(NEW YORK) — The Tribute in Light, a 9/11 commemoration that takes place over Lower Manhattan, has been canceled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“This incredibly difficult decision was reached in consultation with our partners after concluding the health risks during the pandemic were far too great for the large crew required to produce the annual Tribute in Light,” according to a statement posted on the 9/11 Memorial & Museum website.
Organizers said they hope to resume the tribute for the 20th anniversary next year.
Tribute in Light is a public art installation in which twin beams of light are projected into the sky.
The beams reach up to four miles into the sky and are made of eighty-eight 7,000-watt xenon light bulbs positioned into two 48-foot squares, mimicking the Twin Towers before they were brought down in the terrorist attack.
The U.S. has the most cases in the world of the coronavirus at 5.2 million. New York City was considered the first epicenter in the country, though cases have since plateaued.
(NEW YORK) — At least 94 wildfires are burning in the U.S., as record heat scorches the West.
Several new wildfires exploded in southern California Thursday, including the Ranch Fire in Azusa, east of Los Angeles. The Ranch Fire is currently burning 3,000 acres, with no containment. Mandatory evacuations are still in place. There is no imminent threat to structures, according to officials.
The Skyline Fire in Corona, California, is currently 51 acres and 40% contained, but all evacuations have been lifted.
There are now at least 11,000 acres burning due to the Lake Fire, which is 5% contained. Three structures have been lost, and another 5,420 remain at risk due to the Lake Fire.
In Oregon, the Mosier Creek Fire has burnt 791 acres and is 10% contained. At least 900 people were forced to evacuate.
In addition to the fires, record heat is scorching parts of the West. Tucson, Arizona, hit 111 degrees Thursday, which is the second hottest day in August ever recorded for the city.
A record high was tied in Phoenix at 115 degrees and in Palm Springs at 116 degrees. Phoenix has now seven days of at least 115 degrees this year, which is the most on record.
There are heat warnings, watches and advisories from Louisiana all the way to Washington state Friday.
The heat is now spreading north into the Pacific Northwest, where Portland, Oregon, will get to 100 degrees. Even usually cool Seattle will get into the upper 90s this weekend.
Meanwhile, in the Midwest, a new storm system will be moving through some areas that are still without power and could bring more damaging winds and even tornadoes.
The biggest threat for tornadoes will be in Minnesota, while damaging winds are possible from North Dakota to Iowa and Nebraska.
(NEW YORK) — The United States’ attempt to return children to the classroom this fall has turned into a slow-motion train wreck, with at least 2,400 students and staff either infected with COVID-19 or self-isolating because of exposure, and the vast majority of large school districts opting to go online this summer amid rising cases of the virus.
President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy Devos have demanded that schools stay open full-time and threatened to pull federal funding if the institutions fail to do so.
DeVos has “consistently said the decision to reopen should be made at the local level, and some schools may need to temporarily remain virtual based on local public health situation,” Angela Morabito, a spokesperson for the Education Department, told ABC News late Thursday in an emailed response to questions about the recent school closures.
“She’s also, for the last 30 years maintained that parents and families need options when it comes to the child’s education and that has never been more evident than now,” Morabito wrote. “Parents need to have access to safe, in-person options as well as distant or remote learning options if that is what is best for their family. The key word here is safe.”
But what is “safe” is not at all clear to most school officials and at the heart of a bitter debate unfolding just months ahead of the presidential election.
There is universal agreement that in-person instruction is superior to online classes and particularly vital for at-risk students. But local officials warn of complicating factors: Crowded hallways, opposition to masks, dilapidated buildings with windows sealed shut and reluctant staff.
“There was no way for us to socially distance our children and follow other guidelines” with in-person instruction five days a week, said Helena Miller, chair of the Rock Hill school board in the red state of South Carolina.
Schools in neighboring states this week seemed to make the same point as they struggled to stay open within days or weeks of reopening — many students without masks and walking in crowded hallways. Georgia’s Cherokee County — which was hit the hardest — reported that nearly 1,200 students and staff were self-isolating after known exposures.
There were other schools too. A community college in Mississippi told 300 of its students to quarantine after nine positive cases were confirmed, along with students in Gulfport and Corinth districts. Indiana schools were also hit with an estimated 500 students in quarantine across several districts, as administrators expressed concern that there would not be enough staff available to continue instruction.
There’s no federal standard on when it’s considered safe to reopen schools, although the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have released various documents suggesting “phased” reopenings and advising that kids and staff wear masks and keep students six feet apart.
As a result, most schools have become hyper-focused on their own local virus data, with some looking to the World Health Organization’s recommendation that fewer than 5% of an area’s daily tests must turn out positive for 14 days before schools in the area can reopen. Currently, only 16 states meet that criteria.
“We pay absolutely no attention to what the White House has to say on this and neither do most big city school districts,” said Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Council of Great City Schools, a coalition of the nation’s largest urban public school systems.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, suggested communities look at the number of new COVID-19 cases in a given week for every 100,000 people. If the rise in new cases is higher than 10%, it should be cause for serious concern.
If “you’re in a red zone, I think you really better be careful,” he said Thursday in a livestreamed discussion sponsored by Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Miller, in South Carolina, said her board anguished for months before finally deciding on offering parents a “hybrid” option, starting Sept. 8. The option allows parents to choose in-person instruction for their kids two days a week — a move that cuts down the number of kids in a school at one time to allow for social distancing.
The hybrid model has been sharply criticized by DeVos when it was initially adopted earlier this summer by a Virginia school district. At the same time, DeVos has argued that a national plan for schools isn’t needed because schools are run by local officials.
“There’s not a national superintendent, nor should there be, therefore there’s not a national plan for reopening,” she said last month.
Many parents agree with DeVos and want to at least try to move ahead with in-person classes as much as possible.
“I definitely still say, ‘Give this a shot.’ I think there is a way to do this in person,” Carlo Wheaton, the parent of a junior at Woodstock High School in Georgia, told WSB-TV in Atlanta after the school announced it had to close temporarily after 14 people tested positive for the virus and 15 more were waiting for their test results.
Dan Domenech, executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association, said one solution is money. His group estimates that schools need $490 per student — an estimated $200 billion nationwide for the 54 million students attending school in the U.S. — to allow for schools to reopen safely.
The money could be used to improve ventilation and expand classrooms to allow instructors to teach their students while socially distanced.
Trump announced Wednesday that he plans to provide 125 million masks for students. Domenech said he’d take it but it’s a drop in the bucket for schools.
“We see what’s happening in Washington: nothing,” Domench said.
Miller said at her local school board presidential politics and White House events aren’t part of the equation, and that she’s leaning on her local health department and governor’s office to figure out what to do when there is no playbook.
(NEW YORK) — Several top prosecutors have faced pushback in recent weeks for what critics say has been too lenient a response to unrest, including looting.
The Cook County State’s attorney, Kim Foxx, was among the latest to face criticism after looting and violence overtook the streets of Downtown Chicago early Monday.
Several Chicago officials this week charged that Foxx’s progressive reforms, such as raising the bar for felony charges in retail theft, have led to repeat offenses in recent months.
“These looters acted as if there are no consequences to their behavior, and they based that on what happened previously, that we made a lot of arrests during May and June, and not many of those cases were prosecuted to the fullest extent,” Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown said at a press briefing Monday.
“These criminals were emboldened by no consequences in the criminal system,” he added.
Chicago Alderman Brendan Reilly, whose ward includes areas where Monday’s unrest occurred, said in a letter to his constituents on Monday that he agreed with Brown.
“[It] is clear that there is no accountability or consequences for the widespread lawlessness in the City of Chicago,” he said.
The president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police also called for looters to be fully prosecuted this week.
Following Monday’s arrests, Foxx said those who broke the law would be held accountable. On Thursday, her office announced it had approved 42 out of 43 felony charges sought by the Chicago Police Department stemming from over 100 arrests in the looting. Felony charges included 28 for burglary/looting, six for gun possession, five for aggravated battery/resisting a police officer and one for attempted murder.
“I am committed to keeping our communities safe and continuing to collaborate with our law enforcement partners to demand accountability and seek justice for the people of Cook County,” Foxx, who is up for reelection for a second term this fall, said in a statement announcing the charges.
Cases are still being reviewed and investigated by law enforcement, and her office will file more felony charges if appropriate, the statement said.
In Portland, Oregon, which has seen more than 70 days of nightly protests following George Floyd’s death while in police custody, the city’s top prosecutor has recently faced demands to “hold the rioters accountable.” In an Aug. 7 letter to Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt and Mayor Ted Wheeler, the head of the Portland Police Association, called on Schmidt to “do your job.”
“The people committing arson and assault are not peaceful protestors; they are criminals,” Daryl Turner, president of the association, said. “Step up and do your job; hold the rioters accountable. If there is no consequence for crimes from the District Attorney’s office, there is no reason for criminals to stop the chaos.”
Days after the letter, Schmidt announced his office would only prosecute cases of demonstrators if the crime involved “deliberate property damage, theft or the use or threat of use of force against another person.” Offenses such as disorderly conduct, criminal trespass and interference with a police officer would otherwise be dismissed.
“This policy acknowledges that the factors that lead to the commission of criminal activity during a protest are incredibly complex,” Schmidt said at a press briefing announcing the new policy on Tuesday.
Schmidt said the new policy is part of an effort to build trust in the community and better allocate resources. He stressed that “this is not a free pass.”
“I will not tolerate deliberate acts of violence against police or anyone else,” he said. “Engage in that type of conduct and you should expect to be prosecuted.”
The new policy is retroactive for those who have been arrested during protests in the wake of Floyd’s death in Minneapolis in May. The district attorney’s office said Tuesday it has received about 400 misdemeanor cases related to the protests, a majority of which will likely be subject to the new policy.
Portland’s policy is akin to one rolled out in New York during the early days of the city’s protests against police brutality. In early June, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance announced he would decline to prosecute protesters arrested for unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct. The policy, his office said, was designed to preserve resources for more serious crimes and “reduce racial disparities and collateral consequences in low-level offense prosecutions.”
Around that time, Vance’s office also faced pushback for not charging alleged looters with higher burglary offenses, allowing them to be released amid new bail reform measures. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called on prosecutors to charge the looters with second-degree burglary and said that “they should be held and set bail.” In response, the district attorney’s office said there often wasn’t enough evidence for a more serious charge.
BlakeDavidTaylor/iStockBy ALEXANDER MALLIN, ABC News
(KANSAS CITY, Mo.) — The Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department announced on Thursday the arrest of a suspect in the murder case of 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro, whose tragic killing in late June inspired the namesake for the Justice Department’s “Operation Legend” law enforcement initiative.
Police charged 22-year-old Ryson Ellis with second-degree murder, unlawful use of a weapon and two counts of armed criminal action, saying in a press release that Ellis fired shots into the apartment where Taliferro was sleeping on the night of June 29.
The KCPD said that Ellis sent threatening social media messages to a witness after the shooting, which led to Taliferro’s family members confronting him about the shooting, including Taliferro’s father.
Both Attorney General William Barr and President Donald Trump applauded the news of Ellis’ arrest, with Trump holding up a picture of Taliferro at a news conference at the White House.
“We named ‘Operation LeGend’ after LeGend Taliferro, where we are going to be helping out and are in the process of helping out cities throughout our country that have difficulty with crime,” Trump said. “So that’s really good news, they caught the killer of LeGend.”
In a separate statement, Barr said the arrest came as a result of coordination between Kansas City police, the FBI and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
“Today’s arrest of LeGend Taliferro’s suspected murderer marks a significant step forward in his case and illustrates the potential of Operation Legend more broadly,” Barr said. “This development is a model for joint efforts to solve crimes and reduce violence in other cities. I thank the state and local law enforcement officers who helped make possible this important step in bringing justice to LeGend, to his family, and to his community.”
Barr first announced the creation of “Operation LeGend” in an exclusive interview with ABC News last month, when he told Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas that he decided to name the initiative after LeGend after hearing he had survived open heart surgery, only to be killed in his sleep.
“My daughter had open-heart surgery at a comparable age and I remember how stressful it was for our family,” Barr said at the time. “And the idea of your child surviving that and, you know, the– the joy you would feel to see your kid pull through something like that and then have them shot in the face, it — it affected me a lot.”
Since its launch in Kansas City, the DOJ has expanded Operation LeGend to multiple other cities, including St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee and Memphis, Tennessee.
The effort involves the deployment of agents from the FBI, ATF, Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Marshals to assist in investigating violent crimes in cities that have experienced recent surges. But it has been met with considerable skepticism, at least initially, from local leaders who believe Trump and Barr are working to target cities led primarily by Democrats with aggressive and visible federal responses like have been seen in Seattle and Portland.
Barr has repeatedly sought to separate “Operation LeGend” from the violent clashes in Seattle and Portland between protesters and federal agents primarily from the Department of Homeland Security.
“Although LeGend’s suspected murderer has been arrested, Operation Legend will go on,” Barr said Thursday. “Inspired by this success, federal law enforcement will continue working tirelessly to support state and local partners in our shared mission to keep the American people safe and enforce the rule of law.”
Michael Ver Sprill/iStockBy ELLA TORRES, ABC News
