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America’s ‘new normal’ will be anything but ordinary

(CNN)The new normal will be anything but ordinary.

“You can call it the ‘new normal,'” said Juliette Kayyem, a CNN national security analyst and former assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security. “I call it the ‘now normal’ because I think every day is going to be different.”

Here’s how life could change as states consider modifying stay-at-home orders and other restrictions:

Staggered schools days and smaller class sizes

How US schools are responding to the coronavirus pandemic

In California, like many other states that have virtually shut down, the reopening of schools is a priority.

“We need to get our kids back to school. I need to get my kids back to school,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said with a chuckle on Tuesday.

It’s too soon to loosen restrictions on schools, Newsom said. When students do return to the classroom, likely in the fall, the educational environment will be dramatically different.

State officials are consulting unions and administrators about steps such as staggered school schedules,and changes to assemblies, physical education and recess. Increased sanitization efforts and deep cleaning will become standard in schools.

“We talk about what the new normal looks like. Normal it will not be,” Newsom said.

Floor plans conducive to physical distancing will be in place.

“At the end of the initial quarantine period, schools could reopen with daily temperature checks for students and staff, as well as weekly testing, so that any new outbreaks could be rapidly identified and contained,” wrote the authors of paper for the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.

“The risk for a second wave comes in the fall when the kids get back in school,” said George Rutherford, an infectious disease expert at University of California San Francisco.

“You could have 9th and 10th grades come in the morning and 11th to 12th grades in the afternoon,” said Rutherford, who has worked with San Francisco health officials on the city’s response. “Or half of the students could come Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The other half on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.”

And some universities across the country are considering the possibility that in-person classes may not resume until 2021.

Disposable menus and masked servers

Meals here can cost $700. Now this restaurant feeds the homeless

Restaurants will likely cut down the number of seats. Mask-wearing dinerscould be greeted by servers in masks and gloves with disposable menus in their hands.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told CNN, “Restaurants may have to be a lot less crowded to begin. We’ve got to take it slow.”

And restaurant goers could have their temperatures checked before sitting down.

Empty stadiums and concert halls

Barring a vaccine, a pharmaceutical intervention or herd immunity, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said mass gatherings such as concerts and sporting events are unlikely until next year.

“The prospect of mass gatherings is negligible at best,” Newsom said this week.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said the return of such events could be far off.

“The last thing we should do is gather, you know, 10,000, 20,000, 50,000 people in one place,” he said. “That’s, like, the exact opposite of social distancing. We shouldn’t do that until we’re really sure that we’re out of this crisis.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told CNN Wednesday night that he had spoken with Mets owner Fred Wilpon.

“I said, ‘Why can’t we talk about a baseball season with nobody in the stands? Why can’t you play the game with the players?'” he said. “Look, it would be good for the country. It would be good for people to have something to watch and do to fight cabin fever. It’s something I’m going to pursue.”

But Major League Baseball would first have to strike deal with the players union.

“If you have no one in the stands then the numbers are going to change, the economics are going to change,” Cuomo said. “If Major League Baseball and the players can come to an agreement on how to adjust the economics for that reality … that would be a good thing.”

President Donald Trump said he misses live sports.

“We want to get our sports back, so importantly,” Trump said at his coronavirus briefing Tuesday.

“I’m tired of watching baseball games that are 14 years old, but I haven’t had too much time to watch. I would say maybe I watch one batter and then get back to work.”

In South Korea, where the number of new coronavirus cases has been dropping, the country’s baseball league is preparing to start its 144-game season in early May, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news.

Intra-sqaud games, with some players in masks, have been played in empty stadiums in a country where spectators are known for dancing in the stands.

“There’s actually a picture from summer season of 1918,” Rutherford said, referring to the Spanish flu pandemic more than a century ago. “I think it was the Oakland Oaks, a Pacific Coast League team, and everybody’s wearing masks, including the umpire, the catcher and the batter.”

Still, baseball in the US may be some time away. Some players have even expressed a willingness to wear masks on the field.

Rutherford recalled a conversation with an A’s beat writer, who told him: “Have you ever been in a major league dugout after a game? It’s just disgusting. People spit everywhere. Ugh.”

Or imagine New Orleans without spring and summer festivals.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said she believes the city’s biggest events — French Quarter Festival, JazzFest and Essence Festival — will not happen until next year.

Tracking of location and other personal information

In China, authorities are using technology to track healthy people — and those who pose a risk.

Residents are assigned color-coded QR codes on their phones. The color determines what they’re able to do. In Wuhan, China, where the lockdown has been lifted, residents need to produce a green QR code on their phones to leave their homes.

To get into places such as restaurants, people need to show a green QR code.

Now Apple and Google are working together to help US health authorities track exposure to the coronavirus using Bluetooth technology.

The tech giants could play an important role in fighting the pandemic despite privacy concerns.

Harvard’s Safra Center said people not in a “high-risk” population could move about freely. Their location on public transport could be tracked on “privacy-protective QR scanning.”

Additionally, the center’s paper said, thermal scanning devices in public spaces “can help spot outbreaks and support contact tracing” — tracking down sick people, isolating them and then tracing everyone with whom they’ve been in contact and putting those people into quarantine.

A report by the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank said home isolation can be enforced using GPS tracking on phone apps.

A plan from the liberal Center for American Progress called for a “trusted, nonprofit organization” to host the medical data — “not private technology companies or the federal government.” The information must be automatically deleted after 45 days.

Jeffrey Shaman, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, said South Korea is using “very aggressive” contact tracing which looks into personal credit cards and phone records and car GPS information.

“The reality is your credit card company is already using this on you,” he said. “You signed it when you signed the contract that was in the fine print there, and they were using for whatever the heck they wanted to do with it to make money. And your phone is already using it. That’s what all the phone companies do, they track you. And lots of other apps on your phones do also.”

Changes at airports and limited travel

Monitoring of international travelers is being recommended by the American Enterprise Institute, which is also urging the public to limit unnecessary travel.

The Center for American Progress calls for nonessential travel to be prohibited outright during the stay-at-home phase: “State and local governments must use aggregated, anonymized cellular data to assess compliance with stay-at-home orders and determine whether targeted enforcement is necessary.”

Airline passengers should be required to have the contact tracing app, confirm no proximity to a positive case, and have a temperature check or show documentation of immunity, according to the liberal think tank.

Dr. Lee Riley, a professor and chair of the Division of Infectious Disease and Vaccinology at University of California, Berkeley, said, “People are discovering that a lot of business trips or small conferences can be actually done virtually. Travel as we’d known it, will definitely decrease, at least for the next two years.”

Beverage and snack distribution probably won’t change, except for the addition of alcohol wipes.

Subways, buses and transit stations should limit the number of passengers to 50% capacity, according to the Center for American Progress.

Face masks may become an everyday accessory

Cuomo said Wednesday he will sign an executive order requiring New York residents to wear a mask or a mouth/nose covering in public when not social distancing.

There will be a three-day notice period before the order is enforced, allowing New Yorkers to secure masks or coverings. Cuomo said he was considering a civil penalty for those who break the rule.

During the initial phase of the reopening, people should be encouraged to wear nonmedical fabric masks in public, according to the American Enterprise Institute. Even people without symptoms.

“Face masks will be most effective at slowing the spread . . . if they are widely used, because they may help prevent people who are asymptomatically infected from transmitting the disease unknowingly,” the AEI said.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine told CNN that American life will be radically altered until a vaccine is developed.

“Things are just going to be different,” he said. “And that’s the sad truth.”

09.05.19 telecommunications

The death toll in the Bahamas is likely going to soar, officials say

(CNN)Amid rescues of people in hurricane-devastated areas, officials in the Bahamas raised the death toll from Hurricane Dorian, brought in body bags and coolers and said hundreds of residents remain missing.

“Literally hundreds, up to thousands, of people are still missing,” Joy Jibrilu, director general of the country’s tourism and aviation ministry, told CNN’s Michael Holmes.

Body bags, additional morticians and refrigerated coolers to properly store bodies are being transported to Abaco and other affected areas, Health Minister Dr. Duane Sands said during a radio interview on Guardian Radio 96.9 FM. Four morticians in Abaco are embalming remains because officials have run out of coolers, he said.

“The public needs to prepare for unimaginable information about the death toll and the human suffering,” Sands said.

“Make no bones about it, the numbers will be far higher than 23,” he said. “It is going to be significantly higher than that. And it’s just a matter of retrieving those bodies, making sure we understand how they died. It seems like we are splitting hairs, but not everyone who died, died in the storm.”

“It’s going to be huge,” he said.

There was some good news amid the desperate search for survivors.

The US Coast Guard said it had rescued 201 residents as of Thursday. Rescues have concentrated on Bahamas’ northern islands, as international teams sent small planes and helicopters to reach those stranded and feed the displaced.

“Our emergent priority is to get the critically wounded out and help the government of the Bahamas get the infrastructure back up so it’s safe, sanitary and livable — at least on a temporary basis — for those folks,” Capt. James Passarelli, chief of staff of the Coast Guard’s 7th District, told CNN.

Teams from Los Angeles and Fairfax, Virginia, are also helping survivors on the hard-hit Abaco Islands and Grand Bahama, the US Agency for International Development said.

A British naval vessel has joined the effort, distributing food and water, and clearing streets of debris, Bahamian Minister of National Security Marvin Dames said Wednesday. About 60,000 people may be in dire need of food relief, the World Food Programme has said.

Dorian, the strongest hurricane ever to hit the Bahamas, wiped out whole neighborhoods, then lingered for days, pounding the same battered places again and again.

TRACK THE STORM

Though the storm targeted only a small section the Bahamas — a nation of more than 700 islands — it still inflicted “generational devastation,” Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said.

Service members rush to help

At least 80 people had been rescued and evacuated Thursday morning from the Abacos, a government official told CNN. Many were flown to the Odyssey Aviation center outside Nassau Airport, where a CNN team saw rescue and relief aid helicopters and small planes landing and taking off.

“Most of the operations to date have been relocating and transporting the critically injured to a higher level of medical care,” Passarelli, the Coast Guard official, said.

Many of those rescued were taken to Nassau, he said.

The Coast Guard now has 10 fixed-wing aircraft, 14 rescue helicopters and at least three different cutters — a term used to identify vessels — in the Bahamas to assist, spokesman Chief Warrant Officer Barry Lane said.

More help is on the way.

At least 8 metric tons of food were on their way from Miami to the Bahamas, Herve Verhoosel, a spokesman for the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) said in a statement.

Another 85 metric tons of “ready to eat” meals would be brought in the next three months, and the WFP was organizing an airlift of storage units and generators that will be brought to the Bahamas from Panama, the spokesman said.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies planned to receive relief supplies in Nassau on Thursday afternoon, the organization said in a statement.

“Getting relief to people in need is our number one priority,” it said. “We are doing everything we can to get aid to hard-to-reach places in the wake of Hurricane Dorian.”

The Red Cross efforts were hampered by damaged roads and telecommunications infrastructure, the statement added.

Resources have been cut off

As authorities rushed to respond to the damage, they have come up against limited access to important resources.

The only international airport on the island of Grand Bahama was devastated and cannot serve as a staging ground for medical evacuations or emergency aid deliveries.

“After two days of trying, we’re finally able to get into the Freeport airport,” CNN’s Patrick Oppmann said from the scene Wednesday.

“It’s gone. … The level of devastation is actually breathtaking. There are no walls left at the airport. The ceiling has come crashing.”

The runway was littered with debris. Inside the domestic terminal, the wreckage of a small passenger plane lay among the detritus.

“You think of the force required to throw a plane from the runway into a terminal,” Oppmann said. “If anybody was in here, I don’t know how they would have survived.”

The international terminal was still standing but had suffered obvious damage from flooding, according to CNN’s crew.

By Thursday morning, debris had been removed from the runway, residents told Oppmann, but it was unclear whether the airport was back in use.

Flooding has also limited access to health care, blocking for a time the path to one hospital with submerged cars.

FOLLOW LIVE UPDATES

Volunteers wade through the flood

Before foreign aid could reach the islands, local volunteers were on the scene and braving the harsh conditions to save others.

As they struggled through floodwaters and debris, volunteers like Rochenel Daniel worked to help those impacted by the prolonged storm.

“Some people, they were exhausted. Some we had to carry,” Daniel said. “Some couldn’t even make it.”

Freeport resident Harold Williams and his son went out on a Jet Ski to get stranded relatives who waded out to them in chest-deep waters.

“I don’t think we’ve seen anything like this in our lifetime,” Williams said. “Total destruction.”

‘You can’t tell that there are any homes there’

Even new homes built under more stringent building codes were destroyed, said Brandon Clement, who shot footage of the destruction from a helicopter.

One older neighborhood was wiped out, he said.

“You can’t tell that there are any homes there,” he said. “It looks like a bunch of building materials were put in a big grinder and thrown on the ground.”

The Abacos suffered massive destruction, the Prime Minister said, with 60% of homes in the town of Marsh Harbour damaged.

“There are no words to convey the grief we feel for our fellow Bahamians in the Abacos and Grand Bahama,” Dionisio D’Aguilar, minister of tourism and aviation, said Wednesday in a statement.

Hotels on the Abaco and Grand Bahama islands are closed, the tourism ministry said. Most of the Bahamas’ other islands are open for tourists.

05.25.19 Credit Cards

How an internet mob falsely painted a Chipotle employee as racist

(CNN)Dominique Moran knew something was wrong as soon as she awakened that Friday morning. She turned on her smartphone and saw the first of what would become a barrage of texts and voicemails.

“I just wanted you to know there’s a video of you going around with you and this person…”

“Hey, you’re on Twitter.”

Only the night before, Moran was an unknown 23-year-old student in St. Paul, Minnesota. She had moved there from Southern California to attend college on a softball scholarship. Living alone in a new city, she worked at a Chipotle to make ends meet and attended a Lutheran church.

That morning, though, she discovered she had become someone else. Strangers were calling her nasty names on social media. Her photo was plastered across internet news sites. A video was circulating online, and she was its villain. In it, she could be seen refusing to serve a group of black men at the restaurant the previous evening.

Her notoriety spread so quickly that her mother called her fromCalifornia the next day.

“What happened? What did you do?”

“Slow down,” Moran told her. “There’s a backstory. We’re good.”

But Moran didn’t feel so good after hanging up. Her body went numb. She took deep breaths. She felt a panic attack coming.

She then fell from her chair and collapsed. As she gathered herself on her apartment floor, she reached for the only form of solace she could think of.

She started to pray.

The rise of ambient racism

Just about every week we see the same story. Someone takes a jittery smartphone video of a white person caught in the act of doing something that’s labeled racist. An army of online commentators mobilizes. The video goes viral. And the person in the video is publicly shamed, often losing a job or being ostracized by the community. His or her name becomes a hashtag for hate.

The circulation of these racist outrage videos is so common that they’ve become the online version of background noise. The social scientist Eugenia Siapera says they often trigger “ambient digital racism” — racially toxic online posts from ordinary people that are so commonplace they no longer shock.

Yet there is another part of this story that is rarely told because it is not as common. What happens when you are falsely accused of being a racist in a video? How does your life change after you’ve become a racist meme? How do you handle your own outrage?

For the last six months, Moran has been trying to answer those questions. She was dubbed online as the “racist bitch.” The video of her November confrontation was watched at least 7 million times and re-tweeted at least 30,000 times within two days. The incident was covered by media organizations such as ABC News and Fox News.

Chipotle fired Moran after the video went viral. Soon after that, she would be vindicated. But while the internet mob moved on, she hasn’t.

“Life is really difficult,” she said. “Everything has changed.”

She talks as if she’s experiencing some digitally induced form of post-traumatic stress disorder. Mood swings, anxiety — she sometimes recoils when someone tries to take a smartphone video or picture of her.

In conversation, Moran exudes a mixture of defiance and vulnerability. She often alludes to her faith and says, “God has a plan.” But she doesn’t know what the plan is for her yet. At various times, she’s wanted to be a teacher, a cook and a writer. Introspective and a bit melancholy, Moran draws portraits and writes poetry in her spare time.

Moran says she’s “spent a lot more time alone” because of the viral video. “I don’t really have a desire to meet new people right now. I feel drained of energy.”

Maybe, though, there’s something to be learned from her pain.

It’s been said that a lie will go around the world while truth is pulling its boots on. That adage has never been truer than when an entire online audience is, as one critic put it, perpetually “primed for outrage.”

Could anything have prevented Moran’s public shaming? And why did it spread so quickly when there were warning signs from the beginning?

There were three factors at play that made her story so disturbing — one of which offers at least some hope.

Reason 1: The power of confirmation bias

It started about 10 minutes before closing time on a Thursday night. A group of about a half-dozen young black men walked in, chatting loudly among themselves while aiming smartphone cameras at Chipotle employees.

“They’re back,” one of Moran’s colleagues told her as the men streamed into the food line.

Moran recognized two of them. Only two days before, she said, their credit cards had been declined when they lined up to pay. She had also been warned about them not paying before, and seen video footage of them “dining and dashing.” They had ordered their food in the takeout line, given the cashier a credit card, then dashed with their food after the card was declined.

“You gotta’ pay ’cause you never have money when you come in,” Moran told them.

The men erupted in indignation. At least one started recording.

“She’s making crazy accusations.”

“Y’all racist!”

“We got no money.”

When Moran returned home that night, she was drained. The men made so much noise she had a headache. She called the police twice to defuse the situation, but it seemed like forever before they arrived.

Plus, there was something she says she didn’t want the men to see. When she handed her business card to one of them after police arrived, she said, he laughed and taunted her when he saw her hand.

It was shaking.

“I cried a lot,” she says. “Just kind of broke down.”

Her ordeal was only beginning.

At 9:49 p.m. that night, one of the men posted a video of the confrontation on Twitter. He has not responded to several interview requests from CNN. Along with the video, he posted this caption:

“Can a group of young well established African American [sic] get a bite to eat after a long workout session?”

It went viral. Online commentators pounced. National media picked it up. It fit into a pre-existing narrative. It seemed to be another example of a new form of racial profiling being caught on video.

The social media landscape had been filled with accounts of white people accosting black and brown people in public for everything from wearing white socks at a public pool to barbecuing in a park. Here, it seemed, was another act of public humiliation.

Moran, however, never thought she would be news. She didn’t even think she was actually being filmed.

“I didn’t think they would do what they did,” she said. “It never crossed my mind that it would be about racism.”

It never crossed her mind that her story would go viral either. Moran wasn’t a big social media user at the time. She says she didn’t even have a Twitter account. ” She had stayed away from her phone right after the incident, and when she did hear from friends, she thought interest in the video was confined to St. Paul.

But when her mother called, Moran knew the video had gone national.

“We’re not racist,” she responded after her mother flooded her with questions.

Moran’s mother is still so disturbed by what happened that she declined to speak to CNN for this story. But Moran’s sister, Elizabeth Perez, recalled how their mother reacted to the video.

“I just remember her breaking down,” Perez said. “She cried. She was like, ‘I don’t want people hurting my daughter.’ ”

There were obvious holes, though, in the emerging online narrative. Start with a basic question Perez asked after she noticed the way people kept referring to her sister in online discussions.

“When they said ‘racist white woman,’ I was like, ‘My sister is not white,'” Perez said. “I was just so confused.”

The incident was framed as a white person’s humiliation of black men, but Moran is Mexican-American. Still, many people kept identifying her as white as her story spread.

Why didn’t someone notice she wasn’t white as the video rocketed around social media?

For the same reason so many people were quick to believe Jussie Smollett when the actor reported being attacked by two white men wearing Make American Great Again hats, said Joel Mathis, a columnist for The Week magazine.

It’s called “confirmation bias” — people are predisposed to uncritically accept stories that line up with preexisting beliefs, he says.

Smollett was recently indicted on 16 felony counts of making false police reports — charges later dropped by prosecutors. Smollett still maintains his innocence. In a column about the actor, Mathis wrote:

“We all think we are rational creatures, but the truth is that most of us believe evidence that confirms our beliefs — and filter out contradictory facts. When a story comes along that so neatly fits our preconceived expectations, we’re ready to give it credence, when maybe the best thing to do is exercise a little caution.”

But caution doesn’t get you clicks on the internet. Why pause to see if a sensational video is true when you can quickly post it and get attention with a snarky comment?

Reason 2: The power of internet mob justice

As her video made the rounds on social media, people started stalking Moran on social media. They left messages.

“I hope you never get another job.”

“You racist bitch.”

“You dumb whore.”

Moran choked up when she recalled one social media stalker’s words. She said he threatened to burn her grandmother’s body and send it to her in a bag. Some of the worst threats have since been deleted from users’ accounts.

“I got really afraid. I didn’t know how I felt,” she says. “I was overwhelmed. What does this mean? Why me?”

What would inspire someone to talk to a stranger that way?

It’s because rage has become the fuel of online discourse. Critics accuse President Trump of normalizing racism by referring to Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and African nations as “shithole” countries. But Moran discovered that some people on the left can be just as vicious when they denounce racism.

Their criticism became so relentless that Moran began to wonder if they were right. Maybe she deserved it. An old habit resurfaced.

“I’ve been the type of person to assume guilt, to put myself down and have anxiety and depression and to allow it consume myself,” she said.

Her depression deepened when Chipotle fired her after the video went viral. The decision “broke my heart.”

“I felt embarrassed,” she said. “Nobody wants to be called a racist in front of the world.”

Moran became a victim of what one commentator called “internet mob justice.”

The writer Erik Kain tells the story of a man who snapped a selfie for his kids at a Target store in Australia while standing next to a Darth Vader “May the 4th Be With You” display. Another woman thought he was actually taking a picture of her children. She snapped a photo of the man and posted it on Facebook in hopes the “creep” would be “caught.” Facebook users started calling the man a “pedo.”

It didn’t matter that he was snapping a selfie for his kids. He started to receive death threats. The man’s life was”completely upended” by the mistake, Kain said. But truth is unimportant in online shame culture, Kain wrote, because”whoever is most outraged wins.”

“It goes on and on,” Kain said. “People are accused publicly, called out on social media. Pictures are posted. Rumors are circulated. Jobs are lost and reputations damaged. Sometimes the people being shamed are bad people. But always the shaming circumvents due process, precedes true justice, and serves mainly to inflate the sense of self-importance and egos of its progenitors.”

Still, Moran would get a lucky break. An unlikely person would take on the internet mob for her.

The internet could destroy, but it could also save.

Reason 3: All you need is one person with a question

Two days after her video went viral, Moran got another call from her mother.

“People are on your side now,” she said.

Moran’s reputation was salvaged by a stranger. He decided to ask a question no one else seemed to ask after watching the video.

His name is Andrew Hallwarth, and he is immersed in the internet culture. Hallwarth is a chatty, jovial news junkie who works in supply-chain analytics for a distribution company. He devours news sites and Twitter.

When he first spotted the Chipotle video, the racist angle didn’t make sense.

Moran wasn’t the only person in the video suspicious of the young black men’s intentions, he noted. So were her co-workers, who were all people of color. What were the chances of all of them being racist?

Hallwarth did a quick Google search of the man who first called out Moran on his Twitter page. He discovered that the man had allegedly tweeted several times about dining and dashing at Chipotle and other restaurants.

“That’s when the red flags started going off,” Hallwarth says.

He posted his findings on Twitter and started taking on people accusing Moran of racism. Hallwarth said he couldn’t stand to see Moran “publicly crucified.”

“The internet mob is so powerful,” he says. “For as much good as it can do — in the sense of fundraising and getting the word out — it can destroy, it can manipulate.

“It can literally ruin people’s lives in a matter of seconds.”

Others followed Hallwarth’s lead. An online army formed to take on the mob. Defenders responded to critics with posts displaying the dine and dash tweets.

Someone started an online petition to help Moran get her job back. Another started a GoFundMe page for her. The anger started shifting to the men who called Moran a racist.

At least one person even sent a tweet to the man who posted the original video:

“Yeah thanks for f—ing over the future black people that ACTUALLY will deal with racism. For you to turn this into some sorta joke to ruin this lady’s life is disgusting.”

The media picked up the new narrative. It reprinted the tweets boasting of dining and dashing. It quickly ran a series of stories that seemed to vindicate Moran.

Moran ended up seeing some good in the online world. She has since exchanged messages with Hallwarth. She says they share a Christian faith.

“It was a totally unreal experience that this person had this urge out there just to dig a little deeper,” she said. “He didn’t really have to do that. He did that for a stranger.”

Her experience brightened even more. Chipotle called her. They wanted to know if she wanted her job back.

Moran celebrated — by going to Twitter.

“Racism is a real issue that I do not take lightly,” she posted shortly after starting her account. “Racism must be addressed, but what happened here was just wrong. Falsely accused and in return, cut off from a goal that I worked hard for. Today I was ‘officially’ offered my job back. I’m truly grateful for all support.”

What’s next for Dominique Moran

Moran, however, didn’t accept Chipotle’s offer. She said strangers believed in her more than her former employer.

“They discovered the truth before my own company did,” she says.

When contacted about the incident, Chipotle spokeswoman Laurie Schalow emailed CNN: “Our former manager did not accept an offer for reinstatement. We won’t be commenting further on this matter.”

Moran has moved back to Los Angeles to live with her family. And she’s back in the restaurant business, working part time while studying to sell life and health insurance.

Still, sometimes she wonders: Can people be trusted? Should I even risk taking photos with my family members? What if someone recognizes me in public? She remembers how unsettled she felt when a customer at a clothing store she used to work at recognized her from the video.

There is another question that gnaws at her as well: When a crime is committed, someone is supposed to pay. But where is justice for me?

She has received no apologies from any member of the internet mob that stalked her.

No contrition from the anonymous commentators who branded her a racist, called her names and threatened her safety.

She knows she’s not the only one who’s been falsely labeled a racist.

“There are still people out there who have to continue living with the embarrassment of this thing, and people just go on with their lives,” she says.

Nor will she be the last.

05.05.19 Credit Cards

Flight data recorder recovered from plane that slid into Florida river with 143 people aboard, NTSB says

(CNN)Investigators have recovered the undamaged flight data recorder from the military-chartered passenger plane that slid off a runway in Jacksonville, Florida, and into the shallow part of the St. Johns River while landing Friday night, NTSB Vice Chairman Bruce Landsberg said Saturday at a news briefing.

The plane carried 136 passengers and seven crew members from the Guantanamo Bay military station in Cuba. Everyone survived the incident but a few passengers sustained minor injuries, Landsberg said.

The National Transportation Safety Board doesn’t know what caused the landing problem at the Naval Air Station Jacksonville.

The aircraft overran the right side of the runway at the far end and “impacted a low seawall which was made of loose stones and rocks and stopped in the shallow water of the St. Johns River,” Landsberg said.

The plane remained in the water Saturday.

Another hard landing

The ungrooved runway pavement is one thing being investigated. A grooved runway allows water to flow off faster than a smooth runway in the event of heavy rain, Landsberg says.

The NTSB is also looking at the human aspects of what may have led to the incident, including the flight crew and the cabin crew. The crew has not been interviewed yet, Landsberg said. Investigators will also look at the airport, weather and air traffic control, he said.

The aircraft operator in the accident, Miami Air International, has five Boeing 737 aircraft, one of which was involved in a hard landing accident in State College, Pennsylvania, in November 2015, Landsberg said.

The aircraft was built in 2001 and had no history of any accidents or incidents, Landsberg said.

More than 900 Boeing 737-800s are in operation in the United States and more than 4,000 in operation worldwide.

What happened to the pets?

Questions remained about pets that were traveling on the plane.

Naval Air Station Jacksonville Commanding Officer Capt. Michael Connor told reporters that first responders concentrated on getting passengers out of the airplane.

“Our first priority was obviously human life — so that was our immediate focus — getting people to safety,” he said.

“I learned that there were pets aboard the aircraft and my heart immediately sank because I’m a pet owner myself and cannot imagine what the pet owners were going through,” he said.

First responders looked inside the cargo bay and did not hear any animal noises or see any animal crates or pet carriers above the water line, Connor said.

‘The plane bounced and screeched and bounced some more’

The plane from Guantanamo Bay was taking active-duty military members, civilian government employees and their dependents back to the United States, Connor said Friday night.

“Some of them were coming back to see their families, some of them were continuing on travel to their homes outside of Florida,” he said.

The plane flew through lightning and thunderstorms on its way to Jacksonville, passenger Cheryl Bormann told CNN’s Don Lemon on Friday.

“As we went down, we had a really hard landing,” Bormann, a defense attorney, said. “And then the plane bounced and screeched and bounced some more. And it listed to the right, and it listed to the left. And then it sort of swerved, and then it came to a complete, like, … a crash stop.”

Some oxygen masks deployed, and overhead bins opened up and sent belongings spilling out. Bormann’s identification, cash, credit cards, computers, phone and passport went flying to the seats behind her, and she could not retrieve them, she said.

Passengers at first had no idea where they were, Bormann said.

“We were in water. We couldn’t tell where we were, whether it was a river or an ocean,” she said. “There was rain coming down. There was lightning and thunder.

“And we stood on that wing for a significant period of time. Rescue folks came, and eventually someone inflated a life raft that had been on the plane, and we began climbing into it. Everybody was helping everybody.”

Firefighters used a cable to pull people on an inflated raft to a nearby pier. At least 50 firefighters were involved in the rescue, said Chief Mark Russo of First Coast Navy Fire and Emergency Services.

A wet runway could lead to hydroplaning

The military often uses charters, so it was likely a “normal military deployment flight,” said retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, a CNN military analyst.

“It sounds to me like it was likely a unit, it was either deploying or re-deploying out of Guantanamo Bay,” he told Don Lemon. “Most Americans think that when military forces move around the globe, they’re always in an Air Force jet. That, in fact, is not the case. Most of the time we use civilian charter airplanes.”

A “weak tropical disturbance” had created scattered thunderstorms Friday evening across northeastern Florida, CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam said.

“Flying around or through areas of convection can be dangerous as it can create heavy turbulence in the air and a wet runway, leading to the threat of hydroplaning upon landing,” he said.

The White House called to offer help as the situation was developing, Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry said.

04.25.19 Credit Cards

How a convicted terrorist became a US citizen

(CNN)A one-time Islamic jihadist who spent years in an Israeli prison for attempting to bomb a bus was granted US citizenship and allowed to remain in the country for nearly a decade as federal authorities investigated his background, CNN has learned.

Federal authorities have been aware since at least 2010 that Shqaire was arrested on a bombing-related charge in Israel and served time in prison. They’ve had fingerprint evidence conclusively linking him to the terrorist act, committed under the name Mahmad hadr Mahmad Shakir, since early 2016, according to federal court records.

“Somebody dropped the ball,” said Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.

Shqaire, 51, carried out the attack in Israel in 1988 “acting on the direction” of a cell of the Palestine Liberation Organization, at the time a terrorist group in the eyes of the US government, according to records filed in US District Court in Los Angeles.

Despite his conviction, which should have barred him from even entering the United States, much less becoming an American citizen, Shqaire’s application was approved and he took the oath of allegiance on November 6, 2008, in the waning days of the second George W. Bush administration, the records state.

He was charged in September with illegally obtaining his American citizenship by intentionally withholding his criminal record and past associations.

“By concealing his violent, terrorist conduct, defendant circumvented the procedures our immigration system depends upon,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

Shqaire is currently free on bond and living in the Los Angeles area as he awaits his sentencing, scheduled for Friday.

Shqaire’s case marks at least the second time a convicted terrorist has been made a US citizen after 9/11. Chicago-area resident Rasmieh Odeh pleaded guilty in 2017 to illegally obtaining her US citizenship by not disclosing her 1970 conviction in Israel for her role in a pair of bombings, one of which killed two people. Odeh, who became an American in 2004, has since been stripped of her citizenship and expelled from the country.

A spokesperson with US Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency charged with combating immigration fraud and detecting national security threats, declined to answer detailed questions about the processing of Shqaire’s application, citing a policy against commenting on matters involving pending litigation.

In a written statement, the spokeswoman said, in part, that the agency’s current leadership “has enhanced the screening and vetting of those seeking immigration benefits to ensure they are eligible and do not pose a risk to national security.”

A former US immigration official who was engaged in the vetting process in 2008 told CNN that a mandatory background check that was in place at the time should have detected something as egregious as a terrorism conviction, whether or not an applicant disclosed it.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the politically charged nature of immigration issues, added, however, that the system is only as good as the information it draws from — some of it derived from foreign governments.

“Who knows whether this was in there,” he said.

Shqaire declined to be interviewed for this article. His attorney, Mark Werksman, said in a recent interview his client has worked as a parking valet in Southern California for years and is not a threat to anyone.

His lies to US immigration officials, Werksman said in a sentencing memorandum, were a misguided attempt to escape the chaos of the Middle East for “the comparative peace and freedom of life in America.”

“Mr. Shqaire wanted nothing more than to be an American and to contribute positively to American society,” the lawyer wrote.

Despite his client’s conviction, the case is an embarrassment for the government, said Werksman, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles.

“On paper, my client is a very bad guy,” he told CNN. “So, the question is: How did this happen?”

The voluminous file on Shqaire in Los Angeles federal court spans decades and continents. There are references to the Six-Day War between Israel and its neighbors in 1967, the Palestinian uprising known as the first intifada that began two decades later, and claims of harsh interrogation techniques and coerced confessions.

Shqaire, a Palestinian-born Jordanian, says his family of 13 ended up in a refugee camp following the war among Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Syria. As a young man in the 1980s, he was recruited by the PLO and became a violent operative in its “Shabeba” cell, according to confessions obtained by Israeli military officials.

Shqaire underwent training with rifles and grenades and learned how to build bombs, the records state. He discussed the possible assassination of an Israeli intelligence officer and participated in the beatings of fellow Palestinians suspected of collaborating with the Israelis, including an incident in which a man was stabbed, according to the records.

In December of 1988, the records state, Shqaire and an accomplice built a pipe bomb. The accomplice placed it along the route of an Israeli bus. Shqaire served as a lookout and told the other man when the bus was in range. The bomb exploded, but no one was injured. The documents offer no explanation for the lack of injuries, despite the bomb detonating.

Shqaire would say decades later that his confessions were the result of coercive interrogations and threats by members of the Israel Defense Forces. He claimed he was beaten, subjected to showers that were either scalding or freezing and housed for “many weeks” in a dark cell that was so small, “I was unable to even stretch my legs or stand up.”

He also accused Israeli authorities of repeatedly arresting his father as a means of intimidation, mistakenly shooting his brother in the belief that it was him, and of ousting his family from their home and sealing it shut with cement.

US prosecutors wrote in a court filing that “such allegations are not supported by the certified court records Israel provided.” Nonetheless, prosecutors said they are not relying on Shqaire’s purported confessions to the Israelis as part of their case against him.

Shqaire was sentenced to 10 years in prison in Israel in 1991 for, among other things, placing a bomb “with the intent to cause death or harm.” A military appeals court later reduced the sentence to seven years. Shqaire was released after serving just four years following the 1993 Oslo peace accords and subsequent agreements.

He first came to the United States on a visitor’s visa in 1999, records show.

That same year, he got married to a US citizen in a so-called green card marriage. He paid his bride, whom he first met on their wedding day, $500, the woman would later tell federal investigators.

Trump: We don’t want them here

His attempt to obtain a green card through the marriage failed when it ended in divorce in 2002. But Shqaire married a second time later that same year. This time the union lasted longer, and he was able to apply for and receive status as a legal permanent resident. Throughout the process, he indicated he’d never been arrested and was not a member of any group, according to records.

In 2008, in the final stage of his pursuit of US citizenship, he was questioned under oath by an immigration officer in Los Angeles. He again omitted his past conviction and ties to the PLO.

The US immigration officer who handled Shqaire’s application said she relied on him to “provide complete and truthful answers” about his criminal past and associations, according to court records. Had he done so, the records state, she would have requested further documentation.

Instead, she approved his application.

Two years later, Shqaire came onto the radar of US terrorism investigators, according to documents and interviews. He was questioned about repeated money transfers to the Palestinian city of Ramallah and was characterized in court records as a “subject of interest” to the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Los Angeles in 2011.

Shqaire was never charged in connection with the money transfers, but he was convicted of grand theft in 2011 for his involvement in a credit card fraud scheme. He was given a suspended sentence of five years in state prison and spent four months in county jail, records show. He was also placed on probation for five years.

Werksman, Shqaire’s attorney, said in a recent interview that his client had been maxing out credit cards to get a new business off the ground, and that the money being sent overseas was merely to assist family, not for anything nefarious.

While being questioned in 2010, Shqaire acknowledged having been “arrested and incarcerated in Israel on two different occasions,” according to documents recounting the interview. But prosecutors say he falsely told investigators at the time that he was arrested for taking part in demonstrations, not terrorism.

“He stated that he was young and stupid at the time but was influenced by seeing innocent Palestinian men, women, and children injured or killed by Israelis,” according to court documents. “Shqaire claimed he would have never participated in events if he knew the consequences.” He said he did not recall whether he’d disclosed his arrests to US immigration officials, the documents state.

For years, federal authorities continued working behind the scenes to unearth Shqaire’s past.

By 2013, they’d obtained certified Israeli court documents related to his conviction and submitted to them to Hebrew language specialists for translation to English. The translated documents were then provided to Department of Homeland Security agents and federal prosecutors “on a rolling basis” over time.

In February 2016 a forensic expert with the Department of Homeland Security was able to match Shqaire’s prints from his 2010 arrest in California with those from his 1990 arrest in Israel under the name Mahmad Hadr Mahmad Shakir.

Finally, in October of last year, agents armed with a search warrant raided Shqaires’ apartment south of Los Angeles, and he was arrested and charged with unlawful procurement of US citizenship.

In January he entered into a plea agreement subjecting him to the possibility of prison time, and agreeing to the loss of his citizenship and removal from the country.

Werksman is seeking a sentence of probation, arguing that Shqaire relinquishing his cherished US citizenship and being expelled from the country “will serve as a reminder of his mistake for the rest of his life.”

The lawyer submitted letters from several of Shqaire’s friends who described him as a kind-hearted, generous role model and mentor. He was a guy, as one former boss put it, “who just wants to live his life, ride his bike, go to the beach, not bother anybody.”

A younger co-worker recalled Shqaire, whom he referred to by the nickname “Moe,” as someone who routinely bought food for the homeless and whose good deeds have “a domino effect where he influences others in a positive way.”

“The Moe you see today,” Joseph Sandoval wrote to the judge, “should not be judged the same as the Moe from many years ago.”

Though Shqaire’s offense is a relatively minor one when it comes to federal sentencing guidelines, prosecutors asked the judge to put him behind bars for 16 months for what they referred to as his “attack on our immigration system.”

09.20.17 banks

Hurricane Jose may threaten Northeast next week

(CNN)Tropical Storm Jose has strengthened back into a hurricane, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The storm, which could bring rain and wind to the northeastern United States later this week. It had maximum sustained winds of nearly 80 mph and was 550 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, early Saturday, according to the hurricane center.

Jose remains out in the Atlantic Ocean and is moving toward the northwest, and that motion will bring it closer to the United States through the weekend. Just how far it moves west before turning to the north will tell forecasters a great deal about the likelihood of whether it will make landfall somewhere along the eastern US coastline.

The National Hurricane Center has included parts of the United States, from New Jersey up to New England, in its “cone of uncertainty,” which shows the probable track of the center of a storm over a five-day period. The cone includes the New Jersey coastline, Long Island, most of Connecticut and Massachusetts and all of Rhode Island.

A majority of the models keep the center of the storm over the ocean, including the major global models the GFS — the American forecast model — and the ECMWF — the European one.

Still, the proximity to land will likely bring strong gusting winds and rain to the Northeast, including New York City, by the middle of next week. In addition, tropical-storm-force winds could extend to North Carolina’s Outer Banks on Monday, the National Hurricane Center said.

The official forecast track from the hurricane center puts Jose as a strong tropical storm Wednesday 225 miles southeast of New York. Coincidentally, the average track error for the forecast at five days is 225 miles. The forecast gives about a 1-in-4 chance of seeing tropical-storm-force winds — more than 39 mph — in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

You can track the storm here.

At one point last weekend, Jose was a Category 4 hurricane.

But the window for intensification looks to last the weekend only. After that, an increase in wind shear and cooler ocean temperatures should begin to weaken Jose as it approaches the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast coasts next week.

No matter its path, Jose’s ocean swells are likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions in Bermuda, the Bahamas, the northern coasts of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, and the US Southeast, the hurricane center said.

The hurricane season lasts through November. Two major hurricanes, Harvey and Irma, have made landfall in the United States already this year.

09.18.17 banks

Tropical Storm Jose’s forecast path shifts west toward US

(CNN)The so-called cone of uncertainty for Tropical Storm Jose now includes North Carolina’s Outer Banks, Maryland and Delaware, after the National Hurricane Center on Thursday shifted its potential path west.

The cone shows the probable track of the center of a storm over a five-day period.

With maximum sustained winds of 70 mph, Jose is a tropical storm after being a hurricane through the week. The storm is expected to strengthen and become a hurricane again by this weekend, the center said. At one point last weekend, Jose was a Category 4 hurricane.

Jose, which recently completed an odd clockwise loop, is forecast to move closer to the United States before turning north. The vast majority of computer models still keep the storm out to sea, but a few show it making a potential landfall along the East Coast, CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller said.

“Jose could produce other direct impacts next week along portions of the east coast of the United States from North Carolina northward to New England, but it is too soon to determine what those impacts might be or where they could occur,” the hurricane center said.

Track the storm here

The inclusion of the Outer Banks in Thursday’s advisories marked the first time the United States mainland has been in the forecast cone tracking Jose.

As of 11 pm on Thursday, Jose was in the southwest Atlantic Ocean, about 375 miles northeast of the southeastern Bahamas, and was moving west-northwest at 8 mph.

No matter its path, Tropical Storm Jose is expected to bring rough surf and rip current conditions in the next few days. The swells generated by Jose are affecting Bermuda, the Bahamas, the northern coasts of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico and the US Southeast coast. Those effects will spread north along the mid-Atlantic coast in the next few days.

Jose is the sixth named hurricane of the Atlantic basin season, which lasts through November. The peak of hurricane season is generally from mid-August to mid-October. Two major hurricanes, Harvey and Irma, have hit the United States, with Irma also demolishing islands in the Caribbean.

09.14.17 banks

Irma floods Jacksonville, Charleston and Savannah

(CNN)Editor’s note: This is a developing story that is being constantly updated as the storm progresses.

Leaving a trail of devastation in Florida, Irma trudged north on Monday, flooding downtown Charleston, South Carolina, uprooting trees in Atlanta and cutting off coastal communities.

A weakened Irma — downgraded to a tropical depression Monday night — still packed power. At least three storm-related deaths were reported in Georgia and one in South Carolina. The deaths occurred mostly when tree limbs fell on victims during the tropical storm that stretched 650 miles from east to west, affecting at least nine states.

As Jacksonville, Florida, grappled with record storm surge, the level of the destruction became more apparent in the hard-hit Florida Keys at the southern tip of the state. Areas without water, power or communications are likely to remain so for some time.

Irma flooded portions of River Street in the tourist magnet city of Savannah, Georgia and forced police to temporarily shut Highway 80 leading to the barrier island community of Tybee Island. Water also filled The Battery, the downtown Charleston neighborhood where the Ashley and Cooper rivers meet. Charleston police asked residents to avoid downtown in anticipation of high tide.

Waters in Charleston Harbor peaked at nearly 10 feet high, the city’s third-highest reading, topping Hurricane Matthew in 2016, said CNN meteorologist Taylor Ward.

High tide today at the Battery. #hurricaneirma

A post shared by David Blackmon (@_dblackmon88_) on Sep 11, 2017 at 10:42am PDT

Parts of coastal Georgia and South Carolina remained under storm surge warning late Monday.

Irma will continue to weaken, but the rain and wind will spread further north. The storm was moving towards Alabama late Monday. It is forecast to move to Tennessee on Tuesday before fizzling out later this week, forecasters said.

The latest developments:

— As of Monday night, Irma was centered about 95 miles south of Atlanta, with maximum sustained winds of 35 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.

— A 57-year-old South Carolina man was fatally injured by a falling tree limb during the storm, Abbeville County Coroner Ronnie Ashley told CNN. The man was cutting downed limbs with a chainsaw outside of his home when he was struck.

-Three people died in Georgia: A 62-year-old man who was on his roof was killed in Worth County, which experienced wind gusts of 69 mph, according to Kannetha Clem, a spokeswoman for the Worth County Sheriff’s Office. Another man was killed in Sandy Springs, an Atlanta suburb, when a tree fell and “literally cut the home in half,”said Sharon Kraun, the city’s communications director. One woman was killed when a downed tree struck her vehicle in Cumming as the car at in a private driveway, the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office.

— About 6.2 million electric customers were without power in Florida late Monday, according to Floridadisaster.org. FEMA chief Brock Long has said some places won’t have electricity for weeks.

— More than 1.4 million customers in Georgia were without power, according to Georgia Power and Georgia EMC.

— In South Carolina, nearly 200,000 customers were without power, according to utility companies.

— Storm surge warnings in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina mean “there is a danger of life-threatening inundation,” the hurricane center said.

‘We’re definitely shaken up’.

Irma turned Jacksonville’s Memorial Park into an unrecognizable lake.

Hurricane Irma #irma #hurricaneirma #storm #memorialpark #riverside #river @news4jax

A post shared by AnaMaria (@italian_crafter) on Sep 11, 2017 at 9:18am PDT

“We have very serious, significant river flooding along the banks of the St. Johns River. It’s bad now, it’s going to continue to get worse,” meteorologist Angie Enyedi said. “We’ve already surpassed historic levels, the levels will continue to rise.”

In one Jacksonville yard, Irma snapped a tree near its roots, sending it crashing onto the car of an evacuee from South Florida on Sunday.

No one was hurt. The tree at the end of Kristine Garcia’s driveway, luckily, didn’t fall on her house.

“We’re definitely shaken up. We were in shock when we went outside,” Garcia, 34, told CNN Monday. “If it would have fallen toward our direction, it would have been a … mess.”

No electricity or safe water

Irma devastated much of Marco Island, off the southwest coast of Florida, leaving it with no electricity or clean water.

Roommates Zack Forrest and Krock Indigo rode out the storm on the island and likened Irma to a relentless tornado. “The storm was really intense, it was like a tornado that lasted for an hour and a half,” Forrest said.

“No way!” Indigo interrupted. “It was like 5 hours.”

By the time Irma finished with Marco Island, it left 15 homes that have either lost their roofs or suffered other severe damage, the fire department said.

The good news is that there were no major injuries, said Marco Island Fire Chief Mike Murphy

“We were the little engine that did it,” he told CNN’s Ed Lavandera.

Tara O’Neill arrived at her house in Goodland, Florida, on Monday for the first time since the eye of the storm hit the small fishing village at the southeast corner of Marco Island. A tree had crushed her home.

“It’s never good when you show up and see this in front of your house,” she quipped.

The Goodland native bought the home in 1998 when it was a “dump,” she said . She and her husband spent six years remodeling.

O’Neil climbed on the hood of her car to get a better look and found humor in her devastation.

Looters, she joked, could help themselves to anything they wanted.

Some Florida Keys residents could soon be home

Irma made landfall on the Florida Keys as a Category 4 hurricane Sunday, but the full extent of the damage there is still unknown.

That’s because some islands are extremely difficult to access. Southbound US Route 1 — the only road connecting the Keys — is closed, Florida Keys spokesman Andy Newman said.

Large debris is blocking access, and a 150-foot stretch “has some buckling,” Newman said.

Crews continued to work to clear US 1. Transportation officials have inspected and cleared some bridges, officials said.

Some evacuees from the Keys will get a chance to lay eyes on the devastation early Tuesday when Monroe County allows residents and business owners in Key Largo, Tavernier and Islamorada to return home.

‘It’s the worst storm I’ve ever seen’

But officials urged some evacuated Floridians to be patient and not try to go home yet even though the storm was beyond parts of the Deep South.

Where is the storm now?

Why storm surges are so dangerous

Floridians share their Irma stories

Some may face weeks without power

Florida’s economy to take a major hit

Photos: Irma roars into Florida

“We’re asking folks to be patient and remain sheltered in place,” said St. Augustine Fire Chief Carlos Aviles.

“Stay off the roads, stay off the streets, let us complete our assessment, clear the roads of water, power lines, trees and then you can get out there and determine what happened to your individual property or your neighborhood,” said Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler.

Track Hurricane Irma’s path

The massive storm triggered evacuation orders for 5.6 million people before it made two landfalls in the state Sunday.

On Monday, Cuban state TV announced 10 hurricane related deaths — meaning Irma killed a total of 36 people in the Caribbean before heading to the US.

This is the first year on record that the continental United States has had two Category 4 hurricane landfalls in the same year.

Last month, Hurricane Harvey devastated much of coastal Texas and killed more than 70 people.

Are you affected by Irma? Text, iMessage or WhatsApp your videos, photos and stories to CNN (but only if it’s safe to do so): +1 347-322-0415.

09.09.17 Health Care

5 DACA myths debunked

(CNN)The decision to end DACA has triggered a political firestorm and prompted protests around the country.

Since President Barack Obama put it into place in 2012, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, has shielded 800,000 people who were illegally brought to the United States as children from deportation — but not without its fair share of controversy.

First, some critics slammed it as unconstitutional, and more recently, a group ofstates threatened to file a court challenge to the program.

And even though the Trump administration announced Tuesday it’s ending the program, the debate is far from over.

Now Congress has six months to decide whether it wants to pass a measure that would continue protections for this group of immigrants, who are commonly known as Dreamers.

Here are five myths about DACA and Dreamers, and why they’re wrong:

Myth 1: It’s a pathway to citizenship

DACA gives beneficiaries a temporary reprieve from deportation, allowing them to stay lawfully in the country, granting them work permits and allowing them to obtain driver’s licenses.And it stops there.

The program is not amnesty, nor is it a path to become a US citizen or a legal permanent resident. Dreamers are able to reside legally in the United States for two years and then apply for renewal.

“This is not amnesty. This is not immunity. This is not a path to citizenship. It’s not a permanent fix,” Obama said when he announced the program five years ago. “This is a temporary stopgap measure.”

The program’s temporary nature was also something Trump administration officials noted when they announced an end to DACA.

“DACA was never more than parole — a bureaucratic delay — that never promised the rights of citizenship or legal status in this country,” acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke said in an internal email sent to all Department of Homeland Security staff.

“And for that reason, DACA was fundamentally a lie that left recipients in two-year cycles of uncertainty.”

Myth 2: They don’t pay taxes

DACA recipients have paid about $2 billion in state and local taxes, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates.

Belen Sisa, a political science student at Arizona State University, drew widespread attention in March after she posted a photo of her holding up her tax returns.

“MYTH BUSTER: I, an undocumented immigrant, just filed my taxes and PAID $300 to the state of Arizona,” Sisa wrote.

She also had a message for President Donald Trump, “Wanna tell me again how I should be deported, contribute nothing and only leech off this country while the 1% wealthiest people in this country steal from you everyday?”

Myth 3: They get Medicaid and Obamacare

Some types of immigrants living in the United States have health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, but under DACA, Dreamers are not eligible. DACA grantees cannot get Medicaid, either.

Dreamers respond to DACA ending

But asylum seekers, refugees and people with temporary work visas are among the various groups of “noncitizens” who are allowed to get premium tax credits and lower copayments, according to the federal marketplace website.

However, some states such as California and New York have created separate state-funded programs.

The only other ways for Dreamers to get health insurance is by receiving it from an employer, being a spouse’s dependent, going to a community clinic or purchasing it on their own outside the exchange, paying the entire premium.

Myth 4: They are going to college for free

It depends. DACA opened the doorway for undocumented immigrants to enroll in college, pay in-state tuition and, in some cases, gain access to financial aid packages.

While DACA students are not eligible for federal financial aid, some states let them pay in-state tuition, and a few offer them state-sponsored aid.

Undocumented students and the controversial path to affording college

Public and private universities tend to handle students in different ways.

In at least seven states, including Georgia and South Carolina, universities block undocumented students from attending college as residents and from getting financial aid. Some private institutions prefer to enroll them as international students, who in some cases have to pay thousands of dollars more than domestic out-of-state students.

Myth 5: They are stealing jobs from American citizens

There’s actually a shortage of qualified workers in the United States, the Federal Reserve said ina survey of businesses across the country released in July.

Tech companies in New York can’t find software developers. Construction firms in Virginia can’t find skilled builders and trucking companies in Kansas are short on drivers, just to name a few industries with hiring issues.

Silicon Valley to Trump: ‘Dreamers are vital’

Critics who argue that DACA takes American jobs point to the 4.4% unemployment rate, noting that unemployed Americans could be employed instead of DACA recipients. They also contend that if employers offered higher wages, Americans would fill those jobs.

Many economists reject those arguments, pointing out that 6 million jobs remain unfilled in the United States, a record high, despite DACA recipients being employed.

Experts say ending protections for DACA recipients would worsen the shortage of workers in the country. More than 75% of the 800,000 people with DACA permits are employed, the National Immigration Law Center said.

Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified the college of Belen Sisa. She attends Arizona State University.

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