Media Spin Master

More than 186,000 restaurants flooded the federal government with applications for money in the first two days of a program set up to ameliorate the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the White House said Wednesday.

President Joe Biden plans to deliver remarks Wednesday afternoon on the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, launched on Monday as part of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package he signed into law nearly two months ago, as an industry group warned the fund’s popularity could cause it to quickly exhaust its $28.6 billion in funding.

The program will provide grants of up to $10 million to restaurants, bars, food trucks and other eateries.

“The question on the minds of many is what happens when applications outpace the available funds,” the president and CEO of the National Restaurant Association, Tom Bené, said this week.

Earlier Wednesday — Cinco de Mayo — Biden made an unannounced visit to a taqueria in Washington that had been awarded money from a pilot version of the restaurant fund, as well as from the Payment Protection Program — the federal government’s signature program for providing businesses with pandemic-related aid over the past year. He said he ordered tacos and enchiladas.

Severely impacted by the economic crisis unleashed by the pandemic and restrictions on businesses to mitigate the spread of the virus, restaurants have over the past year become primary beneficiaries of government grants and loans to businesses.

Accommodation and food services businesses were the No. 1 industry benefiting from the latest round of funding from the Payment Protection Program — receiving 17%, or $40 billion, of the loans, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. They have received billions more from separate federal aid programs for small businesses.

The Small Business Administration, which administers the Payment Protection Program and the new restaurant fund, said Tuesday that the Payment Protection Program had finally run out of money — four weeks earlier than expected — as the government transitions to more targeted programs.

The same could happen with the restaurant fund, according to the National Restaurant Association’s chief lobbyist, Sean Kennedy.

Kennedy told grassroots supporters in an email that the “the total number of applicants is going to exceed expectations – and may quickly exhaust the $28.6 billion in federal funding.”

The White House on Wednesday touted the 97,600 applications it said came from businesses controlled by women, veterans, socially and economically disadvantaged individuals, as well as 61,700 more from businesses making less than $500,000 annually before the pandemic — “representing some of the smallest restaurants and bars in America.”

Those applicants will be prioritized for the first three weeks of the program.

The businesses can use the grants for expenses like payroll and rent.

The average turnaround time “from submission to funding” will be up to two weeks, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday.

Psaki said Biden was “open” to working with Congress to provide even more funding for restaurants in the future.

“There has already been a large interest in this program,” Psaki said. “And there are great needs across the country from these small businesses, from these restaurants that are in communities across the country.”

Peloton and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced two separate voluntary recalls of Peloton’s Tread+ and Tread treadmills after reports of injuries and a death, Peloton and the CPSC said in a statement Tuesday.

Consumers are advised to stop using the recalled treadmills “immediately” and should contact Peloton for a full refund or “other qualified remedy,” according to the statement.

The company has stopped selling the Tread+ and is working on modifying the exercise device.

In April, the CPSC issued an “urgent warning” for people to stop using Peloton’s Tread+ treadmill if they have small children or pets at home, one month after the company revealed that a child died in an accident involving the workout equipment.

The federal regulatory agency said it had learned of “multiple incidents” of small children and a pet being sucked under and injured beneath the machines. As of April, the CPSC said it is aware of 39 incidents involving the treadmill, including one death related to the $4,295 treadmill.

Peloton said it discovered through CPSC’s public database that a child had experienced a brain injury in connection with the treadmill. In February, a father found his 3-year-old boy trapped under a Tread+ and “not breathing and pulseless,” according to the CPSC incident report. The child is expected to “fully recover,” the company said. Peloton said it also received additional reports of earlier incidents and reported them to CPSC.

John Foley, Peloton’s CEO, said the recall was “the right thing to do.”

“The decision to recall both products was the right thing to do for Peloton’s Members and their families,” he said in a statement. “I want to be clear, Peloton made a mistake in our initial response to the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s request that we recall the Tread+. We should have engaged more productively with them from the outset. For that, I apologize. Today’s announcement reflects our recognition that, by working closely with the CPSC, we can increase safety awareness for our Members. We believe strongly in the future of at-home connected fitness and are committed to work with the CPSC to set new industry safety standards for treadmills. We have a desire and a responsibility to be an industry leader in product safety.”

Added Robert S. Adler, acting chairman of the CPSC: “The agreement, which the Commission voted this morning to accept, requires Peloton to immediately stop selling and distributing both the Tread+ and Tread products in the United States and refund the full purchase price to consumers who wish to return their treadmills. The agreement between CPSC and Peloton is the result of weeks of intense negotiation and effort, culminating in a cooperative agreement that I believe serves the best interests of Peloton and of consumers. I would like to thank the CPSC technical staff who have worked tirelessly to protect consumers and to warn the public. Today we have taken steps to prevent further harm from these two products.”

ABC News’ Rebecca Jarvis contributed to this report.

A Nashville police officer was shot while responding to a 911 call of a woman shot at a house — and the department says it believes the call was a “setup” by the shooter to get authorities to respond.

Officers were fired upon as soon as they arrived at the house Tuesday evening, police spokesperson Kris Mumford told ABC News.

Officer Brian Sherman was shot in the arm, the Metro Nashville Police Department said.

The man who allegedly shot Sherman, 22-year-old Salman Mohamed, then went outside, police said, where officers tried to negotiate with him.

Mohamed fatally shot himself in the head with a rifle in the driveway, police said.

Sherman’s injuries weren’t life threatening and he was discharged from a hospital overnight, Mumford said.

“We believe the person who made the 911 call was Mohamed himself,” police spokesman Don Aaron said at a news conference. “In fact on the 911 call, you can hear him saying that he’s scared, that shots are continuing to be fired. ‘Hurry, hurry, please get here in a hurry.'”

“It was all a ruse to get the police officers to the scene,” Aaron said.

No officers fired their guns during the incident, police said.

A woman has been arrested after smuggling an estimated $40,000 worth of cocaine in seven pairs of shoes upon her return to the United States from Jamaica.

The incident occurred on Sunday, May 2, at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport when a 21-year-old woman from Georgia was pulled aside for further inspection by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers after she arrived back in the United States from Jamaica.

“Upon closer examination of her bags, seven pairs of shoes were found to have a white powdery substance concealed in the shoe bottoms that field tested positive for cocaine,” CBP said in a statement regarding the case.

Authorities said that the amount of cocaine seized from the woman’s shoes weighed approximately three pounds and has a street value of around $40,000.

“Smugglers go through great lengths to conceal drugs from our officers,” said Paula Rivera, CBP Port Director for the Area Port of Atlanta. “Narcotics interdiction remains a priority CBP enforcement mission, one that we take very seriously.”

Atlanta CBP officers turned the female suspect over to the Clayton County Police Department where she will await state prosecution.

The CBP conducts operations at ports of entry throughout the United States and regularly screens arriving international passengers and cargo for narcotics, weapons, and other restricted or prohibited products.

On a typical day, authorities seize an average of 3,677 pounds of drugs from people traveling all across the country, according to the CBP.

Prosecutors in Manhattan have asked a federal judge to appoint a “special master” to sift through evidence belonging to Rudy Giuliani as the government continues investigating former President Donald Trump’s personal attorney for possible lobbying infractions.

In a sign of growing legal scrutiny targeting the former New York City mayor, FBI agents carried out a search warrant at Giuliani’s home and office last week. Investigators confiscated his electronic devices, including a cellphone.

The warrant was in relation to an ongoing probe led by federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York regarding Giuliani’s alleged lobbying efforts abroad during the Trump presidency, which was a key focus of the first impeachment case against then-President Trump.

In a letter unsealed late Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss wrote that the appointment of a special master is necessary given the “unusually sensitive privilege issues that the warrants may implicate” — a reference to Giuliani’s work as counsel to the former president.

It is not uncommon for the court to appoint a special master to conduct an impartial review of evidence for items protected under attorney-client privilege and to referee disputes between the government and their investigative targets.

Prosecutors cited a similar appointment in the case of another of Trump’s former lawyers, Michael Cohen, as precedent for a special master in Giuliani’s case. The government suggested to the judge that it confer with Giuliani’s legal team to gather a list of potential candidates for the role.

Giuliani’s work on matters related to Ukraine and his business dealings with two Soviet-born associates has been the subject of an ongoing investigation by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, sources previously told ABC News.

Giuliani and his attorney, Bob Costello, have both vehemently denied allegations of wrongdoing. Giuliani has not been charged with a crime.

“They’re trying to make Rudy Giuliani look like a criminal,” Costello said last week. “He has done nothing wrong.”

Four people are dead after a small plane crashed into a home in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, late Tuesday night, according to the Hattiesburg Police Department.

The incident occurred at approximately 11:20 p.m. when emergency personnel responded to a report of a downed aircraft on Annie Christie Drive, which emergency crews then confirmed shortly after they arrived onto the scene of the accident.

The Hattiesburg Police Department said that the Federal Aviation Administration has been contacted to handle the investigation and that they have closed off the surrounding roads to traffic while the investigation is being conducted into what happened.

“If you find any debris or wreckage in your yard or property that you believe is connected to the crash, do not touch or remove it, and please contact the Hattiesburg Police Department,” HPD said in a statement posted on social media.

Hattiesburg Police PIO Ryan Moore confirmed live on the air with ABC’s Hattiesburg affiliate station WDAM that four people died in the incident.

The investigation is ongoing and no additional details are available at this time.

A San Francisco man was arrested Tuesday after he allegedly stabbed two Asian American women in broad daylight, police said.

The 55-year-old man is suspected of attacking the women in downtown San Francisco on Tuesday afternoon before fleeing the scene, according to San Francisco Police Department spokesperson Robert Rueca. He was located and arrested about a mile from the scene on Tuesday evening. Charges were still pending and a motive for the stabbings was under investigation, Rueca said.

The names of the suspect and the victims have not been released.

San Francisco resident Patricia Lee, who was working at a nearby flower stand at the time, said she saw the knife-wielding man approach the women at a bus stop. She said the blade was “pretty big” and appeared to be a military-style knife.

“Her back was turned and all I see is the feathers came out of her jacket, so I’m very sure that she got sliced,” Lee told San Francisco ABC station KGO in an interview Tuesday. “It could have been me instead.”

After stabbing the women, whom she described as elderly, Lee said the man “walked away like nothing happened.”

The incident occurred in the district represented by Matt Haney, member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, who took to Twitter to condemn the attack as “disgusting and horrific.” Haney said both women were hospitalized for their injuries and were in “stable” condition as of Tuesday night. One of them, an 85-year-old, required surgery. Haney said he was reaching out to the victims and their families to offer his support.

“This is something that is happening to Asian people in our community specifically,” Haney told KGO in an interview Tuesday. “This is a pattern.”

Tuesday’s attack was the latest in a spate of violence targeting Asian Americans in cities across the nation. The coronavirus pandemic and its suspected origins in the Chinese city of Wuhan is cited as having led to a fresh onslaught of anti-Asian discrimination in the United States that has waged on for over a year.

From March 19, 2020, to Feb. 28, 2021, there were more than 3,795 hate incidents, including verbal harassment and physical assault, against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States that were reported to Stop AAPI Hate, a nonprofit organization that tracks such incidents.

LONDON — The Indian delegation at the G-7 meetings in the U.K. will not be in face-to-face meetings after “exposure to possible COVID positive cases,” the Indian Foreign Minister said, although officials said the summit itself is not at risk.

“Was made aware yesterday evening of exposure to possible Covid positive cases,” Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s Minister of External Affairs, posted on Twitter. “As a measure of abundant caution and also out of consideration for others, I decided to conduct my engagements in the virtual mode. That will be the case with the G7 Meeting today as well.”

Although the Indian delegation has not yet attended the G-7 meeting of foreign ministers at Lancaster House in London, they did meet with their U.S. counterparts on Monday. It is not yet clear whether any of the attendees in that meeting had tested positive.

“The U.S. delegation was advised, including by the U.K.’s public health professionals, that our stringent masking, social distancing, and daily testing protocols would permit us to continue with our G-7 activities as planned,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement. “We have no reason to believe any of our delegation is at risk. We will continue to follow the guidance of public health professionals going forward and abide by the same strict COVID-19 protocols.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was pictured alongside Jaishankar on Monday, has been vaccinated against COVID-19.

Other delegates will not be asked to self-isolate as officials said that strict social distancing was observed.

Attendees to the summit are tested daily, although at the Monday meeting between Blinken and Jaishankar, delegates did take off their masks while divided by sheets of plexiglass. Anyone who tests positive for COVID-19 would be required to self-isolate in line with U.K. government guidelines.

“We deeply regret that Foreign Minister Dr. Jaishankar will be unable to attend the meeting today in person and will now attend virtually, but this is exactly why we have put in place strict Covid protocols and daily testing,” a senior U.K. diplomat said.

While not formally a member of the G-7, India was invited to attend a series of meetings between the foreign ministers of G-7 countries in London this week.

A dozen countries have delegations at this week’s meetings ahead of the G-7, which President Joe Biden hopes to attend with other world leaders, in the U.K. in June. The withdrawal from face-to-face meetings will be a serious blow to the proceedings, which promised to be the first in-person G-7 meetings in two years.

A “resourceful” 47-year-old woman missing for months has been found alive in a tent in Utah County, Utah, telling officials she foraged for grass and moss to survive.

Officials believe the woman — who was weak and had lost weight when found Monday — chose to stay in the Diamond Fork area over the last few months, the Utah County Sheriff’s Office said.

Search and rescue crews first looked for her in December after finding an abandoned car and camping equipment.

“Over the next several months efforts were made to identify and contact family without success,” the sheriff’s office said Monday. “Detectives did make contact with this woman’s former co-workers but they did not get any information that suggested where this woman might be. They did, however, find information that suggested this woman might struggle with mental health challenges.”

On Sunday, a sheriff’s office sergeant and other searchers returned to Diamond Fork to look for her. When their drone crashed, the sergeant and drone pilot walked into the hills to retrieve it, and came across a tent, the sheriff’s office said. Inside was the missing woman.

She had a small amount of food with her and access to water in a nearby river, officials said.

Deputies took the woman to a local hospital for a mental health evaluation, officials said.

The sheriff’s office said, “While many people might choose to not live in the circumstances and conditions this woman did, she did nothing against the law. And in the future she might choose to return to the same area. Resources were made available to her should she decide to use them.”

Former Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who was found not guilty of the charge of murder in the death of a young Islamic State detainee in Iraq in 2017, has made the bombshell allegation that the detainee died as part of a plan to practice medical procedures on him and that his fellow SEALs had all agreed to the idea.

Gallagher, the senior enlisted leader of his SEAL platoon and a medic, provided medical care to the detainee including the insertion of a breathing tube to his throat, but denied allegations that the detainee died after he stabbed him.

Until now, Gallagher has maintained his innocence and alleged that disgruntled members of his platoon had stepped forward with allegations of misconduct to frame him.

“The grain of truth in the whole thing is that that ISIS fighter was killed by us and that nobody at that time had a problem with it,” Gallagher said on the Apple TV+ podcast “The Line,” hosted by Dan Taberski.

“We killed that guy. Our intention was to kill him, everybody was on board,” Gallagher said on the Apple podcast. “It was to do medical scenarios on him until he died.”

“He was going to die regardless” Gallagher claimed, alleging that “everyone was, like, let’s just do medical treatments on him until he’s gone.”

“Everybody knew what was going on,” said Gallagher. “That’s the only truthful thing to this whole process. And then the rest of it, just is like, a bunch of contorted lies to, like, pin that whole scenario on me.”

Gallagher also maintained that he never stabbed the detainee, “that dude died from all the medical treatments that were done and there’s plenty of medical treatments that were done to him.”

In 2019, a military jury found Gallagher not guilty of a murder charge for allegedly stabbing the wounded teenager, as well as charges of attempted murder and obstruction of justice. But he was found guilty of posing for a photo with the corpse of the 17-year-old detainee and was sentenced to four months of time served.

President Donald Trump later restored Gallagher’s rank enabling him to retire as a chief petty officer and allowed him to keep the Trident insignia pin that identified him as a SEAL.

After the trial The New York Times released videos that showed members of Gallagher’s platoon describing him to investigators as being “freaking evil” and “toxic.”

“You could tell he was perfectly OK with killing anybody that was moving,” said Petty Officer 1st Class Corey Scott who would later testify at the trial, under immunity, that Gallagher had stabbed the detainee, but Scott had afterwards asphyxiated the detainee by covering up the breathing tube in his throat as a mercy killing.

Scott told the court that he did that because he believed the detainee would likely be tortured and killed after being turned over to Iraqi security forces. An attorney for Scott declined to comment to ABC News on Tuesday when asked about Gallagher’s new claims.

In January 2020, Gallagher lashed out against the SEALs in his unit who had testified against him, posting a video on Facebook that listed their identities and assignments, something typically not allowed for SEALs to maintain their operational security.

“The story has never been fully exposed about what really happened,” Gallagher said in the short video. “You may think you know, but you have no idea.”

In the podcast, Gallagher claimed when it appeared that he was going to be charged with murder and that SEALs from his platoon might testify against him, “I knew to keep my mouth shut” and never told his superiors.

“At that point, my intuition kicked in and I was like, ‘I’m not talking to anybody about it even though I’m, like, innocent,'” he said.

Gallagher explained on the podcast that the only reason why he performed the life-saving procedure of inserting a breathing tube in the detainee’s throat was “just for practice.”

“I was practicing to see how see how fast I could do one,” he told the podcast.

During his court martial, Gallagher’s attorney Tim Parlatore, laid out a narrative that disgruntled members of the platoon had conspired to bring down Gallagher because they did not like his leadership style.

“This case isn’t about murder. It’s about mutiny” Parlatore had said in his opening remarks and also noted that a forensic analysis of the knife allegedly used in the stabbing found no traces of blood.

Parlatore told ABC News on Tuesday that Gallagher’s new narrative was known to military prosecutors and the presiding judge in the case, but did not come up in the narrative presented by prosecutors.

“There was no necessity for me to highlight it at the time, any more than I did, because ultimately it doesn’t change the bottom line — truth — which is that Eddie Gallagher did not commit murder,” said Parlatore.

Gallagher “has always been of the opinion the truth is something that people need to know, not the narrative that has been put out,” said Parlatore.

The attorney said that the new narrative as laid out by Gallagher “was always there, but just beneath the surface.”

“We knew about it, the prosecutors knew about it, pieces of it were presented to the jury. And it was also presented to the judge in a motion,” said Parlatore.

Parlatore, however, has not pointed to court records specifically raising the conspiracy allegation. He never raised the conspiracy theory in his cross examination of the witnesses and, in fact, complained in a motion to dismiss that prosecutors had improperly withheld evidence asserting that one medic had conducted unnecessary procedures on the detainee. Neither Parlatore nor Gallagher have explained why he is raising the theory now or have offered direct evidence supporting any conspiracy.

The Navy has not responded to a request for comment.

Parlatore argued that the detainee had no chance of surviving his injuries despite the medical procedures performed on him because he would not have been authorized to be be flown to a medical facility aboard a U.S. military medevac helicopter.

Gallagher’s new claims are unsettling to Eric Oehlerich, a former commander of a Navy SEAL team platoon and an ABC News contributor.

“The moral obligation is that if you have enemy combatants you’ve got to take care of them,” said Oehlerich, who noted there is a legal requirement “to keep them alive.”

“You only treat a patient to save a life,” said Oehlerich. “You don’t treat them as live tissue medical treatment.”