(BRUNSWICK, Ga.) — A Georgia jury is now deliberating the fates of three white men charged in the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black jogger.
The prosecution and defense gave the nearly all-white jury two vastly different tales of Arbery. The prosecution painted him as a brother, an uncle and a victim, while the defense portrayed him as a prospective criminal.
Travis McMichael — who shot Arbery on Feb. 23, 2020 — his father Gregory and their neighbor William Bryan have pleaded not guilty to a nine-count state indictment that includes malice murder, multiple charges of felony murder, false imprisonment, aggravated assault with a 12-gauge shotgun and aggravated assault with their pickup trucks.
Travis McMichael claims he shot Arbery in self-defense. The three say they believed he may have committed a crime in the neighborhood and pursued him after he jogged past Gregory McMichael’s house.
In closing statements, Laura Hogue, the attorney for Travis McMichael, slammed Arbery’s character, claiming that “a beautiful teenager with a broad smile and a crooked baseball cap can go astray.”
“He can deteriorate and lose his way, and years later he can end up creeping into a home that is not his own and running away instead of facing the consequences, acting erratically when approached and making terrible, unexpected, illogical choices,” she said, describing Arbery and the case.
Travis McMichael had testified that he and his father believed Arbery had committed a burglary at a home under construction in their neighborhood, though prosecutor Linda Dunikoski said neither Travis nor Gregory called the police or had seen Arbery commit a crime.
The attacks against Arbery’s character continued from the defense.
“Turning Ahmaud Arbery into a victim after the choices that he made does not reflect the reality of what brought Ahmaud Arbery to Satilla Shores in his khaki shorts with no socks to cover his long, dirty toenails,” Hogue said.
Defense attorney Jason Sheffield also recalled Travis McMichael’s testimony, which claimed that Arbery was angry and clenching his teeth when he was approached.
The prosecution argued that there is no proof Arbery had committed or planned to commit a crime.
Dunikoski denounced the portrayal of him as a criminal, saying, “All three of these defendants made assumptions — made assumptions about what was going on that day, and they made their decision to attack Ahmaud Arbery in their driveways because he was a Black man running down the street.”
Dunikoski urged jurors to remember that Arbery was unarmed with nothing in his pockets when he was being tailed by the three men on trial.
“They’re going to try and convince you that Ahmaud Arbery was the attacker, that he was somehow threatening to them — three on one, two pickup trucks, two guns,” said Dunikoski. “They want you to believe that he is the danger to them.”
Dunikoski opened the trial by humanizing Arbery, highlighting his personal relationships as a brother and uncle, and “an avid runner.”
“The evidence that he was an avid runner is you’re going to be able to see his shoes, his Nike shoes, where he basically almost had absolutely no tread left on them whatsoever,” she said, highlighting the commonplace nature of Arbery’s run through the neighborhood.
Outside of the courtroom, Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, urged people to remember him for more than his tragic death.
“He was my baby boy,” she said in an interview with ABC News Live Prime on Nov. 18. “Ahmaud was loved by many and also I saw Ahmaud love many. He just wasn’t a young man who decided to go jogging on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Ahmaud was his son. He was a brother. He was an uncle. He was a grandson. Ahmaud was loved by so many people, and we lost him so tragically.”
Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael and Bryan each face maximum sentences of life in prison if convicted on all the charges.
(LUXOR, Egypt) — After more than seven decades of stop-start attempts to excavate a nearly 2-mile ancient walkway in the southern city of Luxor, Egypt will finally open the 3,000-year-old Avenue of Sphinxes to the public Thursday in a glitzy ceremony.
The full stretches of the 1.7 mile long and about 250 feet wide avenue, which connects Karnak Temple with Luxor Temple, have been uncovered in the ancient city of Thebes, with its distinctive sphinxes and ram-headed statues lined up on both flanks.
In recent years, Egypt has stepped up its efforts to promote its archeological discoveries as it strives to revive its ailing tourism industry, which took a fresh battering during the COVID-19 pandemic.
One element of this approach has been recreating ancient settings in flamboyant ceremonies, which were first introduced when Egypt held what was dubbed a “royal procession” to parade 22 mummies through the streets of Cairo as they were being conveyed to a newly inaugurated museum last April.
Construction of the Avenue of Sphinxes began during the New Kingdom era and was completed during the reign of 30th Dynasty ruler Nectanebo I (380-362 B.C.), but the road was buried under layers of sand over the centuries.
“The amount of rubble that was removed over the decades was up to 8 meters high. Every layer of sand tells us a story about that avenue,” Mostafa el-Sagheer, the head of Karnak’s Antiquities Department who oversaw the project to excavate the last stretch of the avenue, told ABC News.
The first trace of the avenue was found in 1949 when Egyptian archeologist Mohammed Zakaria Ghoneim discovered eight statues near the Luxor Temple, el-Sagheer said, with 17 more statues uncovered from 1958 to 1961 and 55 unearthed from 1961 to 1964 — all within a perimeter of 250 meters.
From 1984 to 2000, the entire route of the walkway was finally determined, leaving it to excavators to uncover the road. It was never a walk in the park, however.
Urban development meant hundreds of homes, as well as mosques and a 115-year-old Evangelical church, had to be demolished to make way for the road.
The political turmoil that followed the 2011 uprising in Egypt further complicated efforts to complete the restoration project, stalling it for several years before it was resumed in 2017.
“From 2017 to 2021, the final 20 or 25% of the road was excavated,” el-Sagheer said.
Most of the original 1,057 statues in the avenue have been recovered. They are divided into three shapes, the first being a body of a lion with ram’s head that was erected over a nearly 1,000-foot area between the Karnak Temple and the Precinct of Mut during the reign of New Kingdom ruler Tutankhamen, famously known as King Tut.
The second shape is a full ram statue, built in a remote area during the reign of the 18th dynasty’s Amenhotep III before being later moved to the Temple of Khonsu in the Karnak complex.
The third shape, which comprises the biggest chunk of the statues, is one of a sphinx (a lion’s body and a human’s head), with the statues stretching over a mile from the Precinct of Mut to the Luxor Temple. They were erected during the tenure of Nectanebo I.
El-Sagheer said the ancient Opet festival would be also relived during Thursday’s celebrations.
The festival primarily involved a procession in which shrines of the “triad of deities” — supreme god Amun-Re, his consort Mut and their son Khonsu — were paraded by priests on wooden barques from Karnak to Luxor in a symbolic recreation of their marriage.
“During this journey, people of Thebes would line up on both sides, with military marches and music playing, dancers performing and oblations offered,” el-Sagheer said.
(WASHINGTON) — Kate Hendricks Thomas deployed to Iraq in 2005 as a member of the Marine Corps. She said she knew that choice carried risks, but she says she didn’t realize it would come back to haunt her nearly two decades later.
“I knew that deploying could cost me my life,” Thomas, now 41, told ABC News. “I didn’t think it would be like this.”
Unknown to her at the time, she said, some of the air she was breathing while deployed was toxic, laced with thousands of chemicals.
The military used burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan as a way to get rid of trash. Regular household waste items were burned, such as food and clothing. But so were more toxic substances — paint, metals, plastics, styrofoam, rubber and human waste. She said these burn pits smelled like exhaust and asphalt on a hot summer day. She said they smoldered, with billowing black smoke.
She wasn’t the only veteran exposed to these toxic fumes. Roughly 3.5 million veterans who deployed post 9/11 could have been exposed, concerned members of Congress say.
“When I checked in at Fallujah, I originally was housed in this area where everybody was cleaning their air conditioners all of the time,” Thomas said. “And it was really as soon as I got there that I realized we were cleaning this chunky particulate matter out of the filters,” she later continued.
Thomas left the Marine Corps in 2008. She went back to school, earned her Ph.D., married, and had a son. But in 2018, at the age of 38, she received shocking news: she had stage 4 breast cancer.
“They said it looked like I had been dipped in something,” Thomas remembered. “I had metastases throughout my skeletal system from my skull to my toes.”
According to a 2021 VA-funded research proposal, “there is a notably high incidence of breast cancer among younger military women (20% to 40% higher). The incident rate of breast cancer for active duty women is seven times higher than the average incident rate of fifteen other cancer types across all service members.”
Kate says she’s met “a ton” of other female veterans who have had breast cancer.
“I actually ran into the only other woman in my unit in Iraq,” Thomas said. “And she and I started chatting, and the conversation turned to health. And it turns out, she has the exact same type of aggressive breast cancer that I do. And that’s anecdotal data, it’s anecdotal evidence, but to me, that felt like a big deal.”
But many of the medical conditions allegedly caused by these toxins weren’t recognized by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Thomas immediately submitted a claim with the VA for coverage. She says she went back and forth with them for three years.
“They denied my claim, they denied appeals,” she said. “They said, ‘You know, we’re not — we’re not approving claims for burn pits right now.'”
Since then, Thomas and her family have paid thousands of dollars every year for private health insurance to pay for her medical treatments not covered by veterans’ benefits.
Expanding coverage
There are multiple ways to expand veterans’ benefits. The president can sign an executive order, Congress can pass legislation, which could then get signed into law, or the VA can choose to recognize more claims.
Last week, the Biden administration said it was establishing a new policy to help more veterans exposed to burn pits during their service overseas receive more benefits.
The Veterans Administration will now “create presumptions of exposure … when the evidence of an environmental exposure and the associated health risks are strong in the aggregate but hard to prove on an individual basis,” according to the White House. But veterans’ claims take time to be approved, and once when they are recognized it can still take months before payouts begin, according to a press conference earlier this month with Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough. The Military Times reported that it could be until May 2022 until checks are actually put in the mail.
Congress, which controls the purse strings, could also pass legislation.
“Congress sent us to war, and they need to understand that paying the full cost of war includes the health care [of veterans],” Tom Porter, the executive vice president at the IAVA, said to ABC News.
There are two bills being considered to expand benefits for veterans, one in the House and one in the Senate.
The chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., told ABC News that he believes “2021 will be the year that we get a comprehensive toxic exposure bill done.”
With little over a month left until 2022, there’s still a lot of work to be done.
Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., a co-sponsor of the House bill and a veteran herself, believes that if passed, the measure could be expansive enough to give affected veterans what they need.
“This bill is very comprehensive,” Luria told ABC News. “And it brings together about 15 different pieces of [previous] legislation that address all different aspects of toxic exposures.” She later added that she believes this is “probably the largest veterans benefit bill of our generation.”
While there has been bipartisan support for both of these bills in the House and the Senate, Sen. Jon Tester, D-Montana, told ABC News there’s been some hesitancy over the cost.
“We have seen some push back by some of the Republicans that say we can’t afford to do this,” Tester said. “If we’re not willing to take care of our veterans when they get back home, then we shouldn’t send them off to war to begin with,” he later continued.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., says he has been working with the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee to make sure a full list of ailments is included in the bill.
“It is outrageous that the federal government has turned a blind eye to the men and women who honorably served their nation,” Rubio told ABC News. “If our bill becomes law, the worst thing that can happen is someone who served our country receives treatment for a rare, debilitating illness.”
While Congress negotiates, the VA is urging vets to file claims, even if they’ve been denied in the past.
“Don’t wait for legislation to be passed,” Ronald Burke, deputy under secretary for policy and oversight at the Department of Veteran Affairs, told ABC News. “Don’t wait for a claim for an item to be listed as a presumptive condition. Yes, file your claim.”
‘Six weeks is an eternity’
In July, after three years of denials, the VA finally recognized Thomas’ claim, acknowledging that her aggressive cancer was caused by exposure to toxic burn pits while she served overseas. But, the earliest appointment she could get was six weeks away.
“Six weeks is an eternity in the stage 4 setting,” Thomas said.
Thomas made the decision to keep her private insurance so she could receive quicker treatments.
While the White House’s expansion of benefits will help veterans to come — and the bills in Congress, if passed, would help too — it’s too little, too late for Thomas. Her doctors gave her five years to live. It’s been three.
Thomas has never regretted serving.
“I love the Marine Corps so much,” Thomas said. “It gave me so much — opportunities to lead, opportunities to travel the world, a sense of purpose. I felt like my work mattered.”
But she recognized there will come a time when there will be treatments she’s not willing to do.
“There will come a point where we say, ‘Okay, we’re going to have to let the cancer take its course,'” Thomas said. “But I’d really like my son to be a little bit older.”
So, she said she’s holding out hope for more time. Her son, Matthew, is just eight years old. She said she’s worried about him losing his mom at such a young age.
“And it’s interesting, because he knows,” Thomas said of her son knowing she has terminal cancer. “The other day we were talking about Jesus and heaven. And he had all these questions. And then he got very still. And his eyes filled up with tears. And he looked at me and he said, ‘Mom, it’s gonna be so sad.'”
ABC News’ Stephanie Ramos, Hannah Demissie, Tia Humphries, Luis Martinez and Nate Luna contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — A rare manuscript by Albert Einstein that changed the course of modern science was just sold for over 13.3 million euros (over $15 million), including fees, beating all predictions.
The 54-page, handwritten document outlines calculations that led to his theory of relativity. One of two existing copies went on sale at Christie’s auction house in Paris on Tuesday evening. It was expected to fetch $2.4 million to $3.5 million. The manuscript was being sold as part of a judicial sale, and had to be handled by a special judicial commissioner. It was bought over the phone by an anonymous buyer.
“This is without a doubt the most valuable Einstein manuscript ever to come to auction,” Christie’s said in a statement ahead of the sale.
The iconic German physicist co-wrote the manuscript with a lifelong friend, the Swiss engineer Michele Besso, in Zurich from June 1913 into early 1914, according to Christie’s, which is hosting the sale on behalf of Aguttes auction house.
Although this copy isn’t the final draft, the Einstein-Besso manuscript shows the trial and error that went into the calculations. When equations about the relativity of rotational movements proved correct, Einstein excitedly wrote in the margins of one of the pages, “Stimmt!” That’s German for, “It works!”
While the document contains mistakes, it ultimately led to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which states that gravity is not a force happening between objects in space but rather a deformation of space and time geometry. The final theory was published in 1915, about a year after the Einstein-Besso manuscript.
The manuscript consists of 26 pages of Einstein’s handwriting, 25 pages of Besso’s and thjree pages that appear to have been written together. Some portions are crossed or torn out, and pages have rust stains, according to Christie’s, which described the document as depicting “a crucial stage in the development of the general theory of relativity.”
“Even today, in 2021, when we study cosmology, or even when we study fusions of black holes, gravitational waves, pulsars, we still use Einstein’s equations,” French astrophysicist Etienne Klein explained in a video on the Einstein-Besso manuscript, released by Christie’s ahead of the sale. “Over a century after being laid down on paper by Einstein, they are still the right equations for describing any gravitational phenomenon.”
Einstein and Besso met at a concert while both students at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, where Einstein studied physics and Besso engineering. Friends for life, Besso described their collaboration as one between an eagle (Einstein) and a sparrow (Besso), saying the sparrow could fly higher under the eagle’s wing, according to Carl Seelig’s 1956 biography of Einstein.
Einstein, who won the Nobel Prize in physics for 1921, was known for destroying most of his work. But Besso preserved the manuscript for posterity.
“A good scientist is someone who makes mistakes, discovers and corrects them,” Klein said in Christie’s catalogue of the sale.
(WAUKESHA, Wis.) — Six people were killed after an SUV driver plowed into a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Sunday afternoon.
The sixth death, a child, was announced by prosecutors Tuesday. The child’s age and identity have not been released.
The 39-year-old suspect is in custody.
Here is what we know about the lives lost:
Tamara Durand, 52
Tamara Durand was dancing for the first time with the Dancing Grannies group at the parade, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
A former elementary school teacher, Durand recently turned her focus to watching her grandson several days a week so her daughter could attend nursing school, the newspaper said.
Durand’s husband, Dave Durand, said in a statement, “Tammy was a vibrant, loving and warm woman who we all miss deeply already. Her memory will bring joy to all who knew her.”
Jane Kulich, 52
Jane Kulich is survived by her husband, three children and grandchildren, said her niece, Desiree Kulich.
Kulich was family-oriented, her niece said, and went to church each Sunday and held a family game night on the weekends.
“My aunt Jane was one of those people that could be described as an angel on Earth. She was one of those people that you could tell anything to and not fear to be judged,” Desiree Kulich told ABC News via email.
“Family was always first,” she said. “The whole family feels robbed.”
Virginia Sorenson, 79
Virginia Sorenson was dancing with the Dancing Grannies at the parade, a group she had been with for 19 years.
She loved to dance and helped choreograph the group’s routines, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
Sorenson was a registered nurse, grandmother and animal lover, caring at home for horses, chickens, dogs and cats, the Sentinel reported.
She leaves behind a husband of 56 years, the Sentinel reported.
Wilhelm Hospel, 81
LeAnna Owen, 71
ABC News’ Jessica Hornig contributed to this report.
(BRUNSWICK, Ga.) — A Georgia jury was set to begin deliberating Tuesday the fates of three white men charged with trapping Ahmaud Arbery with their pickup trucks and fatally shooting.
“Your oath requires that you will decide this case based on the evidence,” Judge Timothy Walmsley told the jury before sending the panel off to begin their deliberations.
The jury got the case after Linda Dunikoski, the Cobb County, Georgia, assistant district attorney appointed as a special prosecutor in the Glynn County case, took two hours to rebut the closing arguments made on Monday by attorneys for the three defendants.
The jury, comprised of 11 white people and one Black person, heard wildly different summations on Monday of the same evidence in the racially-charged case. Dunikoski alleged the defendants pursued and murdered Arbery because of wrong assumptions they made that the Black man running through their neighborhood had committed a burglary, while defense attorneys countered that Arbery was shot in self-defense when he resisted a citizen’s arrest.
Travis McMichael, the 35-year-old U.S. Coast Guard veteran; his father, Gregory McMichael, 65, a retired Glynn County police officer, and their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, 53, each face maximum sentences of life in prison if convicted on all the charges.
The defendants have pleaded not guilty to a nine-count state indictment that includes malice murder, multiple charges of felony murder, false imprisonment, aggravated assault with a 12-gauge shotgun and aggravated assault with their pickup trucks.
The McMichaels and Bryan were also indicted on federal hate crime charges in April and have all pleaded not guilty.
Here’s how the news developed. All times Eastern:
Nov 23, 11:34 am
Judge gives jury final instructions
Judge Timothy Walmsley read the jury final instructions and explained the law and each charge to the jury before sending the panel off to deliberate their verdicts.
Walmsley told the jury that they must reach a unanimous verdict beyond a reasonable doubt, explaining that does not mean “beyond all doubt” or to a “mathematical certainty.”
He reminded the jury that the defendants have all pleaded not guilty to the charges and that the burden of proof is solely on the prosecution.
Walmsley said that lesser charges could only be considered against William “Roddie” Bryan. He said the lesser charges against Bryan are simple assault, reckless conduct and reckless driving.
“Each of you must decide this case for yourself,” Walmsley said.
Nov 23, 10:56 am
Prosecutor pokes holes in Travis McMichael’s testimony
Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski suggested to the jury that Travis and Greg McMichael became angry at Ahmaud Arbery after he ignored their calls to stop when they pulled up alongside him during the pursuit.
Dunikoski attacked the testimony of Travis McMichael, pointing out inconsistencies and claims she alleged were concocted for the trial.
Dunikoski said neither Travis McMichael nor his father told police on the day of the shooting that they were trying to place Arbery under criminal arrest because they believed he had committed a burglary at a home under construction in their neighborhood.
The prosecutor cited Travis McMichael’s testimony that he thought his father had called 911 before they set out to chase Arbery.
“Does anybody believe that?” asked Dunikoski, suggesting that a dispatcher would have kept Greg McMichael on the line to get more information.
She scoffed at Travis McMichael’s claim on the witness stand that he didn’t know what his father yelled at Arbery as they chased him, including the alleged statement threatening to shoot Arbery.
She said Travis McMichael’s testimony was full of “maybes” and assumptions, including that Arbery may have committed a crime, that maybe he was caught.
“These are all maybes. He doesn’t know anything,” Dunikoski said.
Dunikoski also poked holes in Travis McMichael’s claim that he spoke to Arbery calmly during the pursuit, trying to get him to stop and answer questions about what he was doing in their neighborhood.
“Do you believe for a minute he was talking softly to Ahmaud Arbery?” Dunikoski asked the jury.
She played a 911 call Travis McMichael made after Arbery was cornered, and breathlessly reported his emergency that “A Black male was running down the street.” In the background of the call, Greg McMichael was heard yelling at Arbery, “Stop. Goddammit. Stop.”
The prosecutor wrapped up her rebuttal argument by telling the jury the defendants are all “parties to the crime” and asked the panel to convict them on all charges.
Nov 23, 10:03 am
Defense attorneys call for a mistrial
As prosecutor Linda Dunikoski continued her rebuttal argument, defense attorneys for Greg and Travis McMichael objected several times, accusing Dunikoski of misstating the law that pertains to citizen’s arrest.
After one of the defense attorneys called for a mistrial in front of the jury, Judge Walmsley sent the panel out of the courtroom.
Walmsley appeared frustrated at all the interruptions to Dunikoski’s rebuttal, saying, “I like to get the closing arguments done.”
Walmsley denied the motion for a mistrial, telling the attorneys, “I indicated the law is going to be provided to the panel. I’ve indicated the court’s position with respect to the law.”
Nov 23, 9:42 am
‘This isn’t the Wild West’: Prosecutor
Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski went through the felony counts against the defendants, telling the jury that the evidence shows they are guilty of each charge, including malice murder.
“This isn’t the Wild West,” Dunikoski said, referring to the actions the McMichaels and Bryan allegedly took.
“But for the criminal intent at false imprisonment, but for the false imprisonment, but for the assault with the motor vehicles, but for the aggravated assault with the shotgun, he (Arbery) wouldn’t be dead. That’s how you think about it,” Dunikoski said. “You can’t take out any of these crimes. You take out any one of these crimes that they committed and he’s still alive.”
Dunikoski added, “All of the underlying felonies played a substantial and necessary part in causing the death of Ahmaud Arbery.”
Nov 23, 9:18 am
‘Ignorance of the law is no excuse’: Prosecutor
Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski began her rebuttal argument by telling the jury she wants to make sure “we are on the same page as far as the facts and the law goes.”
She said the law requires “a fair-minded and impartial juror to honestly seek the truth.”
“In other words, do you think they committed the crimes? That’s all you need. Oh, if you go, ‘Yeah, I think they committed the crimes, you’re good. That’s all you need.”
Dunikoski’s statement prompted objections from the defense attorneys that she was misstating the law. Judge Timothy Walmsley told the jury he will instruct them on the law once Dunikoski is finished.
The prosecutor then told the jury that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.”
“If you’re going to take the law into your own hands, you better know what the law is,” Dunikoski said, referring to the laws of self-defense and citizen’s arrests that the defendants are claiming.
“The state is not saying that Greg and Travis McMichael ran out of their house to go murder him,” Dunikoski said. “It started out as one thing and it escalated and it escalated until it became murder.”
Nov 22, 8:30 pm
Jury sent home for the night
After Kevin Gough, the attorney for William “Roddie” Bryan, wrapped up his closing argument, Dunikoski informed the judge that she’d need another two hours to present her rebuttal argument.
Judge Walmsley polled the jury and they said they didn’t want to stay longer.
Dunikoski will present her rebuttal argument on Tuesday morning before the jury is given final instructions on the law and sent to begin deliberations.
Court will resume at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, about a half-hour earlier than usual.
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.1 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 772,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
Just 59.2% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the new is developing. All times Eastern:
Nov 23, 10:46 am
Unvaccinated 9 times more likely to be hospitalized, 14 times more likely to die: CDC
In September, unvaccinated people had a 5.8 times greater risk of testing positive for COVID-19 compared to vaccinated individuals, according to federal data pulled from 24 states and jurisdictions that has been published on the CDC website.
The unvaccinated are 14 times more likely to die from COVID-19, according to the CDC.
At Monday’s White House COVID-19 briefing, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said unvaccinated adults are nine times more likely to be hospitalized for the virus compared to vaccinated adults.
-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Nov 23, 9:34 am
Michigan hospital officials warn of strained health system
The Michigan Hospital Association is warning of strained health systems as COVID-19 surges across the state.
Michigan is fast approaching its highest number of COVID-19 hospitalizations since the pandemic began, with more than 3,900 patients currently receiving care, according to state data. The vast majority of patients in the ICU and on ventilators are unvaccinated.
“Most hospitals throughout the state have more patients in their emergency departments than they do available rooms and staff to care for them,” officials wrote in a statement on Monday. “This results in long wait times, patients being placed in hallways or conference rooms, and diverting patients away from a hospital because there is no physical room or medical staff available to accept more patients.”
“We are extremely concerned because our best predictions are that COVID-19 patients will continue to increase during the weeks ahead as we enter the yearly flu season,” they said.
-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Nov 22, 2:31 pm
US sees another increase in pediatric cases
The U.S. has reported an increase in pediatric COVID-19 cases for the third week in a row.
Nearly 142,000 children tested positive in the last week, which is a 16% increase from the week prior and a 41% jump over the last three weeks, according to a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
Nearly 6.8 million children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the pandemic began.
COVID-19 cases among children remain “extremely high,” the organizations said, and there have been almost 1.7 million additional cases since the first week of September.
The Midwest continues to see the highest number of pediatric cases.
Severe illness due to COVID-19 remains “uncommon” among children, AAP and CHA said. However, AAP and CHA continue to warn that there is an urgent need to collect more data on the long-term consequences of the pandemic on children, “including ways the virus may harm the long-term physical health of infected children, as well as its emotional and mental health effects.”
-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Nov 22, 12:44 pm
Hospital admissions on the rise
Daily COVID-19-related hospital admissions are on the rise in the U.S., up 8.4% in the last week, according to federal data.
Nineteen states reported at least a 10% jump in hospital admissions over the last week: Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Michigan, which is now reporting more cases than at any other point in the pandemic, has the nation’s highest infection rate, followed by Minnesota, New Mexico, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Maine.
Puerto Rico, Florida and Hawaii have the nation’s lowest infection rates, according to federal data.
-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Nov 22, 10:01 am
TSA vaccine mandate won’t impact holiday travel
About 93% of TSA employees are in compliance with Monday’s deadline for the federal employee vaccine mandate, TSA spokesperson Lisa Farbstein said.
“In compliance” means employees have had at least one shot or have filed for a medical or religious exemption.
Holiday travel won’t be impacted by the mandate, Farbstein said.
(HOUSTON) — The funeral of the youngest victim in the deadly Travis Scott Astroworld concert will be held Tuesday at 11 a.m. Nine-year-old Ezra Blount was hospitalized following the violent crowd surge at the Nov. 5 concert and later died from his injuries, his family confirmed.
Ezra was “trampled and catastrophically injured” at the festival, when a wave of concertgoers began pushing one another during Scott’s performance, according to a statement issued by the Blount family attorneys.
Ezra was on his father’s shoulders when the crowd surge began, Ezra’s grandparents told ABC Houston station KTRK.
His father, Treston, passed out and fell, and Ezra fell along with him, getting trampled by others in the crowd, according to the family’s GoFundMe. He was separated from his father, and his grandparents said they found him alone at the hospital in a coma, suffering from major organ damage and severe brain swelling.
His family has joined more than 300 Astroworld concertgoers in lawsuits being filed by civil rights attorney Ben Crump and Texas trial attorney Thomas J. Henry against the event organizers, venue management and performers at the concert.
The family’s lawsuit, filed by Crump, alleges negligence regarding crowd control, medical attention and event staffing.
“The Blount family tonight is grieving the incomprehensible loss of their precious young son,” Crump said. “This should not have been the outcome of taking their son to a concert, what should have been a joyful celebration. Ezra’s death is absolutely heartbreaking. We are committed to seeking answers and justice for the Blount family. But tonight we stand in solidarity with the family, in grief, and in prayer.”
Following the concert, Scott released a statement on the tragedy, saying, “I’m absolutely devastated by what took place last night. My prayers go out to the families and all those impacted by what happened at the Astroworld festival.”
Scott announced he will cover the funeral costs and further aid to individuals affected by the tragedy and will refund all of the Astroworld concertgoers and ticket holders. He has also said he is cooperating with investigators.
(NEW YORK) — A holiday like Thanksgiving that is centered on food, family and more food can be a precarious time for people struggling with eating disorders or disordered eating.
Alex Mutti, 27, of New York City, said she always loved Thanksgiving until her early teens, when she began to suffer from an eating disorder and the holiday became “really terrifying.”
She said making it through Thanksgiving became even more difficult even as she went through recovery.
“In my experience, a lot of eating disorder recovery was around eating mindfully and creating routine around my eating,” Mutti told Good Morning America. “And Thanksgiving throws all that out the window. Not many people are eating mindfully on Thanksgiving.”
“Losing that kind of routine that became safe for me was always really anxiety-provoking,” she said. “And being around the extended family and friends was difficult, even if they didn’t say anything.”
Lauren Larkin, now a mental health counselor in private practice in New York City, said she recalls many Thanksgivings she “white-knuckled” her way through the worst stages of her eating disorder, prior to recovery.
“Thanksgiving is really the holiday where you talk about food and talk about regretting the food you ate,” she said. “I would push myself to show up and act like everyone else and be like everyone else, even when maybe I couldn’t, and then I would have really intense anxiety afterwards.”
This holiday is approaching as the United States has seen a mental health crisis during the coronavirus pandemic, of which eating disorders are a major part.
The number of people who were hospitalized for eating disorders doubled in the U.S. during the pandemic, according to research published recently in JAMA Network.
And even for people who may more casually struggle with disordered eating, this Thanksgiving holiday may be more fraught with discussions on weight and looks as family members see each other for the first time in months due to the pandemic.
“I think about the stereotypical great-aunt who is stuck in the diet culture and who is going to make comments about your weight,” said Larkin. “Thanksgiving is probably the most triggering holiday for anyone who has struggled.”
As Thanksgiving Day nears, here are five tips from experts to help cope with diet and negative food talk.
1. Set boundaries.
If you are at a holiday meal with supportive family members or friends, Christy Harrison, a registered dietitian and author of the book “Anti-Diet” recommends setting boundaries ahead of time, like asking loved ones to not comment on your body or what you’re eating, and to do the same for others too.
If difficult conversation does emerge at the dinner table, Harrison suggests appealing to people on an emotional level.
“They probably care about you, they’re people you’re spending the holidays with, so talk on a human level about why diet talk hurts you or what you have found to be helpful in your own relationship with food,” she said. “And keep it focused on yourself, like, ‘for me,’ and, ‘in my experience.'”
“And if you’re not quite as close, you can say something a little less personal, like, ‘I’ve found that talking about this kind of stuff just makes the meal less fun for me,” she said.
2. Remember it is one meal, one day.
“Remember that it’s just one day, it’s just another day of eating and you can have those foods anytime you want,” said Larkin. “Try to minimize the importance and the exact rules around food and remember, you can have it anytime. You can have more. “You can have less. It’s just one day out of 365 days of the year.”
Speaking of her own recovery, she added, “Those are the kinds of conversations I had to have with myself and with my individual therapist leading up those these events until it became true for me.”
Larkin and other experts also recommend staying in a routine with meals both before and after a Thanksgiving lunch or dinner, again reinforcing that it is just one meal among many.
3. Start new traditions.
Larkin said that during certain parts of her eating disorder and her recovery, she chose to travel over the Thanksgiving holiday instead of joining family.
“I had to put my needs in front of my family’s need of wanting to see me and had to say, ‘Even though you want to see me, this holiday is too triggering and I’m not going to participate in the way that I normally would,'” she said. “That’s okay.”
In other cases, a healthy new tradition may be going to a Thanksgiving dinner hosted by friends instead of family, or organizing activities before and after a Thanksgiving meal that don’t involve sitting and talking about food, according to Larkin.
4. Have an ally by your side.
Chelsea M. Kronengold, a spokesperson for the National Eating Disorders Association, said it is important to have a support system on hand around a stressful holiday like Thanksgiving.
“If you have a therapist or a nutritionist, talk to them about your concerns prior to the holiday so you can work together on helpful coping strategies,” she said. “And in addition to professional support, if you have a friend or a family member who’s either in the room with you or available for you to text if the meal is challenging or the family dynamics are challenging, that can be extremely helpful.”
5. Practice self-compassion.
“It’s okay to acknowledge that Thanksgiving and other food and family-focused holidays won’t be easy,” said Kronengold. “If you end up restricting or bingeing, remember that tomorrow is a new day.”
“When you perpetuate that cycle of shame and guilt, it’s only going to be counterproductive to your mental health and your recovery journey,” she said.
If you or a loved one is struggling with food and body image concerns this Thanksgiving, the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) Helpline is available via click-to-chat on Thanksgiving Day from 12 pm – 8 pm ET. For 24/7 crisis support, text “NEDA” to 741-741.
(BRUNSWICK, Ga.) — The lead prosecutor got the final word on Tuesday before a Georgia jury is to begin deliberating the fates of three white men charged with trapping Ahmaud Arbery with their pickup trucks and fatally shooting the 25-year-old Black man.
Linda Dunikoski, the Cobb County, Georgia, assistant district attorney appointed as a special prosecutor in the Glynn County case, is expected to take up to two hours to rebut the closing arguments made on Monday by attorneys for the three defendants.
The jury is expected to be given the case to begin deliberations following Dunikoski’s presentation and final jury instructions from the judge.
The panel, comprised of 11 white people and one Black person, heard wildly different summations on Monday of the same evidence in the racially-charged case. Dunikoski alleged the defendants pursued and murdered Arbery because of wrong assumptions they made that the Black running through their neighborhood had committed a burglary, while defense attorney’s countered that Arbery was shot in self-defense when he resisted a citizen’s arrest.
Travis McMichael, the 35-year-old U.S. Coast Guard veteran; his father, Gregory McMichael, 65, a retired Glynn County police officer, and their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, 53, each face maximum sentences of life in prison if convicted on all the charges.
The defendants have pleaded not guilty to a nine-count state indictment that includes malice murder, multiple charges of felony murder, false imprisonment, aggravated assault with a 12-gauge shotgun and aggravated assault with their pickup trucks.
The McMichaels and Bryan were also indicted on federal hate crime charges in April and have all pleaded not guilty.
Here’s how the news developed. All times Eastern:
Nov 23, 10:03 am
Defense attorneys call for a mistrial
As prosecutor Linda Dunikoski continued her rebuttal argument, defense attorneys for Greg and Travis McMichael objected several times, accusing Dunikoski of misstating the law that pertains to citizen’s arrest.
After one of the defense attorneys called for a mistrial in front of the jury, Judge Walmsley sent the panel out of the courtroom.
Walmsley appeared frustrated at all the interruptions to Dunikoski’s rebuttal, saying, “I like to get the closing arguments done.”
Walmsley denied the motion for a mistrial, telling the attorneys, “I indicated the law is going to be provided to the panel. I’ve indicated the court’s position with respect to the law.”
Nov 23, 9:42 am
‘This isn’t the Wild West’: Prosecutor
Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski went through the felony counts against the defendants, telling the jury that the evidence shows they are guilty of each charge, including malice murder.
“This isn’t the Wild West,” Dunikoski said, referring to the actions the McMichaels and Bryan allegedly took.
“But for the criminal intent at false imprisonment, but for the false imprisonment, but for the assault with the motor vehicles, but for the aggravated assault with the shotgun, he (Arbery) wouldn’t be dead. That’s how you think about it,” Dunikoski said. “You can’t take out any of these crimes. You take out any one of these crimes that they committed and he’s still alive.”
Dunikoski added, “All of the underlying felonies played a substantial and necessary part in causing the death of Ahmaud Arbery.”
Nov 23, 9:18 am
‘Ignorance of the law is no excuse’: Prosecutor
Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski began her rebuttal argument by telling the jury she wants to make sure “we are on the same page as far as the facts and the law goes.”
She said the law requires “a fair-minded and impartial juror to honestly seek the truth.”
“In other words, do you think they committed the crimes? That’s all you need. Oh, if you go, ‘Yeah, I think they committed the crimes, you’re good. That’s all you need.”
Dunikoski’s statement prompted objections from the defense attorneys that she was misstating the law. Judge Timothy Walmsley told the jury he will instruct them on the law once Dunikoski is finished.
The prosecutor then told the jury that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.”
“If you’re going to take the law into your own hands, you better know what the law is,” Dunikoski said, referring to the laws of self-defense and citizen’s arrests that the defendants are claiming.
“The state is not saying that Greg and Travis McMichael ran out of their house to go murder him,” Dunikoski said. “It started out as one thing and it escalated and it escalated until it became murder.”
Nov 22, 8:30 pm
Jury sent home for the night
After Kevin Gough, the attorney for William “Roddie” Bryan, wrapped up his closing argument, Dunikoski informed the judge that she’d need another two hours to present her rebuttal argument.
Judge Walmsley polled the jury and they said they didn’t want to stay longer.
Dunikoski will present her rebuttal argument on Tuesday morning before the jury is given final instructions on the law and sent to begin deliberations.
Court will resume at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, about a half-hour earlier than usual.
