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  • NY officials announce legislation aimed at protecting kids on social media | CNN Business

    NY officials announce legislation aimed at protecting kids on social media | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Two new bills meant to protect children’s mental health online by changing the way they are served content on social media and by limiting companies’ use of their data will be introduced in the New York state legislature, state and city leaders said Wednesday.

    New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York Attorney General Letitia James made the announcement at the headquarters of the United Federation of Teachers Manhattan, joined by UFT President Michael Mulgrew, State Senator Andrew Gounardes, Assemblywoman Nily Rozic and community advocates.

    “Our children are in crisis, and it is up to us to save them,” Hochul said, comparing social media algorithms to cigarettes and alcohol. “The data around the negative effects of social media on these young minds is irrefutable, and knowing how dangerous the algorithms are, I will not accept that we are powerless to do anything about it.”

    The “Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act” would limit what New York officials say are the harmful and addictive features of social media for children. The act would allow users under 18 and their parents to opt out of receiving feeds driven by algorithms designed to harness users’ personal data to keep them on the platforms for as long as possible. Those who opt out would receive chronological feeds instead, like in the early days of social media.

    The bill would also allow users and parents who opt in to receiving algorithmically generated content feeds to block access to social media platforms between 12am and 6am or to limit the total number of hours per day a minor can spend on a platform.

    “This is a major issue that we all feel strongly about and that must be addressed,” James said. “Nationwide, children and teens are struggling with significantly high rates of depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and other mental health issues, largely because of social media.”

    The bill targets platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube, where feeds are comprised of user-generated content along with other material the platform suggests to users based on their personal data. Tech platforms have designed and promoted voluntary tools aimed at parents to help them control what content their kids can see, arguing that the decision about what boundaries to set should be up to individual families. But that hasn’t stopped critics from calling on platforms to do more — or from threatening further regulation.

    “Our children deserve a safer and more secure environment online, free from addictive algorithms and exploitation,” said Gounardes. “Algorithms are the new tobacco. Simple as that.”

    The New York legislation comes amid a raft of similar bills across the country that purport to safeguard young users by imposing tough new rules on platforms.

    States including Arkansas, Louisiana and Utah have passed bills requiring tech platforms to obtain a parent’s consent before creating accounts for teens. Federal lawmakers have introduced a similar bill that would ban kids under 13 from using social media altogether. And numerous lawsuits against social media platforms have accused the companies of harming users’ mental health. The latest of these suits came on Tuesday, when Utah’s attorney general sued TikTok for allegedly misleading consumers about the app’s safety.

    Mulgrew called the New York legislation necessary in part due to a lack of action by the federal government to protect kids.

    “The last time, first and only time that the United States government passed a bill to protect children in social media was 1998,” Mulgrew said, referring to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a federal law that prohibits the collection of personal data from Americans under the age of 13 without parental consent. In July, the US Senate commerce committee voted to advance a bill that would expand COPPA’s protections to teens for the first time.

    New York officials on Wednesday also highlighted risks to children’s privacy online, including the chance their location or other personal data could fall into the hands of human traffickers and others who might prey on youth.

    “While other states and countries have enacted laws to limit the personal data that online platforms can collect from minors, no such restrictions currently exist in New York,” a press release from earlier Wednesday stated. “The two pieces of legislation introduced today will add critical protections for children and young adults online.”

    The New York Child Data Protection Act would protect children’s data online by prohibiting all online sites from collecting, using, sharing or selling the personal data of anyone under 18 for the purposes of advertising, without informed consent or unless doing so is strictly necessary for the purpose of the website. For users under 13, this informed consent must come from a parent or guardian.

    Both bills would authorize the attorney general to bring an action to enjoin or seek damages or civil penalties of up to $5,000 per violation and would allow parents or guardians of minors to sue for damages of up to $5,000 per user incident or for actual damages, whichever is greater.

    The US Department of Health and Human Services says that while social media provides some benefits, it also presents “a meaningful risk of harm to youth.” The Surgeon General’s Social Media and Youth Mental Health Advisory released in May said children and adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of mental health problems like depression and anxiety, a finding the report called “concerning” given a recent survey that showed teens spend an average of 3.5 hours a day on social media.

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  • ‘This isn’t some random dude with a duffel bag’: To catch fentanyl traffickers, feds dig into crypto markets | CNN Politics

    ‘This isn’t some random dude with a duffel bag’: To catch fentanyl traffickers, feds dig into crypto markets | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Biden administration has intensified its focus on tracing cryptocurrency payments that some of the most dangerous Mexican drug cartels use to buy fentanyl ingredients from Chinese chemical companies, the latest step in a renewed attempt to crack down on the multibillion-dollar fentanyl trade that kills thousands of Americans each year.

    The use of digital currency has exploded among fentanyl traffickers, with transactions for fentanyl ingredients surging 450% in the last year through April, according to data from private crypto-tracking analysis firm Elliptic.

    Federal agents are doing everything they can to catch up. While US diplomats have made fentanyl a point of emphasis in high-level talks with Mexican and Chinese counterparts, behind the scenes, a multi-agency effort is underway to keep pace with the rapidly changing nature of how fentanyl is financed and trafficked into the US. The work goes beyond the cartels to include tracking dark-web forums where Americans buy fentanyl.

    Current and former law enforcement officials from across the federal government described to CNN the digital-first tactics the administration is developing to disrupt the fentanyl trade.

    The Drug Enforcement Agency is investing in crypto-tracing software and identifying the cartels’ most sophisticated money launderers. The IRS has its most tech-savvy agents tracing payments on dark web forums. And a Department of Homeland Security investigations unit is leading a team of forensic specialists to pore over digital clues from stash houses near the Mexican border.

    Federal agents have been tracking the cartels’ finances and supply routes for years, but DHS, in particular, has ramped up its surveillance efforts in recent weeks, multiple US officials told CNN.

    There have been some notable busts recently, including nearly five tons of fentanyl seized this spring along the border. But there is still a lot of work left to do, officials caution, and the impact of the current surge may not be felt for months down the road.

    Agents have focused on the activities of two Mexican cartels, Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), which officials say account for the majority of fentanyl on US streets. Sinaloa Cartel, in particular, has developed sophisticated crypto operations to finance its fentanyl business.

    “We’re dealing with a Fortune 50 company, which is what the Sinaloa Cartel is,” a US official with knowledge of the matter told CNN. “This isn’t some random dude with a duffel bag” selling fentanyl in daylight.

    Cryptocurrency has enhanced cartels’ ability to smuggle fentanyl into the US by allowing them to move vast sums of money instantaneously across a decentralized, digital banking system – all without having to deal with actual banks.

    “The speed the criminals can muster, it’s very hard for law enforcement to keep up,” said one top DEA official, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity to describe the agency’s counter-narcotics work.

    Cash is still king for the cartels and often preferred for local operations. But the expanded use of digital currency at both the supply and demand ends of the drug trade has made some traditional law enforcement methods obsolete. For example, drug dealers might hold fewer in-person meetings to hand over cash, reducing the opportunities for stakeouts by federal agents, said Jarod Koopman, head of the IRS’s Cyber and Forensics Services division.

    Cryptocurrency “eliminates the potential for hand-to-hand transactions,” said Koopman, whose team focuses on illicit financial flows, including dark-web purchases that are multiple steps removed from when the cartels get the drugs over the US border. “So now it’s … in a different world where some of the contacts might be online and we’re trying to facilitate or do transactions in a different manner.”

    But digital money also leaves a trail that investigators can follow.

    Federal agents have found cryptocurrency addresses written down on scraps of paper at stash houses in Arizona, Scott Brown, special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in that state, told CNN.

    In another case, DHS agents monitored a cartel-connected crypto account for over a year until it sent $200,000 to an accountant they were using to launder money, Brown said. After the accountant used the money to buy property in the US, federal agents are working to seize the property, he said.

    A “significant portion” of fentanyl is sold over the dark web and paid for in cryptocurrency, Brown said, adding: “That is a vulnerability that we can attack much like we attack the money movements in a traditional narcotics investigation.”

    Most of the fentanyl that enters the US comes from ingredients made in China that are then pressed into pills – or packed in powder – and smuggled in from Mexico by drug cartels, according to the DEA.

    A US indictment unsealed in June illustrates the scope of the problem. Just one Chinese chemical company allegedly shipped more than 440 pounds of fentanyl to undercover DEA agents in exchange for payment in cryptocurrency. It was enough drugs to kill 25 million Americans, according to prosecutors.

    The two cartels, Sinaloa and CJNG, have used their control of the fentanyl trade to develop sophisticated money-laundering techniques that exploit cryptocurrency, according to US officials.

    “We’ve identified people in the cartels that specialize in cryptocurrency movements,” the senior DEA official told CNN, describing longstanding efforts to surveil both the cartels.

    The Sinaloa Cartel has made hundreds of millions of dollars from the fentanyl trade, according to the Justice Department. Run by the sons of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the cartel has allegedly used airplanes, submarines, fishing boats and tractor trailers to transport fentanyl chemicals and other drugs. Four of the “Chapitos,” as Guzmán’s sons are known, are under indictment in the US for fentanyl trafficking, money laundering and weapons charges.

    With their father in jail, the younger generation of Sinaloa leaders is making more of an effort to cover their tracks and avoid law enforcement scrutiny, including by using cryptocurrency, the senior DEA official told CNN.

    In one case, the Sinaloa Cartel laundered more than $869,000 using cryptocurrency between August 2022 and February 2023, according to a US indictment unsealed in April. But that was likely just a fraction of the Sinaloa money laundered during that time, based on the huge profits the cartel has made in recent years.

    The scheme involved two of the cartel’s top money launderers directing US-based couriers to pick up cash from fentanyl traffickers and deposit the money to cryptocurrency accounts controlled by the cartel, the indictment said.

    “Not every seizure is going to get you to Chapo Guzman,” said Brown, the DHS official in Arizona. “It’s certainly more impactful when we can go after the people that are behind the production of the drugs, behind the production of the precursors, behind the movement of the money, behind running the transportation cells.”

    That’s why Brown and his colleagues are trying to make the most of a huge series of fentanyl busts in Arizona and California this spring, when agents seized nearly five tons of the deadly drug, worth over $100 million.

    Evidence was quickly shipped to a forensics lab in Northern Virginia, where DHS analysts hunted for digital clues – things like a common cell phone number called by drug runners near border towns or, better yet, a cryptocurrency account connected to one of the Mexican cartels, according to Brown.

    Based in Phoenix, Brown’s office oversees a recently announced federal task force that aims to thwart drug sales online by infiltrating dark-web forums and tracking crypto payments. The goal is to find “another vulnerability [in] the larger cartel infrastructure” that agents can attack, he said.

    The cartels “are very willing to invest in technology,” Brown said. “That’s one of the things that we need to be equally willing to do.”

    Crypto-based transactions can be traced publicly, giving US officials a much clearer picture of the Mexican cartels’ reliance on Chinese chemical companies to produce fentanyl.

    The Chinese government banned the sale of fentanyl in 2019. But Chinese chemical companies have since shifted to making fentanyl ingredients instead of the finished product, according to US officials and outside experts.

    A recent CNN investigation dug into the activities of US-sanctioned Chinese chemical companies that advertise fentanyl ingredients. When one sanctioned company shut down, another company launched, and told CNN it purchased the sanctioned company’s email, phone number and Facebook page to “attract internet traffic.”

    While the amount of fentanyl directly mailed to the US from China fell dramatically following the 2019 Chinese ban, according to a Brookings Institution study, US officials say Chinese companies are still producing and exporting large quantities of fentanyl ingredients.

    This January 2019 photo shows a display of fentanyl and meth that was seized by federal officers at the Nogales Port of Entry.

    Chinese companies selling ingredients to make fentanyl have received cryptocurrency payments worth tens of millions of dollars over the last five years, enough to potentially produce billions of dollars’ worth of fentanyl sold in the US and other markets, according to research from crypto-tracking firms.

    One of the firms, London-based Elliptic, found 100 China-based chemical companies touting fentanyl, fentanyl ingredients or equipment to make the drugs that accepted payments in cryptocurrency.

    Elliptic didn’t identify any cartel-controlled crypto accounts that sent money to the Chinese companies. That could be due to the cartels’ use of middlemen to buy ingredients and the fact that fentanyl traffickers in Europe also buy from the Chinese companies, according to US officials and cryptocurrency experts interviewed by CNN

    But that data is still only a partial picture of the problem. The Chinese chemicals industry is worth over a trillion dollars, according to some estimates, and comprises tens of thousands of companies, most of them doing legitimate business.

    “It’s impossible to know how many of [those companies] are actually sending chemicals over” to the US that can be used to make fentanyl, a former DEA agent who worked in Mexico told CNN. The former agent spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

    Barring more cooperation from the Chinese government on the issue, which US officials say has been limited, the Biden administration has sanctioned and secured federal indictments against several Chinese companies allegedly involved in the production of fentanyl. Federal agents, meanwhile, follow the money and look for opportunities to seize it.

    “You can at least try to pinch off the financial flow to [the Chinese companies] and then … follow that money trail to whether it’s the Mexican cartels or if it’s in Guatemala or other places, for the actual supply,” Koopman told CNN.

    Cryptocurrency has also allowed cartels to diversify the way they move money around the world. The cartels have a network of money launderers in dozens of countries, from Thailand to Colombia, the senior DEA official said.

    These money launderers, known as “spinners,” might receive drug money in one type of cryptocurrency and convert it to another to try to obscure the source of the funds.

    “They might take Bitcoin and then buy Ethereum with it, and then send the Ethereum to the cartel members,” the senior DEA official said, referring to different types of cryptocurrencies. “The cartels have insulated themselves so they’re not receiving the cryptocurrency directly.”

    The cartels also use “mixing” services, or publicly available cryptocurrency tools, to try to obscure the source of their digital money, the DEA official said. That process is also favored by North Korean hackers who launder stolen cryptocurrency to support Pyongyang’s weapons program, CNN investigations have found.

    The volatility of cryptocurrency means the cartels often quickly look to convert their crypto to cash by moving it through a series of virtual currencies, the senior DEA official told CNN.

    But there are moments in the laundering process where federal agents can strike. A cryptocurrency exchange serving a customer in Mexico might be headquartered in the US, allowing federal agents to issue a subpoena and potentially seize money.

    For Brown, the DHS agent in Arizona, the issue is personal: one of his employees had a family member who died of a fentanyl overdose after buying the drug online , he said.

    “My people are burned out, and yet they come to work and work exceedingly hard every day,” Brown told CNN.

    But he’s optimistic when the subject turns to high-tech methods to hunt the cartels.

    “Are they as anonymous as they think they are? Absolutely … not.”

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  • Nikki Haley’s gender is rarely mentioned on the campaign trail but always present | CNN Politics

    Nikki Haley’s gender is rarely mentioned on the campaign trail but always present | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    When Nikki Haley took the Republican presidential debate stage alongside her seven male rivals last month, she shone a spotlight on her gender only once – evoking a former British prime minister.

    “This is exactly why Margaret Thatcher said, ‘If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman,’” the former South Carolina governor interjected as Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy sparred during the Milwaukee debate.

    Haley, the only female competitor in the GOP race, has not made her gender central to her campaign pitch. Instead, she has zeroed in on the need for a new generation of leadership.

    Republican voters who are considering supporting Haley told CNN they welcome the fact that she doesn’t lead with her gender as she campaigns, but many said her experience as a mother and a military spouse were part of her appeal.

    “It’s not necessary to point out that a female would bring a fresh perspective,” said Melinda Tourangeau, a Republican voter from New Hampshire. “She has one, she’s nailing it and I think that stands on its own merits.”

    GOP strategists say that by simply showing up as who she is, and weaving elements of her gender into her pitch, Haley is likely to boost her support among suburban female voters – a constituency that helped fuel President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020.

    “There’s no need for her to light her hair on fire and [stress] the fact that she’s a woman because she uses her ability and experience as a way to connect with voters,” said GOP strategist Alice Stewart, a CNN political commentator who advised former Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann on her 2012 presidential bid. “What suburban women want is a candidate that’s going to speak the truth, and Nikki Haley is out there being truthful about Donald Trump’s record. She’s being truthful about what we can actually accomplish in the future on abortion.”

    When Haley, a former US ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, speaks on the campaign trail about personal experiences that have informed her policy positions, she underscores her identity as a mother, wife and female politician.

    “I am pro-life because my husband was adopted, and I live with that blessing every day. I am pro-life because we had trouble having both of our children,” Haley has said in explaining her stance on abortion.

    She expanded on that position at the Milwaukee debate last month in calling for a “respectful” approach to the divisive topic.

    “Can’t we all agree that we should ban late-term abortions?” Haley said. “And can’t we all agree that we are not going to put a woman in jail or give her the death penalty if she gets an abortion?”

    Haley also spoke of the difficulty of enacting a federal abortion ban, pointing to the difficulty in overcoming the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to break a filibuster.

    It was a nuanced perspective for a GOP candidate, and one that caught voters’ attention.

    “When she talked about abortion, I liked that because although she is totally pro-life, she is willing to make some concessions because she said it’s not about her. It’s about what the country thinks,” a female GOP voter from South Carolina told CNN after the debate. “She’s trying to meet people where they are or at least do away with late-term abortions and things like that.”

    Hear Nikki Haley answer questions about abortion

    Haley’s campaign said it raised more than $1 million in less than 72 hours following that first primary debate. The campaign also said it raised more online in the 24 hours after the debate than it had on any other day since Haley launched her presidential bid in February.

    GOP strategists believe that Haley’s approach to the abortion issue was a key factor in that surged interest.

    “I think there are two key issues that she addressed on the debate stage that are helping in fueling their fundraising drive, and the nuanced position on abortion is one and her strong support for Israel,” Stewart said.

    In her stump speeches, Haley also draws from personal experiences – highlighting her role as mother – to speak against the participation of transgender girls in girls’ sports.

    “The idea that we have biological boys playing in girls’ sports, it is the women’s issue of our time,” she said during a CNN town hall in June. “My daughter ran track in high school. I don’t even know how I would have that conversation with her.”

    Similarly, when Haley speaks about standing up for veterans’ families, she speaks about her husband, Michael Haley, a major in the South Carolina National Guard whose brigade deployed to Africa earlier this year in support of the United States Africa Command. He previously served in Afghanistan in 2013 when his wife was serving as governor, which meant she was a working mom alone at home with two children.

    “The first three months when he deployed to Afghanistan, one of them was crying every night,” Haley said at the Iowa State Fair this summer. “I feel for every military family out there because it is survival mode.”

    When asked about her gender, Haley’s campaign noted that it is a part of who she is but not her only defining trait.

    “Nikki is proud to be a woman, a military spouse, a mom, a governor, an ambassador, and an accountant. All these experiences make her the tough and honest leader she is. She brought this toughness to the establishment as South Carolina governor. She brought it to the UN when she took on the world’s dictators. And she will bring it to the White House,” campaign spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement.

    Haley is the fifth prominent Republican woman to run for president, following Margaret Chase Smith in 1964; Elizabeth Dole, who dropped out before the 2000 primaries; Bachmann in 2012; and Carly Fiorina in 2016.

    In comparison to Haley, Fiorina spoke more often and more directly about her gender. That move was dictated, at least in part, by Trump attacking her looks and the leading opposition candidate also being a woman.

    “[Whether] or not you’re ready to … support me, in your heart of hearts, every single one of you know you would love to see me debate Hillary Clinton,” Fiorina told voters on the stump.

    Haley’s competition this cycle is different, and so is her tact.

    “She is a woman, but she leads with her merit and experience,” said Iowa state Sen. Chris Cournoyer, a Haley supporter who touted the fact that the former governor does not play the “woman card.”

    At an August event in New Hampshire for female Republican voters, Haley’s identity as a woman was celebrated.

    “Nikki Haley is an empowered woman, who empowers women, and she really gets it as a former state representative,” Elizabeth Girard, the president of the New Hampshire Federation of Republican Women, said as she introduced Haley, who served three terms in the South Carolina House prior to her election as governor.

    SE CUpp unfiltered 0216

    SE Cupp: Nikki Haley promises youth, but will her policies reflect that?

    But when Haley took the stage – facing a gaggle of female voters – she didn’t tailor her message to the audience. She ticked through her regular stump speech, closing out with her signature call for a new generational leader and a candidate who can win the general election.

    Many of the potential female voters in the room that day appreciated Haley’s approach.

    “I think that’s a good thing,” Kim Rice, 50, told CNN after the event when asked about Haley not making her gender a focus of her pitch. “I don’t think that should be the reason people vote for her. I think her policy points are her strongest points. That’s what should draw people to her.”

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  • Donald Trump is testing the resilience of Iowa’s evangelical voters | CNN Politics

    Donald Trump is testing the resilience of Iowa’s evangelical voters | CNN Politics

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    Des Moines, Iowa
    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump is testing the resilience of his evangelical support in Iowa, a key constituency that could solidify – or slow – his march to the Republican presidential nomination.

    The former president’s latest comments on abortion, in which he called Florida’s six-week ban a “terrible mistake” and declined to offer a clear view on a federal ban, are being closely scrutinized by his rivals and Christian conservatives, a crucial GOP voting bloc in Iowa.

    “For evangelicals, there are probably four issues that matter. Life is usually right at the top,” said Mike Demastus, pastor of the Fort Des Moines Church of Christ. “Most people, the way they evaluate presidential elections, is what the gas price is. But for an evangelical? No.”

    Less than four months before the Iowa caucuses open the Republican nominating contest, nuances on abortion policy will be at the center of conversation here among faith leaders like Demastus, who has met with most of the GOP candidates.

    He expressed concern over Trump’s remarks on abortion since the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. But he also acknowledged that Trump’s key role in the decision – appointing three of the six justices who voted with the majority – helps the former president keep evangelical voters in his corner, at least for now.

    “The fact that Trump is leading in polls – he is – but you can’t take it for granted. There’s so many unknowns with Trump right now,” Demastus said in an interview. “There’s a loyalty with Trump, and people that follow him. You can’t just peel that away from some, but I think many people in the evangelical community right now are willing to hear from other people.”

    Whether Iowa Republicans are willing to hear from – or actually vote for – one of Trump’s many challengers is an open question. The answer could rest inside Iowa churches, where candidates are going to great lengths to win over evangelicals, who in 2016 comprised nearly two-thirds of all GOP caucus attendees.

    “They are very appreciative of the former president, but they are exhausted as well,” said Bob Vander Plaats, president of influential Christian group The Family Leader. “Iowa is tailor-made to upend Trump. If he loses Iowa, there’s a competitive nomination process. If he wins Iowa, I think it’s over.”

    The Iowa caucuses, in effect, have become a furious race for second place.

    While Vander Plaats has been a leading Trump critic, his assessment of the Iowa caucuses is shared by allies of the former president, who plans to step up his Iowa appearances for the rest of the year. Starting with a visit to Dubuque on Wednesday, the Trump campaign is intensifying its focus here in hopes of “squeezing off the oxygen” for other rivals, a Trump adviser told CNN.

    The pursuit of evangelical voters is a top priority for most candidates, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who bowed his head as he stood at the center of a prayer circle during a weekend stop at the Fort Des Moines Church of Christ.

    “Our rights are endowed by God,” DeSantis told those assembled in the sanctuary. “They do not come from the government.”

    The Florida governor leaned into the abortion debate Monday, seizing on Trump’s comments and offering a warning to voters during an interview with Radio Iowa: “I think all pro-lifers should know that he’s preparing to sell you out.”

    South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott called out his rivals by name Monday night at a town hall in Mason City, Iowa, telling voters which GOP contenders did not support a federal abortion ban. “I will use my entire presidency fighting for a 15-week limit,” he said.

    Scott also has long been highlighting his faith, often weaving in Bible verses on the campaign trail and in his television ads. Former Vice President Mike Pence frequently talks about his religious awakening and his support for a federal abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy, as a minimum.

    Trump was the only major presidential candidate to bypass the annual Faith and Freedom Coalition’s fall banquet this past weekend in Des Moines, but Rebekah Gerling proudly wore a Trump sticker as she walked through the convention center. She said she supports the former president as strongly as she ever has.

    “I love everything that he stands for,” Gerling said. “He’s willing to stand up for other people who do love God and believe.”

    When Gerling was asked whether she was troubled by the criminal indictments the former president is facing, her friend, Theresa Gibson, also wearing a Trump sticker, jumped in before she could answer, calling the charges “false accusations.”

    “They’re just going after him because he’s the front-runner,” Gibson said, “and he’s very highly supported.”

    Sally Hofmann, a Republican voter who said faith drives many of her decisions, credits Trump for his appointments to the Supreme Court. But she said she is open to supporting another candidate when she walks into her neighborhood caucus in January.

    “I like a lot of what Trump has done in office, but his personality concerns me a little bit,” Hofmann said. “I like what Nikki Haley is doing. I like DeSantis too. I’m in that range.”

    She said some of her friends and her daughter are concerned about Trump’s rhetoric and conduct. She said it bothers her too, but she’s willing to look beyond it if necessary.

    “Like I told my daughter, if I go to a doctor, and that doctor is such a good doctor to evaluate and treat my issue but doesn’t have the personality that I’m most comfortable with, I’ll still go to that doctor,” Hofmann said. “So that’s the way I look at Trump.”

    Inside the Fort Des Moines Church of Christ, where Demastus has preached for more than two decades, he explained how he came around to Trump in the first place. He supported Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in 2016 and was suspicious of Trump’s intentions before he took office.

    “He started to do what he said he would do,” Demastus said. “I said some pretty harsh things about him at the time, but let me be clear: He won me over. He won me over because he was consistent.”

    For now, Demastus echoes the sentiment of many other faith leaders, saying he is undecided, waiting and watching as the Republican presidential primary unfolds. He believes the indictments against Trump are politically motivated but worries they could weaken his chances in the general election.

    “With all the litigation that’s going on, what’s going to happen? Is he going to receive a felony conviction or not?” Demastus said, ticking through a list of uncertainties hanging over the race. “I think that’s why a lot of these candidates are still in it.”

    This story has been updated with additional reaction.

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  • Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain implant startup, raises $280 million from Peter Thiel’s VC fund | CNN Business

    Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain implant startup, raises $280 million from Peter Thiel’s VC fund | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Elon Musk’s biotechnology startup Neuralink raised $280 million in a fundraising round, the company announced Monday via X, the Musk-owned social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

    The Series D round was led by Founders Fund, a San Francisco-based VC firm established by Peter Thiel, the controversial billionaire who was also a cofounder at PayPal.

    “We’re extremely excited about this next chapter at Neuralink,” the company wrote.

    The brain chip startup wants to use implants to connect your brain to a computer, a goal Musk has been working on for five years. The company so far has only tested on animals and faced scrutiny after a monkey died in project testing in 2022 as part of efforts to get the animal to play Pong, a computer game.

    Macaque monkeys have been used in testing by Neuralink as the company has been developing Bluetooth-enabled implantable chips — inserted into the monkey’s brains — that ​the company says can communicate with computers via a small receiver.

    The funding news comes months after Musk announced the company was moving towards human trials. The billionaire said at a December recruiting event that Neuralink has submitted “most” of its paperwork to the US Food and Drug Administration and could begin testing on humans within six months.

    But employees have said the company is rushing to market, resulting in careless animal deaths and a federal investigation, according to a December report by Reuters.

    Before Neuralink’s brain implants are mass-produced and hit the broader market, they’ll need regulatory approval. The FDA put out a paper in 2021 mapping out the agency’s initial thoughts on brain-computer interface devices, noting the field is “progressing rapidly.”

    A tweet by Neuralink Monday announced they were hiring and invited those interested to “join in on engineering challenges to restore vision and mobility.”

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  • Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain implant startup, set to begin human trials | CNN Business

    Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain implant startup, set to begin human trials | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Elon Musk’s controversial biotechnology startup Neuralink opened up recruitment for its first human clinical trial Tuesday, according to a company blog.

    After receiving approval from an independent review board, Neuralink is set to begin offering brain implants to paralysis patients as part of the PRIME Study, the company said. PRIME, short for Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface, is being carried out to evaluate both the safety and functionality of the implant.

    Trial patients will have a chip surgically placed in the part of the brain that controls the intention to move. The chip, installed by a robot, will then record and send brain signals to an app, with the initial goal being “to grant people the ability to control a computer cursor or keyboard using their thoughts alone,” the company wrote.

    Those with quadriplegia due to cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) may qualify for the six-year-long study – 18 months of at-home and clinic visits followed by follow-up visits over five years. Interested people can sign up in the patient registry on Neuralink’s website.

    Musk has been working on Neuralink’s goal of using implants to connect the human brain to a computer for five years, but the company so far has only tested on animals. The company also faced scrutiny after a monkey died in project testing in 2022 as part of efforts to get the animal to play Pong, one of the first video games.

    In May, Neuralink tweeted that it had received FDA clearance for human clinical trials, with the approval acknowledged by the agency in a statement. The opening of human trials also comes over a month after the brain chip startup raised $280 million in a fundraising round led by Founders Fund, a San Francisco-based VC firm established by Peter Thiel, the controversial billionaire who was also a co-founder at PayPal.

    “We’re extremely excited about this next chapter at Neuralink,” the company wrote at the time on X, the Musk-owned social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

    Musk has forecast human trials at the startup at least four times since 2019, yet the company didn’t seek FDA approval until 2022. At that time, the agency rejected the bid, according to a March Reuters report, citing safety concerns about parts of the implant migrating to other parts of the brain and possible brain tissue damage when the devices are removed. Musk said at a December recruiting event that Neuralink has submitted “most” of its paperwork to the US Food and Drug Administration and could begin testing on humans within six months.

    But employees told Reuters in December that the company is rushing to market, resulting in careless animal deaths and a federal investigation.

    Neuralink did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    Before Neuralink’s brain implants hit the broader market, they’ll need regulatory approval. The FDA put out a paper in 2021 mapping out the agency’s initial thoughts on brain-computer interface devices, noting the field is “progressing rapidly.”

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  • Between 100 and 300 believed killed in Gaza hospital blast, according to preliminary US intelligence assessment | CNN Politics

    Between 100 and 300 believed killed in Gaza hospital blast, according to preliminary US intelligence assessment | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The US intelligence community assesses that there likely were between 100 to 300 people killed in the blast at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza, and there was “only light structural damage at the hospital,” according to an unclassified intelligence assessment obtained by CNN that adds more detail to the initial assessment released Wednesday finding Israel was not responsible for the strike.

    The unclassified assessment sent to Capitol Hill by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence adds more detail to the US intelligence community’s initial assessment released Wednesday that Israel was not responsible for the strike on the hospital.

    “Israel Probably Did Not Bomb Gaza Strip Hospital: We judge that Israel was not responsible for an explosion that killed hundreds of civilians yesterday [17 October] at the Al Ahli Hospital in the Gaza Strip,” the assessment states. “Our assessment is based on available reporting, including intelligence, missile activity, and open-source video and images of the incident.”

    The US intelligence community also estimates the number of deaths from the hospital at the “low end of the 100-to-300 spectrum,” according to the assessment, a lower number than figures initially cited by Hamas of more than 500.

    The intelligence community “observed only light structural damage at the hospital,” with no observable damage to the main hospital building and no impact craters, according to the assessment.

    “We see only light damage to the roofs of two structures near the main hospital building, but both structures remained intact,” the assessment states.

    The US intelligence community released its initial assessment on Wednesday that Israel was not responsible after President Joe Biden stated publicly while in Israel that the strike appeared to have been “the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza.” Biden is giving a primetime address from the Oval Office on Thursday evening.

    The National Security Council has said that the Biden administration plans to publicize as much intelligence as it can about the strike amid accusations that Israel was responsible for the blast.

    “We will be sharing that information with our friends and partners in the region we have shared as much of that information as we can publicly,” Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer said on “CNN This Morning” on Thursday.

    The assessment states that intelligence indicates that “some Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip assessed that the explosion was likely caused by an errant rocket or missile launch carried out by Palestine Islamic Jihad” and that the militants were still investigating.

    “We continue to work to corroborate whether the explosion resulted from a failed PIJ rocket,” the ODNI assessment states.

    “We are still assessing the likely casualty figures and our assessment may evolve, but this death toll still reflects a staggering loss of life,” the assessment states. “The United States takes seriously the deaths of all civilians, and is working intensively to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

    Finer told CNN that the assessment of the hospital strike was a warning to the danger of drawing conclusions amid the fog of war. “I think this is a cautionary note for governments in the region, and frankly for press, in responding to each and every twist and turn in a conflict,” he said.

    The Biden administration has been debating how much raw intelligence to declassify underpinning its assessment that the deadly blast at the Gaza hospital was caused by an errant rocket from a Palestinian militant group — not a missile from Israel, according to a senior administration official.

    The White House believes that providing a clearer assessment to the public would be useful in trying to establish a clear and accurate narrative of events, this official said, noting it hasn’t reached a conclusion about how effective raw intelligence would be in that effort.

    The debate a reflects growing concern that the US and Israel have lost control of the narrative spiraling out of Gaza that Israel was to blame for those killed in the hospital blast on Tuesday evening.

    Former intelligence officials and sources familiar with current US intelligence were skeptical that there was anything the US might make public that would be believed in the Arab world.

    “Unfortunately, the narratives have already spread and solidified at this point,” said one US official.

    Following a classified Capitol Hill briefing Wednesday afternoon, a bipartisan group of senators urged the Biden administration to make public as much of the intelligence as possible.

    “A part of the focus also has to be lowering the temperatures in some of the countries that have had reasonably good relationships with Israel — think Jordan, think Egypt,” Sen. Thom Tillis, Republican from North Carolina, told reporters on Wednesday. “That’s more of the focus now.”

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  • Rep. Nancy Mace says Republicans in swing districts are ‘walking the plank’ because of abortion restrictions | CNN Politics

    Rep. Nancy Mace says Republicans in swing districts are ‘walking the plank’ because of abortion restrictions | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    GOP Rep. Nancy Mace has a warning for her party about some efforts to restrict abortion without exceptions – and how it could affect moderate House Republicans on whom their narrow majority depends.

    “I think they’re walking the plank,” the South Carolina Republican told CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview that aired Sunday, when asked if members in moderate districts like hers are doomed.

    “I’m pro-life. I have a fantastic pro-life voting record, but I also understand that we cannot be a**holes to women,” said Mace, who has been vocal about including exceptions for rape in measures to restrict the procedure.

    The two-term congresswoman went public about her own experience of rape during an abortion debate in the South Carolina state house before coming to Congress. “Being the victim of rape, you don’t ever get over it,” she told Bash, noting how the experience has affected her and her outspoken advocacy for exceptions.

    “As a Republican woman in 2023, this is a very lonely place to be,” said Mace, who was first elected to her coastal South Carolina congressional district in 2020. “Because I feel like I’m the only woman on our side of the aisle advocating for things that all women should care about.”

    Still, Mace has faced criticism for voting the party line, even on measures where abortion rights are at stake.

    “I think I get labeled a flip-flopper unfairly because of that,” Mace said. “I have my own ideology that I believe in. I’ll take the vote. That doesn’t mean I want to take the vote.”

    She argues she has tried to secure changes to measures she may not fully agree with. “I have been very effective at trying to push the ball – not always – but doing the best that I can. I’m only one person, and a lot of times I’m doing it alone and by myself.”

    In the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade last year, Mace – the first woman to graduate from the Citadel’s Corps of Cadets – has often said she’s looking for ways to show that the GOP is “pro-women.” In her interview with Bash, she called on lawmakers to address the foster care and child care systems, for example, arguing that having an abortion is a decision no woman wants to make.

    In April, the congresswoman urged the Food and Drug Administration to ignore a ruling by a federal judge that suspended the approval of a medication drug used for abortion. (The Supreme Court subsequently said that the drug and regulations that make it accessible would remain in place for the time being.)

    “This is an issue that Republicans have been largely on the wrong side of,” Mace told CNN at the time.

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  • 26-year-old tech CEO found dead in Baltimore with signs of blunt-force trauma | CNN Business

    26-year-old tech CEO found dead in Baltimore with signs of blunt-force trauma | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    The Baltimore Police Department has announced an arrest warrant for a suspect wanted for the murder of Pava LaPere, the 26-year-old CEO of startup EcoMap Technologies, who was found dead in a downtown Baltimore apartment Monday with signs of blunt-force trauma to her head.

    Police are looking for 32-year-old Jason Dean Billingsley, Acting Police Commissioner Richard Worley said during a news conference Tuesday.

    Officers responded to a call for service at an apartment complex in the 300 block of West Franklin Street at around 11:34 a.m. Monday, according to Baltimore police. Upon arriving, the officers found LaPere with severe injuries to her head. Police have not released any further information on her death.

    The medical examiner’s office took possession of the body, and an examination is pending, police said.

    Billingsley is wanted for first-degree murder, assault, reckless endangerment and additional charges. He should be considered armed and dangerous, police said.

    “This individual will kill and he will rape. He will do anything he can to cause harm,” Worley warned.

    Baltimore police said they do not believe LaPere and Billingsley knew each other.

    The police did not say how they identified Billingsley as a suspect.

    In a message to Billingsley, Worley urged him to turn himself in. “We will find you, so I would ask you to turn yourself in to any officer, any police station,” he said.

    EcoMap was founded by LaPere and Sherrod Davis while LaPere was a 21-year-old college student at Johns Hopkins, according to EcoMap’s website. With just over 30 employees, the startup is part of the artificial intelligence wave. It sells AI tools, including a customizable chatbot, that aim to make clients’ information easier to access and customer communications more seamless, the company says.

    The company confirmed LaPere’s passing to CNN.

    “With profound sadness and shock, EcoMap announces the tragic and untimely passing of our beloved Founder and CEO, Pava LaPere,” EcoMap said in a statement. “The circumstances surrounding Pava’s death are deeply distressing, and our deepest condolences are with her family, friends, and loved ones during this incredibly devastating time.”

    In August, the company said it had reached nearly $8 million in financing.

    Earlier this year, LaPere was named on the Forbes 30 under 30 list in the social impact category.

    “Pava was not only the visionary force behind EcoMap but was also a deeply compassionate and dedicated leader. Her untiring commitment to our company, to Baltimore, to amplifying the critical work of ecosystems across the country, and to building a deeply inclusive culture as a leader, friend, and partner set a standard for leadership, and her legacy will live on through the work we continue to do,” the company said.

    The CEO of Baltimore-based company Fearless, Delali Dzirasa, served as a mentor to LaPere and remembers her as being a determined leader who was highly regarded across the community.

    “There is no person on planet Earth that could tell Pava that she couldn’t do something,” Dzirasa said. “Even though she was a force, she always made space for other people,” he told CNN.

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  • Incident involving US warship intercepting missiles near Yemen lasted 9 hours | CNN Politics

    Incident involving US warship intercepting missiles near Yemen lasted 9 hours | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A US warship that intercepted drones and missiles near the coast of Yemen on Thursday encountered a larger and more sustained barrage than was previously known, shooting down 4 cruise missiles and 15 drones over a period of 9 hours, according to a US official familiar with the situation.

    The USS Carney, an Arleigh-Burke class destroyer that traversed the Suez Canal heading south on Wednesday, intercepted the missiles and drones as they were heading north along the Red Sea. Their trajectory left little doubt that the projectiles were headed for Israel, the official said, a clearer assessment than the Pentagon’s initial take.

    A sustained barrage of drones and missiles targeting Israel from far outside the Gaza conflict is one of a series of worrying signs that the war risks escalating beyond the borders of the coastal enclave.

    In addition to protests at US embassies across the Middle East, US and coalition forces in Syria and Iraq have come under repeated attack over the past several days.

    On Thursday, Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said the missiles were fired by Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen and were launched “potentially towards targets in Israel.” At the briefing, Ryder said three land-attack cruise missiles and “several” drones.

    Some of the projectiles were traveling at altitudes that made them a potential risk to commercial aviation when they were intercepted, the US official said. The drones and missiles were intercepted with SM-2 surface-to-air missiles launched from the USS Carney.

    US interceptions of Houthi launches are exceedingly rare, making the timing of this incident, as tensions rise in Israel, more significant. In October 2016, the USS Mason deployed countermeasures to stop an attempted attack in the Red Sea targeting the Navy destroyer and other ships nearby. In response, the US fired sea-launched cruise missiles at Houthi radar facilities in Yemen.

    On Wednesday, one-way attack drones targeted two different US positions in Iraq, according to US Central Command. One of the attacks resulted in minor injuries. One day later, the At-Tanf garrison in Syria, which houses US and coalition forces, was targeted by two drones, which also caused minor injuries.

    Early Friday morning in Iraq, two rockets targeted the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center near the airport, which houses US military, diplomatic and civilian personnel, according to another US defense official. One rocket was intercepted by a counter-rocket system, while the second hit an empty storage facility, the official said. No one was injured as a result of the rocket attack.

    The US has not assigned attribution for any of the recent attacks in Iraq and Syria, though Iranian proxies have carried out similar drone and rocket attacks against US forces in both countries in the past.

    The US military has carried out strikes on Iranian-backed militias as a response to previous such attacks against US forces, but the Pentagon would not say anything yet about its intentions.

    “While I’m not going to forecast any potential response to these attacks, I will say that we will take all necessary actions to defend US and coalition forces against any threat,” said Ryder. “Any response, should one occur, will come at a time and a manner of our choosing.”

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  • Amazon Clinic rolls out nationwide as e-commerce giant expands its health care footprint | CNN Business

    Amazon Clinic rolls out nationwide as e-commerce giant expands its health care footprint | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Amazon’s virtual clinic is now available in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., the company announced on Tuesday.

    Amazon Clinic launched last November and offers customers 24/7 access to third-party health-care providers directly on Amazon’s website and mobile app. With the service, Amazon customers can receive telehealth treatment for dozens of common conditions, such as pink eye, urinary tract infections and hair loss.

    The company said on Tuesday that in addition to message-based consultations being available in 34 states, Amazon Clinic now supports video visits nationwide. Amazon Clinic currently does not accept insurance, but medication prescribed by clinicians may be covered by insurance.

    “At Amazon, we want to make it dramatically easier for people to get and stay healthy, and we’re doing that by helping customers get the care and medications they need in the way that is most convenient for them,” Dr. Nworah Ayogu, the chief medical officer and general manager at Amazon Clinic, said in a blog post Tuesday.

    The virtual service will allow customers to see the cost before they start the visit, Ayogu said.

    Amazon’s foray into the health care space comes as other retailers have made similar moves, from CVS to Walgreens to Walmart. The service will also face competition from urgent-care clinics that are popping up across the country as health care costs spiral and doctors visits for routine matters become impossible to book.

    A huge number of telehealth startups grew out of the pandemic, although the market growth has begun to subside.

    In recent years, Amazon has gradually been growing its footprint in the health care sector. In 2020, the company launched its own digital drugstore, Amazon Pharmacy. Earlier this year, Amazon also closed its acquisition of health care provider One Medical in a $3.9 billion deal.

    Amazon had also partnered with JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway to provide better health care services and insurance at a lower cost to workers and families at the three companies, and possibly other businesses, too. That effort, however, never got off the ground and ultimately shut down in 2021.

    The latest expansion of Amazon Clinic comes as the company continues to broaden its reach into every corner of its customers’ lives. The company now oversees grocery stores, produces films and TV shows for its streaming service, and sells a vast array of home devices.

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  • Deadly extreme heat is on the rise in national parks — a growing risk for America’s great outdoors | CNN

    Deadly extreme heat is on the rise in national parks — a growing risk for America’s great outdoors | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Extreme heat appears to be killing people in America’s national parks at an alarming pace this year, highlighting both its severity and the changing calculus of personal risk in the country’s natural places as climate change fuels more weather extremes.

    More people are suspected to have died since June 1 from heat-related causes in national parks than an average entire year, according to park service press releases and preliminary National Park Service data provided to CNN. No other year had five heat-related deaths by July 23, park mortality data that dates to 2007 shows, and the deadliest month for heat in parks – August – is yet to come.

    The deaths reported so far are still under investigation, but all five died in temperatures that hit 100 degrees, a searing microcosm of a much more widespread pattern of extreme heat that has broken more than 3,000 high temperature records across the US since early June.

    That kind of heat has proven an indiscriminate killer in the nation’s parks:

    • A 14-year-old boy died on a trail in southwest Texas’ Big Bend National Park in 119-degree heat, his 31-year-old father died seeking help to save him.
    • A 65 year-or-older man died hiking on June 1 in Big Bend.
    • A 57-year-old woman died hiking a trail in Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park.
    • A 71-year-old man collapsed and died outside a restroom in California’s Death Valley National Park after park rangers believe he hiked a nearby trail.
    • A 65-year-old man was found dead in his disabled vehicle on the side of the road in Death Valley National Park, with park rangers suspecting he succumbed to heat illness while driving and then baked in temperatures as high as 126 degrees.

    Heat is the deadliest type of weather, killing on average more than twice as many people each year as hurricanes and tornadoes combined. But heat deaths are notoriously difficult to track in the US, with one 2020 study estimating that they were undercounted in some of the most populous counties.

    The National Park Service faces the same challenges, and told CNN that the true toll of this year’s extreme heat and recent past heat may be even higher. They need to collect and corroborate death reports with hundreds of individual parks and the equally vast and complex web of local and state officials that medically determine cause of death.

    As a result, some of the most recent death statistics from 2020 to 2023 could “change significantly,” park spokespeople said.

    That’s already proven true. Two of this year’s five deaths happened after the park service provided the data to CNN in early July. Still, the current statistics offer a glimpse into the deadly potential of this unrelenting heat, especially in its epicenter: the Southwest.

    All of this year’s suspected heat-related deaths took place in just three national parks: Grand Canyon, Death Valley and Big Bend. These three parks are also responsible for more than half of the 68 heat-related deaths reported by the park service since 2007.

    And that’s no surprise – all three parks are located in the nation’s oven, the Southwest, and all but one of the deaths happened west of the Mississippi River.

    It’s normal for the Southwest to be hot. But the heat this year, especially the longevity of it, is far from normal. Phoenix, just a few hours south of the Grand Canyon, shattered its record for consecutive days at 110 degrees-plus and only dropped to 97 degrees overnight at times during the streak, a record warm low temperature.

    A recent report from Climate Central, a non-profit research group, found that the Southwest heat wave in the first half of July was made at least five times more likely by human-caused climate change.

    Average annual temperatures across the Southwest increased by 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit between 1901 and 2016, according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, the federal government’s periodic climate change report. The climate crisis has also worsened the region’s most severe drought in centuries, which created an ongoing crisis over water supplies from the river that etched the Grand Canyon into the earth. And projections show that temperatures will continue to rise to the tune of 8.6 degrees – resulting in 45 more days over 90 degrees each year for parts of the region by 2100 under the worst-case scenarios.

    The country’s national parks are ground zero for this warming. A 2018 study found that they had warmed twice as fast as the rest of the US from 1895 to 2010 due to human-caused climate change.

    National parks in the Southwest and in Alaska were the “most severely damaged by human-caused climate change” and experienced the most pronounced warming, said Patrick Gonzalez, climate scientist at the University of California at Berkeley and the study’s author. But he also said that damage was happening “all across America and all across our national parks.”

    “Carbon pollution from cars, power plants and deforestation – human sources – has already damaged our national parks, and in years like this we see the potential acute damage, severe one year damage,” Gonzalez told CNN.

    Heat risk and damage to national parks will only increase if unabated carbon pollution continues, Gonzalez said. That’s changing the personal risk calculus for summer recreation now and in the future in increasingly hotter national parks.

    The 300 million-plus people who visit the parks each year are already encountering warmer temperatures and are at a greater risk for heat illness as a result. Park visitation also peaks during the summer, furthering that risk.

    The park service doesn’t universally keep track of heat-related illnesses that don’t result in death, but multiple park representatives said the number of heat illnesses was much greater than heat mortality. Multiple medical responses a week that are “probably heat-related” happen during the summer at Death Valley National Park, park spokesperson Abby Wines told CNN.

    Grand Canyon National Park doesn’t track heat-specific illness, but carries out hundreds of rescues and so-called “hiker assists” for less-severe issues most commonly because of “lack of physical conditioning,” park spokesperson Joelle Baird told CNN.

    Baird said they see a spike in ranger responses to heat-related illnesses when temperatures reach 95 degrees on trails at the midway point between the top and the bottom of the canyon.

    Extreme heat can trigger heat illness in as little as 20 to 30 minutes for people doing anything strenuous outdoors, like hiking, because heat acts as a “perfect storm,” which overloads the body until it eventually short-circuits and shuts down, Dr. Matthew Levy, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told CNN.

    Hiking was the most common cause of heat-related death in the national parks data, representing more than 60% of all deaths. Park spokespeople said that typically, less-experienced hikers find themselves in compromising situations by overestimating their abilities or underpreparing for the heat, but heat illness and death can and has happened in experienced hikers, too.

    Maggie Peikon is a self-proclaimed “avid hiker” who has climbed some of the country’s highest mountains and even scaled an active volcano in Indonesia.

    She said part of the allure of hiking for experienced hikers is to “challenge my will.” But even so, she said, hiking in this kind of heat isn’t worth it.

    “Most of the challenges I’ve pushed myself to do, there’s a level of enjoyment there, and it just feels like a punishment to go out when it’s that hot,” said Peikon, who works as the manager of communications at the American Hiking Society.

    “I think I’ve just learned what I’m capable of, and that’s not just from a physical standpoint, hiking is very mental as well,” Peikon told CNN. “That was something that has stuck with me on every single hike that I do, especially the challenging ones: What you’re capable of is entirely up to you.”

    Tourists stand next to an unofficial heat reading at Furnace Creek Visitor Center during a heat wave in Death Valley National Park.

    Personal responsibility weighs heavily in the policy direction the individual national parks take when dealing with the heat.

    Parks proactively message visitors about the heat online and in signage posted at the trails that warns of the dangerous and “tragic” consequences of high temperatures. Death Valley posts bright red “STOP Extreme Heat Danger” signs at low elevation trailheads, which urge people to stay off trails after 10 a.m. and to hike only at high elevations, where temperatures are lowest.

    “People are responsible for their own safety,” Death Valley spokesperson Abby Wines told CNN. “We try to get information out to people so they’re aware, but one of the problems with heat, I think, is that often people think it’s a matter of being tough enough. They think ‘oh, I might be uncomfortable, but that’s all and I can push through it.’ But heat is deadly.”

    It’s so hot in Death Valley that the park warns visitors that it can’t and won’t rescue people.

    “We don’t want to put our own staff at risk of heat fatality by doing a physical carry out in extreme heat conditions,” Wines said, adding that the medical helicopter can’t get enough lift to take off because temperatures are so hot.

    That was the case in the most recent death in Death Valley on July 19 when the temperature was 117 degrees, a park release notes.

    What parks seem to rarely do is close trails because of the heat. The park representatives CNN spoke to said there is no national policy or guidance to close if temperatures reach a certain level.

    Trails do close because of other kinds of extreme weather, including winter storms and tropical systems. Park officials said those decisions are made at the individual park level based on the hazards there and that it was technically possible individual parks could choose to close trails or limit access if the heat got too extreme.

    Trails in Lake Mead National Recreational area in Arizona and Nevada do close seasonally because of the heat, and Grand Canyon National Park has at least entertained the idea to close trails.

    “It is something that I’ve heard come up every single year, this time of year, so I don’t think it’s beyond the National Park Service or Grand Canyon,” Baird, Grand Canyon National Park’s spokesperson, told CNN. “I think the thought and stance has always been to push out more hiker education to try to change and influence people’s behavior rather than having a reactionary decision to close trails, because people can hike successfully. We just have to provide enough information and tools for them to be successful.”

    Grand Canyon is the deadliest park for extreme heat with 16 deaths since 2007, the preliminary data from the National Park Service would suggest, a toll Baird said would be “much higher” if the park didn’t also have one of the most robust and proactive responses to heat.

    Grand Canyon pioneered a Preventative Search and Rescue team after a particularly dangerous and taxing year for rescue teams in 1996.

    Emergency Services Coordinator James Thompson observes and directs operations during a search and rescue training exercise at the Grand Canyon.

    The teams are medically trained and meet hikers at the start of trails to make sure they are adequately prepared for the journey, provide assistance with water or snacks and even contact and check in with hikers once they’re on the trails.

    This preventative approach has decreased the number of expensive, “last resort” search and rescues that are typically done via helicopter. But despite these efforts, there are still between 300 and 350 search and rescues each year at Grand Canyon and there have been 172 so far this year, with around 70 coming since Memorial Day.

    “Grand Canyon is an amazing place, everyone should hike into the canyon if they have the ability to do so,” Baird said. “However, this time of year is not optimal.”

    Park officials and hiking experts recommended checking the weather and park alerts before going out on the trail, to get acclimated to heat before your trip and know your personal limits, to shorten activities outdoors, carry more water than you think you might need, find shadier trails, tour the park by air-conditioned car or even just skip the hike altogether to reduce the chance that heat continues to turn deadly.

    “It’s not worth the risk of experiencing heat illness because of the outcomes,” Andrea Walton, Southeast Region Public Affairs Specialist for the park service, told CNN. “At minimum you’re going to feel really bad the next day” or worse, “potentially ending up in the hospital, or worst case, experiencing a fatal incident.”

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  • Portland hospital shooting leaves at least 1 injured as police search for suspect | CNN

    Portland hospital shooting leaves at least 1 injured as police search for suspect | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Police in Oregon are looking for a suspect after a shooting at a hospital in downtown Portland left at least one person injured, authorities said.

    Portland police said officers responded with a Crisis Response Team to Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center in the northwest area of the city after reports of a person with a gun inside the facility, Sgt. Kevin Allen said in a news conference. The facility was placed on lockdown.

    When officers responded, they were told a person had opened fire inside the hospital. At least one person was injured, Allen said.

    “We were told that shots had been fired in the hospital,” Allen said. A witness told officers the suspected shooter had already left the hospital by the time police arrived.

    A Fred Meyer grocery store nearby was evacuated and searched by police, but Allen said authorities have not located the suspect.

    “This is still considered an active tactical incident. There’s efforts underway to locate the suspect,” Allen said, adding authorities “no longer think there’s any potential danger at the hospital.”

    Allen said officers from across the city were contributing to the search for the suspected shooter. The hospital will remain on lockdown as officers investigate, he said.

    Jonathan Avery, the hospital’s chief operating officer, called the shooting “an extremely scary situation.”

    “We really want to make sure that folks do not come to Good Samaritan today until everything has been cleared and we’re back and open,” Avery said.

    Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler also advised residents to “stay alert” on Twitter.

    “This is still an active investigation,” the mayor wrote. “We urge those in the area to stay alert until further notice.”

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  • Cape Cod boat crash leaves 1 dead and others injured, officials say | CNN

    Cape Cod boat crash leaves 1 dead and others injured, officials say | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A 17-year-old girl has died after a boat crashed into a jetty in Sesuit Harbor on Cape Cod Friday night, according to Massachusetts State Police.

    The teenager’s body was recovered from the water around 11:30 p.m. by the regional dive team with assistance from Dennis Fire-Rescue, according to a Saturday news release from the Cape and Islands District Attorney’s Office. Officials have not released the girl’s name “out of respect for the privacy of her family,” the release said.

    Six people, including the girl who sustained fatal injuries, were on the boat before it crashed around 9 p.m., according to the release. Other passengers were transported to Cape Cod Hospital for treatment, police said.

    The State Police Detective Unit for the Cape and Islands District is investigating the teen’s death alongside the Cape and Islands District Attorney’s Office, the Massachusetts Environmental Police, Dennis Police, and the State Police Crime Scene Services Section, according to the news release.

    Police said the Massachusetts State Police Marine Unit and the MSP Underwater Recovery Unit, along with Massachusetts Environmental Police marine assets, are conducting dive operations at the crash site to search for debris from the boat as part of the investigation.

    CNN has reached out to the Cape and Islands District Attorney’s Office, Dennis Police, and the United States Coast Guard for further information.

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  • The Columbus Zoo thought this gorilla was a male — then it gave birth to a baby | CNN

    The Columbus Zoo thought this gorilla was a male — then it gave birth to a baby | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Zookeepers at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium arrived to a pair of unexpected discoveries Thursday morning: a newborn baby gorilla and the news that its mother wasn’t a male gorilla.

    The gorilla, Sully, has lived at the facility with her mother since 2019 and was thought to be male until “the gorilla care team discovered her holding the unexpected baby gorilla early Thursday,” the zoo announced in a news release.

    But how could the facility not know 8-year-old Sully was actually a female? And that she was pregnant?

    Well, gorillas “don’t have prominent sex organs” and males and females look mostly alike until around age 8, the zoo said in the release, noting it’s only later in life that males develop their large size, silver backs and distinctive head bumps.

    Along with the hard-to-distinguish features, veterinarians at the zoo where the gorilla was born took a “hands-off approach” with their care and allowed the primate to be cared for by its mother, the Columbus Zoo noted.

    When Sully arrived in Columbus, she was a “young and healthy animal” and didn’t require any medical procedures that would have led to the discovery sooner, the zoo said.

    The pregnancy was also missed because “gorillas rarely show outward signs” they are carrying because “newborns are smaller than human babies and gorillas naturally have large abdomens,” the release notes.

    With the gestation period for gorillas being eight and a half months, the zoo estimates Sully became pregnant in the fall.

    The zoo says the adorable infant appears to be a healthy female. “The veterinary and animal care teams have not yet approached the infant, giving them time to bond with one another and with the rest of the troop, but will conduct a wellness exam soon,” the facility said in the release.

    A DNA test will be performed later to determine the newborn’s father.

    The new mother and baby will be on display for guests at the zoo’s gorilla habitat starting Friday, according to the release.

    Western lowland gorillas – the subspecies that lives at the Columbus Zoo – are critically endangered, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. There are an estimated 100,000 left in the wild across central Africa, says the Columbus Zoo. Their population has been depleted due to habitat loss, deforestation and hunting for bushmeat.

    The surprise discovery builds on a history of gorilla conservation at the Columbus Zoo. The facility “was the first zoo in the world to welcome the birth of a baby gorilla” in 1956, according to the release.

    Sully’s yet-to be named infant is the 34th gorilla born at the zoo, says the release. “She’s an important part of our work to conserve these magnificent animals,” the facility wrote.

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  • Biden administration suspends funding for Wuhan lab | CNN Politics

    Biden administration suspends funding for Wuhan lab | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Biden administration has suspended funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology following a monthslong review that determined that the Chinese research institute “is not compliant with federal regulations and is not presently responsible,” according to a memo from the Department of Health and Human Services.

    HHS, which conducted the review, also proposed barring the Wuhan Institute from doing business with the federal government going forward, according to the memo, which is dated to Monday and was first reported by Bloomberg.

    The lab has not received any federal funding from the US National Institutes of Health since July 2020, according to an HHS spokesperson.

    The determination came after the research institute failed to provide the National Institutes of Health with requested documents amid reported safety concerns at the lab.

    “This action aims to ensure that WIV does not receive another dollar of federal funding,” an HHS spokesperson said in a statement. “The move was undertaken due to WIV’s failure to provide documentation on WIV’s research requested by NIH related to concerns that WIV violated NIH’s biosafety protocols.”

    In Monday’s memorandum, HHS’s deputy assistant secretary for acquisition concludes that the Wuhan Institute’s “disregard of the NIH’s requests” and the NIH’s conclusion that the institute’s research likely violated biosafety protocols present a risk that the institute “not only previously violated, but is currently violating, and will continue to violate, protocols of the NIH on biosafety.”

    “Therefore, I have determined that the immediate suspension of WIV is necessary to mitigate any potential public health risk,” the official, whose name is redacted, writes in the memo.

    The Wuhan Institute of Virology is at the center of a theory that Covid-19 escaped from the lab in late 2019, triggering the global pandemic.

    The US intelligence community has yet to reach a conclusion about where the virus originated. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a declassified report last month that stated the US intelligence community could not determine whether researchers at the lab who fell ill in the fall of 2019 were infected with Covid-19, but identified safety and security issues at the lab. Many other experts say evidence suggests that the coronavirus likely emerged naturally and spread to humans in a Wuhan seafood market.

    The National Institutes of Health notified EcoHealth Alliance – a US-based organization that received a 2014 grant from NIH that was partly funneled to the Wuhan Institute – in April 2020 that it was reviewing allegations linking the Wuhan Institute to the coronavirus pandemic. And in July of that year, NIH told EcoHealth it had received reports of “biosafety concerns” at the lab.

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  • A doctor known for assessing Covid risk fell ill with the virus. Here’s what he wants you to know | CNN

    A doctor known for assessing Covid risk fell ill with the virus. Here’s what he wants you to know | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A doctor known for advising people on the risks of Covid-19 got a double surprise: He got Covid, and he wound up needing stitches because of it.

    Dr. Robert Wachter, who chairs the Department of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, said he had not tested positive for Covid until last week, according to posts from his Twitter account. He said he was fully vaccinated and had received his second bivalent booster in April.

    He said his symptoms started with a dry cough on July 9, and by that night, he had a fever, chills and a sore throat. Wachter said he made a mistake the following day when he took a shower while feeling these flu-like symptoms.

    “I work (sic) up in a bloody pool on my bathroom floor,” he wrote on Twitter. “There was a dent in the lid of a trashcan, likely where my head had hit. I remembered nothing. As I managed to get up, it was clear that my face was going to need stitches, and more than a couple.”

    Wachter said he required stitches on the back of his head and on his forehead, which he shared in a photo of himself with a black eye. He declined an interview to go into more detail about his illness and recovery.

    Wachter became a highly followed doctor on Twitter for sharing his own risk gauging and Covid advice during the pandemic, and he has urged people to get vaccinated. He said his Covid “case is a cautionary tale” and warned people to avoid the shower mistake he made.

    “While the instinct to take a shower when you’re sweaty and gross is understandable, stepping into hot water when you’re dehydrated and flu-ish can cause your blood vessels to dilate, leading to a dangerous drop in blood pressure,” Wachter wrote, adding that was exactly what happened to him earlier this week.

    He said he was lucky to have his future son-in-law available to drive him to the UCSF emergency room. He was admitted to the hospital.

    Doctors sent him for two CT scans and later an MRI, due to the extent of his injuries on the front and back of his head, he said.

    He said a head CT scan showed a subdural hematoma, which happens when blood collects between the brain and the skull. A neck fracture appeared in one of his vertebrae in another CT scan.

    Wachter’s MRI didn’t show any additional damage, he said. He added a message of thanks for his colleagues who stitched him back together.

    This is Dr. Robert Wachter that the world is used to seeing in an appearance on CNN in April 2022.

    “Luckily, at my age a few scars don’t bother me much, and I believe my wife likes me for reasons other than my previously seamless brow,” he said.

    After 24 hours in the emergency department, Wachter tweeted that he is home and isolating. He said he’s taking the anti-viral medication Paxlovid to help lessen the severity and duration of the illness, as well as the chance of long Covid.

    As far as future brushes with Covid, Wachter said he doesn’t think he will change his behavior, as long as cases remain low. “I’ll continue being relatively careful, but no more than I’ve been,” he said.

    While he has not treated any Covid patients, Wachter said he wears a KN95 mask in clinical settings. Sometimes he’s removed his mask in non-crowded meetings, he added.

    “I will, however, be more careful about showering or taking a hot bath or hot tub when dehydrated. That’s one important takeaway from this mess,” he said.

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  • Three Israeli civilians wounded, one seriously, in West Bank shooting | CNN

    Three Israeli civilians wounded, one seriously, in West Bank shooting | CNN

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    Jerusalem
    CNN
     — 

    One Israeli man was seriously wounded and two young girls were hurt in a shooting in the West Bank, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israeli emergency services said Sunday.

    The trio were injured after shots were fired from a moving vehicle at the Tekoa Junction, south of Bethlehem, the IDF said.

    The wounded man, an approximately 35-year-old civilian, is conscious and in and in serious but stable condition with gunshot wounds, the Magen David Adom (MDA) rescue service said.

    The girls, aged 9 and 14, were mildly injured in the incident. All three are being taken to Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, the MDA said.

    Israeli troops are searching for the attackers, the army said.

    The shooting took place in the southern West Bank, which is normally calmer than the north, which includes Jenin and Nablus.

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  • Killings of 3 women in Long Island went unsolved for more than a decade. Here’s how authorities tracked down the suspect | CNN

    Killings of 3 women in Long Island went unsolved for more than a decade. Here’s how authorities tracked down the suspect | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    After the remains of four women were found near a beach in Long Island, New York, more than a decade ago, investigators say DNA evidence and cellphone data now point to a murder suspect – a local architect whose internet history showed him often searching the status of the case and details about the victims.

    Rex Heuermann was arrested in New York City on Thursday, more than a year after a police task force explored his possible connection to the cold case known as the “Gilgo Four,” named for the beach where the remains were found.

    Heuermann, 59, was indicted on one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder in each of three of the killings – Melissa Barthelemy in 2009, and Megan Waterman and Amber Costello in 2010, according to the indictment. He pleaded not guilty Friday during his first court appearance on Long Island and was remanded without bail.

    The defendant, who told his attorney he did not carry out the killings, is also the prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance and death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, according to a bail application from Suffolk County prosecutors. Heuermann has not been charged in the case, but the investigation “is expected to be resolved soon,” the document states.

    “Rex Heuermann is a demon that walks among us. A predator that ruined families. If not for the members of this task force, he would still be on the streets today,” Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said during a news conference Friday, and offered his condolences to the victims’ families.

    “To the family members of Amber Costello, Melissa Barthelemy and Megan Waterman. I can only imagine what you’ve had to endure over the last decade regarding knowing that your killer was still loose. God bless you,” Harrison said before hugging a few people standing behind him.

    Authorities had been left with little information after a search for a missing woman in 2010 led to the discovery of multiple sets of human remains at Gilgo Beach. By the time the remains of the missing woman, Shannan Gilbert, were found the following year, at least 10 sets of human remains had been recovered across two Long Island counties.

    As they searched for a suspect in the “Gilgo Four” case, investigators combed through phone records from both midtown Manhattan and the Massapequa Park area in Long Island – places where the suspect is believed to have used a burner phone, court documents show.

    “For each of the murders, he got an individual burner phone, and he used that to communicate with the victims. Then shortly after the death of the victims, he then would get rid of the burner phone,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said during a news conference Friday.

    In February 2022, Harrison created a task force to focus on solving the cold case. By mid-March, Heuermann’s name showed up on authorities’ radar after a New York state investigator identified him in a database, according to Tierney.

    Investigators say they narrowed cell tower records from thousands of possible individuals down to hundreds and then to a handful of people. Next, authorities focused on residents who also matched a physical description provided by a witness who had seen the suspected killer.

    As the search pool narrowed, they zeroed in on anyone with a connection to a green pick-up truck a witness had seen the suspect driving, according to two law enforcement sources with knowledge of the case. Later, authorities learned Heuermann drives a green pickup truck registered to his brother.

    Eventually, investigators found Heuermann matched a witness’s physical description, lived close to the Long Island cell site and worked near the New York City cell sites where other calls were captured.

    Cell phone and credit card billing records show numerous instances where Heuermann was in the general locations as the burner phones used to call the three victims “as well as the use of Brainard-Barnes and Barthelemy’s cellphones when they were used to check voicemail and make taunting phone calls after the women disappeared,” Suffolk County prosecutors allege.

    The defendant’s next court appearance is scheduled on August 1.

    A major factor in the case that helped point investigators to Heuermann as a suspect is DNA evidence, which was made possible due to the latest scientific innovations in the field.

    After Heuermann was identified as a suspect in March 2022, authorities placed him and his family under surveillance and would obtain DNA samples from discarded items. A team later gathered a swab of Heuermann’s DNA from leftover crust in a pizza box he threw in the trash, according to Tierney.

    During the initial examination of one of the victims’ skeletal remains and materials discovered in the grave, the Suffolk County Crime Laboratory recovered a male hair from the “bottom of the burlap” the killer used to wrap her body, according to prosecutors. Analysis of the DNA found on the victim and the pizza showed the samples matched.

    Additionally, hair believed to be from Heuermann’s wife was found on or near three of the murder victims, prosecutors allege in the bail application, citing DNA testing. The DNA came from 11 bottles inside a garbage can outside the Heuermann home, the court document says.

    The hairs, found in 2010, were degraded and DNA testing at the time couldn’t yield results. But as technology progressed, mitochondrial DNA testing allowed investigators to make the connection, Tierney explained.

    The victims’ remains “were out in a tough environment for a prolonged period of time. So, there was not a lot of forensic evidence,” Tierney told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Friday, and credited the FBI and one of its agents for a “phenomenal job” with extracting the evidence.

    Evidence shows Heuermann’s wife and children were out of the state when the three women are believed to have been killed, Tierney said during Friday’s news conference.

    A search of Heuermann’s computer revealed he had scoured the internet at least 200 times, hunting for details about the status of the investigation, Tierney added. Heuermann’s internet history also turned up searches for torture porn and “depictions of women being abused, being raped and being killed,” Tierney said.

    Heuermann was also compulsively searching for photos of the victims and their relatives, and he was trying to track down relatives, the district attorney said.

    Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello and Megan Waterman

    While the 10 sets of human remains found are all being investigated as victims of suspected homicide, four of the women found have garnered specific attention due to the similarities found in their deaths.

    The victims known as the “Gilgo Four” were all last seen alive between 2007 and 2010, and their remains were found along a quarter-mile stretch of road in a span of three days in December 2010.

    The women, who all worked in the sex industry, were also buried in a similar fashion, Tierney noted.

    “All the women were petite. They all did the same thing for a living. They all advertised the same way. Immediately there were similarities with regard to the crime scenes,” he said. The killer concealed their bodies by wrapping them in camouflaged burlap, the type used by hunters.

    Authorities have said they believe the death of Gilbert, whose disappearance sparked the searches that found the other victims, may have been accidental and not related to the other killings.

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  • Burner phones. Pizza crust. DNA on burlap. A New York architect was charged with killing 3 women in Gilgo Beach serial killings cold case | CNN

    Burner phones. Pizza crust. DNA on burlap. A New York architect was charged with killing 3 women in Gilgo Beach serial killings cold case | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A New York architect was charged with murder in connection to the killings of three of the women who became known as the “Gilgo Four,” according to the Suffolk County District Attorney, in a case that baffled authorities for more than a decade in suburban Long Island.

    Rex Heuermann – who told his attorney he is not the killer – was taken into custody for some of the Gilgo Beach murders, an unsolved case tied to at least 10 sets of human remains discovered since 2010, authorities said.

    The case was broken open thanks to cell phone data, credit card bills and DNA testing, which ultimately led them to arrest Heuermann, 59, authorities said.

    Heuermann was charged with one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder in each of the three killings – Melissa Barthelemy in 2009, and Megan Waterman and Amber Costello in 2010 – according to the indictment. A grand jury made the six charges, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney.

    He is also the prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance and death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, according to a bail application from prosecutors. Heuermann has not been charged with that homicide but the investigation “is expected to be resolved soon,” the document says.

    This is the first arrest in the long-dormant case, which terrorized residents and sparked conflicting theories about whether a serial killer was responsible.

    Tierney said authorities, fearing the suspect might be tipped off they were closing in, moved to arrest him Thursday night.

    “We were playing before a party of one,” he told reporters. “We knew the person responsible for these murders would be looking at us.”

    See our live coverage here

    Authorities said once Heuermann was identified in early 2022 as a suspect, they watched him and his family and got DNA samples from items that were thrown away.

    During the initial examination of one of the victims’ skeletal remains and materials discovered in the grave, the Suffolk County Crime Laboratory recovered a male hair from the “bottom of the burlap” the killer used to wrap her body, according to the bail application.

    A surveillance team later gathered a swab of Heuermann’s DNA from leftover crust in a pizza box he threw in the trash, the district attorney said.

    Hair believed to be from Rex Heuermann’s wife was found on or near three of the murder victims, prosecutors allege in the bail application, citing DNA testing. The DNA came from 11 bottles inside a garbage can outside the Heuermann home, the court document says.

    Evidence shows Heuermann’s wife and children were outside of the state at the times when the three women were killed, Tierney said.

    The hairs found in 2010 were degraded and DNA testing at the time couldn’t yield results but improvements in technology eventually gave investigators the DNA answers they needed.

    Heuermann was in tears after his arrest, his court appointed attorney, Michael Brown, said Friday.

    “I did not do this,” Brown said Heuermann told him during their conversation after his arrest.

    Rex Heuermann

    Heuermann was remanded without bail. He entered a not guilty plea through his attorney. His next court date is scheduled for August 1.

    Police were still searching his home Friday night, according to a CNN team outside the house.

    Heuermann, who a source familiar with the case said is a father of two, is a registered architect who has owned the New York City-based architecture and consulting firm, RH Consultants & Associates, since 1994, according to his company’s website.

    In 2022, Heuermann was interviewed for the YouTube channel “Bonjour Realty.” He spoke about his career in architecture, and said he was born and raised in Long Island. He began working in Manhattan in 1987.

    CNN has reached out to Heuermann’s company for comment.

    The remains of the Gilgo Four were found in bushes along a quarter-mile stretch of Ocean Parkway in Oak Beach over a two-day period in 2010.

    The skeletal remains of Barthelemy were discovered near Gilgo Beach on December 11. Barthelemy, who was a sex worker, was last seen July 12, 2009, at her apartment when she told a friend she was going to see a man, according to a Suffolk County website about the killings.

    The remains of three other women were found on December 13, 2010: Brainard-Barnes, who advertised escort services on Craigslist and was last seen in early June 2007 in New York City; Amber Lynn Costello, who also advertised escort services and was last seen leaving her North Babylon home in early September 2010; and Waterman, who also advertised as an escort and was last seen in early June 2010 at a Holiday Inn Express in Hauppauge.

    Tierney said of the women, “They were buried in a similar fashion, in a similar location, in a similar way. All the women were petite. They all did the same thing for a living. They all advertised the same way. Immediately there were similarities with regard to the crime scenes.”

    Tierney said the killer tried to conceal the bodies, wrapping them in camouflaged burlap, the type used by hunters.

    The suspect made taunting phone calls to Barthelemy’s sister, “some of which resulted in a conversation between the caller, who was a male, and a relative of Melissa Barthelemy, in which the male caller admitted killing and sexually assaulting Ms. Barthelemy,” according to the bail application.

    The court document alleges cell phone and credit card billing records show numerous instances where Heuermann was in the general locations as the burner phones used to call the three victim,s “as well as the use of Brainard-Barnes and (Barthelemy’s) cellphones when they use used to check voicemail and make taunting phone calls after the women disappeared.”

    The district attorney said the killer got a new burner phone before each killing.

    The case against Heuermann came together in the two years since the restart of the investigation by Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison, authorities said.

    Harrison put together a task force including county police detectives, investigators from the sheriff’s office, state police and the FBI.

    Tierney said the task force held its first meeting in February 2022.

    “Six weeks later, on March 14, 2022, the name Rex Heuermann was first mentioned as a suspect in the Gilgo case,” Tierney said. “A New York state investigator was able to identify him in a database.”

    Investigators had gone backward through phone records collected from both midtown Manhattan and the Massapequa Park area – two areas where a “burner phone” used by the alleged killer were detected, according to court documents.

    Rex Heuermann is seen purchasing extra minutes for one of the burner cell phones connected to some of the crimes at a cellphone store in Midtown Manhattan, prosecutors allege.

    Authorities then narrowed records collected by cell towers to thousands, then down to hundreds, and finally down to a handful of people who could match a suspect.

    From there, authorities worked to focus on people who lived in the area of the cell tower who also matched a physical description given by a witness who had seen the suspected killer.

    In the narrowed pool, they searched for a connection to a green pickup a witness had seen the suspect driving, the sources said.

    Investigators found Heuermann, who matched a witness’s physical description, lived close to the Long Island cell site and worked near the New York City cell sites where other calls were captured.

    They also learned he had often driven a green pickup, registered to his brother. But they needed more than circumstantial evidence.

    When investigators searched Heuermann’s computer, they found a disturbing internet search history, including 200 searches aimed at learning about the status of the investigation, Tierney said Friday.

    His searches also included queries for torture porn and “depictions of women being abused, being raped and being killed,” Tierney said.

    The DA said the suspect was still compulsively searching for photos of the victims and their relatives.

    Heuermann was trying to find the relatives, he added.

    The murder mystery had confounded county officials for years. In 2020, they found a belt with initials that may have been handled by the suspect and launched a website to collect new tips in the investigation.

    Police said some victims identified had advertised prostitution services on websites such as Craigslist.

    The mystery began in 2010 when police discovered the first set of female remains among the bushes along an isolated strip of waterfront property on Gilgo Beach while searching for Shannan Gilbert, a missing 23-year-old woman from Jersey City, New Jersey.

    An aerial view of the area near Gilgo Beach and Ocean Parkway on Long Island where police have been conducting a prolonged search after finding 10 sets of human remains in April 2011 in Wantagh, New York.

    By the time Gilbert’s body was found one year later on neighboring Oak Beach, investigators had unearthed 10 sets of human remains strewn across two Long Island counties.

    The grim discoveries generated widespread attention in the region and sent waves of fear across some communities on Long Island’s South Shore.

    Authorities later said they believe Gilbert’s death may have been accidental and not related to the Gilgo Beach slayings.

    Still, Gilbert’s disappearance led to the discovery of others.

    Crime scene investigators use metal detectors to search a marsh for human remains in December 2011 in Oak Beach, New York.

    Additional remains were uncovered in neighboring Gilgo Beach and in Nassau County, about 40 miles east of New York City. They included a female toddler, an Asian male and a woman initially referred to as “Jane Doe #6,” investigators said.

    In 2020, police identified “Jane Doe #6” was as Valerie Mack, a 24-year-old Philadelphia mother who went missing two decades earlier.

    Mack’s partial remains were first discovered near Gilgo Beach in 2000, with additional dismembered remains found in 2011, according to the Suffolk County police.

    John Ray, a lawyer who represents the family of Shannon Gilbert – whose disappearance and search led to the discovery of “Gilgo Four” and other remains – said Friday he does not know if Heuermann is also responsible for her death.

    “We breathe a great sigh of relief,” Ray said. “We’re happy the police are finally taking a positive step in this respect, but this is just the beginning … This is just the edge of a bigger body of water, shall we say, of murder that has taken place.”

    Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello and Megan Waterman

    Ray also represents the family Gilgo Beach victim Jessica Taylor.

    “We don’t know if he is connected to Jessica Taylor’s murder,” he said.

    Jasmine Robinson, a family representative for Taylor, said she’s “hopeful for the future and hopeful that a connection is made” to resolve the other cases.

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