Lisa Leslie knows basketball. That’s why it wasn’t much of a surprise when the three-time WNBA MVP and four-time Olympic gold medal winner was able to lead her Big3 league team, the Triplets, to victory in 2019, in her first year as coach.
Leslie tells Essence magazine that coaching a Big3 men’s team wasn’t that big of shock to her as a woman.
“I only get reminded we’re different when it’s time for my guys to change clothes in the locker room,” Leslie says, joking about giving her players their privacy.
“And then the second time is only in media,” she continues. “People ask me the question about being a woman and I’m like, ‘Oh, what about it?’ because it really is basketball. We all play this sport at such a high level and after a while, it’s like screens and picks and rolls and certain strategies that we all know. And then it’s hard effort and fight and that don’t got nothing to do with being a woman or a man, you know? You either come in and you’re mentally strong about it or you’re not.”
Considering Leslie’s glowing track record, including helping to coach the WNBA All-Stars to victory against the Tokyo-bound U.S. national team, it’s been asked whether the former-basketball star has any interest in coaching for the NBA.
“I would never say that I’m not interested,” Leslie shares. “For me, I love being a wife and a mom and I feel like it’s about sacrifices and the age of my children. Obviously, I’ve had those opportunities when my kids were younger and I wasn’t willing to do that. Now as my kids get older and they understand the routine of the house it’s a possibility.”
(AURORA, Colo.) — Two Colorado officers from the Aurora Police Department are facing charges after body camera footage purportedly shows one hitting a suspect in the head and then choking him.
Officers John Haubert and Francine Martinez responded to a reported trespassing, attempting to arrest 29-year-old Kyle Vincent and two other adult men.
Martinez learned that they all had felony warrants, and the officers tried to take them into custody. When two of the men fled, Haubert drew a pistol and directed it at Vincent.
Haubert grabbed the back of his neck and pressed the gun against Vincent’s head.
The man denied having a warrant and attempted to avoid being handcuffed. Police say Haubert came on top of the man and grabbed the side of his neck, hitting him with the gun 13 times.
Haubert is facing three felony charges; attempted first-degree assault, second-degree assault and felony menacing. There is also misdemeanor charges of official oppression and official misconduct.
“This is not the Aurora Police Department, this is criminal,” said Aurora Police Chief Vanessa Wilson.
Officer Martinez faces criminal charges for not intervening.
(NEW YORK) — As contentious debates over vaccine mandates continue with new coronavirus cases on the rise among the unvaccinated, elected officials are starting to fine-tune the idea of a new incentive by requiring public employees to get a coronavirus test until they get their shots.
Barun Mathema, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, told ABC News that the plan is a very effective incentive on paper, and it will have a bigger impact outside of the public sector when it comes to confidence in the vaccines.
“This is saying the government, unambiguously, supports vaccination. One can try things like lotteries to entice individuals, but to me, this is a serious and thoughtful approach,” he told ABC News.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last week that employees of the city’s public hospital system, which included medical centers like Elmhurst Hospital, the epicenter of the first wave of hospitalizations in 2020, would have to show proof of vaccination or submit a weekly test until they got their shot. Exemptions are allowed for religious medical reasons.
De Blasio expanded that order on Monday to all city public employees, which included police officers, firefighters and teachers. Even though 59% of the city’s entire population and 70% of its adult population has at least one dose of the vaccine as of Tuesday, the numbers were lagging among the ranks of some New York agencies, city data showed.
The NYPD had a 43% vaccination rate, the Department of Correction had a 42% vaccination rate, the FDNY had a 55% vaccination rate, and public school employees and city hospital employees each had a 60% vaccination rate, according to data from city officials. Nationally, 56% of all residents and 69% of all adults have at least one shot, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The testing mandate will go into effect for unvaccinated public hospital workers next week, and goes into effect on Sept. 13, the first day of schools in New York, for other public employees.
De Blasio stressed that the delta variant is causing cases to rise in unvaccinated neighborhoods in the city and he wanted to ensure New Yorkers that their public employees were vaccinated or proven safe.
“We’re going to keep climbing this ladder and adding additional measures as needed mandates and strong measures, whenever needed to fight the delta variant,” the mayor said during a news conference Monday.
A few hours later, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that he would place a similar testing mandate for any state employee who can’t provide proof of vaccination. The mandate affects 249,000 employees and also provides exemptions for religious or medical reasons.
“California has committed to vaccination verification and or testing on a weekly basis,” Newsom said at a news conference.
California’s policy will take effect on Aug. 9.
Mathema said the policy will be most effective at swaying unvaccinated employees who were on the fence about getting the shot and needed an incentive to do so.
In this case, time spent on taking a COVID-19 test, submitting the paperwork to a boss and getting their OK week after week would take its toll, Mathema said.
“There will certainly be some people who find the constant testing inconvenient,” he said.
Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor, said the testing requirement will put extra pressure on an unvaccinated employee to get their shot.
“They’ll have to quarantine and put themselves out of two weeks of work,” he said.
Brownstein predicted that more states will follow New York City and California’s lead and there appears to be momentum at the federal level. President Joe Biden is expected to announce Thursday that all federal employees show proof of vaccination or submit to regular testing, ABC News has learned.
Brownstein added that some businesses have begun to implement rules that provide more benefits for customers. Some cruise ships, he noted, restrict their non-vaccinated passengers from the more popular dining areas and attractions.
“It’s a hybrid carrot and stick situation. You’re giving benefits to people who are vaccinated and punishing people who aren’t,” he said.
Mathema warned that there are likely to be a number of public employees who will submit to the weekly testing rather than get their shots. He reiterated that elected officials and businesses that implement a testing mandate for the unvaccinated needed to supplement their policy with a focused educational plan.
“I do believe this needs to be met with outreach, strong outreach and consistent outreach,” Mathema said. “We do need to be tactful, show empathy and address real issues that are out there: people’s concerns over the vaccine.”
Anyone who needs help scheduling a free vaccine appointment can log onto vaccines.gov.
Britney Spears shared how she unwinds from the stress of her ongoing conservatorship battle: by painting.
In a new video posted to Instagram on Tuesday, the singer explained in the caption, “As you guys know there’s a lot of change going on in my life at the moment and today I was feeling overwhelmed so I went to Michael’s [craft store] and got white paper and paint !!!!”
“I wanted to see color and this is me messing around,” she continued. “Ok so I’m not a professional painter but I certainly felt like I was !!!”
In the sped-up video, Spears, who’s dressed in an oversized white tee-shirt and blue tennis shoes, rolls out a gigantic sheet of white paper and walks around as she starts painting streaks of green, purple, yellow, red and blue. When her masterpiece is complete, she takes a moment to bust a quick move in celebration before shutting off the camera.
Britney, 39, explained that the painting allowed her to release some of her pent-up emotions and convey what she’s currently feeling.
“This is an expression of how I’m feeling at the moment … rebellious… colorful…bright…bold …spontaneous…magical…so obviously showing my true colors,” she described before challenging fans to find a special surprise in her work of art. “If you look closely you can see find a fish in there somewhere.”
Britney’s burst of creativity comes on the heels of her attorney, Mathew Rosengart, filing legal documents asking to officially remove her father, Jamie Spears, from her 13-year conservatorship.
Rosengart requested Monday that Jason Rubin, a California-based certified public accountant, be put in charge of the singer’s finances, and called her current legal arrangement a “Kafkaesque nightmare” that has “grown increasingly toxic and is simply no longer tenable.”
Ruby Rose is “sending around love” after her recent hospitalization.
Taking to Instagram Stories on Tuesday, the former Batwoman star revealed that she had to be hospitalized after suffering complications following surgery.
“I did have a procedure and I had to have surgery, but it was fine and the surgery went well,” she began. “But then I had a few complications and I had to go to the emergency room to go to the hospital.”
The Australian actress then recalled having trouble being admitted.
“We called an ambulance and it took hours to find a hospital that would be able to take me or anyone,” she recalled as her eyes began to well with tears. Rose said even though her case was “quite serious,” hospitals were rejecting people but she was able to finally get a room “after a bit of a standoff.”
The 35-year-old actress then thanked the healthcare team, raving, that they were “amazing, all the front-liners are amazing.”
Rose attributed the difficulty for her to get admitted into a hospital to to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and urged her followers to protect themselves.
“Please stay safe, try to keep everyone safe. Get vaccinated if you can, please,” she said. “It’s just…it doesn’t need to be this hard for everyone and I just can’t imagine all the other people that are having way more, way, way more serious situations happening right now.”
“I’m just sending around love…love you all are care of yourselves,” she concluded.
(SALINA, Kan.) — NASA recently began new research to investigate how extreme summer weather may be affecting the upper layers of earth’s atmosphere.
Kenneth Bowman, Ph.D., the principal investigator for the Dynamics and Chemistry of the Summer Stratosphere (DCOTSS) research project, spoke to reporters about the project during a press briefing on Tuesday. He said their goal is to understand how intense summer thunderstorms over the U.S. affect the stratosphere — the second layer of earth’s atmosphere as you move toward space — especially as climate change causes severe thunderstorms to occur more often.
“Most thunderstorms occur in the lower layer of the atmosphere, which we call the troposphere. But when we get particularly intense thunderstorms, the updrafts — the rising air in the storm — can actually overshoot into the layer above, which is the stratosphere,” Bowman said.
He said that when this happens, the air in the troposphere can rise up to the stratosphere in as little as 20 to 30 minutes. Those updrafts can transport pollutants and water that might not normally reach this level of the atmosphere in such a short amount of time.
The stratosphere is usually dry, according to the project’s website, and the water and pollutants may “have a significant impact on radiative and chemical processes” in the atmospheric layer.
David Wilmouth, Ph.D., a scientist at Harvard University who is working on the project, said the updrafts could potentially “change the chemical composition of the stratosphere, a process that would not otherwise happen.” Their work will determine if that’s the case.
Bowman explained that the stratosphere is important because it contains the Earth’s ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation that comes from the sun. About 90% of the world’s ozone layer exists within the stratosphere, according to Wilmouth.
Wilmouth said the ozone layer is “critical” for protecting life on earth. If its protective shield was to weaken, humans would be more susceptible to skin cancer, cataracts disease and an impaired immune system, according to NASA.
Dan Csziczo, Ph.D., a professor and head of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University, said during the briefing that their goal is specifically to understand the composition and size of the particles that make their way up to the stratosphere, and how they might influence the earth’s climate. Csziczo said the research would also help scientists understand the process of cloud formation and subsequent precipitation.
Understanding the relationship between climate change and particulate matter in the air is critical because, ultimately, each of them might exacerbate the impact of the other on humans’ health and way of life.
For the project, NASA is working with several universities across the country, as well as the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The mission consists of three eight-week-long deployments over the course of the 2021 and 2022 summer seasons. The DCOTSS will be using NASA’s ER-2 high-altitude research aircraft for the mission.
DCOTSS will be operated out of Salina, Kansas, a site chosen by the researchers due to its central location within the U.S. It’s also a region of the country that’s particularly prone to severe and intense thunderstorms during the summer.
The ER-2 aircraft is equipped with fully robotic, pre-programmed instruments that can measure the gases and particles that come out of the overshooting tops of the thunderstorms, as well as meteorological information, such as water vapor, Wilmouth said.
The aircraft can only transport its pilot, who must wear a pressurized suit to withstand the high altitudes, which can go as high as 70,000 feet — about twice the altitude of typical commercial airlines, according to the project’s website.
(PORTLAND, Ore.) — After a full school year during the COVID-19 pandemic, elementary and middle school students are heading into the fall with lower rates of achievement gains in reading and math than they would have during a typical school year, new research shows.
The researchers say the results were worse in high-poverty areas and could have been even worse overall had thousands of students “missing” from school systems been counted. Separately, they say that it would take “unprecedented” levels of growth to make up for the past school year.
NWEA, a Portland-Oregon-based education research organization that develops pre-K-12 assessments, expedited research on test scores from the 2020-21 school year to help spotlight student needs ahead of the fall.
Researchers compared gains in student achievement in grades 3-8 across the school year to pre-pandemic levels — specifically, the 2018-19 school year — based on the average results of its MAP Growth assessments in reading and math.
They found that, looking at the results of 5.5 million test-takers, students did make modest progress overall over the course of the school year — but not as much as during a typical year. Compared to 2018-19, average achievement gains declined 3 to 6 percentile points in reading depending on the grade level. There was an even steeper decline in math, between 8 and 12 percentile points.
Unexpectedly, the gains in math and reading decelerated between winter and spring relative to a typical school year, researchers found.
“I think many of us expected to maybe start to see some signs of hope closer to the spring, when more kids were returning to the classroom,” Karyn Lewis, a senior research scientist with NWEA, told ABC News. “So that that’s when learning really stalled more was surprising to me.”
Lewis pointed to “pandemic fatigue” as possibly being behind the unanticipated results.
“When I think back and reflect on my own experiences in the winter, that’s I think when pandemic fatigue really started to set in,” she said. “I think that it’s starting to show in these data that kids were also affected.”
When they dug deeper into the data, researchers found that there were even greater declines in math and reading progress for disadvantaged students. Those attending high-poverty schools showed more than double the declines of students attending low-poverty schools for many grades. This was especially pronounced at the elementary level: Third graders in high-poverty schools showed 11-percentile-point declines in reading and 17 percentile-point-declines in math, the report found.
“We know that the pandemic was not an even crisis across families in our country, and families in high-poverty situations were impacted in different ways,” Lewis said. “Parents were less likely to be able to stay home and support virtual learning opportunities because of the way their jobs were structured. These homes may have had less reliable internet access or less reliable access to a dedicated computer. … It’s just layer upon layer of different factors that I think are probably attributing to this.”
The recent findings don’t show the complete picture, Lewis said, due to a higher attrition rate than normal — and so-called “missing” students likely adding to the lower achievers. The overall attrition rate for the 2020-21 school year was about 20%, researchers said — meaning 1 in 5 students who tested the prior year did not test this year. For 2018-19, the overall attrition rate was 13%.
“The kids that went missing are not the random sample of students but are more likely to be in schools that serve a high proportion of kids in poverty, that were lower achieving in prior years and that were from communities of color,” Lewis said. “This may actually be kind of the best-case scenario because we are missing the voices of many of the students in these groups that were most impacted.”
Researchers also emphasized that their work didn’t specifically address the impact of remote learning on performance.
“This national data is fantastic for giving us the lay of the broad landscape, but we really need as districts and schools come back to lean into the local context and look at our own data and see how that compares with the trends that we’re seeing nationally,” Brooke Mabry, strategic content design manager for NWEA’s Professional Learning Design team, told ABC News.
With students going into the fall with, on average, lower gains in math and reading, there would need to be “unprecedented” levels of growth to catch up, Lewis said. The delta variant may also throw a “big curveball” for schools this fall, as COVID-19 cases rise across the country. But there are signs of hope, researchers said.
“We do know that what we learned from what happened with kids over the summer months, when they are out of school altogether, the kids that seem to lose the most across the summer period are also those that tend to rebound the quickest when they’re back in the classroom,” Lewis said.
Kelly Clarkson has to shell out some major cash to her ex-husband, Brandon Blackstock. Major cash to the tune of almost $200,000 dollars a month.
Legal papers, obtained by ABC News, reveal that the 39-year-old singer, talk show host and The Voice coach has been ordered to pay her former spouse $150,000 per month in spousal support, as well as, $45,601 per month in child support for their children — River Rose Blackstock, 7, and Remington Alexander Blackstock, 5.
In addition to the support, Clarkson was also ordered to pay $1,250,000 toward Blackstock’s legal fees.
Blackstock was ordered to maintain the financial responsibility of $81,000 for the Montana Ranch he and Kelly once shared. His request to have the spousal support made retroactive to the date of the divorce filing on June 1, 2020 was denied.
(NEW YORK) — Vaccine lotteries and other incentives designed to encourage COVID-19 vaccination after the rate steeply declined didn’t consistently raise numbers as many public health officials had hoped.
Now, officials are turning to community partnerships and other means of engagement to drive vaccinations — and the personal approach appears promising.
Vaccinations peaked at over 4 million per day in early April before dropping down to an average of about 429,000 per day by early July. Despite at least 30 states and territories implementing vaccine incentives such as cash lotteries, free food and free entrance to local attractions, the weekly moving average still hovers close to 470,000.
Experts caution not to say that vaccine incentives didn’t work. States such as Ohio and Missouri saw a temporary but meaningful bump in vaccinations in the week after the lotteries were announced.
“I think vaccine incentives have worked better than we think,” said Dr. Stacy Wood, professor of marketing at North Carolina State University. “When any given incentive didn’t work, it was because it didn’t match the hurdle that a particular person was facing for vaccination. … There’s no one-size-fits-all incentive.”
But for some, the vaccine incentives themselves are a turn off. “It actually makes me a little more leery,” said Camille Holmes, a school-based speech therapist from Westchester County, New York.
Holmes said she routinely gets vaccines for herself and her family but right now is “indifferent” about the COVID-19 vaccine.
“I think as time progressed, my answer went from ‘absolutely not,’ to ‘I don’t know,’ to ‘I’m not ready,’ to ‘I probably am going to get it when I’m forced to do so.'”
So what is the key to encouraging vaccinations? For some, it might be a mandate from their employer. For others, it might be about renewed fear as the more contagious delta variant spreads. Now that cases are rising due to the delta variant, there has been a gradual increase in vaccinations, up 14% last week, according to the White House.
But for many, it’s about meeting people where they are — literally. According to research by Wood, “small incentives combined with that immediacy” tailored to a specific population works well.
This might be especially true for younger people, who aren’t necessarily opposed to getting a vaccine but don’t feel as deeply concerned they’ll become very sick or die without it.
St. Louis County, Missouri, recently announced a new initiative called Sleeves Up STL that will enlist local barbershops and beauty salons to provide information to their customers about getting the vaccine.
Randy Barnes, the owner of R & R Style Shop in Florissant, Missouri, plans to participate in this initiative because COVID-19 has been rising in his community.
“I’m thinking because of the barber and the beauty shops, people trust us. If the information is there, if the education is there, people maybe would be more apt to [get vaccinated],” Barnes said. “Those that were skeptical, given the right information, maybe would go ahead and get themselves vaccinated and even convince other people.”
There is already evidence that getting information from trusted friends, family members and community leaders spurs vaccination. Since Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson began traveling the state and having community conversations, the rate of vaccinations in the state has increased 40%, he told NPR.
Research has shown, and Barnes and Wood believe, that hearing from those who’ve had COVID-19 or lost someone due to the disease would be helpful. Barnes lost his brother to COVID-19 last April.
In addition to discussing vaccination with people, having vaccines immediately available at places where people commonly go, such as subway stations or museums can be helpful.
Whether it’s a lottery ticket, free meal, a conversation with a survivor or a trusted person or convenience, Barnes said he hopes one of these measures motivates people.
Adjoa Smalls-Mantey, M.D., D.Phil., trained in immunology and a psychiatrist in New York City, is a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
It takes less than ever to find partisan grooves these days — and the fact that they’ve been etched deeper out of the fallout from Jan. 6 serves as a case in point.
That’s the reality that confronts President Joe Biden with this next uncertain phase of combatting the pandemic. New federal guidance on mask mandates and the consideration of a vaccine requirement for federal workers run into longstanding political arguments about individual liberties and personal accountability.
The push for vaccinations has become less partisan of late, with prominent Republicans adding new emphasis — and giving special credit to the previous administration — to make the case.
Yet mask-wearing and vaccine requirements have long since taken on cultural as well as political significance, and the fallout of Biden’s latest comments offer just a taste. Former President Donald Trump is offering strong pushback to mandates, and consider as well how readily some Republicans are using Dr. Anthony Fauci as a foil — raising money off the mention of his name, and even threatening legal action against him.
Biden indicated that he will outline next steps in the push to vaccinate the country on Thursday, as some statistics showing rates going up of late. The president on Tuesday also served up a reminder that as a candidate he “promised to be straight with you about COVID — good news or bad.”
Another reminder: 11 months ago, Biden said he wouldn’t hesitate to order another shutdown if that’s what his advisers recommended.
“I would shut it down; I would listen to the scientists,” he told ABC “World News Tonight” Anchor David Muir last August.
The campaign was quick to clarify that comment at the time. Biden’s statement Tuesday about masks and vaccines framed them as a way “to avoid the kind of lockdowns, shutdowns, school closures and disruptions we faced in 2020.”
“We are not going back to that,” the president said.
The RUNDOWN with Averi Harper
The testimony of Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn underscored the additional layer of trauma Black law enforcement officers experienced on Jan. 6.
Dunn’s heartbreaking testimony chronicled the racial slurs he endured as he tried to defend the seat of our nation’s democracy.
Among the insurrectionists were attackers who carried Confederate flags, donned shirts with anti-Semitic messages and freely hurled the n-word at Black officers.
“No one had ever, ever called me a n***** while wearing the uniform of a Capitol Police officer,” said Dunn.
He also brought with him the stories of other Black officers, later adding, “Another Black officer later told me he had been confronted by insurrectionists in the Capitol who told him, put your gun down and we’ll show you what kind of n***** you really are.”
For many, listening to Dunn recount the epithets stung as they were broadcast uncensored. The attack at the Capitol is often referred to as one of our nation’s darkest days, it’s particularly poignant that racism crept its way into the ugliness of it all, too.
It’s a vile reminder that racism in America, even in its most blatant forms, still exists.
The TIP with Alisa Wiersema
Republicans in Washington have one more representative joining their ranks — but the victory serves as an upset to Trump, despite his looming influence over the Republican Party on a national scale.
Nearly three months after the May 1 special election, State Rep. Jake Ellzey came out on top in Tuesday’s runoff election for Texas’ 6th Congressional District. Ellzey faced off with fellow Republican, Susan Wright, who had Trump’s backing going into the contest due to the political legacy of her late husband, Rep. Ron Wright, who died in February from COVID and complications with cancer.
The conclusion of the race is the latest indicator of the former president’s looming influence over his party in a state that is increasingly becoming ground zero for intra-party battles.
On Monday, Trump waded into another high-profile Texan battle by endorsing incumbent Attorney General Ken Paxton for another term. The move served a devastating — and complicated — blow to Land Commissioner George P. Bush, who was the only member of his storied political family to publicly back Trump, despite the former president launching repeated attacks against his father, Jeb Bush.
