Month: June 2020

The White House on Monday continued to deflect questions about reports U.S. intelligence determined Russia offered bounties to the Taliban to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan, saying “the veracity” of such allegations is still being determined and insisting that President Donald Trump had yet to be briefed on the potentially politically damaging matter.

“There is no consensus within the intelligence community on these allegations,” press secretary Kayleigh McNenay told reporters, “and in effect, there are dissenting opinions from some in the intelligence community with regards to the veracity of what’s being reported, and the veracity of the underlying allegations continue to be evaluated.”

But even as she spoke — and administration officials were briefing concerned members of Congress at the White House — she repeatedly said Trump himself still “has not been briefed on the matter.”

The intelligence “would not be elevated to the president until it was verified,” she said.

Asked by reporters, “Does the president have a specific message for Moscow given these reports?” she responded, “A specific message for Moscow? No, because he’s not been briefed on the matter, as I noted.”

Yet Sunday night, Trump tweeted: “Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP . Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News @nytimesbooks, wanting to make Republicans look bad!!!”

Asked what Trump meant when he tweeted that, McEnany replied: “I have no further details on the president’s private correspondenc

She said that last night, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer “and said that he would be briefing eight members from the committees of jurisdiction, so there was a bipartisan invitation extended,” she said, declining to provide further details.

Asked what Trump would do to hold Russia accountable if the intelligence is borne out to be true, she said, “I won’t speculate on whether this intelligence is verified or not verified and I won’t get ahead of the president on further actions.”

She said Trump had “been extremely strong on Russia, imposing sanctions on hundreds of Russian individuals, expelling dozens of diplomats, closing two Russian consulates, withdrawing from an INF treaty and several other actions.”

Pushed on what she meant that Trump hadn’t been briefed — and if that meant it wasn’t in the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) — she replied, “He was not personally briefed on the matter.”

It was unclear which members of Congress got briefed.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called for briefings of their respective legislative body’s full membership.

While the White House did not specify how many members had been invited, the official said the gathering would not take the form of a meeting of the “Gang of Eight” — a bipartisan group of senior lawmakers regularly briefed on sensitive intelligence.

Pelosi, a member of the “Gang of Eight,” said on Sunday in an interview with ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos that she had not been briefed on the topic.

The New York Times reported Friday that U.S. intelligence officials had determined a Russian military intelligence unit had offered militants tied to the Taliban bounties for killing U.S. and other international troops in Afghanistan.

A military official confirmed to ABC News that U.S. intelligence agencies had determined that to be the case and said Russia had taken the step over the past year, amid peace talks to end the 18-year war in Afghanistan.

President Donald Trump denied that he or vice president had been briefed about the determination, as The New York Times reported Friday.

“Nobody briefed or told me, @VP Pence, or [White House] Chief of Staff @MarkMeadows about the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians,” Trump tweeted Sunday, lambasting the Times’ story. “Everybody is denying it & there have not been many attacks on us.”

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe wrote on Twitter Saturday night that “neither the President nor the Vice President were ever briefed on any intelligence alleged by the New York Times in its reporting yesterday.”

Pelosi on Monday morning wrote in a letter to the director of national intelligence and the head of the Central Intelligence Agency that the revelation was “very disturbing” and requested an immediate interagency briefing for all House members.

“The questions that arise are: was the President briefed, and if not, why not, and why was Congress not briefed,” she wrote.

Immediately following the letter, a senior White House official said the White House did not plan to schedule a briefing for all members of the House this week.

Schumer similarly called for all senators to be briefed on the reports.

“We need to know whether or not President Trump was told this information, and if so, when,” Schumer said in a statement.

Later on the Senate floor, Schumer said the president knew of these allegations as early as March and did not take swift action.

“Russia gives bounties to kill Americans and the administration does nothing? Nothing?” Schumer said. “Donald Trump, you’re not being a very strong president here as usual.”

Senators on the other side of the aisle also voiced concern.

Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., tweeted Saturday that it was “imperative Congress get to the bottom of recent media reports” and that “I expect the Trump Administration to take such allegations seriously and inform Congress immediately as to the reliability of these news reports.”

“If reporting about Russian bounties on US forces is true,” Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., tweeted Sunday, the White House must explain: 1. Why weren’t the president or vice president briefed? Was the info in the [president’s daily intelligence briefing]? 2. Who did know and when? What has been done in response to protect our forces & hold [Russian President Vladimir] Putin accountable?”

Fellow Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma said that “we need answers.”

“I have asked the administration to share what it knows, and I expect to know more in the coming days,” he tweeted Monday morning.

ABC News’ James Gordon Meek, Ben Siegel Trish Turner, John Parkinson And Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.

Georgia has 4.2 million residents with criminal records, according to officials.

They’ve done their time behind bars and been on good behavior since their release, but advocates say some of Georgia’s 4.2 million former felons are still shackled by their past deeds.

While the state’s unemployment rate was around 3.4% before the pandemic, the unemployment rate for residents with criminal records was close to 15% during that time, according to Douglas Ammar, the executive director of the nonprofit group the Georgia Justice Project.

“We’ve run into this issue all of the time and it’s affecting whole communities,” Ammar told ABC News in February. “Everyone in Georgia knows someone who was incarcerated and is struggling to find housing or a job.”

Some of those Georgians are going to get a reprieve after state leaders unanimously approved a bill last week that would allow former non-violent felons the right to expunge their record following good behavior. The “Second Chance” bill gained momentum during this session as prosecutors, elected officials and companies pushed for the change.

Under Georgia’s current law, arrests that don’t lead to convictions and misdemeanor convictions for minors are the only crimes that can be expunged. The Second Chance bill allows former prisoners who committed non-violent crimes to send a request to a judge seeking to expunge their record after a certain number of years of good behavior.

People who were convicted of misdemeanors would have to wait at least three years after their release to request the judge to expunge their records, while those who were convicted of felonies would have to wait at least five years, according to the bill.

The legislation exempts several criminal charges including sex crimes, murder and kidnapping, and it allows judges to consider several factors, including victim objections, before deciding on expungement.

Rep. Mandi Ballinger first introduced the legislation in the Georgia House of Representatives last year and re-introduced it in February with the support of various district attorney offices, prison reform advocates and other groups.

Ballinger said she personally doesn’t know anyone close to her that has a criminal record. Because 40% of the state’s population has had a misdemeanor or felony conviction — a rate that’s among the highest in the nation — everyone is feeling the effects.

“I’ve heard from many people who say it’s happening to their brother or it’s happening to their father or it’s happening to their wife,” Ballinger told ABC News in February. “Having a criminal conviction means you made a mistake. It shouldn’t prohibit you from getting gainful employment.”

The Georgia Budget Policy Institute found that formerly incarcerated residents lost on average $36,000 in wages last year, which amounted to about $2.6 billion in wasted spending power. Forty states have a criminal record expungement program, including North Carolina and Arkansas, according to the Georgia Justice Project.

Georgia’s state senate passed the bill in March but its vote in the assembly was tabled because of coronavirus. During that hiatus, advocates and businesses, such as Coca-Cola and Home Depot, pushed state leaders to pass the bill.

“We’ve brought together legislators, partner organizations, employers and directly affected people across the state to make this effort a reality,” Ammar said in a statement Monday.

Ballinger, a Republican, said her colleagues on the other side of the aisle have expressed support for the measure.

“We all like the goal of the bill, which is to get people back on their feet,” she said.

Representatives for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp didn’t immediately comment about the bill’s passage.

Facebook announced some policy changes Friday as pressure mounts.

Starbucks, Coca-Cola and Levi’s have become the latest big brands to publicly join a growing Facebook ad boycott at the urging of the NAACP and other civil rights organizations.

The call for a pause on Facebook ads began on June 17, when a coalition of advocacy groups lead by the NAACP, Colors of Change and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) launched the #StopHateforProfit campaign, calling on corporations to pause advertising on Facebook during the month of July.

In a statement, the groups slammed Facebook for “allowing racist, violent and verifiably false content to run rampant on its platform.”

The campaign comes as the nation has been rocked by protests over the death of George Floyd in police custody, and corporate America has faced immense pressure to reaffirm commitment to racial justice initiatives through actions and not just words.

Facebook made nearly $70 billion in advertising revenue alone last year, according to financial disclosures.

In a matter of weeks, the boycott has grown from a handful of stores to include multinational conglomerate Unilever, telecom giant Verizon and others.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded — after Unilever’s announcement sent the company’s stock falling by more than 8% on Friday — with a series of updates including banning ads that claim people from a specific race are a threat to the safety of others, labeling “newsworthy” posts such as speeches from politicians and more.

Organizers of the ad boycott on Monday, however, slammed the updates and policy changes as “insufficient.”

“Businesses did something incredible last week: they got Facebook’s attention,” the Stop Hate for Profit Coalition wrote in an update on their website Monday. “Many businesses told us how they had been ignored when asking Facebook for changes. The nonprofit partners in the Stop Hate for Profit coalition felt the same way.”

“But, together, we finally got Facebook’s attention. Facebook representatives have been calling advertisers. Mark Zuckerberg held a town hall on Friday,” the statement added. “The company sent out a note to some of their top advertisers Friday night with some updates.”

“Unfortunately, the sum total of these exercises reveal that Facebook has been spending more time on their messaging rather than addressing the underlying problems on the platform,” the group said.

Specifically, the organizers say that Facebook applying its hate policy to ads does not go far enough to combat hate in groups and posts and raised concerns that posts from someone “newsworthy” that call for violence “will be labeled — but they will still be allowed despite the clear harm that they may pose.”

Zuckerberg said Friday in a lengthy Facebook post, however, that the company is committed to removing content that “incites violence” or surpasses voting, “no matter where it comes from.”

A Facebook spokesperson also responded to the allegations in a statement Monday, noting that the company finds a vast majority of hate speech before it is even reported.

“We invest billions of dollars each year to keep our community safe and continuously work with outside experts to review and update our policies. We’ve opened ourselves up to a civil rights audit, and we have banned 250 white supremacist organizations from Facebook and Instagram,” a Facebook company spokesperson told ABC News in an emailed statement.

The statement added that investments the company made in AI allows it to find nearly 90% of hate speech and take action before users report it, noting that a EU report “found Facebook assessed more hate speech reports in 24 hours than Twitter and YouTube.”

“We know we have more work to do, and we’ll continue to work with civil rights groups, GARM [Global Alliance for Responsible Media], and other experts to develop even more tools, technology and policies to continue this fight,” the spokesperson said.

A White House spokesman said the president did not hear the statement.

President Donald Trump retweeted a video Sunday morning of a Trump supporter shouting “white power” at anti-Trump demonstrators. The retweet of the video was later deleted.

Trump shared the video on his @realDonaldTrump account, which has more than 82 million followers, with the message, “Thank you to the great people of The Villages.” The tweet was deleted about three hours later following an uproar over the phrase “white power,” a racist slogan used by white supremacists.

In a statement, White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere said Trump did not hear the use of the slogan.

“President Trump is a big fan of The Villages. He did not hear the one statement made on the video,” Deere said. “What he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters.”

About 10 seconds into the two-minute video, an unidentified man driving a golf cart decked out with “Trump 2020” and “America First” signs shouts “white power” and raises his fist. The person who posted the video on Saturday claims it took place in The Villages, a retirement community in central Florida. It appears the video was taken on June 14.

Trump is scheduled to head to Florida in August to give his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination in Jacksonville.

On CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott said Trump’s retweet was “indefensible.”

“There’s no question, he should not have retweeted it,” said Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate. “Certainly, the comment about the white power was offensive.”

Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, reacted to the tweet on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday.

“This is really not about the president taking it down,” the civil rights attorney said. “This is about the judgment of the president in putting it up. It’s about what the president believes. And it’s time for this country to really face that.”

In recent weeks, Twitter has started flagging several of Trump’s tweets with warning labels.

In late May, the social media platform placed a “public interest” notice for the first time on a Trump tweet, in response to the president’s controversial “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” tweet. It did so again last week for Trump’s tweet threatening “serious force” against protesters outside the White House.

The “public interest” notice is used by the platform when “it may be in the public interest to allow people to view Tweets that would otherwise be taken down,” Twitter states. Both tweets were flagged for appearing to glorify violence.

In mid-June, the platform flagged a video Trump tweeted as “manipulated media.” And in late May, Twitter added fact checks to two of Trump’s tweets about mail-in voting for the first time. It also marked the first time Trump faced Twitter sanctions on his account.

Following the fact check, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said the company will “continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally.”

“Per our Civic Integrity Policy, the tweets yesterday may mislead people into thinking they don’t need to register to get a ballot (only registered voters receive ballots.) We’re updating the link on @readDonaldTrump’s tweet to make this more clear,” Dorsey said.

ABC News’ Elizabeth K. Thomas and Jesse Covertino contributed to this report.

A toddler and a 10-year-old girl were among 14 people shot to death in Chicago in yet another weekend of gun violence that has rocked the city over the past month.

Between Friday and Sunday morning, a total of 52 people were shot in Chicago, according to police department records.

“As a mother, I am tired of the funerals. I am tired of burying our children,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot tweeted, adding that the city was in the throes of a “gun violence epidemic.”

The latest carnage in the Windy City comes just a week after more than 100 people were shot, 14 fatally over the Father’s Day weekend.

The string of violent weekends also follows the deadliest day for shootings in Chicago in decades. On May 31, the police investigated 18 homicides, the most the city has seen in a single day in 60 years.

On Saturday, a 22-year-old woman was driving with her 20-month-old son in the neighborhood of Englewood on Chicago’s South Side when just after 2 p.m. a car pulled up beside them and an occupant opened fire, according to a police incident report. The mother was grazed in the head by a bullet while her son was shot in the chest and later died at a hospital, police said. No arrests had been made as of Sunday.

The shooting came one week after 3-year-old Mekhi James was shot to death in the east Chicago neighborhood of Austin when someone pulled up alongside the car his 27-year-old stepfather was driving and opened fire, hitting the child in the back, police said.

“Everywhere you go, it is violence everywhere. You can’t run from it,” Mekhi’s aunt, Christal Allen, told Chicago ABC station WLS.

“We do want justice, but it ain’t gonna bring him back,” said the boy’s mother, Myesha James.

At about 9:40 p.m. this Saturday, a 10-year-old girl was hit in the head by a stray bullet that entered her apartment in the northeast Chicago neighborhood of Logan Square, police said. The girl, whose name was not released by police, was taken to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead. No arrest have been made in the incident.

About two hours later, at 11:18 p.m., an 8-year-old girl who was sitting on a couch inside a residence in Englewood was injured when a stray bullet came through her window and gazed her head, police said. The girl was taken to Comer Children’s Hospital, where she was in fair condition on Sunday, according to police. No arrests have been made in the shooting.

“It’s on all of us to double down on our all-hands-on-deck public safety efforts with police officers, street outreach teams, trauma support workers, community and faith-based partners,” Lightfoot said in a tweet posted on Saturday. “We must ask ourselves: ‘What are we each doing to make this a season of bounty, not tragedy?'”

The shootings this weekend came on the heels of a letter President Donald Trump sent to Lightfoot and Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker on Friday criticizing their leadership on the issue of gun violence in Chicago and offering to help.

“While I have been heartened to see crime reductions nationally the last few years, I have been horrified by the continued violence in this great American city,” Trump wrote.

“Your lack of leadership on this important issue continues to fail the people you have sworn to protect,” Trump continued. “I am concerned it is another example of your lack of commitment to the vulnerable citizens who are victims of this violence and a lack of respect for the men and women in law enforcement.”

Responding in series of tweets, Lightfoot said, “I don’t need leadership lessons from Donald Trump.” She went on to write that the president is “using the victims of gun violence in our city to score cheap political points, spew racist rhetoric, and ignore the impact of COVID across this country … It is despicable, disgusting and all too typical.”

Jordan Abudayyeh, Pretzker’s press secretary, added in a tweet that Trump “is a failure who has once again resorted to a press stunt in an attempt to distract from his long list of failures, especially his response to the deadly coronavirus and nationwide calls for racial justice.”

“The people of this state and this nation have unfortunately come to expect his unhinged attempts to politicize tragedy with his predictable and worn out strategy to distract, distract, distract,” Abudayyeh tweeted. “The Governor stands with the Mayor in working to accomplish meaningful change.”

Meanwhile, loved ones and friends of 20-year-old DePaul University student Gary Tinder, who was shot to death on June 21, gathered on Saturday for a vigil and to announce a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction Tinder’s killer. Tinder was slain as he walked home from a Starbucks where he worked in the north part of Chicago.

“How much he was loved,” Tinder’s mother, Jane Tinder, said. “He was wonderful, funny, intelligent and [had] so much promise. It’s senseless.”

Elevated fire danger will persist another day for a large part of the West.

Dangerous fire conditions in the West have contributed to the spread of a number of flare ups over the weekend.

In Utah, The Knolls fire near Saratoga Springs has burned 2000 acres and is 0% contained.

Wind gusts at that fire reached as high as 57 mph on Sunday afternoon. The fire has caused at least 13,000 evacuations. This came after the Traverse fire south of Salt Lake City quickly erupted over the weekend.

In Nevada, The Mahogany Fire at Mount Charleston outside of Las Vegas has burned 5,000 acres and is 0% contained.

The Poeville fire outside of Reno has burned 3,500 acres and is 30% contained.

Unfortunately, elevated to critical fire danger will persist another day for a large part of the West from California to Kansas.

The reason for the fire danger is mainly due to a strong cold front moving through the area knocking temperatures down at least 20 degrees in some spots.

Although the relative humidity is very low for the region, the real concern is the erratic wind on the ridges that at times today could gust as high as 60 mph, especially in northern Arizona.

The only good news here is that much of the region has cooled down from last week. Las Vegas is only expected to reach a high of 88 today and it typically averages a high of 102 degrees at the end of June.

The fire danger will shrink to mainly just Arizona and New Mexico on Tuesday and then, finally, conditions will be significantly less conducive for fire spread by Wednesday.

Meanwhile for much of the eastern half of the nation, the weather story continues to be summer storms.

Yesterday, parts of Massachusetts saw 3 to 5 inches of heavy rain which even prompted a flash flood emergency in Norwood, Massachusetts.

This morning, storms are firing in parts of the upper Midwest where 3 to 5 inches of rain has been reported in parts of eastern Minnesota.

Flash Flood Watches have also been posted there as well as parts of the Heartland from Missouri to Kentucky.

More summer storms, at times with gusty winds, and very heavy rainfall will develop again later this afternoon in parts of New England and the Tennessee valley.

Elsewhere, air quality is improving in much of the U.S. as the Saharan dust settles and blows north and east out of the country.

The main areas this morning likely to see any impact from the dust will be parts of Florida and perhaps a couple of spots in the Midwest.

There are no active air quality alerts due to Saharan dust this morning.

Another round of dust is expected to arrive later this week, however, this round is looking less impressive overall and is likely to remain confined to the Gulf Coast.

Any slow moving storm will continue to bring the risk of flash flooding over the next 24 to 36 hours.

The flag is the last state flag in the nation that still displays the emblem.

The Mississippi state legislature has voted to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag.

The bill now goes to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves’s desk.

On Saturday, Reeves said he would sign the bill if the legislature passed it. That afternoon, the state House and state Senate passed measures allowing for a vote on changing the flag.

On Sunday afternoon, the state House voted 91-23 to remove the emblem. The state Senate passed the bill in a 37-14 vote.

ABC News has asked the governor’s office when the signing will take place.

The Confederate “stars and bars” has been part of Mississippi’s flag since 1894. It’s the last state flag that still displays the emblem, which is widely considered racist due in part to its ties to slavery and use by white supremacy groups.

The Mississippi House Rules Committee has recommended that a flag commission be established to present a flag option to voters in November. A new flag is not allowed to include a Confederate symbol and must include the words “In God We Trust.”

Across the country, symbols of the Confederacy are being contested amid calls for racial justice following the death of George Floyd while in police custody last month. Earlier this month, NASCAR banned the Confederate flag at its events. Monuments to Confederate generals are also coming down in cities and towns across the country.

Former vice president Joe Biden reacted to the Mississippi legislature’s vote late Sunday.

“The arc of the moral universe bent a little bit more today,” Biden tweeted Sunday evening, referencing Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote from a 1968 speech.

ABC News’ Joshua Hoyos, Carena Liptak, John Verhovek and Jason Volack contributed to this report.

Police recovered nine shell casings from the scene of the crime.

Two teenage boys were shot to death after asking the suspect how tall he was when they were buying candy from a store.

The incident occurred at approximately 5 p.m. on Saturday June 20 after three teenage boys went to a store in South Chicago to buy some candy and ended up having a brief encounter with 19-year-old Laroy Battle inside the establishment.

“The victims were walking into the store, they saw Battle, he was standing in line while at the store and the victims commented that Battle, he was quite tall, and they asked him how tall he was and hoped to be that tall someday,” said Deputy Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan “Unfortunately, we will never even see the full growth of these poor children.”

The three teenage boys then left the store and proceeded to walk home together when police say that Battle approached them and began shooting.

Jasean Francis, 17, was shot in the back, chest and left hand. Charles Riley, 16, was shot in the back and left leg. The third teen, who was not identified, managed to escape the gunfire. Both of the boys who were shot were taken to University of Chicago Hospital and later died from the injuries they suffered during the shooting.

“The security cameras from the area were able to show the offender discarding a gun in the garbage can and then Battle was eventually found hiding out in a motel … He was arrested without incident.” Deenihan announced in the press conference.

Police also said that they recovered nine shell casings from the scene of the crime.

A prayer vigil to honor the two teenagers was held on Friday night near the scene of the shooting.

“He was a kid,” said Jasean Francis’ aunt Latonya Pettit, according to ABC News’ Chicago station WLS. “Liked video games, snacks. That was his thing. He would walk into this hospital gift shop daily and purchase snacks.”

“He was nice to seniors on the block,” said another of Francis’ aunts, Keena Hoyle. “The nurses looked forward to him coming over there daily. They brought over to the family roses. They watched him grow up as a child.”

Authorities are still trying to understand the motive behind the shootings.

“There was no altercation,” said Deenihan. “There was nothing that would have set off Battle to be angry at these kids. He is about 6’3”, 6’4”, and they literally just asked him how tall he was because he is extremely tall.”

Battle was denied bond and has been charged with two counts of first degree murder. Police said he had a previous conviction for aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, for which he received probation.

“Justice was very swift in this case because we got help from the community,” Deenihan declared during his public statement to the press. “The offender was identified quickly because the community called the detectives and they told them that was Battle in the video. That is how this case broke. The private security camera footage provided to CPD was incredibly valuable in this case. The fact that detectives can now retrieve this footage quickly and then request the help of the community to identify these [kinds of] offenders is invaluable.”

“This is just one example of how Chicago can help improve the public safety by working together to remove these very dangerous offenders from the streets,” said Deenihan.

A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now killed more than 499,000 people worldwide.

Over 10 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some governments are hiding the scope of their nations’ outbreaks.

The United States has become the worst-affected country, with more than 2.5 million diagnosed cases and at least 125,539 deaths.

Latest:

San Antonio issues ‘stay home’ alert as 795 COVID-19 cases reported Saturday, a daily high

US coronavirus death toll surpasses 125,000 as cases top 2.5 million

4 states had record high case numbers on Saturday

St. Patrick’s Cathedral to hold first public mass since March

Here’s how the news is developing today. All times Eastern. Please refresh this page for updates

11:20 a.m.: Florida records another 8,000-plus new cases

The Florida Department of Health announced an additional 8,577 new cases of the coronavirus in the last 24 hours, 1,000 less new cases from the day prior.

Dade County in Miami reported 2,160 new cases, up from 1,362 the day before.

The percentage of positive test results in the state is currently 12.3%, according to health officials.

The state now has a total of 141,075 cases of COVID-19.

10:50 a.m.: 200 doctors call for Republican convention in Jacksonville to be postponed, masks mandated

Approximately 200 Florida doctors have signed a letter to Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry asking for the Republican National Convention to be postponed, calling the decision to host the event “predictably harmful” and “medically disrespectful to the citizens of this city.”

The doctors also called for the use of masks to be mandatory in the city, according to the letter obtained by ABC Jacksonville affiliate WJXX.

The letter, which was sent to Curry on Saturday, notes that an estimated 40,000-plus people from across the U.S. will attend the convention.

“It is extremely dangerous and contrary to current public health recommendations to stage a large event in an area where the number of cases is surging,” the letter states.

On Saturday the state recorded nearly 10,000 new COVID-19 cases.

Mayor Curry, who has not responded to the letter, announced on Saturday that all members of the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department would be tested after 14 employees were found to be positive.

5:57 a.m.: Global confirmed cases of COVID-19 surpass 10 million

A new milestone was reached early Sunday morning, with more than 10 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide, per John Hopkins University tally.

The current number according to Johns Hopkins University now stands at 10,001,527.

The United States has been the worst-affected country, with more than 2.5 million diagnosed cases and at least 125,539 deaths. The U.S. is followed by Brazil, Russia, India and the United Kingdom as the worst affected countries in the world.

2:56 a.m.: San Antonio issues ‘stay home’ alert as 795 COVID-19 cases reported Saturday, a daily high

San Antonio officials urged residents to stay home as the city recorded its highest number of cases in a single day.

An emergency alert was sent out just minutes after the city reported 795 new COVID-19 cases. That brings the city’s total number of cases to 9,652. Two new deaths were reported and the death toll is now at 107.

The Wireless Emergency Alert, similar to an Amber Alert, urges residents to stay home, wear face coverings, practice social distancing and avoid gathering with people outside of your household.

“This action is reserved only for emergencies, and we have clearly reached emergency status,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg said in a press release. “We need every person in San Antonio and Bexar County to take this crisis seriously and behave accordingly to slow the exponential growth of the virus.”

In San Antonio, there are currently 984 available staffed beds and 449 ventilators, or 21% of beds and 66% of ventilators.

1:25 a.m.: 3 states had record high case numbers on Saturday

Florida, South Carolina and Georgia all hit record high numbers of cases on Saturday with Nevada more than doubling their highest daily total.

Georgia reported a record high in cases at almost 2,000. The 7-day average for cases has nearly tripled since late May. Hospitalizations have also gone right back up after falling from May into June.

Meanwhile, South Carolina blew past its original record mark for most COVID-19 cases in a single day with nearly 1,599 positive tests on Saturday. Previously, the high was 1,293. Also, there were 15 new confirmed deaths and 2 probable deaths listed in the stated related to COVID-19.

The Florida Department of Health reported a total of 132,545 cases of COVID-19 with 9,636 new positive cases on Saturday. The total of tests yesterday was 76,129 with a 12.7% positivity rate.

Nevada also had never reported more than 500 cases in a day but, on Saturday, the state reported almost 1,100, although health officials later said hundreds of those cases could be attributed to a delay in lab testing and were not new cases in the last 24 hours, according to the Las Vegas Sun.

In total across the United States, around 43,000 new cases were reported on Saturday which comes close to the record. These numbers are a result of increased testing capturing the rapid spread of the virus across a large swath of the country.

States also reported 591,000 completed tests on Saturday. The U.S. never hit 500,000 tests in a day before June and has now surpassed that number in nine of the past 10 days.

12:29 a.m.: St. Patrick’s Cathedral to hold 1st public mass since March

St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City will reopen for its first public mass since March on Sunday morning.

The cathedral said in a statement that they will begin to have a small number of masses throughout the week at 25% capacity.

Those entering the Cathedral must follow strict COVID-19 CDC guidelines including social distancing and wearing a face mask during the services.

ABC News’ Ahmad Hemingway, Jason Volack, Josh Hoyos, Brian Hartman, Scott Withers and Matt Foster contributed to this report.

More than 2,300 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan in the 18-year war.

Russian intelligence officers offered to pay Taliban militants to kill American troops in Afghanistan over the past year, amid peace talks to end the 18-year war there, a military official confirmed to ABC News on Sunday.

U.S. intelligence agencies linked the effort to a Russian intelligence unit suspected of covert action and assassination attempts in Europe, according to The New York Times, which first reported the intelligence findings said to have been presented to President Donald Trump in March.

Last year, 23 U.S. troops died in Afghanistan, but whether any were targeted by Taliban fighters paid by Russian operatives isn’t known, the military official said. The official didn’t know whether Trump was briefed but said other senior U.S. officials learned of the Russian operation “months ago.”

“There is no way to really confirm if it actually worked,” the military official, who’s not authorized to speak on the record about such matters, told ABC News.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment on the veracity of the intelligence report but denied Trump was informed in March.

“While the White House does not routinely comment on alleged intelligence or internal deliberations, the CIA Director, National Security Advisor, and the Chief of Staff can all confirm that neither the President nor the Vice President were briefed on the alleged Russian bounty intelligence. This does not speak to the merit of the alleged intelligence but to the inaccuracy of the New York Times story erroneously suggesting that President Trump was briefed on this matter,” White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement on Sunday.

President Donald Trump himself denied ever being briefed in a tweet published early Sunday morning and added that “nobody has been tougher on Russia than the Trump Administration.”

There are about 8,600 U.S. troops still in Afghanistan — many are special operations forces — but sources told ABC News it isn’t clear which troops the Russians wanted the Taliban to kill.

The New York Times report also said that no decisions have been made inside the White House for any kind of response.

Besides the peace talks, which resulted in an accord reached Feb. 29 between the U.S. and the Taliban that set conditions for a drawdown to the war that began after al Qaeda perpetrated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, America’s relationship with Russia came up in Trump’s remarks last spring well after the intelligence assessment circulated inside the administration.

“We have this great friendship. And, by the way, getting along with Russia is a great thing, getting along with [President Vladimir] Putin and Russia is a great thing,” Trump said on May 8.

The President also moved last month to postpone the G7 and said he wants to invite Russia to rejoin.

“Russia is an enemy of the United States. We identify them as such in our national security strategy, but treat them as if they are allies. Why else would we be pushing to include a country in the G7 that invaded another country and is now killing our soldiers?” said Mick Mulroy, an ABC News contributor who served as a CIA officer and deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East.

Since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001, at least 2,310 U.S. troops have died.

This is not the first time American forces have bumped up against the Russian military. U.S. Special Forces have even encountered Russian soldiers in Afghanistan in little-known incidents.

American commandos also have often encountered Russian troops in the complicated Syrian battle space, and U.S. fighter intercepts of Russian military aircraft skirting U.S. airspace have been frequent this year.

In 2018, Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group launched a full-on tank and artillery strike on a U.S. special operations outpost in Dar al Zour, Syria, and the U.S. airstrikes resulted in hundreds of casualties among the attacking forces. ABC News reported at the time that Wagner was behind the attack and is funded by a close ally of Putin, Yevgeny Progozhin — known as “Putin’s Chef” — who also ran the “troll farm” accused by the U.S. of interfering in the 2016 presidential election.

“We do not want a war with Russia and we do not want to start killing each other’s soldiers, but there are some actions you can’t accept,” Mulroy said. “If we have solid evidence that this is being done and our forces are being killed, the gloves should be hitting the floor.”