Photography by Keith Getter (all rights reserved)/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Twenty-three states from California to Connecticut are on alert for blizzard, heavy snow, flooding, strong winds and bitter wind chill as two massive winter storms pound the U.S.
In California, over 100,000 customers are without power Friday morning as the West Coast storm pounds the region.
Six inches of rain is forecast for Southern California, where flooding and mudslides are possible.
A rare blizzard warning was issued for Southern California where up to 8 feet of snow is possible in the highest elevations in the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains.
Big Bear Lake in the mountains of Southern California has already seen 37 inches of snow, with more to come.
A dusting of snow has even reached the hills around San Francisco and the hills of Hollywood.
In the Midwest and the Northeast, residents are digging out from the second winter storm.
Over 700,000 customers in Michigan are without power Friday morning after an ice storm hit, coating trees and power lines.
A volunteer firefighter in Paw Paw, Michigan, died Wednesday evening when a power line fell on him, according to Paw Paw Fire Chief Jim DeGroff. The buildup of ice caused a tree limb to snap the line, DeGroff said.
Minneapolis saw over 1 foot of snow, marking the city’s second-biggest February snowstorm.
In the Northeast, the storm dumped 6 to 10 inches of snow in New England and upstate New York.
Now a short-lived cold blast is expected for the Northeast. The wind chill — what temperature it feels like — is forecast to plummet to 14 degrees in New York and minus 6 degrees in Boston.
Washington, D.C., which saw a record high of 81 degrees Thursday, will face a dramatic plunge to a wind chill of 25 degrees by Saturday morning.
(WASHINGTON) — Leading Republicans like former President Donald Trump, and at least two possible 2024 White House contenders, are increasingly focused on battles around LGBTQ issues and education — a dynamic that political operatives say is likely only to intensify in the lead up to next year’s election.
“We are in a cultural, cold civil war right now,” Robert Blizzard, a GOP pollster, told ABC News.
“I think that Republicans, just as Democrats on their side, are looking for the strongest warrior to lead their cause into ’24,” Blizzard said. “And I think that that’s part of the reason why you’re seeing Republican candidates or presumptive Republican candidates for president start to lay down some policies and some positions to establish their credibility in that battle”
While Republican strategists have preached the idea that GOP voters want a revival of Trump’s presidential policies without his bombast and baggage, other operatives say the voters have different preferences, which are set to dominate the party’s 2024 primary.
That appetite is seemingly being manifested in new policies and legislative pushes by Trump himself as well as governors weighing White House aspirations and others, all not long after a midterm in which expected Republican gains were sharply curtailed over a perceived excess on social issues and focus on the 2020 election, strategists said.
Exit polling backs up this view: Surveys showed midterm voters cared strongly about abortion access while disapproving of Trump-brand election denialism, as younger people and independents broke for Democrats despite widespread disapproval of President Joe Biden and concern about the economy and high inflation, according to an analysis for ABC News.
Among the GOP grassroots, though, the mood is different, some in the party told ABC News — which could be crucial in deciding who is nominated in the next general election.
“They want more … You talk to activists at committee meetings and stuff like that, that’s their focus,” said one former official in Trump’s administration, who asked not to be identified given the sensitivities of their current political work.
The contours of this are already coming into view on several issues, with proposals stretching the bounds of previous battlefields.
On education, Trump has called for school principals to be elected while cutting federal dollars for any school or program that teaches “critical race theory,” which historically refers to a higher-education concept not taught in K-12 classes but which is now linked by some conservatives to curriculum related to racial differences and oppression.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, thought to be Trump’s biggest rival in the 2024 primary — though he has pushed back on questions about his future — has waged a high-profile fight to get the Advanced Placement course on African American studies revised in his state.
And South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who hasn’t ruled out a 2024 bid, has ordered her state’s education department to review materials for “divisive concepts.”
On COVID-19, DeSantis has cited his record of rolling back what he called unnecessary restrictions early in the pandemic, while Noem cast herself as the leader of the “freest state” in the country for the lack of some restrictions to begin with, which she said were government overreach.
“When the world lost its mind, Florida was a refuge of sanity, serving strongly as freedom’s linchpin,” DeSantis said in a statement last month as he backed a permanent ban on COVID-19 mandates.
Perhaps the issue that’s gotten the most attention among the prospective primary field is transgender rights.
In recent years, Trump and other Republicans have highlighted instances of transgender athletes competing in college sports, which they say is unfair, though trans athletes and advocates say that is an oversimplification of the underlying health and science – and competing against another gender is its own problem. New policies go significantly further than what Trump discussed as president and as a 2016 and 2020 candidate, when he described himself as friendly to some in the LGBTQ community.
In a sprawling and strict plan released last month, Trump urged punishing doctors who provide gender-affirming care to minors and passing a law banning such procedures for minors in all 50 states. In a video statement then, he called it “left-wing gender insanity.”
DeSantis has also pushed for state rules restricting minors’ access to gender-affirming care though he, too, has expanded beyond minors, requesting 12 state universities provide data on the number of students and others who received gender-affirming treatment over the last five years.
Noem signed legislation in South Dakota to ban gender-affirming care for minors, arguing at the time that “South Dakota’s kids are our future. With this legislation, we are protecting kids.” And former Vice President Mike Pence’s advocacy group Advancing American Freedom is set to rally conservatives against transgender-affirming policies in schools with a public relations blitz. (Pence indicated to ABC News’ David Muir last year that he’s weighing whether to make 2024 presidential bid.)
Trump’s plan included a proposed executive order that would direct all federal agencies to “cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age” — restrictions that, if enacted, would help prevent transgender people from existing in public life, advocates say.
“Self-interested candidates are going after transgender people to score political points. It’s normal to not understand what it means to be transgender at first, and extremist politicians are exploiting that for their own gain,” Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of the political arm of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said in a statement.
“Last year’s midterms elections are proof that while this may gain votes from the most fringe voters in the primaries, it’s backfires in the general elections. Most Americans agree that there are higher priorities, like the rising cost of living, than attacking transgender people,” Heng-Lehtinen said.
Republicans who spoke to ABC News said they are still divided over how far to take the fight over transgender rights. Others, however, said there is indeed a desire among conservatives for even stricter measures.
“I think we’re in the majority, people that think that it should be limited to an individual at a certain age. I don’t think the parent has a right to make that decision for a child, because that child is not an adult,” said Moye Graham, the chair the Clarendon County GOP in South Carolina, an early primary state.
In a nominating contest though, Republicans interviewed nearly all agreed: There’s little downside to stretching the boundary of the political discussion on transgender rights and other culture issues.
“When it comes to some of the public education stuff, the [critical race theory] stuff, the transgender stuff, especially with kids, I don’t think there’s a primary electorate risk for going too far whatsoever,” said a longtime Trump aide close to his 2024 team, who asked not to be quoted by name.
The general election next year, may be a different story, strategists and local officials acknowledged.
Republicans are still sifting through the aftermath of the 2022 midterms, when the GOP only narrowly took the House and lost a Senate seat despite historic tailwinds based on disapproval of President Biden.
That has even some conservatives warning against focusing too much on social issues — or going too far on them.
“I think people … want to have a community that they’re comfortable living in and don’t want things, particularly in schools, pushed down on their kids that they don’t believe in. But the bigger issues end up being the economic ones. What’s happening in terms of inflation, where are we going to have growth in the economy so we can continue to prosper?” said Club for Growth President David McIntosh.
“I’ve seen tendencies of candidates who pick up, maybe, a trend that they think’s happening in the base of the Republican Party and then in order to jump out in front of the parade, come up with ideas that are just terrible ideas,” McIntosh said.
Not every would-be 2024 candidate is culture warrior. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who said on ABC’s “This Week” in February that he’s considering a run, has largely endorsed his state’s “live and let die” mantra; and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson vetoed a ban on gender-affirming care for minors — which the state legislature overrode.
“The Republican Party that I grew up with believed in a restrained government that did not jump in the middle of every issue. And in this case, it is a very sensitive matter that involves parents, and it involves physicians. And we ought to yield to that decision-making, unless there’s a compelling state reason,” Hutchinson said in 2021.
Potential Republican contenders like South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan have also not sought to advance the same kind of transgender-related legislation as DeSantis, Noem and Trump.
Still, operatives said they are anticipating a cycle of escalation as the 2024 primary takes center stage.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw people try to one up each other, maybe going a little bit further on some of these issues,” said Sam DeMarco, the Allegheny County GOP chair in Pennsylvania, a battleground state. “And I think the American people will judge what they believe is prudent or not.”
(NEW YORK) — To call Ukraine home is to embody the love of food and sharing it with others — a tradition the country has historically embodied in the role it plays in feeding the world.
The fertile soil in the region, known as the “breadbasket of the world” due to its abundance in grains like wheat, barley, corn, soybeans — and other food including sunflower oil and poultry — had ensured in decades past that Ukraine would remain one of the top food producers and exporters in the world. An estimated 70% of land in Ukraine is used for farmland.
The Russian invasion one year ago may change all of that.
Ukraine’s role as the breadbasket of the world is in jeopardy as war rages on, tearing apart the country’s agricultural lands and leaving behind dangerous obstacles, further hindering the cleanup and rebuilding that must take place in order to restore the fields.
The war is exacerbating an already delicate food system that could have consequences for decades to come, experts told ABC News.
Here is how the war in Ukraine has complicated issues of food security around the globe:
Food prices have stabilized, but global food supplies are at risk, experts say
Within about a week of Russia crossing into eastern Ukraine in the dawn of Feb. 24, 2022, prices for grains like soybeans and some vegetable oils spiked about 50% to 60%, Joseph Glauber, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, told ABC News.
Experts on global food systems almost immediately began warning of the repercussions the war could have on food shortages and the subsequent malnutrition that vulnerable populations in places like the Horn of Africa and Yemen could face.
“Maybe people don’t even know about Ukraine there, but they feel that they cannot afford to buy food anymore,” Anna Voloshyna, a Ukranian chef who now resides in San Francisco and has worked with the World Food Programme to bring light to the issue, told ABC News.
Those prices have since stabilized to pre-war levels by the end of summer, as surplus goods from the rest of the world made up for the difference in what Ukraine was no longer able to export, Glauber said. The Food Price Index, a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities released by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, showed a spike in March 2022, but then dropped back down to pre-war levels several months later.
The global food supply “dodged a bullet” after places like the U.S., Canada, European Union and other big exporting regions saw “fairly decent” crop production, Glauber said. There was concern that Russia’s output would be affected, but Russia ended up exporting much more wheat than anticipated, he added. Australia also saw a “record” wheat crop, Glauber said.
The implementation of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, an agreement between Russia and Ukraine made with Turkey and the United Nations to ensure the safe transportation of grain and foodstuffs out of Ukraine, has been “critical” in keeping food prices stable since it went into effect in July, James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson in Ukraine, told ABC News.
However, Voloshyna, who uses sunflower oil almost exclusively in her cooking, said she can no longer find the staple at reasonable prices.
She said that she used to turn the bottle over and see, “Made in Ukraine.” Ever since the war started, those bottles of sunflower oil now mostly come from Mexico, she said.
Food prices have not returned to pre-pandemic levels
While food prices have returned to pre-war levels, they have not returned to pre-pandemic levels, when prices were “considerably lower,” Glauber said.
The Food Price Index declined during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, which reflected uncertainties faced by commodity markets, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s 2022 World Food and Agriculture Report. However, between May 2020 and March 2022, the index surged to its highest-ever value at 159.7 points.
However, Glauber pointed out that only about 25% of the food prices at the grocery store are directly attributable to the underlying commodity price, meaning that if the price of corn goes up, then so will the cost of feeding the chickens and pigs that are later slaughtered for meat or the cows that produce milk that is later sent to the grocery store.
The surge was sparked more by the pandemic’s effect on the supply chains before rising in conjunction with the rebound in activity and demand experienced in 2021, according to the report. The disruption to exports of cereals and vegetable oils from war in Ukraine finished off the spike in 2022, according to the report.
In January 2023, the Food Price Index stood at 135.6. In 2020, before the spike began, the Food Price Index was 98.1, according to the U.N.
Inflation is also to blame. December 2021 and January 2022 saw some of the highest meat prices ever recorded, which was driving the food inflation at 5% to 6%, “really high levels” compared to the typical 2% to 3% increases in food inflation, Glauber said.
“We’ve had very few times when we’ve seen food inflation much higher than that,” he said.
The fact that the dollar has remained strong means that Americans have not felt the full scale of food price increases around the world, Glauber said.
But that could change. There is not a lot of crops in reserve, leaving the world food supply without a cushion,
“We’re in a phase of the market where, at least for the time being, it’s too early to say that we’re out of the woods,” he said.
The war adds complicated dimensions on energy and fertilizer prices, goods that Russia is a large exporter of, is also indirectly affected food prices, Glauber said.
Continued disasters will have large-scale affect on human health
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shows no signs of stopping, which will affect the ability for millions around the world to obtain proper nutrition, experts say.
The rise in food prices — as well as increases in fuel costs — have plunged millions of more vulnerable families into food insecurity, Elder from UNICEF, told ABC News.
“Normally, that means someone in the family is missing out on on meals,” Elder said.
The price of nutritious foods — think foods that contain a lot of vitamins, minerals and micronutrients such as fruits and vegetables, eggs and fish — have increased the most, Saskia Osendarp, executive director of the Micronutrient Forum and co-coordinator of Standing Together for Nutrition, a consortium of nutrition, economics, food and health experts.
Acute malnutrition is life-threatening, as lacking these foods diminishes children’s ability to grow and develop and adults’ ability to function optimally, Osendarp said.
The International Food Policy Research Institute estimates that a 5% increase in food prices will lead to 9% children who suffer from wasting, a form of acute malnutrition.
Just over 13 million children suffer from what we call severe wasting, Elder said.
“With a worsening climate, we’ll keep hurting these children who really don’t have a carbon footprint, and we’re going to keep seeing that number increasing,” Elder said.
The world is on its way to a “raging food catastrophe,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told world leaders at the G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia, in November.
The global food supply is in a “tight market” in the coming year, especially as the war continues, Glauber said. Plantings in Ukraine are down 35% to 40%, meaning that one of the major exporters in the world is going to produce far less again this year, he said.
“That means that if the world wants to keep prices moderate, it’s going to have to find that production from somewhere,” he said, adding that there is very little margin for poor crop elsewhere.
Climate change could also soon affect other major food producers around the world, Osendarp said. There is continued drought in the Horn of Africa, and flooding rains have been ruining crops in South Asia, Osendarp added.
“All of these crises combined have led to these high food prices,” Osendarp said.
Cleanup from the war will take years
Much of the agricultural land in Ukraine has been destroyed or contaminated, Osendarp said.
“It will take us 10 years to remove all the dangerous bombs and mines and the stuff that our friendly neighbor left us,” Voloshyna, whose family has a farm in southern Ukraine, said. “Most of those minds are in the fields, so people cannot go and harvest crops. And they cannot plant new crops.”
The country’s agriculture sector lost $4.3 billion as a result of the war, according to the Kyiv School of Economics.
Even if the war ended tomorrow, it could take up to a decade or more for much of the agricultural land to be restored, Osendarp said. In addition, many farmers have fled the country, she added.
“The long-term impact on production has been devastating,” Glauber said.
Ukraine is in desperate need for money to clear the fields and buy new farming equipment, Voloshyna said.
“The only way to provide that security for farmers is to win the war,” she said.
The economic fallout in the future could be swift as well, Osendarp said. The World Bank is warning countries, especially poorer countries, could soon face debilitating debt after absorbing the increase in food prices to protect their citizens.
“Moving forward, the situation still looks rather grim,” Osendarp said.
Ryan Reynolds is attached to star and produce the feature comedy Boy Band at Paramount, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The project would reunite him with his Free Guy and The Adam Project collaborator Shawn Levy, who is a co-producer. Details, including what role Reynolds would play, are being kept under wraps, but it’s being described as “a boy band reunion movie,” per THR. Reynolds is hoping to start shooting the film either this fall 2023 or early 2024…
Minari and Nope star Steven Yeun has been tapped to join the cast of Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts, according to Deadline. His exact role has not been revealed, but sources tell the outlet that it is “not only significant to this film but could also play a role going forward in future films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” Yeun joins a cast that currently includes Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Wyatt Russell, Hannah John-Kamen, Olga Kurylenko and Ayo Edebiri. Thunderbolts is set for a July 26, 2024 release. Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News…
Megan Mullally tells Entertainment Tonight that she and her husband Nick Offerman are close to inking a deal to join the cast of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy for the show’s fourth and final season. The Parks and Recreation alums would play “a mild-mannered married couple named Jean and Gene, who are college professors.” Meanwhile, the couple can both be seen on the new season of Party Down, premiering Friday on Starz. Mullally returns as Lydia Dunfree, a former member of the catering team who reunites with her co-workers. Offerman is set to appear as a guest star later in the season…
Deadline reports Emily in Paris‘ Ashley Park has joined the cast of Hulu’s Only Murders In The Building in the recurring role of Kimber, a Broadway ingénue, for the show’s third season. Park joins series stars Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez, as well as recently announced season 3 cast Meryl Streep, Paul Rudd and Jesse Williams. Park will next be seen in Adele Lim’s Joy Ride, which follows four Asian American women traveling through Asia in search of one of their birth mothers, hitting theaters June 23…
The SAG Awards on Thursday announced additional presenters for the 29th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards. They include Jason Bateman, Jeff Bridges, Jenna Ortega, Aubrey Plaza, Adam Scott and Zendaya, along with SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher, Matt Bomer, Ariana DeBose, Eugene Levy and Amy Poehler. The SAG Awards will be broadcast live on Netflix’s YouTube channel Sunday, February 26 at 8 p.m. ET from the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles…
The Cohasset Police Department demonstrates the equipment used to mine cryptocurrency in the crawl space. — Cohasset Police Department
(COHASSET, Mass.) — A small Massachusetts town enlisted the help of the Department of Homeland Security to track down the person who illegally installed a cryptocurrency mining operation in a crawl space of a middle school.
According to the Cohasset Police Department, the director of facilities for the Cohasset Middle/High School called the police in Dec. 2021 after noticing out-of-place electrical wires, computers and temporary ductwork. With the assistance of the town’s IT director, detectives located a cryptocurrency mining operation, connected to the school’s electrical system, in a crawl space.
The process of “mining” cryptocurrency utilizes computers to verify transactions by solving complex equations, requiring a “considerable amount of electricity,” according to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
According to the University of Cambridge, bitcoin (which is just one of many cryptocurrencies) requires roughly 14 gigawatts of electricity daily. According to the Department of Energy, the daily energy needs of bitcoin would require approximately 43 million solar panels or 4,662 utility-scale wind turbines.
After discovering the unauthorized mining setup, the Cohasset Police Department contacted the Coast Guard Investigative Service and the Department of Homeland Security to remove the computer and conduct a forensic examination.
Police identified the Town of Cohasset’s assistant facilities director Nadeam Nahas, 39, as a suspect after a three-month investigation. Nahas resigned from his role in 2022.
Nahas was charged with vandalizing a school and fraudulent electricity use in Quincy District Court. According to ABC’s Boston affiliate, Nahas failed to appear at his Thursday court appearance, prompting an arrest warrant for his arrest. He is accused of stealing nearly $18,000 in electricity from the school district.
Emmy-winning Hacks star Jean Smart is opening up about her heart health and sharing a plea to her fans.
“February is American Heart Month — a time when the nation spotlights heart health, so it feels important to share with all of you that I am recovering from a recent, successful heart procedure,” Smart, 71, shared in a statement posted to Instagram Thursday.
She continued, “I am fortunate to have excellent professional care and support from family and friends while I continue to recuperate.”
The Designing Women alum didn’t share any further details about her condition, but did urge those reading to take their health seriously.
“Please listen to your body and talk to your doctor — I’m very glad I did,” she concluded.
ABC News has learned that production on Hacks season 3 has paused for some departments.
“We are so happy that our beloved Jean Smart’s heart procedure was successful and she’s on the mend,” read a joint statement issued on behalf of HBO Max and Universal Television, who also sent Smart their “well wishes.”
Smart lost her husband of more than 30 years, Richard Gilliland, in March 2021. The New Yorker noted in a June 2021 profile of Smart that Gilliland had died unexpectedly of a heart condition.
Ceirra Zeager, now 23, survived a heart attack at age 14 and open heart surgery at age 21. — Courtesy Ceirra Zeager
(NEW YORK) — By the time Ceirra Zeager graduated from college last year, she had already survived a heart attack and open-heart surgery.
Now, the 23-year-old is sharing her story to help other people, especially women, know the signs and symptoms of heart disease.
“You really have to advocate for yourself,” Zeager told Good Morning America. “And if you’re feeling something that’s abnormal, you should really get it checked out and just trust your gut that something may be wrong.”
Zeager, who is from Ephrata, Pennsylvania, suffered a heart attack at age 14. She said she began to feel symptoms the morning after she attended her first winter formal dance with friends.
“I remember trying to put my favorite shirt on,” she said. “It was a pink and gray top, and I always remember what it looks like because that moment just changed my life, trying to put that on and realizing that I couldn’t put it on.”
Zeager said she felt like her chest was “closing in,” and the pain got so severe that her parents drove her to a local hospital.
At the hospital, Zeager said she remembers waiting a long time only to have one doctor tell her parents that she had “teenage anxiety.”
“I had a crushing chest feeling and a loss of breath,” she said. “It was such intense pain that I thought to myself, ‘If this is teenage anxiety, I do not want to be here.'”
Without a clear diagnosis, Zeager said she was sent to a nearby children’s hospital, where doctors eventually rushed her into emergency surgery.
“I woke up from surgery and my sister was crying and I asked why, and she said, ‘You had a heart attack,'” Zeager recalled. “I was in shock.”
Zeager said doctors discovered she had an atrial septal defect, or ASD, a type of congenital heart defect where there is a hole in the wall that divides the upper chambers of the heart, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The hole increases blood flow to the lungs, which can damage blood vessels in the lungs over time.
Each year, around 2,000 babies in the United States are born with ASD, but many cases are not diagnosed until adulthood, according to the CDC.
In Zeager’s case, she said she did not know she had ASD until a blood clot had traveled through the hole and lodged in a coronary artery, causing her heart attack.
Though doctors were able to plug the hole, Zeager said the heart attack upended her life.
“I had a pretty difficult transition back into normal life,” she said, adding, “It took me a few years to really grasp what had happened. I was very thankful they figured out what happened, but I was also kind of in a selfish mindset of ‘Why did this happen to me? Why wasn’t this ever caught before?'”
Zeager went onto to recover from the heart attack and graduate from high school, but said while in college, she started to experience symptoms again.
“I was feeling the quality of my life diminishing,” she said. “I was tired and exhausted. I would walk through a short room and be completely out of breath.”
Zeager said she had to advocate for herself to get an echocardiogram, which showed one of her heart valves was leaky.
She then sought a second opinion from another cardiologist, who told her she needed surgery as soon as possible to repair or replace the leaky valve.
The mental health struggle of heart disease
Zeager said she considers herself one of the lucky survivors as she has to take daily medications to manage her heart health but is expected to live a long and healthy life.
Though she is OK physically, Zeager said she has struggled over the years to cope mentally with her heart condition and is now on a mission to raise awareness of mental health alongside heart health.
“They all prepare you for what you’re physically going to go through, but then they don’t ever mention, ‘This is going to be hard for you to deal with mentally,'” said Zeager, who was named a “2023 Real Woman” by the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women campaign. “There almost should be like a cardiac rehab, but for your brain.”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, studies show that people living with heart disease, including heart attacks, are at a higher risk for developing depression.
At the same time, mental health disorders can add stress to the heart and can be associated with heart disease, according to the CDC.
Zeager said she often found herself feeling depressed and “in a rut,” but did not know where to turn for help because she didn’t see people talking about mental health and the heart.
“It can be embarrassing to be in the mindset of ‘I need help,'” she said. “Even after open-heart surgery, when I literally felt myself in a rut, I still didn’t get help because I didn’t know where to go to and who to talk to. I didn’t have those resources.”
Zeager said some of her mental health struggles stemmed from not feeling heard by doctors, so her biggest advice to other women is to be proactive in their medical care and to seek out answers.
Heart disease, which refers to several types of heart conditions, is the leading cause of death for women in the United States, according to the CDC.
Dr. Harmony Reynolds, a cardiologist at NYU Langone Health in New York City, said women should not be worried about “false alarms” if they feel heart disease symptoms.
“It’s important to walk in and say, ‘I think I’m having a heart attack. Tell me why I’m not,'” said Reynolds, who did not treat Zeager. “If they say, ‘Oh, no, no, you’re just nervous,’ like what happened with Ceirra, then you have to say back, ‘Well, how can you tell I’m not?'”
She continued, “You have to advocate for yourself a little bit … and this way we make sure that everybody gets the attention they need.”
When it comes to symptoms to watch out for, Reynolds said not everyone has recognizable symptoms, but others may feel something noticeable that could be a sign of a heart attack.
“When I’m with patients, I’ll point from my mouth to my belly button and say that the discomfort can really be anywhere between, so the jaw, neck, shoulders, arms, chest, back, upper stomach,” she said. “Any of those areas may be important as a heart disease discomfort.”
Women can often experience symptoms other than chest pain when having a heart attack, including shortness of breath, lightheadedness, nausea and sweating.
This file handout photo released April 25, 2022, courtesy of Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office and part of the investigative files, shows actor Alec Baldwin being processed after the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins at the Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on Oct. 21, 2022. — Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office
(NEW YORK) — Alec Baldwin has pleaded not guilty and waived his first court appearance after being charged with involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting on the set of his film Rust, court officials announced Thursday.
Baldwin and the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, were both charged last month with two counts of involuntary manslaughter over the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in October 2021.
First assistant director David Halls has already agreed to plead no contest for the charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon. The plea agreement is pending a judge’s approval, prosecutors have said.
All three were scheduled to make their first court appearances remotely on Friday, though Baldwin and Halls filed a waiver of first appearance this week and no hearing will be held for them, a New Mexico court official said. Both pleaded not guilty to their charges in their waivers.
District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer also issued an order setting conditions of Baldwin’s release, including that he must not possess any firearms, not consume alcohol and have no contact with any potential witnesses unless it’s related to filming the movie.
Gutierrez-Reed’s hearing is scheduled for 10:15 a.m. MST Friday.
The charges followed a lengthy investigation into the on-set shooting, which has also spawned multiple lawsuits, including from Hutchins’ family.
In the statement of probable cause, investigator Robert Shilling charged that Baldwin, who was listed as the primary producer of Rust, “failed to act to mitigate or correct the reckless safety violations, neither in his capacity as actor nor producer.”
Shilling also said that evidence showed that Baldwin had his finger inside the trigger, and that the trigger was pulled — contradicting Baldwin’s statements saying he never pulled the trigger — and that no safety meeting was conducted on the day of the fatal shooting, based on statements and evidence.
In Gutierrez-Reed’s charging document, Shilling claimed that the armorer’s “deviation from known standards, practice and protocol directly caused the fatal death of Hutchins.” That included failing to insist that Baldwin have proper firearm training nor correct him on “dangerous” safety violations such as pointing the weapon at people and having his finger on the trigger, not ensuring that a fake gun was used in a rehearsal scene, leaving the set before the fatal shooting and allowing Halls to handle the firearm unsupervised, according to Shilling.
On Friday, New Mexico First Judicial District Attorney’s Office dropped the gun enhancement charge — a crime that would have carried a maximum five-year sentence if convicted — against Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed.
The decision came after Baldwin’s attorneys filed a motion arguing that prosecutors “committed a basic legal error,” and that the firearm enhancement didn’t apply at the time of the shooting. The accident occurred in October 2021, but the current version of the law did not take effect until May 2022, the attorneys said.
New Mexico First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies said they removed the enhancement “in order to avoid further litigious distractions by Mr. Baldwin and his attorneys.”
Baldwin’s legal team has also filed a motion seeking to disqualify Andrea Reeb, the special prosecutor appointed by Carmack-Altwies, arguing there is a conflict since Reeb is also an elected member of the New Mexico House of Representative.
Production of Rust, which has been on hold since the shooting on the Santa Fe set, is scheduled to resume in the spring at Yellowstone Film Ranch in Montana, producers announced this month.
Director Joel Souza, who was also injured in the shooting, is set to return, while Hutchins’ husband, Matthew Hutchins, will serve as an executive producer, Rust Movie Productions said.
New crew members will include two safety officers and cinematographer Bianca Cline, who will step in to “complete Halyna’s vision for the film,” the production company said in a statement.
The production will also “bar any use of working weapons and any form of ammunition,” the company said. “Live ammunition is — and always was — prohibited on set.”
The release did not name Baldwin, Gutierrez-Reed or Halls among the returning crew.
Plans to resume filming were first announced last year, when Hutchins’ family reached a settlement in their wrongful death lawsuit against the producers of the film.
ABC News’ Aaron Katersky contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., is raising awareness for heart health two months after the signing of a new law named for his late wife, who died in June 2020 from a rare condition.
Barr appeared on GMA3 on Wednesday to mark Heart Valve Disease Awareness Day and to discuss the Cardiovascular Advances in Research and Opportunities Legacy Act — or CAROL Act — named for his wife, with whom he shares two daughters.
“This is about Carol’s legacy,” Barr said. “What I want to do is raise awareness and let people know who have this diagnosis, look, this is a big deal. You need to get checked out,” he continued.
His family’s experience had opened his eyes.
He explained that “when she was in seventh grade, Carol was diagnosed with an underlying heart condition, a heart murmur known as mitral valve prolapse. Now, there’s approximately 11 million Americans who have heart valve disease. And for most of them, it’s a benign condition. And we certainly thought it was a benign condition. Our doctors told us that this was no big deal. We just needed to monitor it.”
“But unfortunately, she was one of the 0.2% of Americans with heart valve disease who had a sudden cardiac death event,” Barr said of his wife, who was found dead in their home.
According to the American Heart Association, mitral valve prolapse is a condition that affects the valve between the left heart chambers. Common symptoms include palpitations (bursts of rapid heartbeats), fatigue or chest discomfort.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises that if doctor hears a murmur (unusual sound) when listening to your heartbeat, “Depending on the location of the murmur, how it sounds, and its rhythm, the doctor may use echocardiography, a test that uses sound waves to create a movie of the valves to see if they are working correctly.”
Barr said on GMA3 that the money in the CAROL Act is important for scientific advancements.
“We can stop this,” he said. “There’s amazing, amazing research that’s going on. We need to fund that research.”
He also urged people to be mindful of their own health.
“With early detection and intervention, this can be fixed and people who have heart valve disease can live long and healthy lives with surgical intervention and other types of treatments,” he said.
The CAROL legislation annually gives $28 million for research to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which goes toward distinguishing between benign and life-threatening cases of heart valve disease.
There’s also $8 million earmarked annually for the CDC to fund a registry to give workers in health professions data on sudden cardiac events and fund an awareness campaign.
Barr said he hopes his efforts now can help other families and spare them “the same tragedy.”
“Carol was an awesome, awesome mom. She was a great lady. Her life was cut too short. … Through her memory, we’re going to we’re going to help people deal with heart valve disease in a better way,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — European Commission employees will have to remove TikTok from their work phones for security reasons, the European Union’s executive body said Thursday.
The Commission said in a statement that all its employees will have to comply by March 15.
This measure aims “to protect the Commission against cybersecurity threats and actions which may be exploited for cyber-attacks against the corporate environment of the Commission,” the statement said.
“The security developments of other social media platforms will also be kept under constant review,” the statement added.
The new rule will apply to work phones, but also employees’ personal phones if they have an EU app on it, said Sonya Gospodinova, a spokesperson at the executive body.
The EU is more than ever forced to pay attention to “foreign interference” and potential data collection threats, Michel Maroy, an EU policy expert based in Brussels, told ABC News.
Maroy added, “European Union needs to reshape its geopolitical dimension and it does include new discussions and technical rules that are now becoming as important as sanctions for example.”
TikTok in a statement called the Commission’s decision “misguided and based on fundamental misconceptions.”
The app, owned by the China-based company ByteDance, has faced growing scrutiny from officials in the U.S. and Europe over fears that user data could fall into the possession of the Chinese government.
With more than 125 million European users, none of the 27 EU members has so far imposed a full ban on the application. However, Dutch officials in January asked public authorities to stop using the app.
The European Commission declined to comment on whether any specific incident made them rush this decision.
“We do not know at what level Chinese intel could be involved and could use our 125 millions users’ data. This is unclear. This is a protective action,” Maroy said.
To build trust in Europe, TikTok announced last week that they will open two additional data centers on the continent.
