(NEW YORK) — At least 15 people have been killed amid devastating flooding in Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear said Friday, and he said he expects the death toll to “more than double.”
The fatalities will likely include children, the governor said on CNN.
Among those killed was an 81-year-old woman, according to the governor.
On Thursday, Beshear called it “one of the worst, most devastating” floods in the state’s history, and said he anticipates this will be one of the deadliest floods in Kentucky in “a very long time.”
A flash flood emergency was issued in Kentucky late Wednesday as 2 to 5 inches of rain pounded the Bluegrass State.
As of Friday morning, central and eastern Kentucky remain under a flood watch, according to Beshear. An additional 2 to 4 inches of rain is expected in eastern Kentucky through Monday.
For some areas, the water will not crest until Saturday, the governor said.
“While rain totals are not expected to be as high, flooding still remains a concern due to saturated grounds,” the governor tweeted.
The state is combating washed out roads, destroyed homes and flooded schools, according to Beshear.
“Hundreds” have been rescued by boat and many people remain stranded, Beshear said Friday.
Hundreds of residents are expected to lose their homes and it’ll likely take families years to recover and rebuild, he said.
Three of Kentucky’s state parks are being opened to people who have lost their homes, according to the governor.
President Joe Biden on Friday approved a disaster declaration for Kentucky.
ABC News’ Alexandra Faul, Kenton Gewecke and Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.
Selena Gomez is feeling super thankful in the wake of her 30th birthday.
The Only Murders in the Building star, who hit the milestone birthday on July 22, shared a video on TikTok on Thursday to say “thank you to every person that wished me a happy birthday.”
“I got to see some of your messages,” she continued. “I don’t read a lot of comments, but the few that I read were really, really sweet and I just want you to know that I don’t take that for granted.”
The pop star also showed gratitude for those who donated to the Rare Impact Fund, a charitable organization that aims to “to increase access to mental health services in educational settings,” according to its site.
Selena closed out the minute-long clip with continued thanks as tears welled in her eyes, telling fans, “And I just wanted to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for being in my life, for growing up with me — for putting up with me.”
Actress Mary Alice, best known for portraying Leticia “Lettie” Bostic on NBC’s A Different World and Effie Williams in the 1976 original version of Sparkle, died Wednesday at her home in Manhattan, a spokesperson for the NYPD confirms to People. She was 85. A cause of death was not given. Alice also played The Oracle in The Matrix Revolutions, and won an Outstanding Supporting Actress Emmy in 1987 for her role as Marguerite Peck in I’ll Fly Away. Her other film credits include Spike Lee‘s Malcolm X, Awakenings, opposite Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, and Clint Eastwood‘s A Perfect World. On TV she appeared in shows such as Oz and Law & Order…
The release date for third Creed movie — and ninth installment in the Rocky film franchise — has been pushed back from Nov. 23, 2022 to March 3, 2023, according to Variety. The film will again have Michael B. Jordan starring Apollo Creed’s son Adonis, who “makes peace with his late father’s burdensome legacy,” while Rocky travels to Vancouver “to bury the hatchet with his estranged son and meet his grandson.” Creed III will also bring back co-star Tessa Thompson as his love interest, Bianca, and Phylicia Rashad as Adonis’ mother, Mary Ann. Sylvester Stallone, however, will not appear in the film…
Mindhunter‘s Holt McCallany has been tapped for a role in Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part Two, according to Deadline. Returning for the film, along with with Tom Cruise, are Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Vanessa Kirby and Frederick Schmidt. Henry Czerny, who appeared in the first Mission: Impossible movie back in 1996 as IMF Director Eugene Kittridge, also returns, along with newcomers Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, Rob Delaney, Charles Parnell, Indira Varma, Mark Gatiss, Cary Elwes and Shea Whigham. Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part Two, the eighth film in the series, is set for a theatrical release on June 28, 2024…
CODA Oscar winner Troy Kotsur is attached to star in a Disney+ series based on the football team from the California School for the Deaf Riverside as the team’s coach, according to Variety. The show will tell the true story of the CSDR Cubs’ 2021 football season, when the team went undefeated and got all the way to the California State Championship. The writing and production team, both in front of and behind the cameras, will include artists from the Deaf community, according to the outlet…
Former The View panelist Elisabeth Hasselbeck will be returning to the ABC daytime panel show — at least temporarily — as a guest host, according to People. “It will be an honor to co-host The View, share our bestselling children’s book, ‘Flashlight Night’, and as always tackle hot topics!” Pray for me y’all!” the conservative TV host and author tells the outlet. Hasselbeck originally appeared on The View from 2003-2013 as the conservative seat on the show, which has also been filled by Candace Cameron Bure and Meghan McCain, among others…
Despite the fact that Robert Pattinson is currently playing the cinematic Batman, Ben Affleck might not be retiring his Batsuit just yet. Jason Momoa teased Affleck’s return as Batman for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, the sequel to 2018’s Aquaman.
“REUNITED bruce and arthur,” Momoa shared Thursday on Instagram, along with a photo of him and Affleck. “love u and miss u Ben WB studio tours just explored the backlot alright. busted on set all great things coming AQUAMAN 2 all my aloha j”
Affleck most recently played Bruce Wayne/Batman in 2017’s Justice League — as well as last year’s Zack Snyder director’scut of the film — and in Suicide Squad and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, both in 2016. He’s also set to reprise the role for The Flash, due out in 2023.
The Batman, starring Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Jeffrey Wright, Colin Farrell and Paul Dano, has earned over $770 million since its release in March. A sequel is in the planning stages.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is slated to hit theaters March 17, 2023.
(NEW YORK) — A Minnesota woman is sharing her health battle on TikTok, she says, in order to raise awareness and encourage women to advocate for themselves and their health.
Raquel Rodriguez, 25, said doctors first found a cyst on her ovary in 2016 while doing testing to determine why she was experiencing kidney infections so severe she had to be hospitalized.
“They just kind of said, ‘Oh, you have a cyst. We’re not worried about it,'” Rodriguez told Good Morning America, referring to her doctors at the time. “They didn’t tell me the size and they didn’t really tell me much about it at all, so I just kind of moved on and was like, OK, they’re not worried about it.”
Ovarian cysts, fluid-filled sacs that forms on or in the ovaries, can happen monthly in the ovulation process. Most of the cysts are what gynecologists call “functional cysts” that resolve on their own and are typically benign, according to the U.S. Office on Women’s Health.
Rodriguez said over the course of the next several years, she continued to experience intermittent kidney and bladder issues, as well as pain during intercourse.
Though the pain during intercourse was often severe, Rodriguez said she struggled to seek help.
“Me being a teen, I was kind of embarrassed, like, I don’t know if this is normal,” Rodriguez said, adding that after a negative experience with a male emergency room doctor, whom she said she felt undermined her pain, she never sought help for the pain again.
Even though Rodriguez said she continued to experience symptoms such as continued pain and frequent urination, it was only this past year that she said she began to notice more physical changes, including extreme bloating.
“I kind of took it into my own hands to do as much research as possible,” she said. “I really started to dig and look at Reddit threads and talk to other women that had the same thing, and then I really started to advocate for myself.”
Rodriguez said she wanted to be “as educated as possible” about what was going on with her body because the previous times she sought medical care for her symptoms, she “wasn’t taken seriously.”
Through her research, Rodriguez said she assumed it was her cyst that was growing and went to a midwife, noting, “I thought they would listen to me better than anyone else had.”
The midwife she saw ordered an emergency ultrasound with a doctor that same day, according to Rodriguez. On the ultrasound, a cyst was found that extended from Rodriguez’s pubic bone to her sternum.
“She said, ‘I’ve never, ever in my life seen something this big before,'” Rodriguez said of the reaction of the doctor who performed the ultrasound. “I remember after walking out of the appointment, I called my mom immediately and told her, and I called my sister and told her, and everyone was really excited because we’d dealt with this for so long. I was really, really relieved.”
In June, on her 25th birthday, Rodriguez underwent a two-hour surgery to remove the cyst, which weighed 10 pounds and carried more than four liters of fluid.
“The first thing I noticed after surgery was not having to pee right away. I could drink a glass of water and not have to go pee immediately,” she said. “That night after the surgery, I looked down at my stomach and it looked like it was sunken in, which was super weird.”
Rodriguez’s surgeon, Dr. Adrienne Mallen, a gynecologic oncology specialist, said the cyst was large enough that it looked like Rodriguez was carrying a full-term pregnancy.
“The abdominal cavity, I tell people it’s like thinking of the inside of a beach ball. It’s easy to hide growths,” Mallen said. “The body is pretty adaptive, so it can be very easy to not notice something in that area, and sometimes it’s not noticed until it comes out of what we refer to as the pelvis, especially in women’s bodies.”
Mallen said that because there is no common way to check women’s ovaries, ovarian cysts can often go undetected.
“The best test we have to determine if there’s growth is a pelvic examination with your doctor,” Mallen said, adding that ultrasounds are then used to help determine if a cyst is benign. “We don’t have a standard test that you can get to check your ovaries, it’s only if you’re having a problem.”
Though ovarian cysts affect millions of women each year, only around 5% to 10% of women, like Rodriguez, have cases severe enough to require surgery to remove an ovarian cyst, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
“I tell people to just focus on body awareness so they can feel empowered because they know their body well,” Mallen said, adding of her own patient, “Raquel was a great advocate for herself and made sure she found a team that was listening to her.”
Ovarian cysts — which can be caused by hormonal changes, endometriosis, pregnancy and severe pelvic infections — often cause no symptoms at all.
If an ovarian cyst does cause symptoms, they may include bloating, pressure or pain near where the cyst is located. Symptoms of a ruptured ovarian cyst may include dizziness, nausea, vomiting, bleeding and intense pelvic or abdominal pain on the side of the body where the cyst is located, according to the Office on Women’s Health.
Over the past year, as Rodriguez got answers herself, she began to share her health journey on TikTok to help raise awareness about ovarian cysts and women’s health.
“I wished I had been a bigger advocate for myself because I felt had I been a bigger advocate, I would have gotten the help I needed back when this first started,” she said. “And I really wanted people to understand that women do go through a lot, and there are a lot of things that people go through that we don’t talk about.”
Rodriguez said that as she has shared her journey, she has been surprised both by the number of people who do not know about ovarian cysts, and the number of people who have messaged her thanking her for speaking out.
She said that as she continues to recover and improve, she has also been surprised to find herself with a platform to help empower women when it comes to their health.
“Women are dismissed so often and it is not really talked about,” Rodriguez said. “I realized just how strong I was getting through this surgery, advocating for myself, and then being able to share my journey with other people. It has really made me feel empowered.
(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into neighboring Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with Russian forces invading from Belarus, to the north, and Russia, to the east. Ukrainian troops have offered “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.
The Russian military has since launched a full-scale ground offensive in eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donbas region, capturing the strategic port city of Mariupol and securing a coastal corridor to the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jul 29, 8:28 AM EDT
US ambassador to Ukraine speaks to ABC News as grain ships prepare to leave
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink told ABC News on Friday morning that she is “optimistic” ships carrying grain will begin leaving Ukraine this weekend, but that it’s up to Russia to keep its side of the deal.
During an interview in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, Brink declined to say whether the United States would impose consequences on Russia if it disrupted the United Nations-brokered deal or attacked the ships. But she underlined her country’s support for Ukraine and the deal, saying it was important that Ukrainian grain starts reaching countries that need it.
When asked if there was a “Plan B” if the deal failed, Brink said the focus was on doing everything to ensure “Plan A” works.
Earlier Friday, Brink and ambassadors of other G-7 countries held a press conference in Odesa while overseeing the preparations. She told reporters that she hopes an agreement confirming the safe corridors of the grain ships to sail through this weekend would be reached. Under the deal, Ukraine and Russia have been negotiating the precise routes the vessels will take through the Black Sea.
Since Russian forces invaded neighboring Ukraine on Feb. 24, the cost of grain has skyrocketed worldwide. Russia and Ukraine — often referred to collectively as Europe’s breadbasket — produce a third of the global supply of wheat and barley, but Kyiv has been unable to ship exports due to Moscow’s offensive. Last month, the Ukrainian Grain Association warned that Ukraine’s wheat harvest is expected to plummet by 40%.
In recent weeks, there has been an all-out push from the U.S. and the U.N. to facilitate exports from war-torn Ukraine, desperate to offset what they foretell is a looming global food crisis with the potential to devastate the developing world. A Russian blockade in the Black Sea, along with Ukrainian naval mines, have made exporting siloed grain and other foodstuffs virtually impossible and, as a result, millions of people around the world — particularly in Africa and the Middle East — are now on the brink of famine.
-ABC News’ Patrick Reevell
Jul 29, 7:11 AM EDT
Ukraine says 1st grain ships should leave this weekend
Ukraine announced Friday that it hopes the first ships carrying grain will finally be leaving two ports this weekend under a United Nations-brokered deal to end Russia’s blockade.
The departure of the first ships will be a major test of whether the deal with Moscow will hold and Ukrainian food can begin to ease the global hunger crisis worsened by the blockade amid Russia’s war.
Ukrainian Minister of Infrastructure Oleksander Kubrakov, who is overseeing the operation, told reporters in Odesa on Friday morning that the port as well as the nearby Chernomorsk port are prepared to begin, with 17 ships already loaded with grain.
A final agreement mediated by the U.N. and Turkey needs to be signed off on the routes the vessels will take out of the heavily mined ports. Kubrakov said Ukraine had provided a number of options and that, from its side, the country is ready. Ukraine is waiting for the U.N. to confirm the routes are accepted by both sides.
Kubrakov said the first ships should leave by the end of the weekend.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was also in Odesa on Friday morning to see the preparations and meet with Kubrakov as well as other officials, including U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink.
-ABC News’ Patrick Reevell
Jul 27, 2:51 PM EDT
Blinken and Lavrov to discuss US proposal to free Griner and Whelan
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he plans to speak with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the coming days, marking the first time the two leaders will speak since the war began.
Blinken said a critical topic of discussion would be securing the freedom of detained Americans Paul Whelan and Brittney Griner, revealing that the U.S. has already put forward a plan to accomplish that.
“We put a substantial proposal on the table weeks ago to facilitate their release. Our governments have communicated repeatedly and directly on that proposal, and I’ll use the conversation to follow up personally and I hope move us toward a resolution,” Blinken said.
“I can’t and won’t get into any of the details of what we’ve proposed to the Russians over the course of some many weeks now,” Blinken said.
Blinken said President Joe Biden played an active role in crafting the proposal for Griner and Whelan.
Blinken also stressed, “My call with Foreign Minister Lavrov will not be a negotiation about Ukraine,” adding, “Any negotiation regarding Ukraine is for its government and people to determine.”
-ABC News’ Shannon Crawford
Jul 27, 9:32 AM EDT
Ukraine uses US rocket system to strike key bridge in Russia-held Kherson
Ukrainian forces struck a strategic bridge in the Russian-occupied city of Kherson early Wednesday, according to local officials.
High-precision missile strikes by the Ukrainian military damaged the Antonivskiy bridge, forcing the occupied authorities to close the structure to civilian traffic. The mile-long bridge across the Dnieper River is an essential artery used by Moscow to supply its troops occupying southern Ukraine.
“Strikes were delivered on the bridge, on its road. The bridge is currently closed to the civilian population,” Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the Moscow-appointed administration for the Kherson region, told local media on Wednesday.
The bridge’s pillars and spans were still intact as of Wednesday morning, according to Stremousov.
“It is simply that the number of holes on the road has increased. The strike on the bridge has affected only the civilian population,” he added.
According to Stremousov, Ukrainian forces hit the bridge with High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) supplied by the United States. He said ferry crossings across the Dnieper River will be organized during the bridge’s restoration, and that traffic will resume in the near future.
“We have prepared a pontoon bridge. We have a ferry link,” he told local media.
Earlier on Wednesday, Ukrainian military officials said the number of Russian soldiers killed in the war has surpassed 40,000, just more than five months after Russia launched its invasion of neighboring Ukraine in late February.
-ABC News’ Edward Szekeres, Yulia Drozd, Max Uzol and Yuriy Zaliznyak
(NEW HAVEN, Conn.) — As students prepare to return to school in the fall, one Ivy League law school has a new scholarship aimed at broadening access to legal education by eliminating tuition for students with financial needs.
Yale Law School’s Hurst Horizon Scholarship will erase tuition and pay for college fees and health care costs for law students with the greatest financial need. It’s a first-of-its-kind scholarship that is creating new conversations about what law schools can do to diversify the legal profession.
Yale Law School dean Heather Gerken, the first woman to serve in the role, tells ABC News the scholarship was needed. “We have so many people from low-income backgrounds, who are not going to law school to pursue change because of the debt that waits on the other end for them,” she said.
The scholarship will be given to any Juris Doctor student whose family income is below the federal poverty guidelines and whose assets are below $150,000. The law school tells ABC News that more than 45 students this fall will qualify to be awarded more than $70,000 per year to cover tuition, fees and health insurance.
The program’s aim is to get lawyers to reflect the country’s demographics more closely and to change the demographics of the legal landscape by setting the tone for other top law schools to eliminate tuition fees, the school says. According to a 2021 report from the American Bar Association, lawyers of color only make up 14.6% of the legal profession.
Other Ivy League law schools have made similar efforts in recent years.
In May, Stanford Law School announced it was eliminating tuition for low-income students.
A spokesperson for the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School told ABC News the school increased financial aid by more than 60% over the past five years, raised $2.5 million to support its First Generation Professional Scholarships and pledged to increase financial support over the next five years by more than $8 million.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Harvard Law School told ABC the school “provides 100% need-based financial aid, and spending on financial aid grants has doubled over the past decade.”
Gerken says Yale Law’s scholarship offers much needed benefits for the legal profession.
“If you really just think about this generation and what it’s facing, this generation has inherited problems that are impossible to solve,” Gerken said. “And the job of law schools is to teach them how to solve it. You cannot do that unless everyone is sitting at the table.”
According to U.S. News and World Report, the average percentage of minority students was 28.5% in fall 2020 among 189 law schools surveyed.
“We also still have a system where law students of color graduate with a disproportionately higher loan debt burden,” James G. Leipold, executive director of the National Association for Law Placement, told ABC News.
Leipold said two decades ago, the “bulk of institutional discretionary financial aid moved from a need-based environment to a merit-based environment, I think to the great harm of all of higher ed.”
He said the change was driven by competition for SAT and LSAT scores. Universities began giving scholarships to people with high scores so that they could position their universities or law schools well in rankings, Leipold said.
Gerken said the idea for the Hurst Horizon Scholarship began in 2016 during a conversation between students. Rakim H. D. Brooks, a first-generation law student who grew up in New York City’s public housing, led the conversation that night for students who were restarting the First Generation Professionals program at Yale, a group for students who are the first in their families to attend the school.
It was during that conversation that Gerken noticed many of the students saw law school debt as a family or community debt. “I realized that it’s time for legal education to change if it really wants to achieve equity access and accessibility,” she said.
Brooks, who now serves as president of the nonprofit Alliance for Justice, said the new scholarship, named after founding donors Soledad and Robert Hurst, will allow future law students to pursue their passions.
He says its “quintessentially American to provide the hardest working working class and poor kids the best opportunities, and that’s what this scholarship is going to do.”
Gerken said she believes this scholarship is just the beginning of Yale’s mission to diversify the legal profession and “create a generation of lawyers and leaders who reflect our society.”
(NEW YORK) — Who will win the Mega Millions jackpot in Friday night’s drawing? That’s the billion-dollar question.
For only the third time in the 20-year history of the American lottery game, the big prize has reached the billion-dollar mark. The jackpot has grown to an estimated $1.1 billion — a cash value of $648.2 million — after no ticket matched all six numbers drawn Tuesday night, according to a press release from Mega Millions.
If won, it will be the second-largest jackpot in Mega Millions history, behind only the record $1.537 billion won in South Carolina on Oct. 23, 2018 — the world’s largest lottery prize ever won on a single ticket.
Friday night’s Mega Millions drawing will mark the 30th in this jackpot run, which began on April 19.
In the 29 drawings since the Mega Millions jackpot was last won in Tennessee on April 15, there have been over 28.1 million winning tickets at all prize levels, including 42 worth $1 million or more in 17 states across the country. Four Mega Millions jackpots have been won so far this year — in California, New York, Minnesota and Tennessee.
Mega Millions jackpots start at $20 million and grow based on game sales and interest rates. Despite a surge in ticket sales, the odds of winning the big prize remain the same — 1 in 303 million.
Mega Millions tickets are $2 and can be purchased in 45 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Drawings are conducted at 11 p.m. ET every Tuesday and Friday at the studios of Atlanta ABC affiliate WSB-TV, supervised by the Georgia Lottery.
Winners can either take the money as an immediate cash lump sum or in 30 annual payments over 29 years.
(UVALDE, Texas) — Mandy Gutierrez, the principal of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, was reinstated Thursday to her position, her attorney, Ricardo Cedillo, confirmed to ABC News.
“Ms. Gutierrez’s administrative leave with pay has been lifted and she has been fully reinstated to her position, where she will continue to discharge her duties and continue to serve all the families of the UCISD,” a statement read.
Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District superintendent Hal Harrell thanked Gutierrez in a letter obtained by ABC News for submitting responses to the House Investigative report into the May 24 mass shooting that left 19 children and two adults dead.
“As a result of our review, you will be allowed to return to work,” Harrell said in the letter.
The reinstatement comes a day after Gutierrez responded to criticisms lodged against her and her leadership team by the special investigative committee of the Texas House.
Gutierrez was suspended earlier in the week by Harrell. There was no reason given as to why Gutierrez was placed on administrative leave but the decision came two weeks after a report by the Texas legislative committee into the shooting. The report found that Gutierrez, in her first year at Robb Elementary School, was aware of security problems such as a door not locking properly for one of the classrooms the gunman entered, but did not fix them.
Uvalde Schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo was placed on administrative leave without pay in June as the district considers the recommendation of firing him.
Katie Conway and Josh Margolin contributed to this report.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(HOUSTON) — Former NFL player Kevin Ware was indicted Thursday for murder in the death of his missing girlfriend, Taylor Pomaski.
“We appreciate everyone who has come forward to provide evidence and aid in our investigation,” said Lacy Johnson, a chief prosecutor in the Harris County District Attorney’s Office. “Although this investigation has been going on since Taylor’s disappearance in 2021, the court process is just beginning, and we encourage anyone who has knowledge about what happened between Kevin and Taylor to come forward.”
A Harris County grand jury also indicted Ware for tampering with a corpse. If convicted of murder, Ware faces the possible sentence of 15 years to life in prison.
“Prosecutors presented the evidence to a Harris County grand jury, which determined there was sufficient evidence for criminal charges,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg told ABC News. “We will follow the evidence wherever it leads and apply the law equally to all.”
Pomaski was last seen alive at Ware’s home on April 25, 2021, with the Harris County Sherriff’s Office saying she disappeared “under suspicious circumstances,” according to ABC News Houston station KTRK.
In June 2021, shortly after Pomaski’s disappearance, Ware was arrested in Houston on gun and drug charges and had been in Montgomery County Jail ever since.
Pomaski’s remains were found in December 2021, according to KTRK.
Ware was a tight end for Washington and the San Francisco 49ers in 2003 and 2004.
