The Alaska snow crab harvest has been canceled for the first time ever after billions of the crustaceans have disappeared from the cold, treacherous waters of the Bering Sea in recent years.
The Alaska Board of Fisheries and North Pacific Fishery Management Council announced last week that the population of snow crab in the Bering Sea fell below the regulatory threshold to open up the fishery.
But the actual numbers behind that decision are shocking: The snow crab population shrank from around 8 billion in 2018 to 1 billion in 2021, according to Benjamin Daly, a researcher with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
“Snow crab is by far the most abundant of all the Bering Sea crab species that is caught commercially,” Daly told CNN. “So the shock and awe of many billions missing from the population is worth noting – and that includes all the females and babies.”
The Bristol Bay red king crab harvest will also be closed for the second year in a row, the agencies announced.
Officials cited overfishing as their rationale for canceling the seasons. Mark Stichert, the groundfish and shellfish fisheries management coordinator with the state’s fish and game department, said that more crab were being fished out of the oceans than could be naturally replaced.
“So there were more removals from the population than there were inputs,” Stichert explained at Thursday’s meeting.
Between the surveys conducted in 2021 and 2022, he said, mature male snow crabs declined about 40%, with an estimated 45 million pounds left in the entire Bering Sea.
“It’s a scary number, just to be clear,” Stichert said.
But calling the Bering Sea crab population “overfished” – a technical definition that triggers conservation measures – says nothing about the cause of its collapse.
“We call it overfishing because of the size level,” Michael Litzow, the Kodiak lab director for NOAA Fisheries, told CNN. “But it wasn’t overfishing that caused the collapse, that much is clear.”
Litzow says human-caused climate change is a significant factor in the crabs’ alarming disappearance.
Snow crabs are cold-water species and found overwhelmingly in areas where water temperatures are below 2 degrees Celsius, Litzow says. As oceans warm and sea ice disappears, the ocean around Alaska is becoming inhospitable for the species.
“There have been a number of attribution studies that have looked at specific temperatures in the Bering Sea or Bering Sea ice cover in 2018, and in those attribution studies, they’ve concluded that those temperatures and low-ice conditions in the Bering sea are a consequence of global warming,” Litzow said.
Temperatures around the Arctic have warmed four times faster than the rest of the planet, scientists have reported. Climate change has triggered a rapid loss in sea ice in the Arctic region, particularly in Alaska’s Bering Sea, which in turn has amplified global warming.
“Closing the fisheries due to low abundance and continuing research are the primary efforts to restore the populations at this point,” Ethan Nichols, an assistant area management biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, told CNN.
Stichert also said that there might be some “optimism for the future” as a few, small juvenile snow crabs are starting to appear in the system. But it could be at least three to four more years before they hit maturity and contribute to the regrowth of the population.
“It is a glimmer of optimism,” Litzow said. “That’s better than not seeing them, for sure. We get a little bit warmer every year and that variability is higher in Arctic ecosystems and high latitude ecosystems, and so if we can get a cooler period that would be good news for snow crab.”
Former President Barack Obama will travel to Atlanta and Detroit for campaign events in the final weeks of the midterm elections.
The Democratic Party of Georgia said in a statement Saturday that Obama will campaign with Democratic candidates on October 28. It wasunclear which Democrats the former President would stump with in Georgia, which is home to high-profile races for governor and US Senate.
Obama will then join Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, among other down-ballot Democrats, at a get-out-the-vote rally on October 29, Whitmer’s team said in a statement. Michigan and Georgiaalso have competitive US House races and critical down-ballot contests, some of which feature GOP nominees who have spread false claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
The Wisconsin Democratic Party announced on Friday that Obama would campaign with Democratic nominees in Milwaukee, also on October 29.
In an interview with “Pod Save America” that aired Friday night, Obama pointed to down-ballot races as an important test for the Democratic Party.
“One of the things I want to emphasize in this midterm is the importance of looking not just at the top of the ballot, but all the way down the bottom, because there are governor’s races, secretary of state’s races, state legislative races that are going to really matter,” he said. “It may turn out that in a close presidential election at some point, certification of an election in a key swing state may be at issue. And, it’s going to a be really important that we have people there who play it straight.”
Obama won both Wisconsin and Michigan in 2008 and 2012. He did not win Georgia in either presidential campaign, but now-President Joe Biden won the state in 2020, becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to do so since Bill Clinton in 1992.
“Given the high stakes of this year’s midterm elections, President Obama wants to do his part to help Democrats win next month,” an Obama spokesperson told CNN. “This is why he headlined four finance events in recent months for the key campaign committees and will campaign in targeted states as part of Democrats’ final GOTV stretch. He looks forward to stumping for candidates up and down the ballot, especially in races and states that will have consequences for the administration of 2024 elections.”
Iran has denied supplying Russia with weapons for use in Ukraine, saying it “has not and will not” do so.
The denial, reportedly made in a phone call between Iran’s Foreign Minister and his Portuguese counterpart on Friday, follows claims by Kyiv and US intelligence that Russia is using Iranian-made “kamikaze drones” in its attacks on Ukrainian territory.
The Iranian government said its Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian emphasized in the call “once again” that Tehran “has not and will not” provide any weapon to be used in the Ukraine war.
“We believe that the arming of each side of the crisis will prolong the war, so we have not considered and do not consider war to be the right way either in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria or Yemen,” Amir-Abdollahian said, according to an Iranian readout of the call.
The Portuguese government said its Foreign Minister João Gomes Cravinho had expressed concerns about the “recently reported evidence on the use of Iranian drones by the Russian Federation in Ukrainian territory” and “stressed the need for the Iranian authorities to ensure that this equipment is not supplied to Russia.”
Ukrainian authorities say Russia has used Iranian-supplied kamikaze drones in strikes against Kyiv, Vinnytsia, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia and other cities in recent weeks, and has pleaded with Western countries to step up their assistance in the face of the new challenge. The Ukrainians themselves have been using kamikaze drones to strike against Russian targets.
Drones have played a significant role in the conflict since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February, but their use has increased since the summer, when the United States and Kyiv say Moscow acquired the drones from Iran.
On Saturday, just hours after the call between the foreign ministers, the Ukrainian military said the city of Zaporizhzhia had been hit by four kamikaze drone strikes overnight.
Kamikaze drones, or suicide drones, are a type of aerial weapon system. They are known as a loitering munition because they are capable of waiting for some time in an area identified as a potential target and only strike once an enemy asset is identified.
They are small, portable and can be easily launched, but their main advantage is that they are hard to detect and can be fired from a distance.
The name “kamikaze” refers to the fact the drones are disposable. They are designed to hit behind the enemy lines and are destroyed in the attack – unlike the more traditional, larger and faster military drones that return home after dropping missiles.
US officials told CNN in July that Iran had begun showcasing Shahed series drones to Russia at Kashan Airfield south of Tehran the previous month. The drones are capable of carrying precision-guided missiles and have a payload of approximately 50 kilograms (110 pounds).
In August, US officials said Russia had bought these drones and was training its forces how to use them. According to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russia has ordered 2,400 Shahed-136 drones from Iran.
According to Portuguese accounts of the foreign ministers’ call, the pair also discussed the protests that have been sweeping Iran since the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who died after being detained by morality police in September and accused of violating the country’s conservative dress code.
Amini’s death has sparked an outpouring anger over issues ranging from women’s rights and freedoms in the Islamic Republic to the continuing and crippling impacts of sanctions.
“Minister João Cravinho reiterated that the existence of Iranian legislation repressive to women’s rights is at the basis of the recent events in that country and appealed to the Iranian authorities to give a positive signal in the promotion of women’s rights,” read the Portuguese readout of the call.
Pakistani officials said Saturday they had summoned the US ambassador to the country following recent comments made by President Joe Biden that doubted the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.
Speaking at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Los Angeles on Thursday, Biden said Pakistan was “one of the most dangerous nations in the world” because it has “nuclear weapons without any cohesion,” according to a transcript of the speech released by the White House.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif shot back Saturday at Biden’s comments. “Pakistan is a responsible nuclear state and we are proud that our nuclear assets have the best safeguards as per IAEA requirements,” Sharif tweeted, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency. “We take these safety measures with the utmost seriousness. Let no one have any doubts.”
Pakistan’s foreign minister, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, said that he was surprised by Biden’s remarks and that, after speaking with Sharif, they summoned Ambassador Donald Blome to the Foreign Office of Pakistan.
A US official confirmed to CNN that Blome was summoned by Pakistan’s foreign ministry following Biden’s remarks. Those remarks frustrated US diplomats in the region, the US official said.
Speaking to reporters Saturday at a news conference in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, Bhutto-Zardari echoed Sharif on his country’s atomic safety record. “We meet all, each and every international standard in accordance with the IAEA,” Bhutto-Zardari said.
Bhutto-Zardari blamed Biden’s comments on a misunderstanding: “I believe this is exactly the sort of misunderstanding that is created when there is a lack of engagement and luckily, we have embarked on a journey of engagement,” he said.
CNN has reached out to the US State Department for comment.
Wildfires burning in British Columbia and Washington state have triggered an air quality advisory for metro Vancouver, according to a Metro Vancouver district press release.
The smoke is contributing to high concentrations of fine particulate matter in the area, which pose the greatest risk to health, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Local Canadian officials have urged residents to “postpone or reduce outdoor physical activity while PM 2.5 concentrations are high, especially if breathing feels uncomfortable.”
United States Environmental Protection Agency
Fine particulate matter, also known as PM 2.5, refers to airborne solid or liquid droplets with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less, the press release explained. That’s 30 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, according to the US EPA. PM 2.5 can easily penetrate indoors because of its small size, according to the press release.
Stagnant weather conditions are forecast to persist for at least the next few days, according to Vancouver officials, meaning the air quality is also not likely to change.
“Smoke concentrations may vary widely across the region as winds and temperatures change, and as wildfire behaviour changes,” the Metro Vancouver press release said.
There are currently nine active wildfires in Washington, according to a Friday update from Northwest Interagency Coordination Center. This includes the Cedar Creek Fire, which is 40% contained. It has burned 122,794 acres since it began on August 1, according to the Incident Information System.
There is also smoke from a wildfire on Cypress Mountain, a popular ski area in West Vancouver, “contributing to hazy conditions already being experienced in Metro Vancouver,” said the press release.
Due to unseasonably warm and dry conditions, Metro Vancouver officials have also extended lawn watering restrictions from Saturday until October 31 in order to better conserve the region’s drinking water,” according to a Metro Vancouver water conservation advisory.
Protestors in Cuba who have been taking to the streets after Hurricane Ian damaged the island’s already faltering power grid could face criminal charges, Cuba’s Attorney General’s office said Saturday.
In a note published in the island’s communist party newspaper, Granma, prosecutors said they were investigating cases of arson and vandalism of state property, streets closures and “insults to officials and forces of order.”
Additionally, parents of minors who take part in the protests could face charges of child endangerment, according to the note.
Anti-government protests are usually quickly broken up by police in Cuba, but after Hurricane Ian worsened the island’s critical power shortages, Cubans across the island have taken to the streets to complain.
The hurricane’s fierce winds and rain left at least three people dead, state media said, and knocked out power to the entire island.
Two of the deaths occurred in Pinar del Rio, where a woman died after a wall collapsed on her and a man died after his roof fell on him, state media said.
The state-run National Electric System turned off power in Havana to avoid electrocutions, deaths and property damage until the weather improved. But the nationwide blackouts were caused by the storm and were not planned.
The storm exacerbated an economic crisis that has been gripping Cuba, leading to shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Blackouts across the island were regular all summer, which led to rare scattered protests against the government. Those protests picked up after the hurricane made life harder for Cubans already struggling.
Often at night, protestors in cities and towns have banged on pots and pans, angry at government power cuts. Some protestors have called for electrical service to be restored while others have demanded that Cuban leaders step down.
After days of power cuts by the government last year, residents in the small city of San Antonio de los Baños ran out of patience. On July 11, 2021, they took to the streets in a moment of rare public dissent on the island.
Cubans across the nation were able to live stream and view in real time the unfolding protests in San Antonio de los Baños – and join in.
Almost immediately thousands of other Cubans were demonstrating. Some complained the lack of food and medicines, others denounced high-ranking officials and called for greater civil liberties. The unprecedented protests spread to small cities and towns.
While Cuban officials have long blamed US sanctions for the island’s woes, protestors during the summer of 2021 raged squarely against their own government for their worsening living conditions.
In a speech on state-run TV, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel blamed the island’s economic problems on US sanctions, said the protests were the result of a subversion campaign directed from abroad and called on Cubans loyal to the revolution to take back the streets. The state cracked down.
Cuban prosecutors said this summer that close to 500 people were convicted and sentenced in connection with the protests, in the largest mass trials on the island in decades. Prison terms ranged between four and 30 years for crimes that included sedition.
Betsy Johnson casts herself as the candidate for Oregon governor who will speak for voters who are “fed up” with homeless encampments and trash-strewn streets and tired of watching Republicans and Democrats “fight like two cats in a sack.”
The former Democratic state senator, now running as an independent, likes to boast that she is not campaigning as “Miss Congeniality” and promises to govern from the center. Johnson argues that the policies of Democratic gubernatorial nominee Tina Kotek – the former state House speaker who is appearing at a private fundraising reception with President Joe Biden on Saturday – would leave the state “woke and broke,” while stating that her Republican opponent, Christine Drazan, a former state House minority leader, would endanger women’s reproductive rights.
“I am the champion and the voice right now of people who feel disrespected, disenfranchised, looked down on, and they’re sick of it,” the bespectacled former helicopter pilot said in a telephone interview as Biden was headed to the state this week. “I have always been pro-choice, pro-cop, pro-change, pro-accountability and pro-alternative to the status quo. The status quo was getting us no place, and the only people that were suffering were Oregonians.”
The resonance of that message from a moderate former Democrat with deep financial support in Oregon’s business community has upended the state’s race for governor this year – unnerving Democrats by creating a scenario under which Republicans could capture the office for the first time in 40 years.
Two years after Portland lived through 100 nights of protests against police brutality and racial injustice – demonstrations that often led to violence – the state’s largest city is still attempting to repair its image. That recovery process was hindered by the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic that led to shuttered businesses. And the challenge for Democrats has been compounded by the financial stressors that many voters and business owners are now feeling as a result of inflation. Portland also had a record number of homicides in 2021 and is grappling with a wave of gun violence that has raised concerns about crime.
The race between Johnson, Kotek and Drazan to replace term-limited Democratic Gov. Kate Brown was already unusual as a matchup between three women in what could be a record year for female gubernatorial hopefuls.
But Johnson was also able to pull off a rare feat for an independent candidate by keeping pace in fundraising with the major-party nominees by drawing on her relationships with business leaders. Nike co-founder Phil Knight donated $3.75 million to Johnson’s campaign before appearing to shift his allegiances to Drazan with a $1 million contribution earlier this month.
Johnson’s presence in the race has been an unexpected boon for Republicans, who only comprise about a quarter of the electorate. Democrats make up about 34% of the state’s voters and nonaffiliated Oregonians account for nearly 35%, according to the most recent figures from the Oregon secretary of state.
Jim Moore, a political science professor at Pacific University, said Johnson appears to be siphoning more votes from Democrats, creating what is essentially a tie between Kotek and Drazan in a state that Biden won by 16 points in 2020.
“Voters are growing increasingly unhappy with what the Democrats are doing, but they’re not willing to go to the Republicans who’ve gone further to the right,” said Moore. That has led to support for Johnson among disaffected Democrats and the state’s growing ranks of unaffiliated voters.
“There’s just a frustration that life overall appears to be getting harder,” Moore added. “So many people have come to Oregon – or grew up here – and say, ‘Yes, I get paid less than other places, but the quality of life is amazing.’ And they’re seeing that quality of life drop.”
Drazan, a social conservative and an opponent of abortion rights, has also centered her message around the idea that the state needs greater balance in government as it attempts to address the rise in homelessness, the affordability of housing and achievement gaps students are facing as a result of school closures during the pandemic. Drazan has also criticized the relaxation of certain high school graduation requirements as she argues for a parental bill of rights – echoing the message from Republicans, such as Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who will campaign with her in Oregon next week.
“We have had single-party control for a decade, which means that we have had the legislature really, truly fail to hold the governor to account, and likewise we’ve had the governor fail to hold the legislature to account,” she said during a recent debate hosted by KOBI-TV and Southern Oregon University. “We need balance. We need commonsense solutions that are durable – with long term value.”
Kotek counters that Drazan demonstrated obstructionist tendencies when she led a legislative walkout in 2020 to protest a climate bill. The Democrat has argued that Drazan’s move effectively killed legislation that would have advanced the state’s efforts to improve homelessness, among other issues.
“Tina called for a homelessness state of emergency almost three years ago, but Representative Christine Drazan literally walked off the job – blocking millions of dollars for emergency homeless shelters and affordable housing construction,” Katie Wertheimer, Kotek’s communications director, said in a statement.
“Oregonians are justifiably frustrated and want real solutions to homelessness, crime, and the cost of living,” Wertheimer added. “Tina will do what Kate Brown couldn’t or wouldn’t, and finally declare that state of emergency, and she will hire crews to clean up the trash. She is the only trusted leader in this race bringing forward real plans that will deliver results.”
Drazan defended the rationale for the walkout at the time, saying it was not the time for cap-and-trade policies “because we cannot prevent these costs from being passed on – not to big companies, not utilities – but just straight down the line to Oregonians.”
“Homelessness, crime, affordability, and education all dramatically worsened during her time in power,” Drazan campaign spokesperson John Burke said of Kotek. “Oregonians have had enough of her excuses and her failed agenda. That’s why they’re going to elect Christine Drazan as their next governor.”
A convoy transported the lions from Odessa across Moldova to Romania; their journey stretched for over 600 miles, says the sanctuary. They arrived at the Targu Mures Zoo in Romania’s Transylvania region on May 24.
The lions spent months at the zoo waiting for an emergency travel permit so they could board a rescue flight, according to the sanctuary. They finally arrived in their final homes on September 29.
Seven adult lions and two cubs from the rescued pride are now being cared for by The Wild Animal Sanctuary, a nonprofit based in Keenesburg, Colorado. The lions will live at an extension of the sanctuary called The Wild Animal Refuge, which consists of almost 10,000 acres of land near Springfield, Colorado. The facility is not open to the public, according to the sanctuary’s website.
Another two lions were sent to the Simbonga Game Reserve and Sanctuary in Eastern Cape, South Africa, says the release. On Facebook, the South African reserve said they received two lions, Mir and Simba, who had been rescued from Ukraine and then stayed in Romania.
Pat Craig, The Wild Animal Sanctuary’s executive director, highlighted the complexity of the feline rescue mission.
“International rescue operations are almost always more complex in nature, but then you are factoring in a variety of foreign governments and timelines for permitting, some of those with active war zones,” Craig said in the release. “We are thankful we could get all the lions out in time and save them. That’s what matters. They will live out the rest of their lives in pristine, large, natural habitats.”
The black labrador-bull mastiff mix became well-known in Seattle after she learned to take the bus to the dog park even without her owner.
She died in her sleep on Friday morning, according to a Facebook post on the account run by her owner, Jeff Young. A previous post told fans that Eclipse had been diagnosed with cancerous tumors. She was 10 years old, according to the Facebook account.
“Eclipse was a super sweet, world-famous, bus riding dog and true Seattle icon,” said the official metro Twitter account. “You brought joy and happiness to everyone and showed us all that good dogs belong on the bus.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ migrant relocation program planned to transport “approximately 100 or more” migrants to Delaware and Illinois between September 19 and October 3, according to documents obtained by CNN through a public records request.
The documents are memos sent to the Florida Department of Transportation’s state purchasing administrator from James Montgomerie, the CEO of Vertol Systems Company Inc., the company that Florida contracted to arrange transport for the migrants.
The memo explicitly states that Vertol Systems would provide the services to transport the migrants, “from Florida.”
Two “projects” were planned, according to a September 15 memo. “Project 2” would transport “up to fifty” migrants to Delaware; “project 3” would transport “up to fifty” migrants to Illinois.
Both projects were scheduled to take place between September 19 and October 3.
A second memo, dated September 16, combined the projects into one and estimated their cost as $950,000.
The memo also said the migrants could be transported to a “proximate northeastern state designated by FDOT based on extant conditions.”
CNN reached out to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker for comment but did not immediately receive a response. A spokesperson for Delaware Gov. John Carney said he had no comment.
Vertol Systems was paid $1.6 million by the state of Florida, including a payment of $950,000.
The flights to Delaware and Illinois never happened. However, flight plans were filed with the FAA that indicated there was a second set of flights planned from San Antonio to Delaware.
A third memo, dated October 8, notes that Vertol extended the project dates to December 1, meaning that the flights could still take place.
On September 14, two planes picked up 48 migrants from San Antonio, Texas, and transported them to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. The flights, paid for by the state of Florida, temporarily stopped to refuel in Crestview, Florida, and the Carolinas.
DeSantis has tried to sidestep criticism of the flights, saying they were necessary to stop the flow of migrants at the source before they came to Florida.
“If you can do it at the source and divert to sanctuary jurisdictions, the chance they end up in Florida is much less,” DeSantis told reporters in September.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigations has launched a probe regarding a police officer shooting and killing a teenager earlier this month in the city of Gulfport, police said, as attorneys for the teen’s family call for video footage of the incident to be released.
Law enforcement officers responded to a 911 call on October 6 of multiple people in a vehicle brandishing firearms, Gulfport Police Chief Adam Cooper said at a news briefing this week. When police arrived and made contact with the vehicle, members of the group left the vehicle and attempted to flee, he said.
An officer then fired at an armed suspect – identified by police as Jaheim McMillan – who pointed a weapon in their direction, Cooper said.
McMillan, 15, was struck in the head and later died after being taken off life support, according to a news release from civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is retained by McMillan’s family.
The officer who fired and struck McMillan has been placed on non-enforcement duties, Gulfport Police spokesperson Sgt. Jason DuCré told CNN on Friday.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigations “is currently assessing this critical incident and gathering evidence. Upon completing their investigation, agents will share their findings with the local Attorney General’s Office,” the state bureau said. State Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office declined to comment, citing the active investigation.
Police have not publicly released any footage of the shooting. Crump called on officials to release all video “so that we can see with our own eyes what transpired on that tragic night,” he said.
“This child had his whole life ahead of him, but bullets from those officers took all possibility of that away in an instant,” Crump said. “While much remains unknown about this case, we fully intend to put pressure on officials in Mississippi until this family gets the answers they need and deserve.”
Police say McMillan did not comply with the officer’s verbal commands to stop running and drop his weapon. Instead, police alleged, McMillan turned his body and weapon toward the officer, prompting the officer to fire at McMillan.
After being shot, McMillan was taken to a hospital before being airlifted to another medical center, police said.
Gulfport police have turned over all evidence to the state bureau and are cooperating fully with the investigation, Cooper said. The police department is also conducting its own internal investigation to determine whether policies were violated.
CNN has reached out to the Harrison County Coroner’s office for further information.
A 15-year-old will be charged as an adult for allegedly carrying out a mass shooting that left five people dead Thursday in Raleigh, North Carolina, prosecutors said, as calls to curb gun violence are renewed once again in the US.
The suspect, identified by police as a White male juvenile, was taken into custody by law enforcement after an hours-long manhunt Thursday.
The sprawling crime scene of more than two miles across the Raleigh neighborhood of Hedingham also left two people wounded in the attack, officials said. One of the five victims killed was off-duty police officer Gabriel Torres, 29, who shot while on his way to work.
“My heart is heavy, because we don’t have answers as to why this tragedy occurred,” Raleigh Police Chief Estella D. Patterson said during a news briefing Friday.
Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman told CNN on Friday her office intends on charging the suspect as an adult.
He is hospitalized in critical condition following his apprehension Thursday night after a standoff with police, officials said. Freeman said her office is monitoring the suspect’s condition.
As authorities investigate, few details have been provided related to how exactly the shooting unfolded.
In one of four 911 calls obtained by CNN, a caller told a dispatcher that the shooter was wearing camouflage and looked like he was 16. The caller said the gunman “walked by and shot” a police officer “for no reason.” Another caller reported that two neighbors had been shot. A third caller reported that a “kid running around here with a shotgun” shot a person and “ran back into the woods.”
The suspect donned camouflage clothing and carried a camouflage backpack, a source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN. After the shooting, a handgun and long gun were recovered, according to the source.
The other deceased victims identified by police are Nicole Conners, 52; Sue Karnatz, 49; Mary Marshall, 35; and James Roger Thompson, 16.
The two victims who were wounded include a responding police officer, who was later released from care.
Marcille Lynn Gardner, 59, remains in critical condition, Patterson said.
The mass shooting prompted a response from President Joe Biden, who lamented the harrowing loss of Americans to gun violence yet again and reiterated his call for an assault weapon ban.
“Enough,” Biden said. “We’ve grieved and prayed with too many families who have had to bear the terrible burden of these mass shootings.
“Too many families have had spouses, parents, and children taken from them forever,” the President added.
Biden’s remarks come as the Raleigh community grieves the sudden loss of loved ones and neighbors.
Karnatz, one of the victims killed, was described by her husband, Tom, as a loving wife and mother to three boys, whose ages are 10, 13 and 14.
“We had plans together for growing old. Always together. Now those plans are laid to waste,” he wrote Friday on social media.
Christine Hines, who is Karnatz’ neighbor, said she feels as if her heart had been pierced by the loss. The pair had seen each other the day of the shooting while walking their dogs.
Marshall, another victim who was killed, was also walking her dog when she heard gunshots ring out, her sister Meaghan McCrickard told CNN.
After hearing the shots, Marshall called her fiancé to tell him about the firing and said she was heading back to the house, McCrickard said.
“She was my hero despite being my younger sister,” McCrickard added. The sisters were three years apart.
Marshall, a culinary arts alumnus of Wake Technical Community College, was described by faculty and classmates as “a hard worker with a good attitude and a determination to succeed,” the school said in a statement.
Thompson was a junior at Knightdale High School when he was fatally shot Thursday, principal Keith Richardson said in a statement.
“It is an unexpected loss and we are saddened by it,” said Richardson, noting that counseling and crisis services are available for students and staff.
Those who witnessed some of the violence unfold also described their anguish over what their neighbors endured.
A resident, who asked not to be identified, stood beside her 15-year-old daughter as she recounted that police cars, ambulances and fire trucks were descending when a neighbor approached.
“She had seen a ghost,” the resident said. “She comes towards us, and I’m, like, what happened, and she said, ‘I just witnessed my neighbor being shot in the driveway.’ She was completely in shock.”
The resident and her daughter locked themselves in a bedroom after an officer in an unmarked car told them there was an active shooter.
“I started crying,” her daughter recalled. And on Friday morning, she cried again.
“Imagining what people are going through,” she said. “And the fact that it was so close to us. It could have been us.”
McCrickard, Marshall’s sister, expressed frustration that gun violence has not been restrained further.
“We want to take this unimaginable opportunity to beg our local, national, and country leaders to finally step up and do something about gun control,” McCrickard said. “Being a leader is about leading and making decisions that benefit, support and keep our country safe. How many times do we have to hear our leaders say, ‘We’re sorry’ and ‘Something must be done?’ We demand action.”
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper echoed Biden’s sentiments following the shooting, saying the Raleigh community’s pain is unimaginable.
“We’re sad. We’re angry and we want to know the answers to all the questions,” the governor said. “Those questions will be answered. Some today and more over time. But I think we all know the core truth: No neighborhood, no parent, no child, no grandparent, no one should feel this fear in their communities.”
“The news hit me like a bucket of cold water,” says Alejaidys Morey, a 30-year-old Venezuelan woman, who until this week was planning to start traveling towards the United States.
On Wednesday, the US announced that it is expanding Title 42 — a pandemic-era provision that allows migration officials to expel illegal migrants to Mexico on public health grounds — and unveiled a new program to allow some Venezuelan migrants to apply to arrive at US ports of entry by air with a cap of 24,000.
Both plans are designed to dissuade Venezuelans like Morey from attempting to enter illegally and dangerously overland through the US-Mexico border.
But many migrants who are already en route tell CNN that the Biden administration’s decision leaves them in agonizing limbo, after having already given up everything to begin the trek northward.
They also point out that the new airport entry program favors the wealthy and well-connected — in other words, Venezuelans who can afford to fly northward in the comfort of an airplane.
The Venezuelan migration crisis is more acute than ever. More than seven million Venezuelans now live abroad, according to new figures released this month by the United Nations, fleeing a humanitarian crisis in their home country.
Most live in other South American countries – there are more than two million in Colombia alone — but in recent months a growing number have started to head north to the US through Central America and Mexico, as living conditions deteriorate amid the Covid-19 pandemic and a global food crisis.
As a result, the number of Venezuelans apprehended at the US southern border is ballooning. Up to 180,000 Venezuelans have crossed the border over the past year, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Panama and Mexico form a geographical passageway for overland travelers coming from South America. Under the new US migration provision, any northbound migrant entering Panama or Mexico illegally will be ineligible from the program.
The journey that Morey, her husband Rodolfo and their three children planned would have been just that. They aimed to travel first to the town of Necocli in Colombia, and then hike into Panama via the Darien Gap, a 100-kilometer stretch of jungle that is impassable by road.
Despite the myriad dangers, 150,000 migrants have crossed on foot so far this year, according to Panamanian authorities.
Morey, who is currently in Colombia, says a return to Venezuela is impossible. In 2018 her family sold their home in Santa Teresa del Tuy, an impoverished town some 30 kilometers southeast of Caracas, for US$1500 to pay for the journey to Colombia.
Now, she feels she’s been thrown into limbo. Like so many others, she cannot afford to pay for a transcontinental flight — much less for her entire family.
“Under these circumstances I have nowhere to go… I am scared: what can I do?” Morey told CNN.
Her situation is the norm for most of the migrants who are currently traveling north.
“After so much pain, so many obstacles we had to overcome, now we’re stuck. We are in Necocli and have nowhere to go…” a Venezuelan migrant who asked to be identified only as José told CNN.
Up to 10,000 migrants are waiting in the town to cross the bay to the Darien Gap, according to local authorities, but some are now reconsidering their next move.
“I’m in pain, I don’t know what to do now,” says Ender Dairen, a 28-year-old Venezuelan who was planning to join a group travelling north from Ecuador. But his plans changed after speaking with other migrants online.
“A couple friends are thinking of just settling down wherever they got to, somewhere between Costa Rica and Nicaragua,” he told CNN. “Every person you speak with says the same thing: the whole route collapsed; we can no longer travel.”
In a call with reporters on Thursday, senior Homeland Security official Blas Nuñez-Neto said the goal is to reduce the number of migrants approaching the US southern border illegally, and at the same time to create a legal pathway for those eligible.
But the plan drew rare criticism from members of the Venezuelan opposition, who are generally aligned with Washington in their struggle against Venezuela’s authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro.
“The US Government announced a cruel migratory policy, that makes the situation of thousands of Venezuelans more painful,” tweeted Henrique Capriles, a two-time presidential candidate and one of the few anti-Maduro leaders still living in Caracas.
Carlos Vecchio, the official representative of the Venezuelan opposition in Washington, also tweeted that the plan “insufficient for the magnitude” of Venezuela’s migration crisis.
“We recognize @POTUS’ efforts to seek alternatives to the migration crisis through Humanitarian Parole, for orderly and safe migration for Venezuelans,” he said.
“But the 24,000 visas announced are insufficient for the magnitude of the problem. A reconsideration is necessary in this regard.”
The Venezuelan government has not commented on the new US policy.
But humanitarian organizations, such as Doctors Without Borders (MSF), have echoed others’ criticism that 24,000 legal permits are not enough — and insist that expulsion of others to Mexico under Title 42 should not be permitted.
“We are shocked by the Biden administration’s decision to start expelling Venezuelans under Title 42, a cruel and inhumane policy that has no basis in safeguarding public health that should have been ended long ago,” said Avril Benoit, Executive director at MSF in a statement.
“While we welcome the rollout of a special humanitarian parole program for Venezuelans, ensuring safe pathways into the US should be the norm and not the exception.”
Rights activists argue that asylum seekers should have a chance to present their cases in the US before being turned back.
Still, some migrants say they see a glimmer of hope in the Biden administration’s new stance.
Oscar Chacin, 44, a boxing instructor who had considered the idea of traveling to the US via Central America for weeks, told CNN that he now sees a legal pathway to migrate.
“For me, it’s actually better. This will make things worse for so many people, but for me it’s good,” he said. “I have relatives in the US, some friends and some former boxing students, some of them will be able to sponsor me and my family.”
His son, Oscar Alexander, is already in Mexico and entered before the new US immigration rules were unveiled.
“He will stay there, now. He’s already looking for a job, and we will present the documentation as soon as we find the sponsor,” Chacin said.
“Then we will wait for the paperwork. Maybe one, maybe two years, but we will make it, I’m sure!”
What first appeared as statistical noise is now becoming clearer: Historically left-leaning Latino voters are shifting toward the GOP, with the potential to swing major races come November’s midterm elections.
And with razor-thin margins determining control of Congress, Hispanic communities where Donald Trump unexpectedly made gains in 2020 are coming into sharp focus, especially the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas.
Here, the battle for Texas’s 15th Congressional District between Republican Monica De La Cruz and Democrat Michelle Vallejo is arguably the state’s most competitive House race and may be a test for Republicans’ appeal among Hispanic Americans.
Hispanic Americans make up a fifth of registered voters in more than a dozen hotly contested House and Senate races in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Texas. While Democrats are still expected to win a majority of Latino voters, their margins appear to be shrinking – dramatically, in some cases.
“What we’re seeing now is that the GOP has stepped in and helped us get our messaging out to show Latinos their values of faith, family and freedom really align with the Republican Party,” De La Cruz said
Vallejo argues that the shift is tied to an increase in outside spending by the GOP: “I think the resources and money they’re getting from the outside really does add fuel to their fire. … It’s not deeply connected with the desire from the community to drive up and bring solutions that are specifically from South Texas.”
For De La Cruz, attending her first Trump rally inspired her to start a career in politics.
“I was busy raising a family, raising my business,” De La Cruz said. “(Trump) caught my attention to look at national politics and what was happening in DC and say, ‘Those policies don’t reflect me or my values.’”
The entrepreneur insurance agent and mother of two says she’s a former Democrat whose family voted against Republicans for generations, including her “abuelita.”
“This area had been under Democrat rule for over 100 years and what we’re seeing here is that Democrats haven’t done anything for us. … (They) just abandoned Latinos and Latinos are seeing that their values of faith, family and freedom just align better with the Republican Party.”
Part of a trio of Latina Republican congressional nominees on the ballot in South Texas, De La Cruz is attempting to redefine the region’s political tradition alongside Cassy Garcia, a former Ted Cruz aide who is running in the 28th District, and US Rep. Mayra Flores in Texas’ 34th who became the party’s first representative from the Rio Grande Valley in more than a century after winning a special election earlier this year.
The “triple threat,” as some Republicans call them, are part of a record number of Republican Latino nominees this fall, with many taking a page from Trump’s pro-border wall playbook.
Asked whether she ever felt insulted by Trump’s rhetoric toward Latino immigrants (“They are bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists,” the then-candidate said when announcing his first presidential run in 2016), De La Cruz, the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants, said his words didn’t turn her away.
“Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have said things the way he said them, but I think people were able to look past those things because they knew he’s not a politician. He didn’t have a political background. He was a businessman,” said De La Cruz. “He stood up against the establishment and put forth policies that worked for American families.”
Like her GOP opponent, Vallejo, the Democrat running in Texas’ 15th, is a relatively new to politics and an entrepreneur. She operates the Pulga Los Portales flea market in Alton, which her parents founded some 25 years ago.
“Our community deserves more attention and more respect,” Vallejo said of the newly drawn district, which would have voted for Trump by nearly 3 percentage points in 2020. “I think that both national parties were leaving us out.”
Vallejo said Republicans have “demonized” Latino immigrants to score political points.
“We have pride and dignity and we will not stand for anyone making fun of us, making fun of our community and our culture. We’re deserving and we give a lot back to this country,” she said.
Running as a progressive in an area that more often elects moderate Democrats, Vallejo defeated her primary opponent by only 35 votes and is campaigning on guaranteed abortion rights, expanding Medicaid and Medicare, and raising the minimum wage to $15.
“There are a lot of issues being ignored,” Vallejo said. “It’s time we see a change for South Texas, and we need progressive, bold policies … so that we finally get a voice at the table.”
Vallejo points to outside influence and spending to account for the GOP’s gains in the area, saying, “Outside interests did see an opportunity to swoop in, pouring millions and millions of dollars to pretty much buy up our seat.”
As for Latinos who drifted from Democrats to support Trump, Vallejo said she “looks forward to hopefully earning their support.”
“I’m fighting for all our families here in South Texas, whether they’re Republican, independent or people who have never felt engaged by the political system before,” she said.
Polling indicates that Latino voters are more likely than any other ethnic groups to cite the economy or inflation as the most important issue facing the country. But other issues, such as immigration and abortion, also loom large.
“It’s become so difficult. … Supply chain issues are a big problem. And inflation – we used to pay $19 for a box of eggs. Now, I pay $54,” said Rodolfo Sanchez-Rendon, the owner of Teresita’s Kitchen in McAllen.
Sanchez-Rendon also faults Democrats for undervaluing faith, family and small business.
“Their values have changed,” he said. “Extremely liberal, where religion becomes an afterthought. … They’ve drifted from our values.”
But the economy remains the most important issue to voters like Sanchez-Rendon, who immigrated to the United States in 1986 and said unchecked illegal immigration is out of control across the southern border.
Contractor Edgar Gallegos said he plans to vote Republican because of the economy, despite Trump’s rhetoric about Latino immigrants.
“I’ll take a mean tweet right about now, over what we have,” Gallegos said.
Other voters, like Justin Stubbs, say they feel Democrats lack urgency on the issue of immigration.
“It seems like Republicans care and talk about the border issue a lot more. … I just don’t see a lot of Democrats talking about the border crisis and honestly, there’s a lot of people down here that are affected by that,” he said.
One voter in nearby Alton, Texas, said he and his wife will remain loyal to the Democratic Party because he believes it will do more to help the community.
“We want candidates who will pay attention to our needs,” says Jose Raul Guerrero, who says he’s voting for Vallejo partly because he’s known her since she was a child. “She understands our needs. … and we need a lot of help right now.”
“What people have to understand is that Hispanic Americans have hard working-class values,” said Giancarlo Sopo, a former Barack Obama campaign worker who led Trump’s hyper-local Hispanic advertising in 2020.
“Who’s America’s blue-collar billionaire? Donald Trump,” he said.
Sopo said part of the Trump’s campaign’s success with Latinos was tied to an ad campaign that “used words and ways of speaking” that were unique to specific nationalities and generations, tailoring ads meant to target Puerto Ricans, for example, with slang and references common to the island.
“The reality is there are many Hispanic communities,” Sopo says. “You open the door with culture and engage Hispanics on a policy level.”
Pointing to trends over the last decade that show Latinos experiencing gains when it comes to incomes, home purchases and starting new businesses, Sopo said many in the community view Trump aspirationally – adding that among some Latinos, especially men, the former President’s brash rhetoric may have worked to his advantage.
“To a lot of Hispanic Americans – the same way that Bill Clinton was the first Black president before Barack Obama – Donald Trump, to them, is the first Hispanic president,” Sopo said. “He’s very charismatic, he’s not politically correct, he’s a successful entrepreneur. … These values really resonate.”
When Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker met to debate in the already contentious Georgia Senate race, all the focus was on how personal allegations against Walker would roil the first – and likely only – debate in the campaign.
The allegations that Walker paid for a woman to terminate her pregnancy and then, two years later, encouraged the same woman to have the procedure a second time, however, were just a blip in the hour-long contest, which instead centered on Warnock’s ties to President Joe Biden, the vast differences between the two candidates on abortion and even, however briefly, Walker’s use of what appeared to be a sheriff’s badge.
Walker continued to deny the allegations about him – calling them “a lie” – and Warnock, as he has on the campaign trail, did not engage on the controversy, instead choosing to question his Republican opponent’s relationship to the truth.
“We will see time and time again, as we have already seen, that my opponent has a problem with the truth,” Warnock said. “And just because he says something doesn’t mean it’s true.”
For Walker, the debate was as much about touting his own candidacy as it was about tying Warnock to Biden, who was invoked early and often. His effort, in the closing moments, to assuage fence-sitting voters about his readiness to serve also included a jab at Warnock and Biden.
“For those of you who are concerned about voting for me, a non-politician, I want you to think about the damage politicians like Joe Biden and Raphael Warnock have done to this country,” Walker said.
Here are five takeaways from Friday’s debate:
Biden wasn’t on the stage Friday night, but Walker tried repeatedly to convince viewers that the Democratic President was ostensibly there with his Democratic opponent.
From the outset of the event, Walker repeatedly invoked Biden, hoping to tie his Democratic opponent to the President’s low approval ratings.
“This race isn’t about me. It is about what Raphael Warnock and Joe Biden have done to you and your family,” Walker said at the top of the debate.
Later, when pressed on voter fraud in the 2020 election, he added, “Did President Biden win? President Biden won, and Sen. Warnock won. That’s the reason I decided to run.”
He then synthesized his point: “I am running because he and Joe Biden are the same.”
Warnock did little to distance himself from Biden, even at times touting the legislation he passed with the President’s help. But during a question on foreign policy, he took the chance to note a specific time he stood up to the Biden administration.
“I am glad we are standing up to Putin’s aggression and we have to continue to stand up, which is why I stood up to the Biden administration when it suggested we should close the Savanah Combat Readiness Training Center,” Warnock said. “I told the President that was the exact wrong thing to do at the exact wrong time. … We kept that training center open.”
Walker went back to his message in response: “He didn’t stand up. He had laid down every time it came around.”
“It is evident,” said a somewhat exasperated Warnock, “that he has a point that he tried to make time and time again.”
Headed into the debate, the focus was on how Walker – and arguably less predictably, Warnock – would address the accusations that the Republican candidate allegedly paid for a woman to terminate her pregnancy and then, two years later, encouraged the same woman to have the procedure a second time.
Walker did what he has done repeatedly as the allegations roiled an already contentious Senate race: Label the allegations a lie.
“As I said, that is a lie,” Walker said in response to a question from the moderator. “I put it in a book, one thing about my life, I have been very transparent. Not like the senator, he has hid things.”
Walker added: “I said that is a lie and I am not backing down. And we have Sen. Warnock, people that would do anything and say anything for this seat. But I am not going to back down.”
CNN has not independently verified the allegations about Walker.
Warnock, as he has done previously, did not address the allegations, instead choosing to let Walker fight them off without pushing them himself.
Instead, the senator took a broad approach, focusing on Walker’s “problem with the truth” and less on the specific allegations.
The candidates also clashed on abortion rights more generally, with Walker insisting he did not support a federal ban, in contrast to past statements, and pointing to the state’s restrictive “heartbeat” law. The law prohibits abortions as soon as early cardiac activity is detectable, which can be as early as six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant.
“On abortion, I’m a Christian. I believe in life. Georgia is a state that respects life,” Walker said.
The Georgia law makes exceptions for cases of rape or incest, pending a timely police report, and in some cases where the pregnant person’s health is at risk.
Before the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, state law had allowed abortions up to 20 weeks.
Warnock, who supports abortion rights, repeated an argument he’s made on the trail: “A patient’s room is too narrow and small and cramped for a woman, her doctor and the US government. … I trust women more than I trust politicians.”
Walker then shot back, invoking Warnock’s support for the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality.
“He told me Black lives matter… If Black lives matter, why are you not protecting those babies? And instead of aborting those babies, why aren’t you baptizing those babies?,” Walker said.
Warnock, as he did throughout the debate, didn’t directly answer Walker’s provocation. Instead, he repeated his position.
“There are enough politicians piling into the rooms of patients,” the senator said, “and I don’t plan to join them.”
Georgia is one of 12 states not to expand Medicaid and currently has an estimated 1.5 million uninsured residents.
Walker, when asked by the moderator if the federal government should step in to make sure everyone has access to health care, began a confusing non-response.
“Well, right now, people have coverage for health care. It’s according to what type of coverage do you want. Because if you have an able-bodied job, you’re going to have health care,” he said. “But everyone else – have health care is the type of health care you’re going to get. And I think that is the problem.”
Walker continued to say that Warnock wants people to “depend on the government,” while he wants “you to get off the government health care and get on the health care he’s got.”
To note: Warnock, as a US Senator, is on a government health care plan.
Walker also gave a puzzling response to Warnock’s attack on his opposition to federal legislation capping the price of insulin for people with diabetes.
“I believe in reducing insulin, but at the same time, you have to eat right,” Walker said. “Unless you have eating right, insulin is doing you no good. So you have to get food prices down and you got to get gas prices down so they can go and get insulin.”
Warnock responded by telling viewers who require the drug that Walker was, in effect, blaming them for their struggles accessing it.
Warnock, on the subject of his pledge to close the Medicaid gap, was asked how he would pay for it.
“This is not a theoretical issue for me,” he replied, invoking the story of a nurse in a trauma ward who lost coverage when she became sick and, as he put it, died “for lack of health care.”
“Georgia needs to expand Medicaid,” Warnock continued. “It costs us more not to expand. What we’re doing right now is we’re subsidizing health care in other states” – a reference to the state’s refusal to accept federal funds that residents already pay into.
The debate within the debate over Warnock’s support for police, in which the senator pointed to his support for legislation that backed smaller departments, was briefly derailed when Walker pulled out what appeared to be a police badge.
The moderator quickly admonished Walker, reminding him that props were not allowed onstage.
“You have a prop,” the surprised moderator said. “That is not allowed, sir.”
Moments earlier, Warnock – in response to Walker’s claims that he has “called (police officers) names” and caused “morale” to plummet – said that his opponent “has a problem with the truth.”
Warnock then hit Walker with a callback to a more than two-decade-old police report in which the Republican discussed exchanging gunfire with police and a subsequent false claim from Walker that he previously served in law enforcement.
“One thing that I haven’t done is I haven’t pretended to be a police officer and I’ve never, ever threatened a shootout with police,” he said.
Warnock also argued that his support for greater scrutiny of police didn’t undermine his support for law enforcement.
“You can support police officers, as I’ve done, through the COPS program, through the invest-to-protect program, while at the same time, holding police officers, like all professions, accountable,” he said.
A federal appeals court has agreed to suspend enforcement of Texas’ social media law restricting content moderation, in the face of a looming request by tech industry groups for the Supreme Court to review the case.
In an order on Wednesday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay of its earlier mandate that had paved the way for the Texas law, known as HB 20, to take effect.
HB 20 aims to expose social media platforms including Meta, YouTube and Twitter to new private lawsuits, as well as suits by the state’s attorney general, over the companies’ decisions to remove or reduce the visibility of user content they deem objectionable.
The law is viewed as a challenge to decades of First Amendment precedent, which holds the government may not compel private entities to host speech.
In a filing leading up to Wednesday’s order, the technology groups challenging the Texas law said they planned to ask for the Supreme Court to rule on HB 20, and that Texas did not oppose the motion for a stay.
The Supreme Court has already indicated it is open to regulating social media platforms, agreeing this month to hear two cases that could indirectly narrow the scope of the tech industry’s all-important liability shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Some justices, including conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, have explicitly cited the role and power of social media platforms as reasons the Court should step in.
Last month, Florida’s attorney general called on the Supreme Court to review a social media law in that state that is similar to Texas’ legislation. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals had earlier blocked Florida’s law, saying it was likely unconstitutional.
That finding created a split with the Fifth Circuit’s decision to uphold Texas’ law, making it even more likely for the Supreme Court to take up the matter.
A 15-year-old suspect is in custody after five people were killed and at least two others wounded in a mass shooting Thursday in Raleigh that North Carolina’s governor called a “moment of unspeakable agony.”
A handgun and long gun were recovered after the shooting, during which the suspect wore camouflage and carried a camouflage backpack, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.
One of the victims killed was an off-duty Raleigh police officer, Gabriel Torres, 29, who was on his way to work, authorities said.
“Enough,” President Joe Biden said in a statement Friday. “We’ve grieved and prayed with too many families who have had to bear the terrible burden of these mass shootings.”
The President added, “We must pass an assault weapons ban. The American people support this commonsense action to get weapons of war off our streets.”
Officials offered few details about what happened in the quiet, middle-class Raleigh neighborhood but said the crime scene extended over two miles on streets and a popular greenway. It ended after a long standoff during which the shooter was critically wounded.
The other fatalities were identified as Nicole Conners, 52; Sue Karnatz, 49; Mary Marshal 35; and James Roger Thompson, 16.
A police officer who was injured has been released from a hospital and another victim, Marcille Lynn Gardner, 59, is in critical condition, according to Raleigh Police Chief Estella D. Patterson.
“My heart is heavy, because we don’t have answers as to why this tragedy occurred,” Patterson said.
Karnatz’s husband, Tom, called her a loving wife and mother to three sons – ages 10, 13 and 14.
“We will miss her greatly,” he said in a statement to CNN.
In a Facebook tribute, he wrote Friday: “We had plans together for growing old. Always together. Now those plans are laid to waste.”
Christine Hines said she was having yard work done at her home Thursday afternoon when the gunfire erupted. Sirens blared. An officer yelled at her to get back in the house when she went to close the patio door, she said.
“I want to leave the area and then I have to consider that there’s really no perfect place,” Hines said. “And this is as close as I have seen, but I’m not sure if I want to stay.”
Hines recalled seeing Sue Karnatz earlier Thursday. They walked their dogs about the same time each day on opposite sides of the street because the pets don’t get along. Knowing her neighbor is gone, Hines said, feels like her heart had been pierced.
Of the teen suspect, Hines lamented: “Life hasn’t even begun for him.”
Another resident, who stood with her 15-year-old daughter and asked not to be identified, said police cars, ambulances and fire trucks were descending when a neighbor approached.
“She had seen a ghost,” the resident said. “She comes towards us, and I’m, like, what happened, and she said, ‘I just witnessed my neighbor being shot in the driveway.’ She was completely in shock.”
An officer in an unmarked car told them there was an active shooter. They locked themselves in a bedroom, the resident said.
“I started crying,” her daughter recalled.
On Friday morning, the teen was crying again.
“Imagining what people are going through,” she said. “And the fact that it was so close to us. It could have been us.”
Knightdale High School principal Keith Richardson said in a statement that Thompson was a junior at the school. “It is an unexpected loss and we are saddened by it,” said Richardson, adding that counseling and crisis services were available for students and staff.
Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, who joined police and city officials at a news conference Friday, called the rampage an “infuriating and tragic act of gun violence.”
“It was a complex mission, in a short amount of time, to stop the shooter,” said Cooper, praising the police response.
“We’re sad. We’re angry and we want to know the answers to all the questions,” Cooper added. “Those questions will be answered. Some today and more over time. But I think we all know the core truth: No neighborhood, no parent, no child, no grandparent, no one should feel this fear in their communities.”
Raleigh police spokesperson Lt. Jason Borneo identified the suspected shooter as a White juvenile male, and police have not released any other details about him.
The suspect was moved to a hospital after being taken into custody, CNN affiliate WRAL-TV reported. Officials did not say the extent of the suspect’s injuries. CNN has reached out to the hospital for further information.
The shooting began just after 5 p.m. in the neighborhood of Hedingham near the Neuse River Greenway, officials said. A manhunt ensued as authorities worked to apprehend the suspect.
Police “contained” the suspect around 8 p.m. inside a residence in the area, Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin told reporters Thursday.
Helicopter footage from WRAL-TV showed more than a dozen emergency vehicles lined up on a road through a wooded area.
A woman who was at the Hedingham Golf Club driving range said an “unending stream of police” drove by the area.
“A golf pro came out to tell us to shelter inside or leave ASAP,” she told CNN. “They were very calm, but I could tell something was wrong, so we left right away.”
The suspect was taken into custody before 9:40 p.m. Thursday, police said.
Baldwin, joined at the news conference Thursday by other officials including Cooper, expressed her frustration at the heart-wrenching gun violence that infiltrated her city.
“Today has been a very difficult day in our city. We pray that something like this will never happen here. It did,” Baldwin said.
The mayor emphasized the widespread of gun violence must be stopped. “We have work to do, but there are too many victims,” she said.
“We have to wake up. I don’t want other mayors standing here at the podium, with their hearts breaking because people in their community died today, needlessly and tragically.”
There have been at least 531 mass shootings – including Thursday’s in Raleigh – in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The organization, like CNN, defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are shot, excluding the shooter.
Cooper echoed the mayor’s sentiments and called for prayers for the victims and the community.
“Tonight, terror has reached our doorstep. The nightmare of every community has come to Raleigh,” Cooper said. “This is a senseless, horrific and infuriating act of violence that has been committed.”
Both Cooper and Baldwin praised the multi-agency response to the shooting, with Cooper saying law enforcement officers ran to “an active shooter who was ready to kill people.”
Law enforcement is anguished by the killings, including that of a fellow officer, Borneo said.
“For the Raleigh Police Department, every officer is a brother or sister, so when we lose one of our own, it is a tragic, heartbreaking day for all of us,” Borneo said.
Since they first started arriving in Ukraine last spring, the Starlink satellite internet terminals made by Elon Musk’s SpaceX have been a vital source of communication for Ukraine’s military, allowing it to fight and stay connected even as cellular phone and internet networks have been destroyed in its war with Russia.
So far roughly 20,000 Starlink satellite units have been donated to Ukraine, with Musk tweeting on Friday the “operation has cost SpaceX $80 million and will exceed $100 million by the end of the year.”
But those charitable contributions could be coming to an end, as SpaceX has warned the Pentagon that it may stop funding the service in Ukraine unless the US military kicks in tens of millions of dollars per month.
Documents obtained by CNN show that last month Musk’s SpaceX sent a letter to the Pentagon saying it can no longer continue to fund the Starlink service as it has. The letter also requested that the Pentagon take over funding for Ukraine’s government and military use of Starlink, which SpaceX claims would cost more than $120 million for the rest of the year and could cost close to $400 million for the next 12 months.
“We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time,” SpaceX’s director of government sales wrote to the Pentagon in the September letter.
Among the SpaceX documents sent to the Pentagon and seen by CNN is a previously unreported direct request made to Musk in July by the Ukrainian military’s commanding general, General Valerii Zaluzhniy, for almost 8,000 more Starlink terminals.
In a separate cover letter to the Pentagon, an outside consultant working for SpaceX wrote, “SpaceX faces terribly difficult decisions here. I do not think they have the financial ability to provide any additional terminals or service as requested by General Zaluzhniy.”
The documents, which have not been previously reported, provide a rare breakdown of SpaceX’s own internal numbers on Starlink, detailing the costs and payments associated with the thousands of terminals in Ukraine. They also shed new light on behind-the-scenes negotiations that have provided millions of dollars in communications hardware and services to Ukraine at little cost to Kyiv.
The letters come amid recent reports of wide-ranging Starlink outages as Ukrainian troops attempt to retake ground occupied by Russia in the eastern and southern parts of the country.
Sources familiar with the outages said they suddenly affected the entire frontline as it stood on September 30. “That has affected every effort of the Ukrainians to push past that front,” said one person familiar with the outages who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. “Starlink is the main way units on the battlefield have to communicate.”
There was no warning to Ukrainian forces, a second person said, adding that now when Ukraine liberates an area a request has to be made for Starlink services to be turned on.
The Financial Times first reported the outages which resulted in a “catastrophic” loss of communication, a senior Ukrainian official said. In a tweet responding to the article, Musk didn’t dispute the outage, saying that what is happening on the battlefield is classified.
SpaceX’s suggestion it will stop funding Starlink also comes amid rising concern in Ukraine over Musk’s allegiance. Musk recently tweeted a controversial peace plan that would have Ukraine give up Crimea and control over the eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
After Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky raised the question of who Musk sides with, he responded that he “still very much support[s] Ukraine” but fears “massive escalation.”
Musk also argued privately last month that Ukraine doesn’t want peace negotiations right now and that if they went along with his plan, “Russia would accept those terms,” according to a person who heard them.
“Ukraine knows that its current government and wartime efforts are totally dependent on Starlink,” the person familiar with the discussions said. “The decision to keep Starlink running or not rests entirely in the hands of one man. That’s Elon Musk. He hasn’t been elected, no one decided to give him that power. He has it because of the technology and the company he built.”
On Tuesday Musk denied a report he has spoken to Putin directly about Ukraine. On Thursday, when a Ukrainian minister tweeted that Starlink is essential to Ukraine’s infrastructure, Musk replied: “You’re most welcome. Glad to support Ukraine.”
More than seven months into the war, it’s hard to overstate the impact Starlink has had in Ukraine. The government in Kyiv, Ukrainian troops as well and NGOs and civilians have relied on the nimble, compact and easy-to-use units created by SpaceX. It’s not only used for voice and electronic communication but to help fly drones and send back video to correct artillery fire.
CNN has seen it used at numerous Ukrainian bases.
“Starlink has been absolutely essential because the Russians have targeted the Ukrainian communications infrastructure,” said Dimitri Alperovitch, co-founder of the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a think tank. “Without that they’d be really operating in the blind in many cases.”
Though Musk has received widespread acclaim and thanks for responding to requests for Starlink service to Ukraine right as the war was starting, in reality, the vast majority of the 20,000 terminals have received full or partial funding from outside sources, including the US government, the UK and Poland, according to the SpaceX letter to the Pentagon.
SpaceX’s request that the US military foot the bill has rankled top brass at the Pentagon, with one senior defense official telling CNN that SpaceX has “the gall to look like heroes” while having others pay so much and now presenting them with a bill for tens of millions per month.
According to the SpaceX figures shared with the Pentagon, about 85% of the 20,000 terminals in Ukraine were paid – or partially paid – for by countries like the US and Poland or other entities. Those entities also paid for about 30% of the internet connectivity, which SpaceX says costs $4,500 each month per unit for the most advanced service. (Over the weekend, Musk tweeted there are around 25,000 terminals in Ukraine.)
In his July letter to Musk, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Gen. Zaluzhniy, praised the Starlink units’ “exceptional utility” and said some 4,000 terminals had been deployed by the military. However, around 500 terminals per month are destroyed in the fighting, Zaluzhniy said, before asking for 6,200 more terminals for the Ukrainian military and intelligence services and 500 per month going forward to offset the losses.
SpaceX said they responded by asking Zaluzhniy to instead take up his request to the Department of Defense.
On September 8 the senior director of government sales for SpaceX wrote the Pentagon saying the costs have gotten too high, approaching $100 million. The official asked the Department of Defense to pick up Ukraine’s new request as well as ongoing service costs, totaling $124 million for the remainder of 2022.
Those costs, according to the senior defense official, would reach almost $380 million for a full year.
SpaceX declined repeated requests for comment on both the outages and their recent request to the Pentagon. A lawyer for Musk did not reply to a request for comment. Defense Department spokesman Bob Ditchey told CNN, “The Department continues to work with industry to explore solutions for Ukraine’s armed forces as they repel Russia’s brutal and unprovoked aggression. We do not have anything else to add at this time.”
Early US support for Starlink came via the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) which according to the Washington Post spent roughly $3 million on hardware and services in Ukraine. The largest single contributor of terminals, according to the newly obtained documents, is Poland with payment for almost 9,000 individual terminals.
The US has provided almost 1,700 terminals. Other contributors include the UK, NGOs and crowdfunding.
The far more expensive part, however, is the ongoing connectivity. SpaceX says it has paid for about 70% of the service provided to Ukraine and claims to have offered that highest level – $4,500 a month – to all terminals in Ukraine despite the majority only having signed on for the cheaper $500 per month service.
The terminals themselves cost $1500 and $2500 for the two models sent to Ukraine, the documents say, while consumer models on Starlink’s website are far cheaper and service in Ukraine is just $60 per month.
That’s just 1.3% of the service rate SpaceX says it needs the Pentagon to start paying.
“You could say he’s trying to get money from the government or just trying to say ‘I don’t want to be part of this anymore,’” said the person familiar with Ukraine’s requests for Starlink. Given the recent outages and Musk’s reputation for being unpredictable, “Feelings are running really high on the Ukrainian side,” this person said.
Musk is the biggest shareholder of the privately-held SpaceX. In May, SpaceX disclosed that its valuation had risen to $127 billion and it has raised $2 billion this year, CNBC reported.
Last week, Musk faced a barrage of criticism on Twitter – including from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – after presenting in a series of tweets his peace plan to end the war. It would include giving Crimea to Russia and re-do referenda, supervised by the United Nations this time, in the four regions Russia recently illegally annexed.
It echoed comments he’d made last month at an exclusive closed-door conference in Aspen, Colorado called “The Weekend,” at which Musk told a room full of attendees that Ukraine should seek peace now because they’ve had recent victories.
“This is the time to do it. They don’t want to do it, that’s for sure. But this is the time to do it,” he said, according to a person in the room. “Everyone wants to seek peace when they’re losing but they don’t want to seek peace when they’re winning. For now.”
Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.
Hong Kong CNN
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When Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, he inherited a country at a crossroads.
Outwardly, China seemed an unstoppable rising power. It had recently overtaken Japan as the world’s second-largest economy, the country still basking in the afterglow of the dazzling 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.
But deep within the high walls of Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound where Xi spent time as a child visiting his late father Xi Zhongxun, a liberal-minded vice premier, China’s new leader saw a country in crisis.
Rampant corruption plagued the Communist Party and stoked popular discontent, chipping away at the legitimacy of a regime Xi’s father helped bring to power. The quest to get rich over decades of economic reform created a gaping wealth gap and hollowed out the official socialist ideology, fueling a crisis of faith. And as the Arab Spring toppled dictators in the Middle East, the rise of social media in China offered a rare space for public dissent, amplifying calls for social justice and political change.
Xi took these perceived challenges head on. Born a “princeling” – the offspring of revolutionary heroes who founded Communist China – the Chinese leader saw himself as savior, entrusted by the party to steer it away from threats to its survival.
But instead of following in the reformist footsteps of his father, Xi opted for a path of total control. Combining the old authoritarian playbook and new surveillance technology, he has eliminated his rivals, tightened his grip on the economy and made the party omnipresent in China – embedding his own cult of personality in daily life.
Xi also touted the “Chinese dream” of national rejuvenation, offering a tempting vision to restore China to its past glory and reclaim its rightful place in the world.
“Xi Jinping sits on top of the party, the party sits on top of China, and China sits on top of the world. That’s basically the program,” said Richard McGregor, a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute in Australia.
Ten years on, Xi’s China is richer, stronger and more confident than ever, yet it is also more authoritarian, inward-looking and paranoid than it has been in decades. It has bolstered its international clout, at the expense of its relations with the West and many of its neighbors.
At a key party congress beginning on Sunday, Xi is poised to be appointed to a norm-breaking third term. It will be his coronation as China’s most powerful leader since Chairman Mao Zedong, paving the way for potential lifelong rule.
But as Xi grapples with a sharp economic downturn, growing frustration with his uncompromising zero-Covid policy and surging tensions with the United States and its allies, the sense of crisis that beset his rise to power has continued to haunt him, and is set to shape his rule in the years – if not decades – to come.
Xi saw the party’s crisis up close during his ascent to the top in 2012, when a sensational scandal brought down a prominent political rival and threatened to derail the leadership handover.
Bo Xilai, a fellow “princeling” and charismatic leader of the mega city of Chongqing, was vying for promotion into the top leadership when his police chief attempted to defect to a US consulate, accusing Bo of trying to cover up his wife’s murder of a British businessman. Party leaders feuded over how to deal with the fallout. Eventually, Bo was investigated and expelled from the party weeks before the five-yearly power reshuffle. Bo and his wife are today both serving life in prison.
Having risen through the ranks in the bustling coastal provinces during China’s reform and opening up, Xi would have seen no shortage of local corruption. But the blatant abuse of power and deep rifts at the very top of the leadership exposed in Bo’s scandal likely aggravated Xi’s sense of peril for the party’s survival.
“Our party faces many grave challenges and there are many pressing problems within the party that need to be solved, in particular corruption,” Xi said in his first speech hours after being appointed the top leader.
Within weeks, he launched the most brutal and long-lasting “war on graft” the party had ever seen. The sweeping purges targeted not only the corrupt, but also Xi’s political enemies, including powerful leaders who were accused of plotting a coup with Bo to seize power.
The crackdown instilled discipline, loyalty and a culture of fear, stifling opposition as Xi moved to amass power into his own hands. He styled himself as a strongman, eschewing the collective rule that was alleged to have exacerbated factionalism under his comparably weak predecessor Hu Jintao. In just four years, Xi asserted himself as the “core” of the party leadership, demanding its 96 million members to “unify their thinking, willpower and action” around him.
“(Xi) thinks the only instrument with which he can rule China at home and make gains abroad is a unified, strong, and powerful Communist Party. So he has made it his mission to strengthen the party under his rule,” said McGregor at the Lowy Institute. “He’s both strengthened himself, and he’s strengthened the party as a vehicle for himself.”
Consolidating the party from within was only part of his plan. Xi also set out to fortify the party’s grasp over the country. “Government, the army, society and schools, east, west, south, north and center – the party leads them all,” he said at the party congress in 2017.
Under Xi, the party reasserted itself in all aspects of life. It revitalized once-dormant grassroots party cells and set up new branches in private and foreign companies. It tightened its grip on the media, education, religion and culture, strangled civil society, and unleashed harsh crackdowns on Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
Xi also ramped up the party’s control of the economy, especially its once-vibrant private sector. His sweeping regulatory crackdown brought tycoons to heel and wiped out trillions of dollars of market value from Chinese firms.
In the online sphere, extensive censorship and real-life retaliation tamed social media. Instead of serving as a catalyst for social and political reforms, it became an amplifier for party propaganda and a breeding ground for nationalism.
The pervasive social control reached new heights during the pandemic. In the name of fighting Covid, 1.4 billion Chinese citizens lost their freedom of movement to the whims of the party and the prowess of the surveillance state. Cities across China are trapped in rolling, draconian lockdowns, sometimes for months on end, with millions of people confined to their homes or massive quarantine camps.
For Xi, safeguarding the party’s primacy is a painful lesson drawn from the Cultural Revolution, when the Communist establishment was attacked by Mao’s “red guards” and lost control over society.
Hundreds of thousands died in the turmoil, including Xi’s half-sister who was persecuted to death. Xi’s father was purged and tortured. Xi himself was incarcerated, publicly humiliated and sentenced to hard labor in an impoverished village at age 15.
“Arguably, his emphasis on party authority, and stopping individuals who disagree with the party from criticizing (it), is a result of his phobia of chaos because of what he saw happened to himself, his mother, his father and siblings,” said Joseph Torigian, an expert on Chinese politics at American University and author of an upcoming biography on the elder Xi.
Many Chinese who survived the Cultural Revolution – including some party elites – came away with a conviction to prevent a similar catastrophe from happening again, China needed the rule of law, constitutionalism and protection of individual rights. But Xi arrived at a very different conclusion.
“(He) believed that to achieve political order you needed to have a powerful leader, a powerful party, not creating a system in which people had rights that went too far, because they would only abuse them and hurt other individuals,” Torigian said.
So instead of turning against the party, Xi devoted himself to it. In interviews with state media, Xi spoke of how his seven years as a “sent-down youth” toughened him up and strengthened his resolve to serve the party and the people. “I was distilled and purified, and felt like a completely different man,” he told the People’s Daily in 2004.
Xi’s obsession for control was also shaped by the trauma of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he has repeatedly cited as a cautionary tale for the Chinese Communist Party.
“Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist Party collapse? An important reason was that their ideals and beliefs had been shaken,” Xi told senior officials in a speech months after taking the helm of the party.
To address China’s own crisis of faith, Xi cracked down on religion, reinvigorated the party’s official Marxist ideology and promoted his own eponymous philosophy. “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” is enshrined in the party charter and dominates party speeches and meetings. It also permeates billboards, newspaper front pages and cinema screens, and is taught in classrooms across the country – to children as young as 7.
At the center of “Xi Jinping Thought” is the notion of the Chinese dream: the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” – a vision Xi unveiled just weeks after coming to power.
It has since become a hallmark of his rule, shaping many of his policies at home and abroad.
“Xi Jinping is a man with a mission. He believes that he knows the ways to take China to the promised land of national rejuvenation,” said Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at SOAS University of London.
“He is going back to his mythical visions of Chinese history, when China was the greatest civilization and country in the world. And the rest of the world (should) just respect, admire and follow the leadership of China.”
To be sure, many Chinese are proud of their country’s achievements. Under Xi, China declared an end to extreme poverty, modernized its military, emerged as a leader in next-generation technology and greatly expanded its global influence. It is striving to become the dominant power in space, commands the world’s largest navy, and makes its weight felt as an emerging superpower.
For others, Xi’s Chinese dream has turned into their living nightmare. In the country’s far west, Muslim minorities are arbitrarily incarcerated, forcibly assimilated and closely surveilled. In Hong Kong, pro-democracy supporters saw their freedom and hope crushed in a city changed beyond recognition. Across the country, numerous rights lawyers, activists, journalists, professors and businessmen are languishing in jail, or silenced by fear. In Xi’s eyes, they are all perceived threats to his quest for a strong and unified nation, and thus must be remolded or eliminated.
But increasingly, the sheen of the Chinese dream is coming off for ordinary people, too – young professionals who chose to “lie flat” in the face of intense pressure, depositors who lost their life savings in rural banks, homebuyers who refused to pay mortgages on unfinished homes, as well as business owners, laid-off workers and residents pushed to the brink by Xi’s relentless zero-Covid lockdowns. Some of them might have previously rooted for Xi and his vision, but are now paying the price for his policies.
The most disillusioned are seeking a way out. “Run philosophy” has become a Chinese buzzword, advocating emigration to escape what some see as a doomed future under Xi’s rule. Xi has repeatedly touted that China is rising and the West is in decline – a conviction strengthened by America’s political polarization, and his belief that China’s superior political model has enabled it to fight Covid better than Western democracies. But the growing number of disciples of “run philosophy” is an outright rejection of that narrative, showing many Chinese have no faith in his promise to make China great again.
Underpinning Xi’s Chinese dream is a bitter sense of resentment toward the West, rooted in the nationalistic narrative that before the party took power, China suffered a “century of humiliation” at the hands of foreign powers and was invaded, carved up, occupied and weakened.
In recent years, American measures to counter China’s rising influence has only reinforced its sense of being under siege from Western powers, McGregor said.
“It has a visceral, emotional appeal in China. It’s very powerful. I think Xi understands that and he intends to harness that to his own ends,” he said.
As a leader-in-waiting, Xi had already shown a strong disdain for foreign criticism of China. “There are some foreigners with full bellies who have nothing better to do than point fingers at us,” Xi told members of the Chinese community in Mexico on a visit as vice-president in 2009. “China does not export revolution, hunger or poverty. Nor does China cause you headaches. Just what else do you want?”
But Xi’s starkest warning to the West came last summer, when he presided over a grand celebration marking the party’s centenary. Standing on top of Tiananmen, or the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the towering entrance to the Forbidden City palace of imperial China, Xi declared the Chinese nation will no longer be “bullied, oppressed or subjugated” by foreign powers. “Anyone who dares to try, will find their heads bashed bloody against a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people,” he said to thundering applause from the crowd.
Since coming to power, Xi has repeatedly warned against the “infiltration” of Western values such as democracy, press freedom and judicial independence. He has clamped down on foreign NGOs, churches, Western movies and textbooks – all seen as vehicles for undue foreign influence.
Abroad, Xi embarked on an aggressive foreign policy. “Xi thinks this is China’s moment. And to seize that moment, he has to be assertive and take risks,” McGregor said.
Under Xi, China has openly competed for global clout with the United states, leveraging its economic heft to gain geopolitical influence. Its ties with the West are at their most fraught since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre – and they were further soured by Beijing’s tacit support for Moscow following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Xi and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin share a deep suspicion and hostility toward the US, which they believe is bent on holding China and Russia down. They also share a vision for a new world order – one that better accommodates their nations’ interests and is no longer dominated by the West.
But it remains to be seen how many countries are willing to join that alternative perspective. Views of China have grown more negative during Xi’s decade in power across many advanced economies, and in some, unfavorable views reached record highs in recent years.
Beijing’s sweeping claims of sovereignty have also antagonized many of its neighbors in the region. China built and militarized islands in the South China Sea, raised military tensions over a disputed island chain with Japan, and engaged in bloody border conflicts with India. It has also ramped up military intimidation of Taiwan, a self-governing democracy Xi has vowed to “reunify” with the mainland.
For its part, the US has awakened to the competition with China, and is working with allies and like-minded partners to take a raft of measures against Beijing on geopolitics, trade and technology.
That difficult international environment, along with the toll of zero-Covid and the economic headwinds, poses a big challenge for Xi in the years ahead.
But for the coming week, the party congress will be all about celebrating Xi’s victory. According to the party’s most updated official history, Xi has brought China “closer to the center of the world stage than it has ever been.”
Mao may have founded Communist China. But according to the party’s narrative, it is Xi who will lead the country to its rebirth as the new global superpower. Whether he can succeed will have a profound impact on the world.
New testing on a variety of popular branded sports bras and athletic wear has revealed high levels of BPA, a chemical compound that’s used to make certain types of plastic and can lead to harmful health effects such as asthma, cardiovascular disease and obesity.
Sports bras sold by Athleta, PINK, Asics, The North Face, Brooks, All in Motion, Nike, and FILA were all tested for BPA in the past six months, and the results showed the clothing could expose wearers to up to 22 times the safe limit of BPA, based on standards set in California,according to the Center for Environmental Health. The CEH, which conducted the testing, is a non-profit consumer advocacy group focused on exposing the presence of toxic chemicals in consumer products.
Under California law — specifically Proposition 65, enacted in 1986 — the maximum allowable dose level for BPA via skin exposure is 3 micrograms per day.
The group also tested athletic shirts from brands that included The North Face, Brooks, Mizuno, Athleta, New Balance, and Reebok and found similar results.
The CEH said Wednesday it has sent legal notices to the companies, which will have 60 days to work with the center to remedy the violations before the group files a complaint in California state court requiring them to do so.
To date, the watchdog said its investigations have found BPA only in polyester-based clothing containing spandex. “We want brands to reformulate their products to remove all bisphenols including BPA. In the interim, we recommend limiting the time you spend in your activewear by changing after your workout,” the group said.
Athleta, Nike, Reebok, The North Face and Victoria’s Secret (which owns PINK) did not immediately provide a comment.
BPA (Bisphenol A) is found in a large number of everyday products, from water bottles and canned foods to toys and flooring. In adults, exposure to BPA has been linked to diabetes, heart disease, cancer, obesity and erectile dysfunction.
Premature death was also associated with BPA exposure, a 2020 study found. More recently, BPA has also been linked to asthma in school-age girls.
“People are exposed to BPA through ingestion, from eating food or drinking water from containers that have leached BPA, or by absorption through skin,” Kaya Allan Sugerman, CEH’s illegal toxic threats program director, said in a statement.
“Studies have shown that BPA can be absorbed through skin and end up in the bloodstream after handling receipt paper for seconds or a few minutes at a time. Sports bras and athletic shirts are worn for hours at a time, and you are meant to sweat in them, so it is concerning to be finding such high levels of BPA in our clothing,” Allan Sugerman said.
Over the past year, the group has asked more than 90 companies, including Walgreens and socks and sleepwear brand Hypnotic Hats, to reformulate their products to remove all bisphenols, including BPA. Some have already agreed to do so.
“Even low levels of exposure [to BPA] during pregnancy have been associated with a variety of health problems in offspring,” said Dr. Jimena Díaz Leiva, science director with CEH.
Although CEH litigates under California’s Clean Drinking Water and Toxics Enforcement Act of 1986, it says the repercussions of its settlements extend beyond California “as it is most often economically infeasible for companies to reformulate for just the California market.”
“Our legal action has been successful in pushing entire industries to remove certain chemicals from products like children’s candy or toys,” the group said in a statement to CNN Business. “These cases not only serve to protect California consumers but also consumers throughout the country.”
