HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – After Super Typhoon Bavi whipped through the northwestern Pacific over the weekend, volunteers with the American Red Cross are preparing to provide aid.

Traveling through Hawaii for a quicker connection, volunteer Deborah Blaze is among a handful of volunteers staying in Oahu as they await flights to the Northern Mariana Islands. Airport closures have delayed the timeline for volunteers headed to the archipelago.

Blaze is returning to the islands after joining Red Cross relief efforts in the aftermath of another Super Typhoon, Sinlaku, which caused an estimated $1.5 billion in damages there in April.

“The people are so phenomenal. That’s the reason I wanted to go back because I was in Saipan. I was managing a shelter and we became like a family,” Blaze recalled.

Sinlaku claimed 17 lives and displaced thousands, making it the deadliest storm in Micronesia since 2002.

When asked to describe the storm’s devastation, Blaze said, “It was like, it was like a post-war scenario when we first got there. All the trees are ripped off and houses are destroyed.”

As the islands continued to recover, Bavi whipped through the Northern Mariana Islands over the weekend with winds as high as 180 miles an hour.

“We had over a thousand people in the shelter. And when I talked to those residents, a lot of them said, you know, we’ll be back tonight,” Red Cross volunteer Peter Teahen said.

Teahen has been in Saipan since before Bavi’s arrival and drove around the island to assess damage Monday afternoon after a mandated lockdown was lifted.

Because Sinlaku left so much destruction, Teahen said it is unclear what Bavi left behind, adding the damages are, “just not obvious from, you know, just driving down the street. It was a common phrase that I heard. ‘We just have to clean up again.’ You can kind of hear the exhaustion in there.”

To ease the burden on those impacted, hundreds of Red Cross volunteers provided shelter, meals and supplies after Sinlaku and will do so again when it’s safe.

“I get a sense of a very positive culture here and very private culture that, they know that they’re going to have to take care of themselves, but they will need the help of the Red Cross,” Teahen said.

Aubry Hocog, mayor of Rota, an island hit hard by Bavi, told Hawaii News Now, “A lot of our utility poles have been damaged especially in the Songsong area and so really there’s going to be a lot of work that we are going to have to do, but we’re ready for that. I know that our people are concerned, our people are scared, our people are worried, but I know that by working together, communicating with each other, being transparent, that we can overcome this.”

Click here if you want to donate to the Red Cross’ relief efforts. You can also call 1-800-RED CROSS (800-733-2767) or text the word REDCROSS to 90999.

If you want to become a volunteer, more information is available here.

AP — 

An Idaho woman who said her toddler twins died last year after being vaccinated faces murder charges connected to their deaths, authorities said.

A grand jury indicted Andrea Shaw, who is accused of suffocating her 18-month-old twins in May 2025, on two counts of first-degree murder on June 29, according to court records and a statement from the Payette Police Department.

While appearing last year on an internet show produced by Children’s Health Defense — an anti-vaccine group founded by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — Shaw said her twins died after getting vaccinated. Kennedy has not been affiliated with the group since December 2024, when he formally resigned as chairman to join President Donald Trump’s administration.

Shaw, 23, was arrested by Boise police officers Tuesday and arraigned Thursday. She is being held on a $2 million bond and could face life in prison or the death penalty if convicted or if she pleads guilty to first-degree murder. Her next court appearance is July 14.

Joe Filicetti, an attorney representing Shaw, wrote in a text message that she “denies anything and everything” and that the state “cannot prove” the criminal charges.

“We will defend her with wholeheartedness,” Filicetti added.

The Payette Police Department and the Payette County prosecutor’s office declined to comment Monday.

During her May 2025 appearance on the Children’s Health Defense show, Shaw said she found her twins dead in their room days after they got vaccinated for the flu and other diseases.

“They had got their shots at the same time by two nurses at the same time,” Shaw said. “And they got sick.”

Medical experts point out that the childhood vaccines at issue — hepatitis A, influenza and DTaP — are safe and effective for kids and recommended by various medical groups.

Shaw is also a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit brought by Children’s Health Defense and others against the American Academy of Pediatrics. The lawsuit, which was filed in January in federal court in Washington, accuses the American Academy of Pediatrics of racketeering for its “central role in an enterprise that has defrauded American families about the safety of the childhood vaccine schedule for several decades.” In the lawsuit, Shaw is described as a mother “whose children died following routine vaccinations administered according to AAP guidelines.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics has asked the court to dismiss the suit, asserting in an April court filing that it is the “latest missive in a campaign targeting” the academy and its “use of science-backed evidence in vaccine policy.”

In January, pediatricians and other experts became alarmed when US health officials made broad changes to childhood vaccine guidance, dropping several universal recommendations. Kennedy, who helped lead the anti-vaccine movement for years, said the changes better align the US with peer nations “while strengthening transparency and informed consent.”

In March, a federal judge blocked the changes and said Kennedy likely violated federal procedures in revamping a key vaccine advisory committee. But the judge’s order is not the final word; the blocks are temporary, pending either a trial or a decision for summary judgment.

The Wilderness Society, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, and the Montana Wilderness Association, now rebranded “Wild Montana,” all claim they support the Roadless Rule and have been asking people for donations to oppose efforts to repeal it. But a review of the record shows that these “conservation” groups have supported opening 1,585,000 acres or Roadless and Wilderness Study Areas to logging and road building since the roadless rule went into effect in 2001.

Tracy Stone-Manning, now the President of The Wilderness Society, has been widely quoted as supporting the Roadless Rule. But while working as a top environmental advisor for former Montana Senator Jon Tester, she strongly supported his 2009 Forest Jobs and Recreation Act. The Montana Wilderness Association, now doing business as Wild Montana, was also one of the main cheerleaders for Tester’s bill

Although the bill never passed, it would have opened one million acres of roadless lands in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest in southwest Montana and mandated logging 10,000 acres per year for 10 years in the Beaverhead and Kootenai National Forests. The Kootenai contains the smallest, most threatened grizzly population in the world in the Cabinet-Yaak. Since most grizzly bears are killed within 1/3 of a mile of a road, more logging means more logging roads would be bulldozed into grizzly habitat, resulting in more dead grizzly bears. The measure was so extreme even the Forest Service opposed it.

The groups also strongly supported former Montana Senator Max Baucus’ Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act, passed as a rider on the 2014 defense spending bill. The measure opened 208,000 acres of roadless lands to logging and road-building and guaranteed grazing in perpetuity with no environmental analysis or public review. The pitiful 67,000 acres of wilderness tack-ons also required the sacrifice of four Wilderness Study Areas in Eastern Montana, opening 29,000 acres to oil and gas exploration and development.

Then came Tester’s 2017 Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act that carved up 50,000 acres of an Inventoried Roadless Areas contiguous to the Scapegoat and Bob Marshall Wilderness Areas. The measure also allowed loggers to decide where to build roads and designated 5,000 acres as a play area for snowmobiles and mountain bikes.

The bill didn’t even make it out of committee, but now these same groups have renamed it “A River Runs Through It Act” — although there is no sponsor and no “act.” In addition to the roadless lands Tester’s bill would have destroyed, it turns over management of 70,000 acres in grizzly, lynx and wolverine habitat in the Ogden Mountain Roadless Area northwest of Lincoln Montana to the timber industry. It also converts 130,000 acres of Inventoried Roadless Areas into play areas for motorized recreation and mountain bikers.

The clearcutting, bulldozing new logging roads, and motorized recreation in roadless areas will send tons of sediment into the Blackfoot River which has been designated critical habitat for bull trout, a threatened species. It should be called “A Clearcut Runs Through It Act.”

Finally, all three groups support the Greater Yellowstone Conservation And Recreation proposal. There is no sponsor and no bill, but the proposal opens much of the Lee Metcalf Wilderness Study Area and other Inventoried Roadless Areas to motorized recreation, logging and road building. While adding only 102,000 acres as wilderness — less than half of the 250,000 acres that qualify for wilderness designation — it also significantly reduces the 155,000 acre Hyalite-Porcupine-Buffalo Horn Wilderness Study Area by 53,000 acres.

Don’t fall for the con. The record is clear: these groups have supported reducing, not protecting Inventoried Roadless Areas in the past and are doing so now.

Please consider helping us get the only bill before Congress that would designate all 23 million acres of roadless in the Northern Rockies designated as wilderness, the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act.  Please also consider donating to Counterpunch to help them continue exposing hypocrites.