/iStockBy KELLY MCCARTHY, ABC News
(NEW YORK) — New York City is home to some of the most diverse cuisines and talented chefs and restaurant owners in the world. But in the wake of the ongoing global pandemic, restaurants that have barely managed to keep kitchens operational are worried as they prepare to weather the fall and winter months without a plan for indoor dining.
As restaurants continue to expand and contract to fit the ever-changing requirements for safely serving food — both curbside for takeaway or at socially distanced outdoor tables — industry leaders have called for an immediate plan for the return of indoor dining service in New York City.
New York, New Jersey restaurateurs respond to indoor dining delays The New York City Hospitality Alliance, a nonprofit organization that represents tens of thousands of restaurants and nightlife establishments across the five boroughs, assembled a panel of restaurateurs for a virtual press conference on Wednesday to demand action from Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Blair Papagni, owner of Anella in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, spoke about the toll brought on by the pandemic and the frustration she felt after she was forced to close her other longtime restaurant, Jimmy’s Diner, after 13 years.
“Back in March, when we had to close and some of my staff looked at me and said, ‘Are we going to close, close?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not, there’s no way we’re closing. This is going to be a bump in the road and we’ll reopen,'” she said. “And unfortunately for us, looking at an 11-month lease, a liquor license that we had to renew and looking at what was a real lack of a clear path to any sort of indoor dining — there was no way for us to stay open.”
Papagni is now turning her lived experience into a message for the government to act.
“Having to close a business I really loved has motivated me to advocate for government support to keep my other restaurant, Anella in Greenpoint, and my friends’ businesses open,” she told ABC News. “I don’t want any other employer to have to lay off their staff, any other owner to have to see their dream disappear like mine did.”
As the sun begins to set on the summer outdoor dining season, restaurant owners on the call tackled the tough question of what comes once it gets cold outside, when they are unable to accommodate outdoor diners, prompting the larger issue of layoffs, even more revenue loss and eventual closures.
“We all know the realities of what we need to make in order to pay rent, pay our purveyors and our staff,” Papagni said on the call. “The most difficult part of looking at anything past November is the idea of having to lay off my staff again. For me, and I think for all of us, that would really be devastating.”
After meeting a list of health metrics, indoor dining at reduced capacity was initially supposed to reopen at the beginning of July during New York’s phase 4 of reopening, but Cuomo delayed the decision without saying when that day might come down the line.
“At the moment it seems like indoor dining in other areas of New York has gone successfully and I think in New York City, the city that beat back the virus through diligence and sacrifice, we can also be successful,” Papagni told ABC News. “If restaurant and bar owners are not given the ability to move indoors at a reduced capacity or provided with financial support then we will see many more owners have to make the tough decision that I did: turn in the keys to prevent going further into debt.”
She continued, “Having seating that is completely dependent upon the weather makes staffing and provisioning very difficult and often results in our extremely small profit margin disappearing completely.”
Another longtime local restaurant maven, Tren’ness Woods-Black, owner of Sylvia’s in Harlem — which she said has been the largest minority employer in the borough for 40 years — echoed the same calls for the government to guide the industry that works on such small margins.
“There is simply no way that we, being the greatest city for dining in the world, can go on not knowing when we’re going to open,” she said. “We’re not asking to open tomorrow, we’re asking for the simplest thing — a plan.”
Woods-Black told ABC News, “If there isn’t a plan for resuming dining soon, then the winter season will be a miss, and it will be a catastrophic miss for the majority of restaurants.”
“There is no way most restaurants would be able to continue to pay rent and taxes and keep up with all other expenses. Restaurants become very strapped when they don’t have cash. We’re in the home stretch of closing out the year. Not having any cash reserves makes it almost impossible to plan for the next year,” Woods-Black said.
But like other restaurant owners in New York City, she has watched restaurants in other cities succeed with innovative, safe and socially distant indoor dining measures.
“If other restaurants are resuming indoor dining right next door to the city, and there’s been no spikes in the virus and the same indoor occupancy rates would apply to us, then it really shouldn’t matter what it looks like outside my restaurant’s doors,” she reasoned.
Without a chance to reopen their doors, even at limited capacities, the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to deliver blows beyond the walls of these restaurants to the surrounding community.
“One of the biggest challenges that we weren’t considering was the magnitude and how far-reaching this crisis would be,” Woods-Black said. “We have a lot of elderly guests who would eat with us for breakfast, lunch and dinner — and it wasn’t just nourishment they were seeking because it was also really part of their mental health routine.”
“The restaurant was a home to them,” she added. “Being closed, these same people can no longer sit in their seat or dine at their table. They lost a home and that impacts people.”
Andrew Rigie, executive director of the NYCHA, reinforced the call to action by citing the proven success by the city’s eateries that have continued to follow mandates in order to slow the spread of the virus.
“Despite the fact that the city exceeds and sustains the metrics that have allowed restaurants throughout the rest of the state to reopen, government leaders have still yet to provide any guidance on when small business owners, workers and customers can expect indoor dining to return,” Rigie said. “Our industry’s survival over the next several months depends on government immediately developing and implementing a plan that allows restaurants in New York City to safely reopen indoors like our counterparts everywhere else in the state.”
On top of the call for development and implementation of indoor dining plans, the group of restaurant owners renewed the urgency for relief for restaurants across all five boroughs, including extending the moratorium on evictions, extending the suspension of personal liability guarantees in leases, pausing commercial rent taxes, providing rent relief and extending small businesses cash grants.
Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty ImagesBy ELLA TORRES, ABC News
(LOS ANGELES) — Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has turned off the utilities at a Hollywood Hills home after he said it “turned into a nightclub.”
“Despite several warnings, this house has turned into a nightclub in the hills, hosting large gatherings in flagrant violation of our public health orders,” Garcetti said in a statement Tuesday. “The City has now disconnected utilities at this home to stop these parties that endanger our community.”
Though Garcetti did not identify the home, it’s believed to be the home of TikTok influencers who have thrown large parties in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. The Los Angeles Times identified it as the home of the influencers, including Bryce Hall, who recently drew ire for hosting a huge 21st birthday party.
Garcetti’s office noted that the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health declared in early August that the “highest-risk settings are large in-person gatherings where it is difficult for individuals to remain spaced at least 6 feet apart and where face coverings are not worn.” Shortly after that, Garcetti announced that those who held large gatherings could face a shutoff of utilities.
Police visited the home twice after noise complaints on Aug. 8 and on Aug. 14, according to Garcetti’s statement.
TikTok influencers have moved into homes that have been given names to document their lives via the app and post content. The home in question is believed to be the Sway House, of which Hall is a member.
Hall has not made any public statements regarding the utilities shutoff and he could not be reached for comment by ABC News.
Myriam Borzee/iStockBy MORGAN WINSOR and ELLA TORRES, ABC News
(NEW YORK) — A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now killed more than 787,000 people worldwide.
Over 22.4 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some national governments are hiding or downplaying the scope of their outbreaks.
Since the first cases were detected in China in December, the United States has become the worst-affected country, with more than 5.5 million diagnosed cases and at least 173,181 deaths.
Here’s how the news is developing today. All times Eastern.
1:49 p.m.: Purdue suspends 36 students for partying
Purdue University suspended 36 students for hosting and attending a party amid the coronavirus pandemic, the school announced.
The suspensions come a day after Purdue’s president Mitch Daniels said the university “added a provision to the university’s student code that brings the hammer down on off-campus parties that violate social distancing and mask policies.”
Dr. Katie Sermersheim, associate vice provost and dean of students, said that the Indiana university has been “clear and consistent” with its message to students about safety measures.
“Unfortunately, everything we have done – the months of planning to give our students the opportunity to continue their educational pursuits in person – can be undone in the blink of an eye with just one party or event that does not follow the rules and guidelines,” Sermersheim said in a statement.
Reports circulated on social media that the students were removed from campus housing. When asked by ABC News, Purdue pointed to the statement that the “ultimate sanctioning decision” will be made only after a “full hearing process” and students will have the right to appeal.
1:22 p.m.: Cuomo signs bill allowing New Yorkers to request absentee ballot amid COVID
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill Thursday allowing voters concerned about COVID-19 to request an absentee ballot for the November election.
The bill allows voters to begin requesting absentee ballots starting Thursday, Cuomo said.
He added that the measures were in place “to guarantee that New Yorkers can vote safely and that every vote counts.”
Mailed absentee ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day and received within seven days after the election will be counted. Additionally, any ballots without a postmark that are received by Nov. 4 will also be counted.
New York also does in-person early voting, which will run from Oct. 24 – Nov. 1.
With New York’s move, just six states still currently require an excuse beyond coronavirus to vote absentee by mail in the general election: Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
12:36 p.m.: University of Notre Dame cases increase to 304
Cases at The University of Notre Dame have increased to 304, two days after the school canceled classes for two weeks due to an increase.
The cases have been tracked since Aug. 3, though the semester began on Aug. 10.
Since Aug. 3, 1,780 tests have been conducted at the university, located in Notre Dame, Indiana.
11:39 a.m.: Fauci underwent surgery to remove vocal cord polyp
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top medical expert on the coronavirus pandemic, underwent outpatient surgery on Thursday morning to remove a polyp on his vocal cord, his office confirmed to ABC News.
Fauci, who is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a key member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, is now at home resting, according to his office.
ABC News has also reached out to Fauci directly for comment.
11:23 a.m.: University of Kansas reports 89 cases, mostly among fraternities and sororities
At least 87 students as well as two faculty members and staff at the University of Kansas tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday.
The university’s chancellor, Douglas Girod, announced the initial results from community testing for the Lawrence and Edwards campuses, in which 7,088 people were tested upon returning to campus prior to the start of classes. Those who test positive are instructed to self-isolate.
“A large majority of the 87 overall student positives have come from our fraternity and sorority community,” Girod said in a statement Thursday. “Last night, I met with leaders in these communities along with other campus officials to stress the importance of adhering to the health and safety guidelines and rules we’ve laid out while laying out some additional policy recommendations. And we’ll follow up with these groups with targeted additional testing efforts as needed.”
9:19 a.m.: US jobless claims jump back up over 1 million
Some 1.1 million workers in the United States lost their jobs and filed for unemployment insurance last week, according to data released Thursday from the U.S. Department of Labor.
The latest weekly figure shows a concerning jump from the previous week’s figure, when weekly filings dipped below the million mark for the first time in 21 weeks.
The rise in new jobless claims — which had been trickling down for weeks — highlights the ongoing anguish of the U.S. labor market as the coronavirus pandemic-induced financial crisis wages on.
Prior to the pandemic, the previous record for weekly unemployment filings was 695,000 in 1982. That was smashed by nearly tenfold in the last week of March as 6.9 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance in a single week.
8:47 a.m.: AMC reopens more than 100 theaters across US
AMC, the largest movie theater chain in the world, is reopening more than 100 of its locations in the United States on Thursday for the first time in more than five months.
AMC said overall seating capacity will be “significantly reduced” at those theaters in order to achieve social distancing.
The company expects to reopen approximately 300 additional theater locations around the country over the next two weeks, as part of a “phased plan” to reopen all 600 U.S. locations. The remainder of its U.S. theaters will reopen “only after authorized to do so by state and local officials,” according to a press release from AMC.
7:41 a.m.: Europe reporting an average of 26,000 new cases per day
An average of about 26,000 new cases of COVID-19 are being reported every day across Europe as infections there have been steadily increasing each week over the last two months, according to the World Health Organization.
Dr. Hans Kluge, the WHO regional director for Europe, said at a press conference Thursday that although the region has made “phenomenal efforts” to contain the novel coronavirus after becoming an epicenter of the pandemic earlier this year, “authorities have been easing some of the restrictions and people have been dropping their guard.”
New clusters of cases in European countries are mainly occurring in localized settings such as long-term care homes and food production facilities, or are being caused by travelers, according to Kluge.
“Localized outbreaks and clusters are now occurring with greater frequency, often in closed settings,” Kluge said, while noting that Europe was in a “much better position to stamp out these localized virus flare-ups” and “can manage the virus differently now than we did when COVID-19 first emerged.”
Kluge also called for schools to reopen in areas with low levels of the virus. He said the WHO Regional Office for Europe will convene a virtual meeting of its 53 member nations at the end of the month to discuss how schools across the region could reopen safely.
6:21 a.m.: New study shows children play larger role in spread of virus than thought
Clinical data from a new study shows that children play are larger role in the community spread of the novel coronavirus than previously thought.
The study, which was published Thursday in The Journal of Pediatrics, investigated 192 pediatric patients aged 22 and younger, of which 49 tested positive for COVID-19 and an additional 18 had late-onset, coronavirus-related illness. Researchers found that the infected children carried a significantly higher level of virus in their airways — particularly in the first two days of infection — than adults who were hospitalized in intensive care for COVID-19.
Harvard University called it “the most comprehensive study of COVID-19 pediatric patients to date.”
“I was surprised by the high levels of virus we found in children of all ages, especially in the first two days of infection,” Lael Yonker, lead author of the study and director of the Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital’s Cystic Fibrosis Center in Boston, said in a statement released through the university. “I was not expecting the viral load to be so high. You think of a hospital, and of all of the precautions taken to treat severely ill adults, but the viral loads of these hospitalized patients are significantly lower than a ‘healthy child’ who is walking around with a high SARS-CoV-2 viral load.”
5:36 a.m.: India marks another record rise in cases
India reported 69,672 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours — its highest daily increase yet, according to a real-time tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.
Now, more than 2.8 million people in India have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began — the third-highest count in the world.
There were also an additional 977 coronavirus-related fatalities recorded within the last day, bringing the national total to 53,866, according to the latest data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
The country of 1.3 billion people has the fourth-highest death toll from COVID-19 in the world, behind the United States, Brazil and Mexico, according to Johns Hopkins University.
5:28 a.m.: France, Germany, Spain see highest spike in cases since lockdown
France, Germany and Spain have all marked the highest day-to-day increase in COVID-19 infections since the end of their lockdowns.
France’s national public health agency reported Wednesday that there were 3,776 new cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the national tally to 225,043. Meanwhile, the country’s positivity rate for COVID-19 tests increased by 3.1% from Aug. 10 to Aug. 16.
Germany’s public health institute reported Wednesday that there were 1,510 new cases in the past 24 hours, making the national total 226,914.
“In the past few weeks the COVID-19 incidence has risen markedly in many federal states and the number of districts reporting zero COVID-19 cases over a period of seven days has decreased considerably,” the institute said in its daily situation report. “This trend is very concerning.”
The Spanish Ministry of Health reported Wednesday that there were 3,715 new cases within the last day. Spain’s cumulative case count, which includes diagnoses from antibody test results, now stands at 370,867.
All three European countries are among the top 20 nations hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic.
3:42 a.m.: US reports over 1,300 new deaths for second straight day
There were 46,436 new cases of COVID-19 identified in the United States on Wednesday, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University.
Wednesday’s tally is well below the country’s record set on July 16, when 77,255 new cases were identified in a 24-hour reporting period.
An additional 1,356 coronavirus-related deaths were also recorded Wednesday. It’s the second straight day of more than 1,300 fatalities, although the figure is still under the record 2,666 new deaths that were reported on April 17.
A total of 5,529,933 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 173,181 of them have died, according to Johns Hopkins. The cases include people from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C. and other U.S. territories as well as repatriated citizens.
By May 20, all U.S. states had begun lifting stay-at-home orders and other restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The day-to-day increase in the country’s cases then hovered around 20,000 for a couple of weeks before shooting back up and crossing 70,000 for the first time in mid-July.
While week-over-week comparisons show that the nationwide number of new cases has continued to decrease in recent weeks, the number of new deaths has increased, according to an internal memo from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, obtained by ABC News on Wednesday night.
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Joseph DeAngelo, the man now known as the “Golden State Killer,” was confronted in court Thursday by the family members of people he murdered decades ago. ‘I was the only living witness’
On Sept. 11, 1975, DeAngelo, who was a police officer at the time, shot and killed journalism professor Claude Snelling in front of his daughter, Elizabeth, at their Visalia, California, home.
“My father caught him twice peering in my bedroom window when he came home from teaching night school, and tried to chase him down but wasn’t able to catch him,” Elizabeth Snelling said in court Thursday.
In the early hours of Sept. 11, Elizabeth Snelling, who was 16 years old, said she was awakened by an intruder in a ski mask who pointed a gun at her head.
Snelling said the intruder told her “he was taking me with him and if I made any noise he would kill me.”
DeAngelo dragged her out of the house with a gun pointed at her head, she said, and her dad charged out of the house.
“DeAngelo fired two shots hitting my dad,” she told the court. “He then turned the gun on me as I was down on the ground. My only thought was, ‘this is it.'”
“He started kicking me in the head and face then ran off,” she said.
Claude Snelling was 45 years old and in “the prime of his life,” his daughter said, calling him her “hero.”
“We somehow managed to stay in the same house but with added security. I slept in my mom’s room for the next year,” Elizabeth Snelling said.
“Knowing that my dad’s murderer was never caught … left us all feeling very vulnerable,” she continued. “Since I was the only living witness … there was a chance he could come after me. The police gave us extra security and patrolled our neighborhood … but I still lived in fear.”
“DeAngelo was able to live a normal life with his family for all those years while my family and I could not be with my dad,” she said. “I am so thankful that he will at least spend the rest of his miserable life in prison.”
DeAngelo, a 74-year-old father and grandfather, was arrested in 2018. In June he pleaded guilty to 13 counts of first-degree murder as part of a plea deal, which also required him to admit to multiple uncharged acts, including rapes.
The death penalty was taken off the table in exchange for the guilty pleas.
Three days of victim and family impact statements began Tuesday with powerful words from rape survivors and their relatives. On Thursday, family members of the 13 people DeAngelo killed have their day in court.
On Friday, DeAngelo will be formally sentenced to life without parole. ‘If I had my way he would be shivering, blindfolded, naked and exposed’
In July 1981, Cheri Domingo and her boyfriend Gregory Sanchez were killed.
Sanchez, 27, was shot and bludgeoned in the head two dozen times, prosecutors said. DeAngelo then bound 35-year-old Domingo, raped her and beat her in the head more than 10 times, prosecutors said.
“My heart is racing,” said Domingo’s daughter, Debbi McMullen, as she began speaking in court Thursday.
McMullen, who was 15 at the time of her mother’s murder, said in her 20s “I started to sink into a depression that was undiagnosed and untreated for many years.”
She said she “stumbled into drug use,” during which “a decade was lost.”
“Mom would have helped,” she said. “She would have supported me and guided me toward solutions. She would have prodded me into admitting that I needed help.”
By her mid-30s, McMullen was clean, sober and welcoming her children back home, she said. McMullen then learned her mother’s slaying may be the work of a serial killer and she poured her energy into helping solve the case.
“I am not that lost teenager anymore. Today I am in the room with the pathetic excuse of a man who will now finally be held accountable,” she said. “If I had my way he would be shivering, blindfolded, naked and exposed every moment from now on.” ‘He had no idea how much Katie and Brian were loved’
In Feb. 1978, Brian and Katie Maggiore were shot dead while walking their dog. After Brian Maggiore was shot, his wife ran away and yelled for help, but DeAngelo caught up with her and shot her in the head, prosecutors said.
Katie turned 20 years old four days before she was killed in “cold blood,” her brother said in court Thursday.
“He had no idea how much Katie and Brian were loved. They have remained alive in all our hearts,” he said. ‘Her future was stolen’
Debra Manning and her boyfriend, Robert Offerman, were killed on Dec. 30, 1979.
Manning was bound, raped and shot twice in the head, while Offerman was bludgeoned and shot four times, her friends said in a statement.
“Her future was stolen,” they said.
DeAngelo, who was a police officer from 1973 to 1979, committed 13 murders as well as multiple rapes and burglaries in the 1970s and 80s.
The crimes, which terrorized towns from Northern to Southern California, went unsolved until April 2018, when DeAngelo was arrested in Sacramento County.
DeAngelo was the first public arrest obtained through genetic genealogy, a new technique that takes the DNA of an unknown suspect left behind at a crime scene and identifies him or her by tracing a family tree through his or her family members, who voluntarily submit their DNA to public genealogy databases.
To identify DeAngelo, investigators narrowed the family tree search based on age, location and other characteristics. Authorities conducted surveillance on DeAngelo and collected his DNA from a tissue left in a trash. Investigators plugged his discarded DNA back into the genealogy database and found a match, linking DeAngelo’s DNA to the DNA found at multiple crime scenes, prosecutors said.
Since DeAngelo’s arrest, over 150 other crime suspects have been identified through genetic genealogy.
skyNext/iStockBy MINA KAJI, GIO BENITEZ, and SAM SWEENEY, ABC News
