(NEW YORK) — Tropical Storm Henri is expected to become a hurricane on Saturday as it accelerates quickly up the East Coast toward southern New England.
Henri is predicted to touch down near Long Island and southeastern New England on Sunday afternoon, with winds nearing 75 miles mph.
Since the coastal Northeast is very close to the sea level, these areas are prone to flooding amid storm surge, which could reach as high as 4 feet in Queens and Long Island, as well as coastal Connecticut. In Rhode Island and southeast Massachusetts, the storm surge could reach 5 feet.
From Newport, Rhode Island, to Montauk, New York, wind gusts are forecast to reach up to 80 mph, and they may reach 60 mph in other coastal areas.
Hurricane watches have been issued for eastern Long Island, parts of Connecticut, Rhode Island’s coastal regions and southeast Massachusetts. Meanwhile, tropical storm watches have been issued for areas just north of New York City, including Westchester and Nassau counties.
It’s the first time in nearly 10 years that parts of New York have been issued a hurricane watch, according to the National Weather Service, which also noted that if Henri lands in New England as a hurricane, it’ll be the first direct hurricane landfall since 1991.
Fred, a tropical depression that passed by earlier this week, caused major flooding in parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts, areas that could see another 6 to 8 inches of rain from Henri.
(ATLANTA) — Georgia businesses won’t have to comply with local COVID-19 measures like mask or vaccine mandates under a new executive order, as the state’s hospitals continue to be stretched to their limit.
Gov. Brian Kemp issued an executive order Thursday that will keep businesses from being forced to follow COVID-19 ordinances put in place by local jurisdictions. The Republican governor said the order was issued to protect recovering businesses from “another round of shutdowns.” It doesn’t prevent businesses from complying with local orders, but the ordinances won’t be enforced, he said.
“Local governments will not be able to force businesses to be the city’s mask police, the vaccine police or any other burdensome restriction that will only lead to employees being let go, revenue tanking and businesses closing their doors,” Kemp said during a press briefing announcing the order.
Several cities in Georgia have reinstated mask mandates amid rising COVID-19 cases. Last month, Atlanta issued a mandate requiring mask use in public indoor spaces, including private businesses. Nearby, Decatur issued a similar mandate, though businesses can opt out. Savannah has issued a mask mandate for some indoor public spaces, though it doesn’t include businesses.
The order comes as there is “substantial case incidence” of COVID-19 throughout counties in Georgia, according to the latest COVID-19 forecast from PolicyLab researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
The number of available intensive care unit beds is also dwindling in the state. According to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, ICU capacity in Georgia is at 94%.
Northeast Georgia Health System’s hospital in Gainesville is overflowing with COVID-19 patients. Hospital officials confirmed with ABC News Thursday that as COVID-19 patients fill up beds, doctors have been treating some patients needing emergency care inside their ambulance while waiting for a bed to open up. The hospital has also set up a tent behind the emergency department for overflow patients.
Some hospitals in the Atlanta metro area are on diversion and are turning away ambulances when their emergency departments are full, hospital officials said.
On Thursday, doctors from some of the state’s largest hospital systems pleaded with people to get vaccinated as they’re being inundated with COVID-19 patients.
“Our hospitals are once again filling up, and they’re filling up with young people and old people and those with comorbidities who have not been vaccinated,” Dr. Danny Branstetter of Wellstar Health System said during a press briefing with doctors and officials from several metro Atlanta health systems. “We’re seeing this peak rise very, very quickly, and rising to match or exceed the peaks we saw in the winter.”
Over 92% of those hospitalized with COVID-19 are unvaccinated, Branstetter said.
Dr. James Fortenberry, the chief medical officer at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, told reporters the hospital is seeing a “significantly greater impact” on children during the surge of the highly contagious delta variant.
“Our teams are seeing more COVID-19-positive patients in our emergency departments, urgent care centers and hospitals than at any time in the pandemic,” Fortenberry said, noting that there were 31 patients across the system’s three hospitals with COVID-19 on Thursday. “Thankfully, only a small fraction of children who test positive for COVID-19 need to be hospitalized to treat their infection, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t experience illness, and what can be significant illness, and miss out on normal activities like school and sports.”
Fortenberry implored all teachers, staff, students and visitors at schools to follow recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics and wear masks regardless of vaccination status.
“We owe it to our kids to do everything that we can to protect them,” he said.
In Georgia, 47.4% of residents ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated, compared to 59.8% nationwide, according to CDC data.
Kemp has not issued any vaccine mandates for state employees, though he has closed state offices on Sept. 3 to encourage public employees to get the shot.
“We have three lifesaving vaccines widely available,” he said Thursday while urging people to speak with someone they trust about getting vaccinated.
(NEW YORK) — The United States is facing a COVID-19 surge this summer as the more contagious delta variant spreads.
More than 623,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.3 million people have died from the disease worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Just 59.5% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing Friday. All times Eastern:
Aug 20, 10:48 am
Unvaccinated Black people ‘biggest group’ driving COVID spike: Texas Lt Gov
Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told Fox News Channel host Laura Ingraham that “African-Americans who have not been vaccinated” are the “the biggest group in most states” driving the spike in COVID-19 cases, during a Thursday interview.
Patrick doubled down on his comment, adding that “over 90% of them vote for Democrats and their major cities and major counties.”
“It’s up to the Democrats to get — just as it’s up to Republicans to try to get as many people vaccinated,” he said. “In terms of criticizing the Republicans for this, we are encouraging people who want to take it to take it, but they are doing nothing for the African-American community that has significant high number of unvaccinated.”
NAACP President Derrick Johnson pushed back in a statement: “Lt. Governor Dan Patrick lives in an alternate reality, where facts don’t matter,” Johnson said.
“He’s delusional. Black Texans are not the driving force behind the surge of COVID cases in Texas. His statement is not only baseless, it’s racist. Falsely casting blame on the Black community is one of the oldest tricks in the book, and we expect better from an elected official.”
Aug 19, 5:57 pm
Mississippi’s only pediatric hospital sees record COVID-19 patients
Children’s of Mississippi, the state’s only pediatric hospital, reported a record number of patients Thursday.
There are 28 children, all unvaccinated, with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19, the highest since the start of the pandemic, the hospital said on Facebook. Among those, eight children are in the intensive care unit, including five not yet old enough to receive the vaccine, the hospital said.
“The best way to protect ALL of Mississippi’s kids from COVID-19 is for everyone age 12 and up to get vaccinated,” said the hospital, which is part of the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.
Nearly 43% of Mississippi residents ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated, according to CDC data, one of the lowest rates in the country.
(COLLEGE GROVE, Tenn.) — Amid a heated debate playing out in school districts across the country over whether students should be required to wear face masks, a Tennessee dad is going viral for an impassioned speech in which he explained why he is having his 5-year-old daughter wear a mask.
“She went to school and was one of just a few kids in her class wearing a mask, which made her ask why she had to. My answer was because we want to take care of other people,” Justin Kanew, of College Grove, Tennessee, said during a school board meeting Monday night. “She’s 5 years old but she understood that concept, and it’s disappointing that more adults around here can’t seem to grasp it.”
Kanew, also the dad of a 2-year-old son, spoke before the Williamson County Board of Education, which last week, just before the start of school, approved a temporary mask requirement for elementary school students, staff and visitors until Sept. 21, according to the school district’s website.
The school board’s ruling prompted an outcry from groups who opposed the mask requirement. Videos shared on social media showed people wearing masks heckled and confronted as they left the special session where the board ruled on masks.
Kanew said he had not planned to speak at Monday’s meeting, which he attended to cover for his website, TN Holler, but decided to do so when he saw so many people speaking out against masks in schools.
“It just seemed important for the school board to hear that there are other voices out there,” Kanew told “Good Morning America.” “I just hope people will really continue to make their voices heard, especially in counties like ours where we can sometimes be drowned out by the other side of this discussion.”
Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics , an organization of nearly 70,000 pediatricians, have called for schools to enforce universal masking mandates as the United States experiences a COVID-19 surge, including among children, brought on by the delta variant and low vaccination rates.
Some governors in states like Florida and Texas have banned mask mandates and threatened to remove local school officials who break state rules and require masks for students. In Tennessee, Gov. Bill Lee this week signed an executive order requiring schools to allow parents to opt their children out of a school mask mandate.
Kanew said his daughter told him she is one of just a few students in her class to wear a mask, but will continue to wear one regardless.
“To her credit, she’s totally seemed to understand that concept of helping other people and we’ve reiterated that to her over and over again,” he said. “We just tell her that we want to keep everybody safe and the more people that wear masks, the safer everybody can be and the sooner we can get back to not wearing masks.”
“She fully understands that and I wish more people would stop making this political and start making it more about taking care of each other,” Kanew added. “At the end of the day, we should be doing everything we possibly can to keep our kids in school and to get back to some sense of normal, and if masks are a path to that, that seems like a small price to pay.”
Kanew said his speech before the school board was met with silence in-person, but that he has received thousands of supportive comments on social media and has also been thanked in-person by members of his local community.
“[A school board member] said at the meeting that she’d gotten over 1,000 emails about this issue and over 700 of them were in favor of a mask mandate, so she reminded the people in the room that they may be a majority in that room but and doesn’t necessarily reflect the reality of the greater situation,” he said. “You can’t judge based on who shows up to kick and scream.”
In his speech, Kanew also provided a counterpoint to parents claiming on behalf of their kids a religious exemption from wearing a mask.
“I asked a pastor friend of mine and he was very clear that there was no actual biblical justification for using the Bible to get out of a mask mandate passed by a majority of this elected board,” he said. “But thousands are doing it anyway, calling it a religious exemption, which is frankly just sad. Avoiding masks is not in the Bible, but taking care of others is.
Kanew told “GMA” that although he had not planned on speaking out publicly amid the mask debate, he is glad he did and hopes his example encourages others to do the same.
“I think it’s important to put a face on some of these disagreements whenever possible and actually see the humanity in each other,” he said. “It’s easy to hide behind our social media screens and keyboard and I think it’s good to get out and talk with each other. It doesn’t mean you’re going to agree with everybody, but at least you can be reminded that we’re all trying to do what we think is right.”
(ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.) — Four police officers were wounded during a shootout after they responded to a call about an armed robbery in New Mexico on Thursday morning.
Albuquerque Police Department Chief Harold Medina told reporters Thursday that three of the four officers were shot during the incident, which occurred at a business in the Foothills in northeast Albuquerque.
“We are here at a horrible scene. … These officers put their lives at risk on every single call and their families never want to get the calls they’re getting today,” Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller told reporters.
The officer in critical condition was shot in the upper chest, just above the vest, Medina said, while another was shot in the arm. Both required surgery. A third officer was shot at the center of his bulletproof vest, and the fourth was injured by what Medina said likely was shrapnel or glass.
One of the suspects had also been shot during the incident and was in custody at the hospital. Keller said APD had been working with local, state and federal law enforcement to locate a second suspect on Thursday morning, but by the afternoon, the APD tweeted that the suspect had been caught. At least four other people had been detained, Medina said, adding that their investigation would determine if there would be any additional charges.
The APD urged anyone with information, or photo or video evidence, to come forward.
Remembering two officers who died in the line of duty on Aug. 18, 2005, Medina said, “It’s a very emotional time.”
(GEORGIA) — A Georgia teen honored his late mother through a graduation photoshoot.
KJ Morgan’s mother Teresa Colbert died from cancer on May 19, 2019, near the end of his freshman year at Northside High School. In preparation for his graduation this May, Morgan, 17, did a photoshoot with his mom’s portrait and wore a custom stole with photos of her on it.
“When she was here, we’d always talk about how I was going to graduate and I was going to be the one crying and she was going to be the one laughing and screaming,” Morgan told “Good Morning America.”
Morgan was supposed to graduate in May 2022, he said, but his mom’s death pushed him to work harder and graduate a year early.
“She was already not here,” he said. “So I was like, ‘Why don’t you just graduate early and make it 10 times more better?'”
In order to accomplish that, Morgan said he took college classes at Central Georgia Technical College in addition to his regular high school course load.
“From January to May, I took eight classes and for the summer semester I had five classes,” he said.
Morgan’s early graduation was even more special to him he said, because he had to miss class to take care of his mom.
“I missed so many school days taking care of my mom,” he said. “So my ninth grade year, I was failing classes back to back yet I still managed to graduate a whole year early. It just put the cherry on top for me. It did it for me to know that my mom wouldn’t be disappointed in me. … I just wanted to make her proud and this was my way of making her proud.”
(NEW YORK) — Nearly 90% of parents in the United States plan to send their children to school in person this fall, an increase since May, even with the delta variant spreading across the country and more children falling sick from COVID-19.
At the same time, almost one-third of parents say they don’t know their child’s school’s COVID-19 safety plan, and 60% say they’d like to know about the measures their school is taking to keep kids safe.
The numbers are from a survey of more than 3,000 parents, conducted this summer by the RAND Corporation and commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation, aimed at finding out how hesitant adults are to send their children to school in person this year. The report, Will Students Come Back? was released Wednesday.
Andrew Sweet, managing director of COVID-19 response and recovery at the Rockefeller Foundation, said he was surprised to see more parents commit to in-person learning this summer than in the spring.
“I think we’re at a breaking point and a lot of parents just can’t afford to keep their kids at home. They don’t have time. A lot of parents have to go to work. You can’t work in a grocery store remotely,” he said.
Parents with children under 12 years old — and not yet authorized to receive a COVID-19 vaccine — are just as likely to send their children to school in person as parents whose children were 12 or over, the survey found.
Fifty-seven percent of parents said they would get their child vaccinated when the shot is authorized for their age. Meanwhile, 52% of parents with children 12 and over — who made up roughly two-thirds of all those surveyed — said their child had received the vaccine.
Parents differed along racial lines: 94% of white parents surveyed said they would send their children to school in-person, compared to 83% of Hispanic and 82% of Black parents.
Additionally, parents of color were substantially more likely to require certain school safety measures — like classroom ventilation, mandatory masking and vaccinated teachers — to allow their kids to return to school buildings this fall.
Parents of color were twice as likely as white parents to support mask requirements, an issue that has flared recently in states like Florida, Texas and Arizona, where governors have attempted to ban schools from mandating face coverings for kids.
The survey found that only 27% of parents know in detail which safety measures their child’s school is adopting, suggesting a glaring lack of communication that has most of the surveyed parents wanting more information about how their child will be protected from COVID-19 in the classroom.
“I think there is confusion because there are so many messengers,” said Sweet.
Most parents in the survey said they’d prefer to get information about school safety from a school staff member, with 44% of them preferring to hear from a principal.
Yet educators might not be the most effective messengers of health guidance to parents and students, suggested Sweet.
“It’s hard to be an educator but also a public health communicator. We’ve asked so much of our teachers over the course of the pandemic, and to add another piece to it to speak about ventilation systems or antigen testing … that’s not part of their vocation. That’s not really what they signed up to do. And so it’s asking them to do yet another thing,” he said.
The public school district in New Orleans began weekly press conferences with the superintendent this summer to help communicate safety decisions to families. The district is also using social media to spread information, and is encouraging parents to speak to one another and contact their child’s school directly.
“It is always our challenge to make sure the nitty-gritty details get to our parents, which is unfortunate and hard at times,” Dina Hasiotis, senior adviser to the Superintendent of NOLA Public Schools, said in a roundtable streamed by the Rockefeller Foundation on Wednesday.
(WASHINGTON) — Could you live on Mars for an entire year? Or, could you at least pretend?
NASA is on the search for four people to live in a 1,700-square-foot habitat, created by a 3D-printer, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, to simulate a year-long stay on Mars.
Applications to participate as part of the crew are being accepted through Sept. 17, 2021 for the one-year mission that starts in late 2022.
According to NASA’s website, finalists will undergo medical evaluations, psychological testing and psychiatric screening to determine suitability for the physically and mentally demanding isolation mission.
“The CHAPEA missions are designed to collect critical health and performance data to characterize risks associated with going to Mars,” said Shaneequa Vereen, public affairs officer for the Human Health and Performance Directorate at the NASA Johnson Space Center. “These analog missions will entail a good number of the challenges associated with a Mars mission, such as a Mars-realistic spaceflight food system, time-delayed communication, crew isolation and confinement, and resource restrictions.”
But NASA isn’t looking for just anyone to join this mission. The qualifications are intense and applicants must have a Master’s degree in a science, engineering or math field or pilot experience.
Additionally, only U.S. residents between the ages of 30 and 55 with no dietary or physical health issues will be eligible. Motion sickness? Sorry, but no can do.
“Living on Mars is going to entail a large number of challenges,” Vereen added. “By conducting analog missions we are able obtain data that enables us to better characterize risks before sending astronauts all the way to Mars.”
The Mars Dune Alpha experiment will be carried out in three phases, with the first beginning next fall. The exploration trip will also be complete with spacewalks and ready-to-eat space food. There will even be an area to grow plants and other vegetation.
(WASHINGTON) — Fines for unruly behavior during flights have soared in 2021, with the Federal Aviation Administration reporting Thursday that it has proposed more than $1 million in penalties this year alone.
The FAA has received almost 4,000 reports of aggressive behavior from airlines since the beginning of 2021.
Airline crews have reported incidents in which visibly drunk passengers verbally abused them, shoved them, kicked seats, threw trash at them, defiled the restrooms and in some cases even punched them in the face.
The agency said 71% of the reported incidents involve passengers who refuse to comply with the federal mask mandate.
The FAA had hoped its zero-tolerance policy for in-flight disruptions, which could lead to fines as high as $52,500 and up to 20 years in prison, would be enough to deter potential offenders, but they’ve still seen hundreds of incidents per month.
In-flight tensions are unlikely to wane as the mask requirement for planes was extended just this week from September into January.
Two weeks ago, FAA Administrator Steve Dickson urged airport police to arrest more people who are unruly or violent on flights.
“While the FAA has levied civil fines against unruly passengers, it has no authority to prosecute criminal cases,” Dickson told airport executives.
He said they see many passengers — some who physically assaulted flight attendants — interviewed by local police and then released “without criminal charges of any kind.”
“When this occurs, we miss a key opportunity to hold unruly passengers accountable for their unacceptable and dangerous behavior,” he said.
The agency has looked into more than 682 potential violations of federal law so far this year — the highest number since the agency began keeping records in 1995. But it is unclear how many people have actually paid the FAA’s proposed fines.
Those on the front lines, the nation’s flight attendants, are bearing the brunt of the violence.
They are increasingly turning to self-defense training to learn how to defuse situations as well as protect themselves and their passengers.
“I think people are just kind of just at a tipping point with the pandemic,” Robin Gilinger, a flight attendant, said. “And when they’re up in the air at 35,000 feet, there’s no one to stop them. There’s no police officer on the corner they can go to. It’s just the flight attendants.”
Gilinger recently attended a crew member self-defense training course taught by federal air marshals in West Orange, New Jersey.
The courses had been paused amid the pandemic, but now they’re back up and running with four times the amount of classes and double the number of attendees as before.
“We’re not here to beat our passengers. We’re here to stop the unrest that has precipitated through this pandemic,” Gilinger said. “And this provides really good, basic tools, not just for the aircraft.”
While this type of training is free, flight attendants must come on their own time and pay for their travel and lodging. The head of the country’s largest flight attendant union is now pushing for the course to be federally mandated.
(FRANKFORT, Ind.) — The two people shot dead Wednesday at an NHK factory in Frankfort, Indiana, were employees of the company — a grandmother and granddaughter who were arriving for their shift, according to the Clinton County Sheriff’s Office.
The alleged suspect, 26-year-old Gary C. Ferrell, was an employee at the factory is in custody, authorities said.
Ferrell is believed to have finished his shift before shooting 21-year-old Promise Mays and 62-year-old Pamela Sled, Clinton County Sheriff Rich Kelly said at a press briefing Wednesday evening.
The sheriff’s office said 911 calls came in at 4:15 p.m. local time. Shortly after, it warned residents to avoid the area due to the “active scene.”
When deputies showed up, Ferrell jumped in a car and drove away from the scene, but was tracked down by police about a minute later, authorities said. Ferrell crashed his car after a high-speed pursuit and was taken into custody. He was not injured in the minor accident, Clinton County Sheriff Richard Kelly said.
An investigation is ongoing and the sheriff had no information on a motive. Kelly said they could not provide other information about the relationship between Ferrell and the victims.
The shooting took place in the parking lot of NHK Seating of America in Frankfurt, Indiana. The plant manufactures seats and seating parts for a Subaru plant in nearby Lafayette.
“Please avoid the area of our new NHK,” the sheriff’s office wrote shortly after the incident began. “This is an active scene.”
