New Cornell fraternity calls, Russian lab plague death top news

ABC News posted the full Oct. 5 broadcast of World News Tonight with David Muir to YouTube under the title the network gave it on the platform. The channel’s own description leads with newly obtained phone calls between Jane Doe and members of Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity and follows with a fatal mystery illness tied to a Russian research lab; YouTube listed more than 935,000 views on the upload as it trended on the site’s U.S. News & Politics chart.

The description credits Aaron Katersky with the calls segment and places it three weeks after the alleged assault, noting that the recordings arrive as outrage grows on campus. Newsweek’s Bulletin, published Oct. 6 by Shane Croucher, reported that glass doors were smashed and buildings covered with graffiti at Cornell in the early hours of Monday. The graffiti read “smashed the patriarchy” and “at Cornell rapists are protected, protesters are expelled,” according to that account. Day Hall was left with broken glass and wall messages. Campus backlash has been growing over an alleged gang rape at a Cornell fraternity in 2024, the Bulletin said.

Elizabeth Schulze is listed next in the ABC description on the Russian lab death that has triggered quarantines. The worker was an employee of the Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East. She was hospitalized with severe pneumonia symptoms last Tuesday and died Thursday, according to the Moscow Times as cited by Newsweek. Media reports have identified pneumonic plague as the suspected infection. Russian authorities have not confirmed that pneumonic plague caused the death, Newsweek reported.

President Donald Trump answered a reporter’s question about the case on Monday. “We’re looking at it very strongly. We just heard about it,” he said, according to the Bulletin. Pneumonic plague is a severe lung infection caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Fever, headache, shortness of breath, chest pain and coughing, sometimes with blood, are among the symptoms described in standard medical accounts of the disease. It can spread through airborne droplets from an infected person. Untreated, the infection is almost always fatal.

The same Newsweek roundup paired the lab death with a separate federal action. The Trump administration has moved to strip 40 naturalized Americans of citizenship. Attorney General Todd Blanche called it the “largest denaturalization effort in modern history.” The Justice Department alleged the individuals obtained citizenship illegally or fraudulently. The department cited undeclared crimes including sexual offenses against minors, voluntary manslaughter and fraudulent marriages. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, a federal court can revoke naturalized citizenship if the government establishes it was illegally obtained, Newsweek reported.