(CLARK COUNTY, Nev.) — Health officials are investigating an increase of a rare brain infection occurring in kids in Nevada, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD) reported in October a “higher than expected” number of pediatric patients in Clark County who have intracranial abscesses.
There were 18 cases of intracranial abscesses found in children in 2022, up from about four cases per year between 2015 and 2021, which is more than triple the amount, according to SNHD.
According to the report, there were an average of seven cases during 2020 and 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A cerebral abscess is a pus-filled pocket of an infection in your brain, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
The abscess can cause swelling in the brain, which places harmful pressure on brain tissue and can prevent blood from flowing to parts of the brain, according to Johns Hopkins.
“A cerebral abscess usually occurs when bacteria or fungi make their way into your brain, either through your bloodstream or from an infected area in your head, such as your ears or sinuses,” John Hopkins Medicine said on its site. “An injury to your head or head surgery can also let in germs that can cause an abscess.”
Headaches, fevers, chills, nausea, vomiting and seizures are some symptoms caused by the brain abscess, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
According to the Southern Nevada Health District’s findings, most of the cases occurred in males with a median age of 12 years old. The most common bacterial pathogen was Streptococcus intermedius, found in 33% of patients. Fifteen out of the 18 patients required craniotomies, according to the report.
No deaths were reported, according to SNHD. However, death is possible if left untreated, according to Johns Hopkins.
Medical professionals can treat cerebral abscesses with strong antibiotics and other medications, such as steroids and drugs to prevent seizures, according to John Hopkins Medicine.
(NEW YORK) — Liza Burke, a 21-year-old college student at the University of Georgia, died Friday, nearly two months after she sustained a brain hemorrhage during a spring break trip to Mexico, according to her mother.
Burke’s mom, Laura McKeithan, shared an obituary on Facebook on Sunday, writing, “Following a six-week battle with a previously-undiagnosed brain tumor, Liza transitioned into the next realm peacefully while being cared for by friends and family.”
PHOTO: Liza Burke, a senior at the University of Georgia, suffered a medical emergency while on a spring break trip to Mexico.
Liza Burke, a senior at the University of Georgia, suffered a medical emergency while on a spring break trip to Mexico.
Courtesy Laura McKeithan
McKeithan told ABC News her daughter had “a knack for living life.” She also described Burke as a curious and loving person who adored animals and cared about the environment.
“Liza lived large, like every day could be her last,” McKeithan wrote on Facebook. “She was not only at ease in nature, she was intrepid—whether watching sunsets from a mountain top tent, swimming solo across any body of water, or surfing in Central America. As Liza matured, she accomplished more in 21 years than many people do in a lifetime. She spoke two languages, played guitar, traveled the world, went skydiving, hiked across a glacier, joyfully sang and danced — always without fear of judgement.”
In March, Burke had traveled with friends to Cabo San Lucas for spring break. During the trip, Burke had complained of a headache and went to lay down. Her friends later found her unresponsive, according to McKeithan, who added that Burke was transported to a local hospital and underwent surgery to relieve a brain bleed.
She was moved from the hospital in Mexico to The Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, where she had been making a slow recovery, according to McKeithan.
McKeithan said doctors had discovered her daughter had a tumor on her brain stem and were running tests to find out more information about her condition.
Burke was responsive then and had been able to open her eyes and squeeze her mom’s hand, according to McKeithan, but her prognosis quickly deteriorated. McKeithan said Burke went from being able to speak and walk to only being able to wiggle her toes and lift her eyebrows.
“At that point, we decided that we were going to take her somewhere to live out her final days where she could be surrounded by friends and family. So we rented a house near water, it’s on an inlet, where her family and her friends could come be with her and we could pull her outside into the breeze,” McKeithan said.
In Burke’s obituary, McKeithan said, “In her short time here, she gave off an extraordinary amount of light, energy, and love. Her life serves a reminder to go through life unapologetically, take chances, speak and act boldly, cherish the little things, laugh often, and to stay present.”
Burke is survived by her father, mother, stepfather and older brother.
(MOJAVE, Calif.) — Four people were killed in a mass shooting in a remote part of California Sunday night, and police are searching for answers about the incident.
Authorities said they responded to a call at 11:20 p.m. on Sunday in remote Mojave and found four people shot.
“When deputies arrived on scene, they located four victims suffering from traumatic assault injuries,” the press release said.
All were shot in the head, a public information officer for the Kern County Sheriff’s Office. One male victim and two female victims were pronounced dead at the scene, and an additional female victim was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
Investigators from the Kern County Sheriff’s Office are “rapidly” pursuing leads but do not have a suspect or motive for the incident. The office’s public information officer described the investigation as “difficult” due to the limited eyewitnesses to the shooting.
“KCSO homicide detectives are pursuing all investigative leads to identify and arrest the suspect(s) responsible for this crime,” a press release noted.
Mojave is a small desert community about 50 miles east of Bakersfield, CA.
The shooting follows a Friday night shooting in Cleveland, TX, that left five dead from an “execution style” shooting. In both the Texas and California instances, investigators are still searching for the shooting suspect.
(CLEVELAND, Texas) — After Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott faced backlash for what critics called an effort to “dehumanize” the victims of a mass shooting in his home state over the weekend, a spokesperson appeared to walk back Abbott’s remark in a statement to ABC News on Monday afternoon.
The spokesperson claimed federal authorities had told “the state of Texas” that the shooting suspect and victims “were in the country illegally” but that they have since learned at least one of the victims “may have been in the United States legally” — and that they “regret” if the information was an incorrect distraction.
“Any loss of life is a tragedy, and our hearts go out to the families who have lost a loved one. Following the horrific shooting on Friday night, federal officials provided the state of Texas information on the criminal and the victims, including that they were in the country illegally. We’ve since learned that at least one of the victims may have been in the United States legally. We regret if the information was incorrect and detracted from the important goal of finding and arresting the criminal,” Renae Eze said in the statement.
In an earlier tweet on Sunday announcing a $50,000 reward for the at-large suspect, Abbott called the five victims of Friday’s attack “illegal immigrants,” leaving many on social media to question why he used language they consider dehumanizing toward immigrants.
In a statement on Sunday, Abbott said, “Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of the five victims that were taken in this senseless act of violence.”
The victims of the brutal attack in Cleveland, Texas, were identified by authorities as Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; Diana Velázquez Alvarado, 21; Obdulia Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; and Daniel Enrique Laso Guzman, a 9-year-old boy, according to his father and school district officials. All are originally from Honduras, police said.
Police say the suspect — still at-large — used an AR-15-style rifle in the attack, which began late Friday, to kill the five family members. Two of the female victims were discovered in the bedroom lying on top of two surviving children, authorities told ABC News. Three minors in total were found uninjured but covered in blood.
Jefrinson Josué Rivera, partner to Velázquez Alvarado for the last six years, told ABC News in a phone interview Monday that she was a lawful permanent resident, not an undocumented immigrant as Abbott had initially claimed.
In Spanish, he said the governor was “inhumane” for referring to the victims, all friends or relatives of his, in this way.
Through tears he described how he wants his loved one to be remembered: “She was warrior, she gave everything for her children. She never had issues with anyone. She was happy, humble and caring. She was so attentive to her children, her friends, and to me.”
He also said he has a question for Abbott: “Why do they discriminate against immigrants so much. In what way are we affecting him? What harm have we caused him? He’s making his living and we’re here to make our own? We don’t care if he wants to make his money through politics, we’re here to make an honorable living.”
Reacting to Abbott’s tweet late Sunday, Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, said he showed “a disgusting lack of compassion and humanity.”
“If loosening gun laws actually made us safer, Texas would have one of the best records in the country on gun violence,” she said in another tweet. “In this country so awash with firearms, you can’t go to grocery stores, church, schools, or even your neighbor’s house now without fear. It’s the guns.”
Texas state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde — where, one year ago this month, a gunman killed 19 fourth graders and two of their teachers — called Abbott’s framing a “new low.”
“Greg, how was an undocumented person able to obtain an AR-15 in the first place? I’ll tell you why. It’s because you and other Republicans have made safe gun laws nonexistent,” Gutierrez tweeted.
The Hispanic Congressional Caucus also weighed in, accusing the governor of trying to “dehumanize & delegitimize the lives of those killed in this horrific attack.”
Charlie Sykes, a conservative commentator and editor-in-chief of the website The Bulwark, called it “extraordinary” that Abbott “felt the need to do that.”
“This cried out for a little bit of compassion, for some leadership. Of course, we got neither of those,” he said Monday on MSNBC.
“Star Trek” Actor George Takei, who was imprisoned in a Japanese internment camp for a year and a half, was one of the first on the chorus of critics to call Abbott’s response “despicable.”
“I would have thought bringing up the immigration status of the innocent victims of this senseless violence would be beneath even you. But I was wrong,” he tweeted.
Meanwhile, the manhunt for suspected gunman Francisco Oropesa, 38, is still underway.
Investigators said carnage at his hands began Friday night after neighbors asked him to stop shooting his gun in the yard of his home in Cleveland, Texas, about 50 miles north of Houston. When deputies arrived at the home, they found five victims at the property, San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers told reporters on Sunday. Abbott also said in his tweet that Oropesa is “in the country illegally.”
The gruesome, mass shooting follows a series of attacks gun safety advocates argue illustrate the need for stricter gun laws across the country.
ABC News’ Peter Charalambous, Meredith Deliso and Nadine El-Bawab contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, testifying Monday under cross-examination in her civil defamation and battery case against former President Donald Trump, denied that she borrowed her rape claim from an episode of the TV crime drama “Law & Order.”
Carroll, who brought the lawsuit in November, alleges that Trump defamed her in a 2022 Truth Social post by calling her allegations “a Hoax and a lie” and saying “This woman is not my type!” when he denied her claim that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in the 1990s.
She added a charge of battery under a recently adopted New York law that allows adult survivors of sexual abuse to sue their alleged attacker regardless of the statute of limitations. Trump has denied all allegations that he raped Carroll or defamed her.
“You know there’s a Law & Order episode from 2012 that featured a woman getting raped in the Bergdorf Goodman dressing room?” defense attorney Joe Tacopina asked Carroll during his ongoing cross-examination.
“I am aware,” Carroll replied.
Carroll’s attorney objected to the line of questioning but the judge allowed it.
“The Law & Order writers are very good at keying in to the psyche of their viewers,” Carroll said. “That was amazing to me.”
“What do you mean, amazing coincidence?” Tacopina asked.
“Astonishing,” Carroll said.
“Astonishing coincidence,” Tacopina started to say before an objection from the plaintiff’s side that the judge sustained.
Carroll also told Tacopina that she didn’t report the alleged attack because she’s a member of the “silent generation” that didn’t speak up about such things. The exchange came after Tacopina introduced several of her advice columns for Elle magazine in which she suggested that her readers call police in the event of a sexual assault or threat.
“There were numerous times where you’ve advised your readers to call the police” despite Carroll never reporting her own alleged rape to police, Tacopina said to Carroll.
“In most cases I advised my readers to go to the police,” Carroll replied.
“I was born in 1943,” she said. “I am a member of the silent generation. Women like me were taught to keep our chins up and not complain. The fact that I never went to the police is not surprising for someone my age. I would rather have done anything than call the police.”
The answer was stricken from the record as nonresponsive to the question posed, but the exchange continued the defense’s questioning of Carroll’s actions following the alleged assault, and their suggestions that her behavior — not going to the police, not seeking security camera footage, continuing to shop at Bergdorf’s — is at odds with how other sex assault victims might behave.
Carroll also testified under cross-examination that she wanted more publicity for her 2019 book in which she made the rape allegation.
Tacopina walked Carroll through the numerous interviews she gave after going public with her claim, then showed her an email in which she indicated she was upset with her public relations firm, 42 West, for not getting her more.
“My feelings were hurt that nobody cared about the book,” Carroll testified. “The book was not selling. The book was a dud. It was an absolute dud.”
In interviews, Carroll described her life as “fabulous” since the publication of her book — but said on cross-examination that it was a front.
“That is what I’d like my life to appear to be,” Carroll said. “I say it quite a bit. That is how I want people to perceive it.”
Carroll said that, as an advice columnist, she sees herself as solving other people’s problems and not soliciting advice for her own.
“The column is not called ‘E. Jean Asks People for Their Advice,.” Carroll said. “I don’t want anyone to know that I suffer. Up until now I would be ashamed to know that people know what is actually going on.”
Tacopina also suggested that Carroll tried to influence the testimony of Natasha Stoynoff, a former reporter for People magazine who is expected to testify later in the trial that Trump sexually assaulted her when she interviewed him at his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2005.
“The evidence will show that Ms. Stoynoff — Mr. Trump led Ms. Stoynoff to an empty room, claiming that he wanted to show her something there. As soon as they got inside, Trump closed the door, grabbed Ms. Stoynoff’s shoulders, pushed her against the wall, and started kissing her,” Carroll’s attorney Shawn Crowley said during opening statements.
Tacopina read excerpts of an interview Carroll conducted with Stoynoff in 2020 and suggested that Carroll repeatedly tried to get Stoynoff to say that Trump was “grinding” against her.
“I didn’t get her to try to say that he did,” Carroll said. “I asked her to think whether it was a possibility.”
Stoynoff is one of two women, in addition to Carroll, who have been allowed to testify about alleged sexual assault by Trump, who denies all of their claims. The other, Jessica Leeds, is expected to testify that Trump assaulted her on an airplane in 1979.
The defense also played an excerpt of an interview Carroll gave to CNN’s Anderson Cooper in which she is heard saying that most people think of rape as sexy. Tacopina asked whether she still believes that.
“In our culture we are saturated with entertainment shows which continually show rapes to gather an audience,” Carroll said, citing Game of Thrones as an example.
“You’re comparing television rape scenes to real life rape scenes?” Tacopina asked. “No,” Carroll said. “To me rape is the most horrible, violent act that can be done against a woman or a man.”
Carroll began her third day of testimony Monday after the judge in the case denied the defense’s request for a mistrial.
In a letter sent early Monday morning to Judge Lewis Kaplan, Tacopina requested that a mistrial be declared on the grounds that the judge had mischaracterized elements of the case and improperly shut down certain lines of questioning during cross examination last week.
Tacopina said he should have been allowed to explore why Carroll did not pursue security camera footage from Bergdorf Goodman and why Carroll did not go to the police following the alleged assault.
“[P]roof that Plaintiff never attempted to determine if any such footage of the parties existed constitutes circumstantial evidence that her accusation is false,” the letter said.
Kaplan denied Tacopina’s request for a mistrial before testimony resumed Monday morning. He offered no reason for the denial.
Earlier, Tacopina asked Carroll about her shopping habits, saying, “You’ve made many purchases at Bergdorf’s since 1995-96?”
“I’ve not made many but I’ve made several,” Carroll replied.
Tacopina displayed an itemized list of 23 purchases Carroll made from 2001-2018 totaling more than $13,000, and said the purchases made it clear that Carroll was not afraid to enter the store where she was allegedly assaulted.
“Bergdorf’s is not a place that I’m afraid to enter,” Carroll said.
Tacopina asked Carroll about a time she was in the store with Lisa Birnbach, one of two women Carroll has said she told about the alleged rape by Trump.
“That day where you were discussing your niece’s wedding dresses, having champagne with Lisa, did the alleged attack ever enter your head?” Tacopina asked.
“I don’t remember,” Carroll answered. “This was a very happy occasion. I wasn’t there to remember the time in the dressing room in 1996.”
The nine-member jury of six men and three women is weighing Carroll’s defamation and battery claims and deciding potential monetary damages.
Carroll’s lawsuit is her second against Trump related to her rape allegation.
She previously sued Trump in 2019 after the then-president denied her rape claim by telling The Hill that Carroll was “totally lying,” saying, “I’ll say it with great respect: No. 1, she’s not my type. No. 2, it never happened. It never happened, OK?” That defamation suit has been caught in a procedural back-and-forth over the question of whether Trump, as president, was acting in his official capacity as an employee of the federal government when he made those remarks.
If Trump is determined to have been acting as a government employee, the U.S. government would substitute as the defendant in that suit — which means that case would go away, since the government cannot be sued for defamation.
This month’s trial is taking place as Trump seeks the White House for a third time, while facing numerous legal challenges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, his handling of classified material after leaving the White House, and possible attempts to interfere in Georgia’s 2020 vote. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said last week she would decide whether to file criminal charges against Trump or his allies this summer.
(WASHINGTON) — New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez isn’t preparing to challenge incumbent Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, her Democratic colleague, during next year’s election cycle, a spokesperson said.
“She is not planning to run for Senate in 2024. She is not planning to primary Gillibrand,” Lauren Hitt told Politico in an article published on Sunday. Hitt declined to comment to ABC News beyond that statement.
The news removes a potential complication in New York’s 2024 Senate race. No serious contender has come forward against Gillibrand, who first joined the Senate in 2009 and who launched her reelection bid in January amid chatter about a possible primary challenger from her left.
Whomever wins the Democratic primary next year will be the heavy favorite in the general election, given New York’s bright blue hue.
“I think my ability to deliver for our state has never been greater,” Gillibrand told The New York Times in January.
A reliably Democratic vote, Gillibrand built a national profile by focusing on issues like paid leave and curbing firearms trafficking and sexual assault in the military. But she has also sometimes been viewed suspiciously by progressives given her ties to Wall Street and her past representing the more conservative upstate New York.
She is also just a couple of years removed from a failed presidential run, which never gained traction and ended before any of the 2020 primaries took place.
While Ocasio-Cortez’s decision does not definitively close the door on a run next year, it further decreases the chance of a high-profile and prolonged primary battle.
“Senator Gillibrand is excited to run on her strong record of delivering for New York families and is confident she’ll be re-elected,” said spokesman Evan Lukaske. “From making gun trafficking a federal crime to securing health benefits for 9/11 survivors to bringing home hundreds of millions of dollars for projects that will boost the economy, Senator Gillibrand has consistently gotten real results.”
Ocasio-Cortez has been seen as a rising star in her state and beyond since she was first elected to the House in 2018 after a primary win against Rep. Joe Crowley, who was then the chair of the House Democratic Caucus.
Last month, she suggested she was keeping her options open.
“There’s a world where I’m here for a long time in this seat, in this position. There’s a world where I’m not an elected official anymore,” she told Politico. “There’s a world where … I may be in higher office.”
At the same time, Ocasio-Cortez has become a major target of conservatives who deride her progressive politics and use her as a boogeyman in message campaigns.
The potential avoidance of a Senate primary in 2024 would be a reprieve for Democrats after they were stunned in the 2022 midterms, when Republicans flipped four House districts and helped secure Speaker Kevin McCarthy his GOP majority.
“Democrats in New York are laser — and I mean laser — focused on winning back those four House seats,” Jon Reinish, a New York Democratic strategist and former Gillibrand aide, told ABC News earlier this year.
(HELENA, Mont.) — Montana state legislator Zooey Zephyr is suing the state, House Speaker Matt Regier and Sergeant at Arms for the Montana House of Representatives Bradley Murfitt after being censured by House Republicans.
“The recent actions violate my 1st amendment rights, as well as the rights of my 11,000 constituents to representation,” Zephyr said in a tweet Monday. “Montana’s State House is the people’s House, not Speaker Regier’s, and I’m determined to defend the right of the people to have their voices heard.”
Zephyr’s calls to vote against a gender-affirming care ban for transgender youth on bill SB99 prompted days of being ignored by Republican leaders on the House floor in April.
Some legislators, including Regier, argued she had broken House rules of decorum when she said legislators would have “blood on your hands” if they passed the transgender youth care ban.
Demonstrators in support of Zephyr interrupted House business several days later to protest her being silenced. Zephyr showed her support by holding up her mic and failing to leave the House floor.
House Republicans voted to censure her in response, getting just over the two-thirds needed to bar her from participating in the legislature from the House floor.
Zephyr has since participated from the public seating in the state Capitol building.
Possible tornado in Virginia Beach, VA. — Courtesy of Rocky Scott Piccola
(NEW YORK) — Between 50 and 100 homes have been damaged by a tornado in Virginia Beach, according to officials.
The tornado struck Virginia Beach just before 6 p.m. on Sunday as severe storms moved through much of the East Coast, according to the National Weather Service.
The twister touched down near River Road and North Great Neck Road, according to the City of Virginia Beach. Several nearby schools and roads are closed as a result.
Virginia Beach resident Jennifer Toppel told ABC News the tornado formed right above her home.
“We heard the roar and we quickly took cover, hiding in our pantry,” Toppel said. “We could actually see snapped pine trees and debris flying 100 feet in the air.”
As Toppel and her family took cover, Toppel’s husband left the pantry to grab their dog and saw the tornado touch down in Lynnhaven River.
Sunday’s tornado may be the strongest since an EF2 hit the area on March 31, 2017, records show. The National Weather Service will conduct a survey on Monday.
Virginia Beach City Manager Patrick Duhaney declared a local state of emergency Sunday night. There have been no reports of any injuries or fatalities as a result of the storm, city officials said.
Tornado warnings led to the cancellation of the third day of the Something in the Water music festival.
Tornado activity has been affecting much of the Southeast in the past week. Seven tornadoes were reported in Florida and Georgia on Thursday, and more tornadoes rolled through Florida’s Atlantic coast on Saturday — including a confirmed twister in Palm Beach.
The same storm system that allowed a tornado to form in Virginia Beach brought flooding conditions to the Northeast on Monday morning. Flash flood warnings were in effect in Maine, where up to 4 inches of rain have already fallen, with another 1 to 2 inches possible through Monday, forecasts show.
Some flooding in the region has caused road closures with the potential for more road washouts.
Flood warnings are also in effect in New Hampshire and parts of New Jersey.
ABC News’ Kenton Gewecke, Lauren Minore and Helena Skinner contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Cross-examination of former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll resumed Monday in her civil defamation and battery case against former President Donald Trump, after the judge in the case denied the defense’s request for a mistrial.
Carroll, who brought the lawsuit in November, alleges that Trump defamed her in a 2022 Truth Social post by calling her allegations “a Hoax and a lie” and saying, “This woman is not my type!” when he denied her claim that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in the 1990s.
She added a charge of battery under a recently adopted New York law that allows adult survivors of sexual abuse to sue their alleged attacker regardless of the statute of limitations. Trump has denied all allegations that he raped Carroll or defamed her.
In a letter sent early Monday morning to Judge Lewis Kaplan, defense attorney Joe Tacopina said the judge had mischaracterized elements of the case and improperly shut down certain lines of questioning during cross examination last week.
Tacopina said he should have been allowed to explore why Carroll did not pursue security camera footage from Bergdorf Goodman and why Carroll did not go to the police following the alleged assault.
“[P]roof that Plaintiff never attempted to determine if any such footage of the parties existed constitutes circumstantial evidence that her accusation is false,” the letter said.
Kaplan denied Tacopina’s request for a mistrial before testimony resumed Monday morning. He offered no reason for the denial.
In his ongoing cross examination of Carroll, Tacopina introduced several of her advice columns for Elle magazine in which she suggested that her readers call police in the event of a sexual assault or threat.
“There were numerous times where you’ve advised your readers to call the police” despite Carroll never reporting her own alleged rape to police, Tacopina said to Carroll.
“In most cases I advised my readers to go to the police,” Carroll replied.
“I was born in 1943,” she said. “I am a member of the silent generation. Women like me were taught to keep our chins up and not complain. The fact that I never went to the police is not surprising for someone my age. I would rather have done anything than call the police.”
The answer was stricken from the record as nonresponsive to the question posed, but the exchange continued the defense’s questioning of Carroll’s actions following the alleged assault, and their suggestions that her behavior — not going to the police, not seeking security camera footage, continuing to shop at Bergdorf’s — is at odds with how other sex assault victims might behave.
Earlier, Tacopina asked Carroll about her shopping habits, saying, “You’ve made many purchases at Bergdorf’s since 1995-96?”
“I’ve not made many but I’ve made several,” Carroll replied.
Tacopina displayed an itemized list of 23 purchases Carroll made from 2001-2018 totaling more than $13,000, and said the purchases made it clear that Carroll was not afraid to enter the store where she was allegedly assaulted.
“Bergdorf’s is not a place that I’m afraid to enter,” Carroll said.
Tacopina asked Carroll about a time she was in the store with Lisa Birnbach, one of two women Carroll has said she told about the alleged rape by Trump.
“That day where you were discussing your niece’s wedding dresses, having champagne with Lisa, did the alleged attack ever enter your head?” Tacopina asked.
“I don’t remember,” Carroll answered. “This was a very happy occasion. I wasn’t there to remember the time in the dressing room in 1996.”
The nine-member jury of six men and three women is weighing Carroll’s defamation and battery claims and deciding potential monetary damages.
Carroll’s lawsuit is her second against Trump related to her rape allegation.
She previously sued Trump in 2019 after the then-president denied her rape claim by telling The Hill that Carroll was “totally lying,” saying, “I’ll say it with great respect: No. 1, she’s not my type. No. 2, it never happened. It never happened, OK?” That defamation suit has been caught in a procedural back-and-forth over the question of whether Trump, as president, was acting in his official capacity as an employee of the federal government when he made those remarks.
If Trump is determined to have been acting as a government employee, the U.S. government would substitute as the defendant in that suit — which means that case would go away, since the government cannot be sued for defamation.
This month’s trial is taking place as Trump seeks the White House for a third time, while facing numerous legal challenges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, his handling of classified material after leaving the White House, and possible attempts to interfere in Georgia’s 2020 vote. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said Monday she would decide whether to file criminal charges against Trump or his allies this summer.
Author Jancee Dunn talks about her new book, “Hot and Bothered: What no one tells you about menopause,” on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” May 1, 2023. — ABC News
(NEW YORK) — As more women pull back the curtain on their journeys with menopause — a topic that previously felt taboo to discuss openly — Jancee Dunn dives into the subject in her new book, Hot and Bothered: What No One Tells You About Menopause.
For Dunn, the first signs of menopause started when she turned 45.
“I had no idea what it was. I wasn’t in that space at all,” she told Good Morning America.
While there were plenty of pregnancy books on the shelves, Dunn said she found just one outdated book on menopause from the ’90s. So she set out to change that, spoke with experts in the field and wrote the book she wished she’d had.
“I really wanted to write a book where there was humor in it and not make it so dire,” she said.
Her book instead offers simple advice on how she handled some of the common symptoms, like hot flashes. “I breathe in, count of five, hold it for eight count, then breathe out. There’s something about giving yourself control,” she said.
Other symptoms she outlined include brain fog, mood change, irregular periods, thinning hair and dry skin.
“[Skin is] probably going to get dryer and more sensitive and your go-to products might not work any more,” Dunn explained from her personal experience. “You want something that gets rid of that dry outer layer. Gentle retinol products can help.”
Dunn also shared her message to women struggling with menopause: “Normalize this transition by talking as much as possible to everyone you know about it. The more we talk about it, the more normal it is. Less scary it is.”
ABC News Chief Medical Correspondent and OB-GYN Dr. Jennifer Ashton shared her expertise to further shed light on the topic and help women better understand the phase of time and transition.
When does menopause begin?
“The average age of menopause in this country is 51. It can start as early as 45 or even earlier,” Ashton said. “Perimenopause can start 10 years before menopause actually begins.”
What is perimenopause?
“Our definition is one year without a menstrual period,” Ashton said.
What are the perimenopause symptoms?
The head-to-toe symptoms, as Ashton called it, include “bleeding patterns can change, mood swings, skin changes, hair change [and] weight changes.”
“It is so pervasive and so distinctive woman to woman that we tend to say to a woman 40 and up, ‘If you are experiencing something new, something different, think hormonal, think perimenopause or menopause first.’ That’s how diverse and broad the signs and symptoms are,” Ashton said.
Recommendations for menopause symptoms
“The first thing we have to remember is that hormone replacement therapy is and should be an option on the table for the vast majority of women,” Ashton said, adding that “women should talk to their gynecologist about that.”
When it comes to hot flashes specifically, Ashton said, “There are numerous non-hormonal prescription medications that work very effectively.”
Additionally, she said wellness behaviors can help, such as getting exercise and avoiding alcohol, caffeine and spicy foods, which, she says, can trigger the onset of a hot flash.
What to know about hormone replacement therapy
“Women have to discuss this with their gynecologist,” she encouraged.
While some are weary of the treatment, Ashton pointed to the 2002 Women’s Health Initiative trial, in which “data was boiled down to a misleading headline: ‘Hormones bad, hormones dangerous.’ Now, there are oncologists who actually, in evaluating the data both past and present, really find that most data suggests and shows conclusively that estrogen does not increase the risk of breast cancer.”
When it comes to other conditions that affect women, Ashton said, “Heart disease, osteoporosis and dementia cause more deaths than breast cancer and there are some real benefits to hormones.”
