The alert is for hand sanitizers possibly tainted with methanol or wood alcohol, following what the agency calls a “sharp increase” in hand sanitizer from Mexico that tested positive for methanol.
Bill Magness, CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, was fired on Wednesday in the wake of February's deadly blackouts that left millions without electricity and heat in freezing temperatures. As power grid manager, Magness was given a 60-day termination notice by the company's board of directors. "The ERCOT Board is expected to begin an immediate search for a new President and CEO, and will continue to discuss the transition plan at future meetings during this time period," the agency said in a statement.
The number of children and adolescents with COVID-19 in Mississippi may be more than 10 times the number of previously reported cases, according to a new study. Looking back at residual blood samples from people younger than 18 collected from May to September 2020, researchers at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, in collaboration with the Mississippi State Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, measured levels of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 . Overall, their results suggested that an estimated 113,842 Mississippi children and adolescents had been infected by September 2020.
A picture can be worth a thousand words, but for one family, all they have to say is two: "Thank you." About 15 years ago, Victoria Johnson came across a decades-old family photo in a book she bought at a used book store in New York City. With the help of social media, she was able to return the lost photo to a family in Richardson, Texas, on March 3.
As Los Angeles edges out of the most restrictive tier in its covid-19 reopening plan, small business owners who’ve struggled to stay afloat say that whatever hope it brings is mixed with feelings of frustration and anger. For many of the small business owners, the past year has been defined by sacrifice and heartbreak, and the constant concern that their business could go under as they try to keep up with the latest requirements. “So, this is the equivalent of a silent disco,” Perelmutter said during a recent visit from “Nightline.”
Last weekend an NBA G League official told ESPN they were investigating basketball player Jeremy Lin's claim he was called "coronavirus" on the court. It was a decision that turned a moment in which someone tried to hurt him personally into a rallying cry of strength for the Asian American community at large -- in a year when fear and hatred have been stoked against them amid a global pandemic. "I felt like I wanted to bring awareness towards -- not me ... [but to] what's going on off the court, real life, with people dealing with actual, physical attacks and things of that nature, and people who feel unsafe walking around,” Lin told ABC News.
A Texas police officer was arrested Thursday on two counts of capital murder, authorities said. Bryan Riser, a 13-year veteran of the Dallas police force, was taken into custody and transported to the Dallas County Jail for processing, Police Chief Eddie Garcia said at a press conference. A man came forward in August 2019 and told investigators that Riser directed him to kidnap and kill two people in 2017, Garcia said.
Two U.S. officials said that the Capitol Police will be asking for a 60-day extension of the National Guard and that it’s being reviewed. A third official said a formal request from the Capitol Police has not yet arrived at the Pentagon, though they are aware it is pending. There are currently more than 5,000 National Guard members still in the city from a peak of 25,000 present for security at the Jan. 20 inauguration.
As some kids continue to adjust to at-home learning during COVID-19, one mom is sparking a conversation on how retesting could help students like it did for her son. Kristen Mae, a staff writer at Scary Mommy, wrote a piece for the popular website, titled "Schools Should Absolutely Let Kids Resubmit Work And Retake Tests." In the story, Mae said her 14-year-old son is currently able to retest and retake assignments.
Crisanna Tang, a New York-based health care worker, was just on her way to work. The advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate said it's received almost 3,000 reported incidents of aggression targeting at Asian Americans between March and December 2020. A growing body of research suggests that experiencing such racist aggression can have serious mental health impacts.
As Capitol Police and National Guard troops were on high alert amid a potential threat tied to March 4, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi downplayed that the House changed its schedule so it wouldn't be in session on Thursday. "I don't think anybody should take any encouragement that because some troublemakers might show up that we changed our whole schedule," Pelosi told reporters. The House held a late-night session on Wednesday to ensure that members and staff would not have to be on the Capitol complex on March 4.
New York Fashion Week just got an eco-chic update thanks to Christian Siriano. For the designer's fall 2021 fashion show, he teamed up with digital consignment shop thredUP to send two secondhand looks down the runway. The season four "Project Runway" winner said he was inspired to rethink his recent collection based on the ups and downs of this past year and how people will dress post-pandemic.
The governors of Texas and Mississippi announced earlier this week that they were fully lifting mask mandates in their states. Texas' mandate lifts on March 10, and Mississippi ended its mandate as of Wednesday. The moves drew ire from health officials and even President Joe Biden, who blasted the decisions as "Neanderthal thinking" amid the ongoing pandemic.
The Senate is taking up the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill Thursday, but before voting on President Joe Biden's signature legislation, Republicans who claim the bill is massive and won't address issues related to the pandemic have set the stage for a lengthy series of procedural measures designed to slow down momentum. Democrats are projecting that they will hold together and vote unanimously in favor of the aid after Biden made concessions to appease the moderates. If they stick together, there's little the GOP can do to prevent it from passing in the evenly divided Senate.
Mississippi legislators have passed a bill that would ban transgender athletes from competing on female sports teams in schools and universities -- one of over two dozen similar measures proposed by state lawmakers nationwide this year. The state House voted 81-28 Wednesday to pass the so-called Mississippi Fairness Act. Gov. Tate Reeves said Thursday that he will sign it.
Texas, Mississippi, Iowa, Montana and North Dakota -- have ended, or soon will end, statewide mask mandates, despite the looming threat of COVID-19 and highly transmissible variants. "Starting tomorrow, we are lifting all of our county mask mandates and businesses will be able to operate at full capacity without any state-imposed rules," Reeves said in a Facebook post.
Connecticut is the latest state to take action toward passing a law to ban discrimination against race-based ethnic hairstyles in workplaces and schools. The state's Senate voted 33-0 to pass the The CROWN Act, an acronym for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural hair, this week. Now, it's with Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont to be signed into law.
A grand jury is expected to be seated this week in Fulton County, Georgia, to look into efforts by Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election, signaling that the county's investigation into the former president is intensifying. Prosecutors in Fulton County are expected pursue subpoenas for documents and witnesses and rely heavily on them, people familiar with the investigation told ABC News. In a letter sent last month from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to Gov. Brian Kemp and obtained by ABC News, Willis said the grand jury would convene in March and would "begin requesting grand jury subpoenas as necessary at that time."
A new clip of Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, speaking out to Oprah Winfrey was released Wednesday night, just hours after Buckingham Palace announced it plans to open an investigation into allegations of bullying made against the duchess. "I don't know how they could expect that after all of this time we should still just be silent if there's an active role that the firm is playing in perpetuating falsehoods about us," Meghan tells Winfrey in the promo for Winfrey's primetime interview with Meghan and Prince Harry.
In the first case of its kind in New York, a Long Island doctor has been charged with murder for prescription practices that led to the deaths of five patients between 2016 and 2018. Dr. George Blatti ignored repeated warnings and prescribed “massive quantities of opioids” and other drugs that killed five patients and endangered the lives of six others, prosecutors said Thursday. Blatti is the first doctor charged in New York with depraved indifference murder for prescription abuses.
An international team of researchers from institutions including Boston Children's Hospital, Northeastern University and the University of Oxford has partnered with Google.org, Google's nonprofit subsidiary, to release Global.health, a platform that contains information about almost 10 million COVID-19 cases from over 100 countries. There are many databases tracking COVID information, such as the ones run by Johns Hopkins University and The COVID Tracking Project, but most of those track what's known as aggregate data, which includes case and death counts in particular regions. "What's different about ours is its detailed line-list information," said Dr. John Brownstein, a Global.health researcher and a professor of pediatrics and biomedical informatics at Boston Children's Hospital.
