Top Story with Tom Llamas - March 7 | NBC News NOW
[Music] tonight kidnapped and killed four Americans caught up in a shocking Act of cartel violence two of the victims confirmed dead days after the group was held up at gunpoint and forced into the back of a truck part of the brutal kidnapping captured here on camera tonight the two survivors returning to the U.S a motorcade driving them over the Border they apparently crossed into Mexico seeking a cosmetic procedure tonight we take a closer look at the growing business of medical tourism and the growing dangers patients can encounter when looking for a deal South of the Border also in Mexico tonight the troubling Discovery inside of a freight truck 340 migrants packed inside nearly a third of them unaccompanied minors the incident part of the record surge in migration leading President Biden to reconsider his policy on detaining migrant families what sources are telling NBC news about what could be a major reversal Terror in the air disturbing new video emerging from an incident we told you about last night a passenger threatening to kill every man on board his flight to Boston before stabbing a flight attendant the emergency safety Summit now scheduled for next week the DeSantis road map the Florida governor dubbing his State a blueprint for the nation in his annual address doubling down on culture War issues at the center of conservative Politics the line of attack former president Trump is trying to use against the Florida governor tonight we take a closer look at why Trump's attack may not stick Fab and fraud how one influencer used coveted relief funds to build a luxury lifestyle for herself posing with the Rolls-Royce and designer handbags and why she's now facing up to 60 years in prison plus crashing the podcast the dramatic moment a car slams into a coffee shop right in the middle of a podcast recording and could a robot be coming for your job the new study from Princeton University that named the top 20 occupations at risk of being replaced by AI technology did yours make the list top story starts right now [Music] and good evening we begin top story tonight with that shocking story out of Mexico a group of Americans caught in the crosshairs of cartel violence just over the U.S border four of them kidnapped and tonight two of them have been returned alive the other two tragically found dead this of course the video that stunned the nation you can see the men in bulletproof vests right loading one woman into the back of a truck others being dragged along the ground and I want to show you exactly where this all happened this horror unfolding in the border state of the mulipas one of the six locations in Mexico that the U.S state department has
classified as a do not travel zone due to the likelihood of life-threatening risks and if we come in closer you can see that the city of Matamoros right over here where the kidnapping took place right in that red Danger Zone near the border and the location though despite all the risks make it a popular spot for some Americans looking across into Mexico for cheaper medication or medical procedures and you can see why look how close this is to Brownsville Texas to just two and a half miles by car this line right here the path those four Americans took just to get in when they traveled and today it's the same path the two survivors were brought back on you can see the motorcade with ambulances and military vehicles crossing the International Bridge the mother of Latavia Washington McGee telling NBC News her daughter was one of the two survivors law enforcement tonight telling us she had gone to Mexico for a medical procedure Gabe Gutierrez is in her hometown of Lake City South Carolina tonight and leads us off tonight the two Americans who survived the Brazen kidnapping are back on U.S soil after a harrowing few days Latavia Washington McGee seen here today in an ambulance is among the survivors her mother who spoke with her directly tells NBC News the violent abduction caught on camera the victims dragged onto this white pickup truck the FBI says gunmen had opened fire on the group shortly after they'd crossed the Texas border into metamoras Mexico today authorities confirmed two of The Americans had been killed we extend our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of deceased McGee was joined by her cousin shine water and friend zindel Brown and Eric James Williams on the days long trip from their homes in South Carolina to Mexico but what a law enforcement official familiar with the matter says was a cosmetic medical procedure Mexican authorities say Williams also survived but was shot in the leg we spoke with his wife Michelle today by phone I didn't know anything until Sunday morning um when the FBI came everything just things come through to me she says she spoke with her husband for a few minutes today before he went into surgery says the four were childhood friends taking the trip together to share driving responsibilities so-called medical tourism is on the rise pre-pandemic an estimated 1.2 million Americans traveled to Mexico each year for elective medical treatment mostly cosmetic procedures and complex Dentistry but Matamoros is in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas which is the state department classifies as level four do not travel violence there has intensified among warring factions of the notorious Gulf cartel today the governor of talmar Lipa said one person who was guarding the kidnapping victims was arrested they were found in a wooden house in Matamoros and over the past three days investigators say they've been moved to several locations including a medical clinic to create confusion the cartels are responsible for the deaths of Americans and we are fighting as hard as possible the DEA and the FBI are doing everything possible all right Gabe Gutierrez joins us now from the victim's Hometown there in South Carolina I guess Gabe the big question still is why have authorities shared any details on the moments leading up to the kidnapping well Tom a law enforcement source with knowledge of the matter says that the evidence suggests that the group of Americans was targeted mistakenly right after they got over the border and the source says one theory is that the cartel gunman may have believed that the group was Haitian Smugglers encroaching on their Turf pump all right Gabe Gutierrez with the sad developments there out of South Carolina with those family members Gabe we appreciate it for more on the kidnapping and the ongoing violence in Mexico we're joined Now by retired FBI agent Jennifer coffendaffer Jennifer thanks for joining top story tonight there's really two parts of this story right there there's these Americans crossing the border into Matamoros which you know not not too long ago was an area where a lot of Mexicans could live peacefully they would cross over into Brownsville Texas people could go to school they could work across the border and it was safe not the situation anymore then you have this case of obviously medical tourism which is a separate Factor talk to us about how these cartels are operating and why things have gotten so violent as we pointed out just two miles from our border come so violent at this point because the golf cartel has lost their leadership which means the under uh members of that group are fighting for control and that is causing this excess of cartel violence and destabilization in the region in addition you have this who are also very violent and also fighting with the gulf cartel for territory you know we're approaching Spring Break season a time when U.S college students generally flock to South of the Border but as of right now Six States within Mexico have level four state department do not Travel warnings which people can always check on the state department website you can see them right here what is your advice to to people traveling to Mexico right now I mean there's obviously certain sections of Mexico that are very safe that are very safe for tourists but there's situations like this where things can turn very dangerous very quickly well certainly certainly uh if they're very specific they point out the areas that it's just not safe we know by this example uh that a tourist can come there and be mistaken and be held uh for ransom taken hostage violently it's something that has to be taken into account when you're making a decision those safe areas if you're going to to go there on vacation you need to register with the state department in their step program you need to stay at your Resort you need to make sure that you travel only by Resort uh connected travel you need to be not outside at night and just be very aware because there's a lot of violence going on right now in Mexico finally Jennifer I don't know if you have any area of expertise on this but a lot of viewers are going to be watching this wondering about this medical tourism and heading to different countries because there are countries all over Latin America that are offering all types of Health Care at a much cheaper cost whether it be Dental Care to plastic surgery to what we saw over here another cosmetic procedure what is what are what is the FBI's advice to Americans who are traveling doing things like this well if you look at the numbers uh between 800 000 and a million Americans are going to Mexico for various medical procedures for medicine and this is just the most vulnerable section of individuals coming from the United States because they're not going to a resort they are traveling the highways and byways they're going with other people they're in vance they're transporting themselves in areas that are cartel controlled and so I would say this is the most dangerous uh places that uh they would be visiting and highly recommend they not go all right Jennifer coffin daffer we thank you okay tonight here on top story we're also following another development out of Mexico more than 340 migrants including more than 100 unaccompanied minors mainly from Central America found in an abandoned freight truck the discovery made on a highway in the Gulf Coast State of Veracruz a route that's often used by Smugglers the new video shows authorities opening that Freight container to find migrants packed inside the group then climbed out one by one Telemundo anchor aranza loisaga joins us now with the details that answer these images are they're so hard to look at right almost 100 unaccompanied children what do we know so far about this case hi Tom just like you said very difficult to be able to process about 103 miners unaccompanied minors and you know the rest of the adults were inside of this Trader that was found abandoned on the side of a road in Veracruz what we know so far is that the driver just fled the scene and the Mexican authorities were saying that inside of the trailer what we know so far is that they had ventilation ports on the roof they also had fans and the migrants were wearing some sort of bracelet color coded indicating that they were potential clients from the cartels or the Smugglers as well we understand that the family units that were inside of that trailer as well as the unaccompanied miners are right now under the care of the Department of Family and Child Services whereas the adults will be processed according to the law to be able to Define their future in that country this is a scene that we're very familiar with because this is not the first time that it happens and this is the first big large group of company miners that uh that were found together a hundred and three of them we understand that earlier this year around January there were about 50 kids from Guatemala found along the U.S Mexico
border and about 20 of them but in the southern border between Chiapas and Guatemala and when you see the pictures of the children coming out of the tractor trailer right you may talk about the wristbands so you think in sense oh these cartels are sophisticated but they really are not right they treat these people like animals like products just packing them into these tractor trailers and we have seen those cases along the border where people die in these tractor trailers because there's not enough oxygen no that is right I mean uh do you remember what happened in San Antonio Texas out of 85 migrants that were confined inside of one of these trailer trucks uh 53 of them died and it was a horrible death because they were abandoned the temperatures were about 105 degrees they had no water no ventilation it was completely dark and people had just the most the worst nightmare right there you know dying and listening to other family members and Friends dying as well this is a tragedy Tom and Mexican authorities are very worried about it the problem is that uh they don't know how to deal with the situation we understand that they have more National Guard elements soldiers in the southern border between Chiapas and Guatemala trying to stop the Caravans or dissolve them before they enter into the Mexican territory they're also giving some working visas to some of them but they say as long as there are no opportunities in the Latin American countries violence corruption and crime families will try to seek for a better future for themselves and their children we appreciate that discoveries like that only adding more pressure to the White House and their response to the ongoing immigration crisis tonight President Biden is considering restarting a controversial policy to detain families at the border NBC News chief White House correspondent Kristen Welker joins us now from Washington Christian this is pretty controversial considering what the president ran on and all the Flack that former president Trump got about this from Democrats Tom that's absolutely right and people familiar with the matter do tell NBC news that the Biden Administration is considering detaining migrant families entering the U.S illegally now it comes as the administration prepares for that public health policy known as title 42 to be lifted and what's widely expected to be a surge in migrants once that happens the issue of family detentions as you point out is a political lightning right now remember candidate Biden campaigned against such detentions and got rid of the practice soon after taking office the possible reversal comes after a record number of legal border crossings I spoke with a member of the Congressional Hispanic caucus today who urged the president not to bring back family detentions calling them harmful to families and children but so far Tom there's no final decision Christian welcome for us at the white house now to that in-flight emergency we told you about last night when a passenger allegedly threatened to kill other people on board then stabbed a male flight attendant before other passengers took him down it comes as the FAA is preparing for a National Aviation safety Summit to drill down on safety and cockpits and control Towers following a string of close calls here's NBC's Tom Costello 2609 was just 45 minutes from Landing in Boston I will kill every man on these plates when prosecutors say 32-year-old Francisco Torres went on an incoherent rant after trying to open one of the plane's emergency exits then rushing and stabbing a flight attendant with a spoon he'd broken in the lavatory fellow passengers quickly tackled and subdued him so there was like four to six guys you know on him on the ground Torres now facing federal charges and up to life in prison if convicted the latest mid-air incident to put Travelers on edge meanwhile the NTSB says it's investigating yet another Runway close call this one in Sarasota when controllers cleared an Air Canada Rouge flight to depart from the same Runway that an American flight was about to land on forcing the American Crew to abort the sixth Runway close call just this year saw many close calls the former captain on the Miracle on the Hudson flight Captain Sully sullenberger tells the Today's Show this is getting very serious they are the canaries in the coal mine and they should concern us now 14 years after the last fatal crash involving a major U.S airliner the acting FAA has called an aviation safety Summit for next week the question has complacency become a problem in cockpits and control Towers I want specific ideas about how to enhance our already robust safety net with concrete actions right now Aviation is back to pre-pandemic levels flights are full and airports are full of planes on runways the question is whether that in any way has been contributing to these problems we've seen with Runway incursions is the margin of safety right now getting a little too tight and thus the airline industry does the FAA need to maybe lighten it up a little bit not so busy not so tight not so tightly scheduled on the nation's runways and in its airports Tom back to you okay Tom thank you for that we have some late breaking news tonight on the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News new documents just unsealed including private Fox News text messages testimony and emails that show hosts panicked about ratings after then president Trump refused to acknowledge defeat in the 2020 election and give more insight into how Executives allowed baseless conspiracy theories to get on the air NBC new senior political reporter Jane Tim joins us now to break down what all this means I know you've been going through all these documents right now so kind of give us an overview on the new information we have tonight you know this is the widest picture yet we've seen of what was going on at Fox News behind the scenes these editorial conversations that people like you and me of every day just sort of inside you know days after the election saying is there evidence that the election was stolen the election fraud claims that are being pushed around is it evidence is there evidence behind it and then being like well it's not really evidence that the election could have been changed really from the beginning a strong clear awareness that we see from people that these claims were false but a desire to keep fostering and talking about it because it was appeasing their viewers and keeping those ratings up definitely a lot of worries about those ratings um it some of these things are quite stunning you see Rupert Murdoch chair of fox Corporation saying you know maybe the hosts went a little too far musing on January 5th about whether they could uh have a strong condemnation of the stolen election line whether they should say you know what Joe Biden won and we're disappointing these Prime Time hosts he was talking about out musing about this January 5th hours later a mob storming the capital and then then later having to say we're pivoting we're pivoting fast we're moving away from this as they did and their own sort of internal conflict there's even messages back and forth at one point about trying to get the news division under control when one of their own reporters fact checked the president and said you know what these claims aren't true are you talking about President Trump at the time yes yes and then also there were Republican senators are writing a report that we're giving pressure to Rupert Murdoch to essentially report the truth right about the election being stolen yeah the behind the scenes here is is stunning you even see Paul Ryan from our house speaker texting being like guys is it ready to move we're ready to move trying to sort of push Lachlan Murdoch and Rupert Murdoch away from this trying to pull them back from you know what they called The Edge you know what I mean there were sort of Fox News Executives saying we're going to go over the cliff if we keep doing this two quick questions will we have a decision soon on this case and how will this new information affect the lawsuit do we think so we're heard going towards a jury trial that would start next month April like the 17th this is sort of the biggest chunk of evidence we've seen so far so what you're seeing here is What's Really Gonna for the case I was listening to the judge this morning on an open status hearing and he was saying you know we're not going to have any surprise uh surprise Witnesses and surprise evidence here this is this is the meat that's okay Jane Tim thanks so much for joining top story tonight now we turn to Florida where Governor Ron DeSantis delivered his State of the State today but many feel it is a blueprint for a potential Run for the presidency our Ali Vitale has more on this platform that includes to stand on the culture wars touting Florida is number one and working together we will ensure that Florida Remains the number one state in these United States kicking off the start of a new legislative session there that's just as much about policies in the Sunshine State as it is about a national road map for Republicans Florida is the fastest growing state in the nation we rank number one for net in migration we rank number one in the nation for new business formations Florida has more people employed today than before the pandemic we are number one in law enforcement Recruitment and support Florida's crime rate stands at a 50-year low it echoes desantis's new book released last week that seeks to establish Florida under his stewardship as an incubator for conservative policies and culture wars from classrooms we've expanded school choice and we have protected the rights of parents to anti-covet vaccine mandate so if you want to wear it fine but this is a this is ridiculous we defied the experts we bucked the elites we ignored the chatter we did it our way the Florida way descent is also taking aim at President Biden's immigration policies we have fought against illegal immigration in the State of Florida from Banning Sanctuary cities to suing the Biden Administration over its Catch and Release policies to transporting illegal aliens to sanctuary jurisdictions and railing against gender affirming care and it's sad that we have to say this but our children are not guinea pigs for science experimentation and we cannot allow people to make money off mutilating them all key to Santa's priorities and all sure to dominate the next 18 months of presidential Politics on the right as DeSantis is widely seen as the top rival to former president Donald Trump but critics even those in his own party say he may be playing too much to the extremes today was certainly a red meat speech and this red meat is awful conservative I think he's probably going too far to the right and more than he he would probably need to right now for for general election because being frankly to have a racist anti-gay gun-toting anti-abortion agenda really isn't going to play well when it comes to Independent Suburban women still the start of the GOP majority session is a stark reminder of why sources close to DeSantis vow he's focused first on his current job before he sets his sights on his next one not that it stops him from teasing what's ahead don't worry about the chattering class ignore all the background noise keep the compass set to True North we will stand strong we will hold the line we won't back down and I can promise you this you ain't seen nothing yet thank you all God bless you all right Ali Vitale joins us now Ali DeSantis is really taking conservative positions along the same path as former president Trump in some cases if not more extreme how big an issue could this be down the road yeah look Tom while many of these candidates are going to try to find ways to moderate either in style or potentially on policy and substance around Trump DeSantis is taking a completely different attack he's running to the right of the former president on a lot of these issues especially because when you look at it a lot of the red meat that DeSantis and other Republicans throw at the base is theoretical it's something that will ignite them and fire them up but DeSantis can actually point to legislating and making tangible policy moves around a lot of this red meat that means that there's actual policy to attach to his names for reporters like us it makes it really easy to see the things that a would-be president DeSantis might push for especially as he uses Florida as a blueprint but it also makes it a lot harder if he wins the nomination to Pivot towards the middle which all these candidates do once they hit a general election it's get ahead of ourselves but certainly it's something that I've heard from Republican strategists who are watching the way that this Republican primary field is already forming how they're already contrasting with each other and one wondering how does that work if you get past the primary and actually into a general and Ali we're still early but we are getting close to that point where candidates have to start to get serious about a primary campaign before it gets too late a lot of people think Governor DeSantis is going to throw his hat into the ring but we've already seen what former president Donald Trump is going to attack him on and it may be hard for the DeSantis to defend some of the positions he held when he was a congressman including on Social Security including on Medicare yeah those are pivot Points that Trump is certainly trying to point to because for DeSantis as much as he's trying to run on Florida as a blueprint he also has a record albeit a somewhat short one from his time in Congress so certainly as there's a Focus right now on entitlement spending on programs like Social Security and Medicare Trump is trying to draw people's attention to desantis's previous voting record on that issue I will say as I've been looking at the ways that other Republicans are talking about these issues specifically former vice president Mike Pence said to me and has said in recent interviews as well that he thinks that these programs have to be dealt with in in a more serious fashion because there are issues with solvency with them it could be that DeSantis then takes that attack and tries to Parry it from Trump that way saying hey look I did take these votes because I want to be serious about the way that we keep these programs solvent especially in a state like Florida that has a large 65 and up population that's one of the things that he could be preparing for but look for DeSantis in the short term Tom he wants to focus on Florida's legislative session and that's going to be most of the spring all right Ali Vitale for us tonight Ali thank you still ahead tonight the emotional plea from the wife of actor Bruce Willis her message to the paparazzi that had been hounding her husband as he deals with a devastating dementia diagnosis plus Fab and fraud how one influencer scammed the coveted relief program to pocket more than a million dollars and the prison time she could now be facing and from Boy Meets World to the political world the major announcement from former Child Star Ben Savage about a new campaign stay with us top story just getting started on this Tuesday night thank you we're back now with the story of how an influencer became an identity thief during the pandemic Danielle Miller assumed the identities of innocent people then use those identities to get tens of thousands of dollars in PPP loans fine designer handbags and luxury vacations until it all came crumbling down NBC's Valerie Castro has the details tonight the flashy and lavish lifestyle of a social media influencer helping to put her behind bars Danielle Miller pleading guilty to a 1.5
million dollar fraud scheme accused of stealing the identities of more than 10 people across the country to obtain covid-19 relief money according to the U.S attorney's Office in Boston prosecutors say Miller's social media post documented her expensive Birkin designer handbags which if real can cost six figures excursions on private jets and visits to fancy hotels including the Beverly Hills Hotel in California all funded by the stolen cash meant for covet PPP loans it's probably easier to catch her because she's on social media flaunting it the criminal complaint describing a photo of Miller in front of a white Rolls-Royce the distinct Hotel behind her investigators using the photo to match her to a fake Massachusetts driver's license that license used to open a fraudulent bank account eventually funded with tens of thousands of dollars in pandemic related small business loans when you take money from the federal government it's a felony so it's a serious charge a certain indictment where if when we look at actually what she's getting charged with it's pretty significant the charges in this case three counts of wire fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft a combined possible sentence of more than 60 years her attorney telling NBC News Miller has accepted responsibility for her role in the offenses as charged Miller who has been out on a one hundred thousand dollar Bond since her arrest in 2021 even documenting what some might say is her least fashionable accessory an ankle monitor so this is an individual actually who is flaunting what they've done and they call themselves you know I'm a con artist they're proud of this and she's actually using it as another platform to Define herself while Miller's cases high-profile pandemic related fraud was and continues to be widespread the government's pandemic response accountability committee estimating the losses are in the billions and Beyond I've said it wouldn't surprise me if at the end of this it exceeds 100 billion dollars in fraud it's certainly going to be tens of billions of dollars the precise number we just don't know yet the victims of scammers like Miller include taxpayers those whose identities were stolen and those who needed the money most every penny that was went to a fraudster from the unemployment insurance program didn't go to someone who was unemployed and that's that's a real tragedy out of this all right Valerie Castro joins us now in studio Valerie people who suffer during the pandemic are going to be seeing the story being very upset when they lost their businesses what does the federal government do and we know the White House has been trying to get some of this coveted relief money that was gone that went to fraudsters back right so just last week the White House announced a 1.6 billion dollar plan to combat pandemic error fraud and recover lost funds since the start of the pandemic more than a thousand people have been convicted of covet related fraud and Tom that number is only expected to go up a thousand people yes probably a lot more all right Valerie thank you for that we have some new reporting tonight on Bruce Willis's Health Battle his wife now calling out the paparazzi for hounding her husband in public and asking for space after the Stars dementia diagnosis Stephen Romo explains I know this is your job um but maybe just keep your space tonight A concerned plea from the wife of actor Bruce Willis for the video people please don't be yelling at my husband asking him how he's doing or whatever the woohooing and the hippie kayes just don't do it yeah I'm still here the 67 year old has stepped away from acting after being diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia but his family says his privacy isn't being respected when he's out and about not a devil any good will it spent decades as a mega star being pursued by Paparazzi cameras his wife Emma Heming Willis posting a video on Instagram saying that chase continues give him a space allow for our family or whoever's with him that day to be able to get him from point A to point B safely that's my PSA she specifically asked for the media not to yell at him when he's out in public saying she wants to educate people and tabloids after photos recently surfaced in page six Metro UK and the daily mail showing the actor out with friends in California this is a devastating diagnosis for him and I think it's it's only in their best interest that we leave them alone frontotemporal Dementia or FTD affects the front and sides of the brain unlike the more common form of dementia Alzheimer's disease which can affect most parts of the brain doctors explain Alzheimer's main symptom is memory loss but FTD patients often experience behavioral changes meaning their responses can be unpredictable Heming Willis previously posting challenges with communication are just one symptom Bruce faces and they may overreact they may lash out become you know kind of grumpy for lack of better words he can't verbalize if he's feeling frightened or if it's disturbing his peace it's quite invasive for him the National Institute of Aging points out there is no cure for this disease and medication use is aimed at reducing agitation and depression watch this space Heming Willis now posting a new video saying she hopes to use this attention to help other patients and their families so I'm going to take my five minutes and I'm going to turn it into 10 because I'm always going to advocate for my husband and while I'm at it I'm going to raise awareness around FTD and for caregivers who are our unsung heroes out there Stephen Romo joins us now and Stephen you know watching your story it sort of brings up this point where you feel for Bruce Willis because of what he's going through but also you feel for his family because it's tough it's tough to deal with this personally and it's tough to obviously with it when you're in the public eye yeah concern for Burnout among caregivers is something I wasn't really aware of until doing this story the expert we talked to saying that these personality changes can be just as hard on a caregiver as it is for the patients to actually experience them and the Mayo Clinic actually says that depression and anxiety are big risks for caregivers of these patients one of the many reasons that people are encouraged to talk about it which is exactly what Bruce Willis's family is now doing okay Stephen we appreciate it thank you for that story when we come back crashing the Pod and SUV slamming into two podcasters while they were recording what one host said seconds before the crash that you will not believe and Disneyland is about to sound a little different the classic song that will no longer be played at the park will explain stay with us [Music] all right we are back now with top stories news feed and we begin with the podcast interrupted by a car crash the whole thing caught on camera take a look at this Nathan Reeves and Alexi Reyes were filming at a coffee shop in Houston when that SUV lost control smashing into the window where they were sitting luckily no one was hurt no word yet on what caused that driver to suddenly lose control the Disney song is Zippity Doo Dah has been removed from Disneyland's daily parade Park officials confirming to the LA times that the 1946 track from Song of the South has been replaced by a song from the original Peter Pan the change comes as the film faces renewed criticisms for its racist imagery and themes it's the same reason Splash Mountain will be remodeled based on the movie The Princess and the Frog and boy meets Congress actor Ben Savage remember him well he announced he's running for a U.S House seat The Boy Meets World Star
making the announcement on Instagram he's running for a seat in representative Adam schiff's Los Angeles District ship of course is seeking California's open senate seat with Dianne Feinstein retiring Savage who filed as a democrat in January ran for a West Hollywood City Council seat last year but lost with just six percent of the vote okay we want to turn now to the latest headline on ozempick we've been covering this pretty in depth here on top story it's the diabetes drug we've been telling you about that is now being used by many for weight loss WWE International formerly known as Weight Watchers announced it is buying the company for 100 million dollars company sequence the subscription service helps overweight customers access groundbreaking new medications like osempic and wagovi the drugs reduce hunger and make people feel full longer but there have been concerns people are using them who don't really need them so I want to bring in Dr Rocio Salas Whalen a double certified or board certified I should say endocrinologist is it double board certified Right double board certified all right learning something here going to medical school on top story doctor thank you so much for joining us here I ask every doctor that we when we do the Olympic segments is it dangerous for people who don't have diabetes it is not completely not this medication is safe for people that don't have diabetes and the reason is that the effect of a diabetes medication is glucose dependent meaning that the patient actually has to have diabetes to work as a diabetes medication but if they don't have diabetes it doesn't touch the sugar so it doesn't cause hypoglycemia so that's why it's safe and non-diabetic anecdotally I hear from friends and family who take those and pick some some people swear by it especially friends and family that have diabetes but others who aren't diabetic have talked about some serious side effects because there are side effects for some people correct the side effects will be irrelevant if they have diabetes or just obesity the side effects will be the same and the side effects are very mild if the medication is used correctly if the medication is prescribed by somebody who has expertise on these medications give me an example of how it's prescribed incorrectly uh really there's very few prescriptions that are incorrectly I think most prescriptions are out there at least when it's done by a obesity board certified physician or an endocrinologist they will have an indication for this medication when you say it's done do you mean the actual injections or when the prescription is written when the prescription is written do you think doctors should be administering these shots or nurses medical professionals or can people do it themselves if people can do it themselves it's a self-administrative pen it's very easy patients can do it I mean this medication is approved for 12 years and above so I have 12 year old patients that do injectors themselves at home I I know somebody who's been taking this and they they were uh older and they said that they felt like they lost a lot of muscle mass along with the weight loss they lost muscle mass so they lost strength if you're if you're of an older age should you be careful you're taking ozempic yes any patient actually and then this is due to any weight loss Source medication or medication when there's significant caloric deficit there's the risk always of losing muscle mass and as we grow older there is also more risk of just muscle loss just because of age so it's always key and this comes again the expertise of the provider to discuss resistance training weight lifting and protein intake in the diet to maintain and preserve muscle during the weight loss how can you lift weights if you're losing the muscle mass though you can I mean you're still you're still able to and you start gradually with two days ago like in my patients little by little and protein intake and diet finally is it dangerous for a company like Weight Watchers to get in the ozempic with Govi business I mean the whole purpose of Weight Watchers was to watch what you eat to eat less to do it on yourself with their diets ozempic is is a shortcut if you will if that's fair definitely not a shortcut and you know weight loss wait hold on why is it why is it not a shortcut because obesity is a chronic disease right so it's a it's a it's like like diabetes okay hypertension but people are also taking ozympic who aren't obese and that's not who I was talking about yeah I mean you know as a as an obesity specialist yeah we cannot tell just by looking at some somebody who needs this medication or not and this goes again on like using the BMI so people that are trying to lose 15 25 pounds we don't know you don't know their their visceral fat their percentage body fat their muscle mass so we have to do like body composition on patients that they may look at the eye that even if they have a normal BMI they may still benefit from their medication because they may still have pre-diabetes and they may still be at risk because their visceral fat is high their percentage body fatty side and their muscle is slow to begin with what we call a skinny fat right so those patients that may look skinny or a normal BMI may be higher body fat and low muscle mass and they will still benefit from this thing let me give you a scenario in case because because I just want to make sure I'm on the same page with you if someone says they wait let's say someone weighs 115 pounds and they want to lose 15 pounds you would be okay with giving them those mpic depending of their height okay I'm gonna get into too many different scenarios here but uh doctor thank you so much for your time uh we appreciate it coming up violence escalating in the Middle East Israeli forces raiding a refugee camp in the West Bank killing six Palestinians our RAF Sanchez was there as it was happening his report next turning out of the Middle East and the Israeli raid on a refugee camp in the West Bank that left at least six Palestinians dead this operation the latest violence has tensions between his races Israeli settlers and Palestinians continues to escalate Ralph Sanchez is there tonight Israeli forces taking their hunt for Palestinian militants deep into the occupied West Bank killing at least six Palestinian men during a raid on a refugee camp in the northern city of Janine this is the scene inside the Janine refugee camp just a few minutes after Israeli forces left this crowd is coming down the hill and they want revenge Israel says it succeeded in killing a Hamas operative responsible for gunning down these two Israeli Brothers last month prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu commending his forces saying our brave warriors operated surgically in the heart of the murderer's den but the Palestinian Authority condemning The Raid as a massacre and people here mourning the loss of yet more young lives in Washington fears of an accelerating cycle of violence we remain deeply concerned by the sharp rise in violence in the West Bank and we continue to urge the parties to take immediate steps to prevent the further loss of life guys hours before the Janine raid an Israeli settler armed with an ax attacking a Palestinian family in their car sitting terrified inside the vehicle 27 year old nurse Omar Idris his wife elderly parents and little daughter Tia do you believe the person who attacked you will be arrested will be prosecuted why who is protecting us who which government protect palestinia no one it's just talking no one protecting Palestinians flying into the chaos U.S defense secretary Lloyd Austin today on a surprise trip to Iraq and tomorrow due to arrive in Israel his difficult Mission trying to bring American influence to bear and bring some calm to a troubled holy lands secretary Austin will meet Israel's defense minister here in Tel Aviv and while the Israelis really want to focus on the threat from Iran the American side is expected to push for steps to end the violence in the West Bank Tom okay Raph Sanchez first Raph we thank you when we come back is AI gonna take your job a new study showing the occupations most at risk due to this new technology the jobs topping that list and you may be surprised stay with us finally tonight here on top story we usually like to leave you with something positive tonight we're doing something a little different is artificial intelligence AI coming for your job I know it doesn't sound great a team of researchers led by Princeton University linked 10 AI powered applications like language modeling to 52 human abilities right and they found the top 20 occupations they claim could be at risk thanks to this growing technology the researchers said quote the top occupations exposed to language modeling include telemarketers and a variety of post-secondary teachers such as English language and literature foreign language and literature as well as history teachers that's right teachers and even judges made the list as well for more on all this I want to bring in Princeton student Edward tion Who Rose to prominence when he developed software to combat the misuse of chat gbt it's essentially he created a program that could let professors know if maybe chat GPT had written their students essays and of course New York Times Tech columnist Kevin Roos you may remember membrane we had a great conversation about what he found with some of the Bing chat GPT Search bot conversations he had one of course being whether he was whether the bot was in love with Kevin or not uh the conversation took a very strange turn but anyways we're going to talk about what's at hand here Edward I want to start with you since we first talked chat GPT has exploded right in popularity people are talking about what it can be done the positive and the negative Kevin's article also led to a lot of the conversation what has changed for you the quickest in the weeks that we first spoke yeah well first thanks so much for having me I would say one of the biggest shifts we've seen is the shift from completely Banning chat GPT which was a lot of the first initial approach in both education and Beyond to this recognition that we have to adopt this technology it's here to stay but how do we still find the value in human work um yes I think that's a that's a shift in mindset yeah everyone Kevin I you know after I spoke to you I was speaking to a friend of mine who who interviews students for universities and he was telling about a student who was in high school a little bit younger than Edward here but he was using chat GPT to help people improve their websites by copying code and essentially I didn't even know chat GPD can do that but now chat gbt can essentially rewrite codes for different websites improve people's you know web pages a job that probably took a couple of software Engineers or you'd have to hire them at least to redo your website can now be done instantaneously with chat gbt and my mind was sort of blown at how many different facets of our economy are going to be affected by this what has sort of surprised you in in sort of the research and the writing you've been doing on chat GPT well I've been looking at this issue of AI and jobs for years I wrote a whole book about it called future proof about what are the skills that are sort of immune to being replaced by Ai and what's really interesting is if you go back through history through all of the technological changes we've had as a society since the Industrial Revolution it's very rare that an entire occupation just disappears overnight there actually aren't that many examples of that instead what happens is that within every occupation there are certain tasks and skills that get taken over by machines and some portion of the workers in those fields are replaced but it's usually the people who are doing the the more robotic parts of that job anyway and So within every occupation I think there are going to be people who are displaced because of AI but it's not necessarily going to be that you know all teachers or all doctors become obsolete it'll be a subset of those teachers and a subset of those doctors who are able to adjust and adapt and there will obviously be people who can't but Kevin I I argue that sometimes with technology nowadays and apps and I get you covered this much more than I do but there is and I'll call it the Uber moment right when Uber starts to take off taxi medallions in New York City suddenly lose all their value and there's sort of this Civil War amongst uh chauffeurs and drivers in the city of New York that expands across the world my question to you is do you think the chat GPT feature is now maybe what Google was for search engines right it took what Yahoo was creating what Alta Vista was creating what asked Jeeves was doing and it took it to a completely new level and made it much more accessible for Americans because it was a better product is chat GPT that AI software that is going to sort of I don't know catapult all of this into the future I I think it could be I mean these large language models certainly are very powerful um and one interesting thing is that this is kind of the reverse of how we expected uh automation to change jobs for a long time the the thought the conventional wisdom was that robots and AI this was going to be a problem for the working class right people in manufacturing or Trucking now these language models they're doing White Collar work much more effectively so it may actually be the kind of sales people and marketers and Technical you know programmers and other sort of high education High skill uh workforces that are disrupted first before the manufacturing workers Edward you're on the front lines of learning about this and developing this how much of a conversation when you guys are dealing with all the technology is done over sort of the ethics of all this because as as Kevin's story pointed out I mean things can get really weird really fast the technology is incredible I think people sort of they're fascinated by it but I think people also have to take a breath and say okay ethically are what are what are we doing here and is it right does that come up in the classroom at all when you guys are developing these things yeah I would say there needs to be more and more a focus of ethics on the industry when this technology is adopted and I would add to the earlier point when I was building gpd0 as an AI detector I was actually using chat GPT to generate the code I'm writing someone pointed out early that's a little bit ironic but it goes to say that I'm studying computer science and journalism at school in this computer science work the technology is already changing a lot of what we're doing uh in journalism uh you know I would say earlier um I was you know speaking to a bunch of journalists asking me is this going to replace our jobs and the immediate answer is no because there are things like Kevin mentioned definitive things that Chachi PT will never be able to do like report news stories find the truth but there are things that hey it's really good at you know maybe getting people started on a certain tasks not so good at finishing the job and doing it right Kevin do you see a scenario where AI creates jobs certainly I think it already has I mean there are there's a new job title called prompt engineer at some of these AI companies where you have people who are basically specializing in how to put the right words into the chat bot to get back the right output so I think this is going to continue their you know every technological Revolution throughout history has created new jobs in addition to displacing some obsolete jobs and so I think the big question is you know how quickly will the new jobs arrive will there be enough of them to support the people who are displaced out of the old jobs and will they be accessible to people with the skills that they developed in doing the old jobs if you you know I there's so much being talked about Tick Tock and Regulation and and I almost feel that that you know our lawmakers probably do have to do that it is important but maybe we're a step behind is anyone talking about regulation over AI right now yeah a lot of folks are talking about it I would say not a lot is currently happening related to AI regulation there have been some you know a few bills proposed and there's a congressional AI caucus um that talks about these issues but I think it's fair to be skeptical of that given how long Regulators took to get their arms around something like social media which is you know 20 years old at this point and we still don't really have robust regulations for that so do you think is it something lawmakers should pay attention to oh absolutely I mean it's going to affect the economy jobs but it's also going to affect elections and information flows and probably become a major you know Global wedge issue so I think politicians and Regulators that are smart and forward-thinking are already looking at this and more will continue Kevin Edward we thank you so much for your time thanks so much for joining top story tonight we thank you for watching top story I'm Tom yamas in New York stay right there more news on the way thanks for watching our YouTube channel follow today's top stories and breaking news by downloading the NBC News app
2023-03-10 12:37
