(NEW YORK) — Vice Media, the youth-oriented publisher of prominent online outlets such as Vice and Motherboard, filed for bankruptcy on Monday, underscoring the fraught economic environment for digital media companies as economic growth slows and the advertising market softens.
The group of sites, which includes food outlet Munchies and fashion news brand Refinery29, will continue publishing as the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process unfolds and the site takes on new ownership, Vice Media said in a statement.
The bankruptcy announcement will facilitate the sale of Vice Media to a group of its top lenders led by Fortress Investment Group and Soros Fund Management — which has agreed to an acquisition of the company that values it at about $225 million, the statement said.
“This accelerated court-supervised sale process will strengthen the Company and position VICE for long-term growth, thereby safeguarding the kind of authentic journalism and content creation that makes VICE such a trusted brand for young people and such a valued partner to brands, agencies and platforms,” Bruce Dixon and Hozefa Lokhandwala, Vice Media’s co-CEOs, said in a statement.
“We will have new ownership, a simplified capital structure and the ability to operate without the legacy liabilities that have been burdening our business. We look forward to completing the sale process in the next two to three months and charting a healthy and successful next chapter at VICE,” they added.
The move comes weeks after Vice Media canceled its flagship TV program, Vice News Tonight, indicating the depth of layoffs and cost cuts already underway.
A string of layoff and closure announcements in digital media has arrived in response to cooling ad revenue that has punished balance sheets.
Vox Media cut 7% of its staff in January and Bustle Digital Group — the parent company of online media outlets like Bustle and NYLON — followed a month later with layoffs that affected 8% of its workforce.
BuzzFeed News, a brand synonymous with the rise of online news coverage, shuttered less than a month ago.
Founded by Shane Smith, Suroosh Alvi and Gavin McInnes in Montreal in 1994, Vice Media rose from an edgy print magazine to a plucky online news brand to a youth culture media empire, ultimately garnering an investment of more than $400 million from Disney. In 2017, Vice was valued at $5.7 billion.
However, the company fell into financial trouble as it struggled to convert a large readership into reliable digital ad sales, finding cold comfort in a volatile ad market where social media platforms reaped much of the revenue.
Vice Union, a labor organization that represents more than 320 employees at the company, said on Monday that it “stands strong in supporting our members through stressful and uncertain times — and is more than ready to fight tenaciously for our rights.”
“Regardless of who owns the company,” the union added.
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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden said Monday he intends to nominate a new director for the National Institutes of Health after Dr. Anthony Fauci stepped down.
Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, a surgical oncologist and cancer researcher, was picked by Biden as the successor.
(NEW YORK) — As the seasons change, our skin care needs change with it, so here are a few dermatologist-approved ideas to help switch up that regimen for summer.
Dr. Rita Linkner shared her top tips with ABC News’ Good Morning America to get your skin ready for the summer sun:
What should you look for in sunscreen?
“There are three things you’re looking for: Broad spectrum is gonna cover UVA, UVB; At least SPF 30; Remember you want it to really be water resistant for up to an hour is what you’re looking for on the label,” Linkner said.
What should change with skin care from spring to summer
“Temperatures are rising, humidity levels are rising. Switch out that pore-clogging, thick cream, you want to go to lighter serums and lotions,” she said.
What ingredients to look for in summer skin products?
“You want to see the titanium oxide [or] zinc oxide in it,” Linkner said. “There are a lot of extra bells and whistles that can protect you against pollution and environmental stressors as well.”
How much sunscreen should you use?
“An ounce is what you need to cover yourself head to toe when you’re at the beach on the weekend. If you’re not using a full ounce you’re not getting the same SPF level that’s on the bottle. Remember, a full shot glass. That’s what you need,” she explained.
How often should you reapply sunscreen?
“Every two hours. Remember if you get out of water sunscreen’s not sweatproof, reapply. And if you’re exercising, reapply every two hours as well,” she said.
What is ultraviolet protection factor clothing?
“In 2023, there’s a lot of fashion involved with upf — ultraviolet protection factor — you want to be around a 50 level. It will block 1/50th of UVB light,” Linkner said.
She suggested a wide-brim hat, sunglasses and other things that cover places aggravated by the sun.
Top body parts to keep covered with SPF
Finally, she said you should remember to apply sunscreen on some neglected body parts: the tip of the nose, top of the ears, lips and hands.
“These are common areas we’re going to see skin cancer and May is skin cancer awareness month,” she said.
(NEW YORK) — It’s been just over three years since Suzanne Morphew vanished on Mother’s Day. Now, her husband and their two daughters are speaking out for the first time since filing a $15 million lawsuit claiming he was wrongfully charged in her alleged death.
“It’s very hurtful to lose your reputation and your integrity,” husband Barry Morphew told ABC News in an exclusive interview that aired Monday on Good Morning America.
Suzanne Morphew, 49 at the time, was reported missing in Colorado’s Chaffee County after she went for a bike ride and never returned home on May 10, 2020. She has never been found and is presumed dead, according to the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office.
Barry Morphew, 55, was arrested almost a year later on charges including first-degree murder and tampering with physical evidence in connection with his wife’s disappearance. But all charges against Barry Morphew were dropped in April 2022, just days before he was set to stand trial.
The move came after the judge presiding over the case barred prosecutors from using most of their key witnesses at trial as punishment for repeatedly failing to turn over evidence in the defendant’s favor. Prosecutors also said at the time that they believed authorities were close to finding Suzanne Morphew’s body, which would be “the most influential fact of consequence.” Examining Suzanne Morphew’s body could either incriminate or exculpate her husband, prosecutors said.
The case was dismissed without prejudice, which allows prosecutors to file charges against Barry Morphew again. He is still considered a suspect and authorities told ABC News they aren’t ruling out future charges.
When asked whether he has anything to do with his wife’s disappearance, Barry Morphew told ABC News: “Absolutely not.”
“They’ve got tunnel vision and they looked at one person and they’ve got too much pride to say they’re wrong and look somewhere else,” he added. “I don’t have anything to worry about. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
The couple’s daughters, Mallory and Macy Morphew, told ABC News that the last three years have been “literally our worst nightmare.” But they are standing by their father.
“I’ve never had a shred of doubt,” Macy Morphew said.
“Not one,” Mallory Morphew added.
Both daughters said there was no indication before their mother vanished that something was amiss and that they never observed any concerning disagreements between their parents.
However, text messages obtained by prosecutors and shared with ABC News appear to show a strained marriage, with Suzanne Morphew referring to her husband as “Jekyl and Hyde” and telling him “I’m done” just before she was reported missing. In another text message, Suzanne Morphew confided in a friend, writing: “Macy and I had a very tough talk yesterday … She’s weary of the tension here. She knows how he is toward me and almost begged me to divorce him … He’s still pulling Mal in.”
Barry Morphew denied their marriage was in trouble.
“We had a wonderful life, a wonderful marriage,” he told ABC News. “She was just so loving and giving, and such a good mother.”
He said his wife had been having cancer treatments in the years prior to her disappearance.
“I know she was going through some hard things and made some bad decisions,” he added. “She was really having trouble with the chemotherapy and the drugs.”
Suzanne Morphew had also been having an affair with another man for about two years, according to authorities. Barry Morphew said he “didn’t believe it” at first when he found out.
“My heart was broken,” he tearfully told ABC News.
Earlier this month, Barry Morphew filed a $15 million federal civil rights civil lawsuit against prosecutors, the sheriff and several investigators, claiming that his life has been ruined by false accusations. His defense attorneys, Jane Fisher-Byrialsen and Iris Eytan, said they “know he’s innocent.”
“I know that $15 million is a huge number but I don’t think that, in my mind, that covers any of the damage that’s happened to Barry and the girls,” Fisher-Byrialsen told ABC News.
“If they would just look for Suzanne outside of where they hypothesized Barry could’ve possibly buried her remains, they could find her,” Eytan added.
(MIAMI) — A 13-year-old girl said she has more than a dozen stitches after fighting off a shark at a Florida beach.
Ella Reed was sitting in shallow water with a friend near a jetty in the Fort Pierce area Thursday when the shark approached, the teen told Miami ABC affiliate WPLG-TV.
“The shark itself was so powerful,” Reed told the station. “That was what I felt the most, was it like hitting my stomach really hard.”
Reed said she punched the shark — which she believed to be a bull shark about 5 to 6 feet long — but it came back.
“It wouldn’t leave me alone, so I had to use my arm and put it there and use my hand too, so it got my finger and my arm right here,” she told WPLG, pointing to her injuries.
Reed said she called her family after the attack. Her mother said she was stunned by the sight of her daughter.
“It was insane because she was totally covered in blood pretty much head to toe so you couldn’t really see what went on,” her mother, Devin Reed, told WPLG. “She was shaking but she was calm.”
Reed told the station that the shark bit her in the stomach, arm, finger and the top of her knee and that she received 19 stitches total at the hospital.
“I was kinda in shock about everything that happened, so I wasn’t really in pain because the adrenaline was just through the roof,” she said.
The Florida native told WPLG she’s never been afraid of the ocean — and that hasn’t changed even after the shark attack.
“It was clear water so you never really know when it’s going to happen,” she told WPLG.
(PHILADELPHIA) — A teenager was fatally shot on a train platform in West Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon, according to police.
The Philadelphia Police Department said the shooting took place at a SEPTA station on the 5200 block of Market Street.
The 14-year-old boy was shot in the chest and the arm and was transported by medics to Presbyterian Hospital where he later died, police said.
No arrests have been made and a weapon has not been recovered, police said.
Sources told ABC News Philadelphia station WPVI that an adult man was identified as the suspect and is currently on the run.
According to WPVI sources, the suspect and the teenager had a physical altercation which started when the 14-year-old allegedly hit the suspect.
The suspect then allegedly took out a gun and fired, hitting the victim, and then fled the scene, according to WPVI.
“SEPTA Police are working closely with Philadelphia Police to find the suspect in this case. This is a horrific tragedy, and our thoughts are with the family that has experienced an unimaginable loss,” SEPTA said in a statement to ABC News.
The statement added, “SEPTA serves over 600,000 riders a day, and the vast majority get to-and-from their destinations without incident. However, even one violent crime is too many, and we are continuing to adjust police patrols and add officers to our ranks so we can address hot spots while providing police coverage across the system.”
(LONDON) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in the United Kingdom on Monday for “substantive” talks with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who said ahead of the meeting that his country would supply Ukraine with hundreds of missiles and long-range attack drones.
“I will meet my friend Rishi. We will conduct substantive negotiations face-to-face and in delegations,” Zelenskyy said on Twitter.
UK officials said ahead of Monday’s meeting that they’d send hundreds of air defense missiles and long-range attack drones — with a range of over 200 km — to Ukraine to aid in the fight against Russia.
“These will all be delivered over the coming months as Ukraine prepares to intensify its resistance to the ongoing Russian invasion,” Sunak’s office said in a statement.
Zelenskyy’s visit to Chequers, the prime minister’s country house, came a day after the Ukrainian president made a surprise stop in Paris for talks Sunday night with French President Emmanuel Macron.
France in the coming weeks will send Ukraine “tens of armored vehicles and light tanks including AMX-10RC” and will train Ukrainian troops to use them, Marcon’s office said.
“Besides, France is focusing its effort in supporting Ukraine’s air defense capacities in order to defend its population against Russian strikes,” the Sunday statement from the Palais de l’Élysée said.
Zelenskyy in February had made another surprise visit to France and the United Kingdom seeking military aid, including advanced Western fighter jets.
ABC News’ Angus Hines and Ibtissem Guenfoud contributed to this story.
(BUDA, Texas) — Bandages, ice packs, aspirin and epinephrine have long been staples of nurse Dawn Baker’s public high school medical clinic in Texas.
Now, she also stocks Naloxone to treat drug overdoses — keeping a supply by the door in case she needs to save a life in an instant.
“Schools have had drugs in them forever. It’s just that the drug is so much stronger and so much scarier now, and, you know, the outcome is death,” Baker said.
As the nation’s fentanyl crisis claims a growing number of American teenagers each year, school districts nationwide are scrambling to acquire the opioid-reversing drug, train teachers and students how to use it, and combat stigma from openly acknowledging problems with addiction.
Last year, just two weeks after Hays County gave Nurse Baker six doses of Naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan, she was called to a classroom where a 16-year-old girl was unresponsive.
“She checked all the boxes of an overdose,” she said. I administered Narcan nasally.” The young woman, who was not breathing, survived but only because an overdose antidote was close at hand, Baker said.
“It’s not the answer to all, but it’s definitely going to help,” she said.
While illicit drug use among teens nationwide has been on the decline, overdose deaths – some of them on school property – have been soaring, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Around 500 U.S. teenagers died from a drug overdose each year between 2010 and 2019, CDC data shows. But in 2020, the number nearly doubled to 954 deaths; in 2021, more than 1140 teens died from a drug overdose.
“We’re seeing a significant number of kids getting access to highly lethal drugs that are ultimately leading to an increase in deaths,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News medical contributor.
“We know that there is plenty of fentanyl on the market that is tainting products that people really otherwise wouldn’t know is there. Even in a very small quantity – one tenth of a grain of rice – can lead to an overdose death,” Brownstein said.
The National Association of School Nurses has become so alarmed by the trend that the organization now advises schools nationwide to develop a Naloxone policy.
“I’m seeing more receptiveness,” said Kate King, president-elect of the nurses association.
Thirty states expressly authorize the possession and use of naloxone in K-12 schools, according to the Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association. But only 1 state – Rhode Island – requires all schools to keep it on hand.
Recent FDA approval for over-the-counter sale of naloxone is expected to accelerate interest in the drug and ways to increase its production and availability.
King says unfamiliarity with Naloxone and “stigma” around it are primary barriers to more widespread adoption.
“The fear is that drug users will camp out on the doorstep so that when they use opioids, school personnel will have to run out and save them with naloxone. There’s a fear of danger after administration – that if you administer it, people are going to come up swinging and that you, yourself, are going to be in danger,” King said. “There’s also fear that schools don’t want to get the bad reputation.”
Officials at Hays County Public Schools, just outside Austin, have had to use Naloxone 6 times since the district began stocking the drug in nurses offices. Five students have died off campus in the past year.
“We are being impacted hard. I think what we’re doing differently is we’re hitting it head on,” said Jeri Skrocki, a former county sheriff’s deputy who now oversees safety and security at Hays Consolidated Independent School District’s 26 school campuses with over 22,000 students.
Administrators have produced videos of grieving parents to show students and released surveillance video of student overdose incidents on county campuses.
“Our goal was transparency and really making sure that we were communicating that this is out here, and we wanted them to see those faces,” Skrocki said.
In Montgomery County, Maryland, after a recent rash of student overdoses, administrators are holding community training sessions throughout the year where free doses of naloxone are distributed to parents and children.
“It’s becoming way closer to home,” said high school senior Isabella Juarez Galeas who attended.
Earl Stoddard, a father who joined the session with his daughter Ava, said the dangers need to be talked about openly.
“It’s just important to educate and be aware of what’s going on in your community. She’s going to high school next year. And so I want to have her prepared for that before she gets there,” he sa9id.
Added Ava, “We’ve had strong personal talks at home about drugs, like if you see someone and they’re like, Oh, here’s an Adderall. No, it may not just be Adderall.”
It’s a conversation being had across the country, from Los Angeles, where the nation’s second largest school district is putting naloxone in every K-12 school, to PTA meetings in Arlington, Virginia.
“As a medical professional, if we’re teaching kids to put condoms on bananas, we can teach kids to put Narcan up someone’s nose,” said Dr. Sulman Mirza, a pediatric psychiatrist, during the Arlington meeting last month.
King, who campaigned to get epinephrine and steroid inhalers into the school nurses’ office across Ohio, said the call for naloxone must come with funding for training and education to end stigma.
“Schools already have emergency preparedness plans. We prepare for tornadoes, we prepare for chemical exposures, we prepare for fires, and certainly we prepare for other kinds of health emergencies. This health emergency is no different,” she said.
(NEW YORK) — A Texas woman said she had to wait until she developed sepsis before physicians could provide her with life-saving abortion care.
Texas has several abortion bans in place that prohibit nearly all abortions, except when a mother’s life is at risk or there is a risk of serious bodily harm. The state has civil and criminal penalties for performing banned abortions.
One of the bans prohibits abortions after fetal cardiac activity has been detected, which meant that doctors couldn’t provide her immediate emergency care, which she would have had access to in states where abortion is not banned or restricted.
Kristen Anaya’s medical records, obtained by ABC News, show she waited 22 hours between when she was admitted to the hospital to when she delivered her baby, despite her spiking a fever and shaking uncontrollably within an hour of arriving.
Anaya said she and her husband Stephen went to see a specialist two years into their marriage, hoping to get pregnant.
After her husband underwent a medical procedure and she went through two rounds of egg retrials for in vitro fertilization, doctors told them they had one embryo, she said.
Anaya said she had the embryo implanted in January and found out she was pregnant nine days later. The couple was elated. Anaya has one 20-year-old son, but this would be her husband’s first child.
Four months later, Anaya said her water broke and she began leaking amniotic fluid — which is essential to keep a fetus alive.
After consulting with her OB/GYN, the couple drove to the hospital and Anaya lost a significant amount of amniotic fluid within the next hour.
An ultrasound confirmed that she had lost nearly all her amniotic fluid, but the baby’s heart was still beating, according to Anaya’s medical records. As she was being examined by a doctor, Anaya began having rigors — shaking uncontrollably — and spiked a fever, both an indication of an infection which could lead to sepsis, the medical records show.
“The pregnant patient has a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy, That condition places the pregnant patient at ‘risk of death;’ That condition poses a ‘serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function’,” doctors wrote in her admission medical records.
It was only a few hours later, when they spoke with Anaya’s OB/GYN, that the couple said they realized their baby girl — who they named Tylee — would not survive.
But the couple had no time to process the devastating news — Anaya’s OB/GYN told her she would “get very sick,” before doctors could help her, she told ABC News.
“So it would have been avoidable — me going into sepsis — if they were able to induce labor. The quicker they could get Tylee delivered, the better chance they had at me not going into sepsis. However, Tylee still had a heartbeat,” Anaya said.
“My husband and I are being told that ‘not only did we lose Tylee, but now you’re gonna go into sepsis and there’s nothing we can do about it other than watch you because of the abortion laws in Texas,'” Anaya said doctors told them.
According to her medical records, Anaya’s physician “initiated contact with the termination committee” — a committee of physicians who must approve any abortion care at the hospital — upon her admission to the hospital, a step which is not required of physicians in states where abortion is legal, according to Dr. Aileen Gariepy, an OB/GYN and assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical College. Gariepy was not involved in treating Anaya.
If Anaya was a patient in New York, she would have been able to get abortion care immediately. The fever and chills were an indication of an infection and left untreated, sepsis is fatal, Gariepy told ABC News.
“That would be an indication to proceed immediately to start some kind of intervention to end the pregnancy. We can give antibiotics, but the cure is to deliver the pregnancy,” Gariepy said.
“There would be no state laws prohibiting us from giving her the highest level of medical care,” she said.
An ethics committee also had to approve the abortion, Anaya and her husband said.
“As a husband, now I’ve lost my daughter and now I could potentially lose my wife and the doctors kind of have to let it happen. That doesn’t make sense,” Stephen Anaya said.
Kristen Anaya said she then began to get sicker, with a high fever, shaking uncontrollably for hours and vomiting at least 8 times.
“They were going to be monitoring me, doing bloodwork every three hours, monitoring my vitals and ‘building a case’ to prove that my life was in great danger and they needed to induce labor,” she said.
Medical records show that Anaya’s lactic acid reached 2.8 mmol/L before she was induced — the normal range is between 0.4 to 2.0 mmol/L. Her white blood cell count went up to 17.6 k/uL, while the healthy range is between 4.5 to 11 k/uL.
When she was admitted to the hospital, her lactic acid was 1.5 mmol/L and her white blood cell count was 12.3 k/uL, according to her medical records.
“I was crying, asking for help. And I remember them literally not saying anything. [The doctors and nurses] would just literally look at me and look at Stephen and they’re just blank. There’s literally nothing they could do,” Anaya said.
She added, “I’m freezing, shaking so hard that I had body aches for a week after getting discharged from the hospital because my body was so tense and just shaking uncontrollably.”
Once Anaya’s test results met the threshold doctors had set, the hospital approved the abortion. She still had to wait from 30 minutes to an hour until the paperwork was in the system before her labor could be induced, according to her.
Despite a dilation and evacuation procedure being more effective at removing all the fetal tissue and the placenta, according to Gariepy, Anaya said she was only offered a labor induction.
The placenta usually detaches itself once a pregnancy is full term. By inducing labor and not performing the surgical procedure there is a risk the placenta will not be delivered, Gariepy said.
“There’s a 25% chance of still needing surgery [after induction] because the placenta get stuck,” Gariepy said.
Even after receiving four rounds of induction medication, Anaya’s placenta was not delivered, according to her medical records.
She has since needed two dilation and curettage procedures to remove the placenta and stop her bleeding. The first was during her 5-day hospital stay.
Then, Anaya began bleeding heavily in early May and needed a second procedure to remove placenta tissue, her medical records show.
The hospital where Anaya received care, and her physician did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
She said she is still having pain and complications and her cervix was still dilated at an appointment last week, despite delivering on April 16. Doctors said her uterus still does not look normal, Anaya said.
“I’m kind of in a gray area, I’m not taking the path of recovery that they would expect. Because I’m still having some complications,” Anaya said. “They’re really unsure as to why I’m still feeling the way that I’m feeling and so we’re kind of gonna wait and see.”
(NEW YORK) — An American citizen charged with spying in China has been sentenced to life in prison after it was revealed that he had been held for over two years.
Suzhou Intermediate Court announced the sentence against 78-year-old Liang Chengyun, also known as John Shing-Wan Leung, in a press release on Monday. Leung also held permanent residency in Hong Kong.
He “was found guilty of espionage, sentenced to life imprisonment, deprived of political rights for life, and confiscated personal property of RMB 500,000,” officials said in a statement translated by ABC News.
Leung had been arrested on April 15, 2021, by the Chinese State Security Bureau, an investigation agency similar to the FBI or CIA in the U.S., the court said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
