Gatt in 2015 – Amy Graves/Getty Images for GBK Productions
Game of Thrones actor Joseph Gatt is responding to allegations of that he engaged in “online sexually explicit communication with a minor.”
Taking to social media, Gatt, 50, defended himself in a statement beginning, “I obviously want to address the absolutely horrifying and completely untrue allegations recently leveled against me. They are 100% categorically wrong and reckless.”
“I have confirmed errors and misleading information in today’s press release,” he continued. “I am fully cooperating with police and LAPD to get to the bottom of this. I look forward to clearing my good name.”
Gatt then thanked his friends and supporters and said “for legal reasons I cannot comment further on social media.”
On April 6, Gatt was arrested at his LA-area home on suspicion of engaging in “online sexually explicit communication with a minor” by detectives from the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, according to the Los Angeles Police Department Wednesday, Los Angeles police reached out to the public in search of people who may have been victimized by him.
Detectives served a search warrant at Gatt’s home, “after they received information that Gatt had been engaged in online sexually explicit communication with a minor across state lines,” according to an LAPD statement.
Gatt was arrested on a felony warrant for “contact with a minor for sexual offense,” police said. Details of his alleged crime were not released.
Gatt had a minor role in Game of Thrones, playing one of the Free Folk in season four. His other acting credits include NCIS: New Orleans, Thor and Star Trek Into Darkness, according to IMDb.
27th Annual SAG Awards/Getty Images for WarnerMedia
Frank Langella has been axed from Netflix’s limited series The Fall of the House of Usher following an investigation into his alleged misconduct on set.
Sources tell Deadline that the Frost/Nixon actor was the subject of an investigation that determined he was involved in unacceptable conduct on set.
Langella was set to play Roderick Usher in the eight-episode series, based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. The part is being recast and the scenes Langella has already filmed will be re-shot.
Langella had not been scheduled to work this week, according to the outlet. Filming on the series will reportedly continue with scenes not involving the Roderick Usher character until a new actor is cast.
TMZ reported on Tuesday that the investigation was launched after the 84-year-old actor was accused of sexual harassment, including making inappropriate comments to a female co-star on set during work.
The Fall of the House of Usher also stars Carla Gugino, Mary McDonnell, Carl Lumbly and Mark Hamill.
For All Mankind‘s Jodi Balfour has landed a major recurring role on Apple TV+’s Emmy-winning series Ted Lasso, according to Deadline. She’s the first known cast addition for the show’s upcoming third season. Balfour will play Jack, “a charming venture capitalist.” She joins Jason Sudeikis, Hannah Waddingham, Brendan Hunt, Jeremy Swift, Juno Temple, Brett Goldstein, Phil Dunster and Nick Mohammed on the series…
Salma Hayek is joining the cast of Channing Tatum’s new Magic Mike sequel for HBO Max, replacing Thandiwe Newton. A spokesperson for Warner Bros. told Variety on Wednesday that Newton “made the difficult decision to step away from the production…to deal with family matters.” In Magic Mike’s Last Dance, Tatum returns as male stripper Mike Lane, a character that was loosely based on his own experiences as a stripper in Florida. The movies have grossed more than $285 million in theaters worldwide…
Kristen Stewart has joined the cast of Love Lies Bleeding, a romantic thriller set in the world of bodybuilding, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The story is centered on the extreme qualities it takes to succeed in the competitive world of bodybuilding, sources tell the outlet. Stewart earned her first Oscar nomination earlier this year for playing future Princess of Wales Diana Spencer in the biopic Spencer…
Jesse L. Martin is leaving the CW’s The Flash after eight seasons for a lead role in NBC’s drama pilot The Irrational, according to Deadline. While he’ll longer be a series regular on The Flash, he is expected to appear in multiple episodes of the DC drama’s upcoming ninth season. Martin, whose contract is up at the end of the current season, hasn’t been approached to return, leaving him available for pilots and series. The pilot for The Irrational, which Martin will also produce, will be shot in late May-early June in Vancouver, where The Flash also films. It won’t be in consideration for NBC’s fall schedule, Deadline says…
(WASHINGTON) — House committee investigators found that consultants from consulting firm McKinsey & Company advised opioid manufacturers while the company was on federal contract with the Food and Drug Administration’s drug approval unit, an arrangement that lawmakers say may have breached federal conflict of interest rules, according to an interim report published Wednesday.
According to the report published by the House Oversight Committee, McKinsey consultants allegedly leveraged their work with the FDA to attract business from companies like Purdue Pharma, one of the leaders in developing opioid drugs. And according to the interim report, McKinsey consultants appear to have tried to influence government officials to benefit their opioid clients, raising questions about the company’s firewall between government contracts and private sector work.
At the same time the FDA was relying on McKinsey’s advice to ensure drug safety and protect American lives, the firm was also being paid by the very companies fueling the deadly opioid epidemic by allegedly helping to defend opioid manufacturers against tougher regulation of these dangerous drugs, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., the committee’s chair, wrote in a statement.
Maloney called McKinsey’s conduct particularly “egregious considering its central role in driving a public health crisis that has killed half a million Americans.”
McKinsey, in response to the new release, wrote in a statement that it “will review the report” and “continue to cooperate with the Committee to address further questions,” but defended its work for the FDA and for its opioid clients, saying it is committed to guarding against conflicts of interest.
In the statement, McKinsey wrote that it reviews its potential conflicts and “will not do the work” if those potential conflicts “cannot be appropriately addressed.” It said its work for the FDA were administrative and operational, “including improvements to organizational structures, business processes and technology,” not related to regulatory decisions or specific pharmaceutical products.
But the firm, in the statement, also admitted that its past private sector opioid work — which it stopped in 2019 — while lawful, “fell short of the high standards we set for ourselves” and that it settled with all 50 state attorneys general to “provide fast, meaningful support to communities across the United States that have been affected by the opioid crisis.”
The new House committee report, in particular, sheds light on questions about the firm’s conflicts of interest policies, including details about at least 22 McKinsey consultants who allegedly worked for both the FDA and opioid manufacturers on related topics, sometimes at the same time.
For example in 2011, at least four McKinsey consultants that were working on a $1.8 million FDA contract to address “the adverse impact of drugs on health in the US” were working for Purdue at the same time, “including on projects designed to persuade FDA of the safety of Purdue’s opioid products,” the committee found, according to the report.
In 2017, a McKinsey partner allegedly worked on a $2.7 million contract to help modernize the FDA’s Office of New Drugs while at the same time advising Purdue on maximizing the market potential of a new opioid, according to the report.
The report also alleged that McKinsey consultants with Purdue ties attempted to influence public health officials in the Trump Administration on the topic of the opioid epidemic.
The committee wrote that some of McKinsey consultants “formed part of what one consultant called McKinsey’s mini ‘army’ here at Purdue,” suggesting McKinsey’s cozy relationship with Purdue during the time period when “numerous McKinsey consultants worked for both FDA and Purdue, both officially and unofficially.” But the report didn’t say whether the particular McKinsey consultant that used the phrase “mini army” was also working on FDA projects.
The committee report also looked at McKinsey’s alleged lack of its potential conflicts of interest disclosures to the FDA, saying the lack of disclosure potentially violated contract requirements and federal law.
McKinsey spokesperson Neil Grace has previously told ABC News Mckinsey had made necessary conflict of interest disclosures, saying that the company’s consulting work for pharmaceutical firms “did not create a conflict of interest” regarding its work with the FDA, because it “has not advised the FDA on regulatory policy or on specific pharmaceutical products,” and “given the absence of a conflict of interest, there was no requirement for any McKinsey disclosure.”
In recent weeks, lawmakers have increasingly trained their sights on McKinsey and other contractors for allegedly accepting government contracts while pursuing outside business opportunities that may present a conflict of interest.
Earlier this month, Senate Democrats called on the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general to investigate McKinsey over alleged conflict of interest violations tied to its work with major pharmaceutical companies.
Lawmakers have also introduced legislation meant to strengthen conflict of interest safeguards for contractors like McKinsey.
(CLENDENIN, W. Va.) — A historic flood from sudden torrential rain nearly wiped out entire towns in West Virginia’s mountainous coal country, killing 23 and inflicting $1 billion in damage. Six years later, many survivors remain unmoved by the growing threat of climate change and urgent calls to curb greenhouse gasses from burning coal.
“It’s weather all over, you know what I mean. I’m not a scientist, but I just don’t believe it,” said Mayor Kay Summers of Clendenin, a Republican elected two years ago to champion the rebuilding. “Every time it rains and storms, I’m lying awake at night. I know it can happen, but I just don’t think it will happen again.”
Communities in the heart of Appalachia are some of the most vulnerable in the country to the impacts of a warming global climate, according to government scientists, and among the most resistant to government-led efforts to blunt the impacts.
They are also the front line in a landmark environmental case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which will decide this spring how much authority the Environmental Protection Agency has to regulate earth-warming emissions from coal-fired power plants.
“I have never seen flooding like I’ve seen here in the past, really in the past 20 years,” said longtime environmental activist Maria Gunnoe, whose family has lived and mined in West Virginia for generations. “We can’t continue to risk everything for energy, you know, I mean – coal keeps the lights on, they say, but at what cost?”
The region’s recovery from the 2016 flood — and continued reliance on the fossil fuel economy — illustrate the dueling human and economic stakes in West Virginia’s lawsuit against the EPA.
Eighteen states led by West Virginia and a coalition of U.S. energy companies want strict limits on EPA authority to issue rules that could transform entire industries. The Biden administration argues that Congress gave EPA significant leeway under the Clean Air Act to write regulations to stave off climate catastrophe.
“It has incredible potential to affect how EPA and other agencies write regulations for years to come,” Kevin Minoli, a former EPA acting general counsel and career civil servant, said of the case.
The outcome could dramatically shape the future of coal-dependent communities like Clendenin and the coal-fired power plants that employ thousands of workers but also generate millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year.
Experts say strict limits to EPA authority could also make it impossible to cut U.S. carbon emissions in half by 2030 and entirely phase out fossil fuels like coal by 2050 — top White House objectives.
“While the EPA does have a narrow array of authority to act in the area of carbon emissions, it’s nowhere near what the Biden administration is suggesting,” said West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a Republican, who warns thousands of jobs, industry profits, state tax revenue and a reliable source of electricity are on the line.
While the extreme flood that submerged Clendenin was exceptional, government and academic climatologists warn that the threat of extreme rain events is growing across West Virginia, which already ranks third in the country in flooding disasters over the last 70 years.
Over the same period, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates more frequent and more powerful storms in the region have dumped 55% more rain.
Coal, one of West Virginia’s most lucrative exports, is used to generate a disproportionately high amount of the state’s electricity, around 90%, according to the Energy Information Administration. (Nationwide less than a quarter of electricity is produced from coal.)
The EPA argues in legal documents that Congress gave it sweeping discretion under the Clean Air Act to determine the best system of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to protect human health, and officials said this month that they are poised to release strict new limits on power plant pollution as soon as the Supreme Court rules.
“Our people want to have clean air. They want to have clean water. Absolutely. But you have to go through the process the right way,” Morrisey said. “To allow un-elected bureaucrats just to decide under the guise of good government – that’s not right. This is Congress’s decision to make, not the EPA.”
The state’s largest coal-fired power facility — the John Amos plant in Winfield, West Virginia — sits 40 miles west of Clendenin along the Kanawha River. It’s one of 174 coal-fired plants nationwide that could be impacted by the Supreme Court’s decision.
“They want to make rules but they don’t understand because they don’t walk in those shoes,” Mayor Summers said of EPA regulators.
American Electric Power, one of the nation’s largest utilities which owns the John Amos facility, granted ABC News Live rare access to see firsthand how its workforce of up to 1,000 full-time and contract workers generate enough power for two million homes and businesses across three states.
The plant burns up to 27,000 tons of coal a day during peak season, drawing on daily shipments of regional coal delivered by barge and by rail. Its three power units released 10.8 million tons of earth-warming carbon dioxide last year — or the equivalent of more than two million cars driven for a year — government records show.
In the mid-2000s, EPA regulations forced many U.S. power plants to invest in upgrading smokestacks with scrubbers that remove nearly all sulfur dioxide — a pollutant that can harm human health and contribute to acid rain.
Since then, the agency has attempted to enact new limits on power plant carbon dioxide emissions, a primary driver of global warming. Litigation has complicated that plan, but EPA expects to unveil a new approach this summer.
Energy companies nationwide, including American Electric Power, have slowly been transitioning to cheaper alternatives to coal. Twenty-eight percent of active coal-fired power plants are set to be retired by 2035.
“I grew up in coal country. I come from a community where we’re seeing massive job losses, massive job losses,” said Keena Mullins, co-founder and solar developer for Revolt Energy. “Coal and solar have to coexist here.”
Mullins runs West Virginia’s largest commercial solar installation in the shadow of the John Amos power plant. She says the legal fight over coal draws attention from a need to diversify the state’s energy portfolio.
“If we were to max out every available roof space in this state and all the usable land, we may be able to reach 30 percent of powering the grid — maybe,” she said.
West Virginia’s public utilities commission last year gave the John Amos plant and two other aging coal-fired facilities a new lease on life, approving more than $448 million in environmental upgrades to keep them burning coal until 2040. Part of the costs will be passed on to ratepayers.
“I think we need coal until we have enough, you know, until they figure out an alternate source,” said Ricky Brookover, a union boilermaker who works overnight installing upgrades at the Amos facility. “We put so much clean energy, clean stuff on [the plant]. Like, when you see the white smoke coming out of the stacks, it’s clean.”
Brookover, a 41-year-old father whose family has deep ties to the coal industry, says he doesn’t oppose the EPA but questions a drive to address a climate crisis he doesn’t see.
“I really feel that when I was a kid it was worse than it is now. You know what I mean? We had more snow when I was a kid. It seemed like there was more flooding,” he said.
As both sides brace for a decision by the Supreme Court, environmental advocates say they fear for the worst.
“The impact here is going to be increased mining, increased pollution,” said Gunnoe. “The coal industry has always kept our people in the dark, and I don’t look for it to change.”
(NEW YORK) — Frank Robert James, 62, was arrested in Manhattan’s East Village on Wednesday afternoon, authorities said, more than 24 hours into an intense manhunt that began after 10 people were shot on a crowded subway car in Brooklyn, New York.
He was charged in a criminal complaint with committing a terrorist act on a mass transportation vehicle and was subsequently transferred to federal custody in Brooklyn. Breon Peace, United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, whose office brought the charges, said James faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.
James, who was born in New York City but has lived in Philadelphia and Milwaukee in recent years, will appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Roanne Mann in Brooklyn federal court on Thursday, according to Peace. The exact timing was unknown.
The shooting unfolded on a Manhattan-bound N subway car during the Tuesday morning commute, just before 8:30 a.m. ET, as the train approached the 36th Street subway station in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood.
A man mumbling to himself on the subway car donned a gas mask and detonated a smoke canister before pulling out a handgun and firing a barrage of 33 bullets, a police official told ABC News. Ten people were shot, with the youngest being a 12-year-old, according to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.
The gun jammed during the incident, which is believed to have saved lives, a law enforcement official told ABC News.
Smoke poured out of the subway car as the doors opened and screaming riders ran out onto the platform of the station. Bloodied people were seen lying on the floor of the train and the platform.
A total of 29 people were injured, according to hospital officials. As of Wednesday morning, four of the wounded remained hospitalized, New York City Mayor Eric Adams told ABC News.
Evidence recovered from the scene pointed investigators to James. According to the criminal complaint, police recovered two bags containing, among other items, a Glock 17 pistol, a key to a U-Haul rental vehicle and multiple bank cards. They also discovered a jacket with reflective tape near the two bags. Inside the jacket was a receipt for a storage unit in Philadelphia, which records provided by the facility showed was registered to James, the complaint said.
Records provided by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives revealed that the Gock handgun recovered from the scene of the attack was lawfully purchased by James in Ohio, according to the complaint. One of the bank cards was a debit card bearing the name “Frank James,” the complaint said. Records provided by U-Haul showed that James rented a white Chevrolet van from the company in Philadelphia on Monday, according to the complaint.
The U-Haul vehicle crossed states lines from Pennsylvania to New Jersey and then to New York, the complaint said. Surveillance cameras recorded the van driving over the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge before dawn on Tuesday and entering Brooklyn, according to the complaint.
At approximately 6:12 a.m. ET, another surveillance camera recorded an individual wearing a yellow hard hat, orange working jacket with reflective tape, carrying a backpack in his right hand and dragging a rolling bag in his left hand, leaving the U-Haul van on foot near West 7th Street and Kings Highway in Brooklyn’s Gravesend neighborhood.
Police later located the vehicle parked on Kings Highway, about two blocks from a subway stop for the N-train, where investigators believe James entered the mass transit system.
Senior law enforcement officials told ABC News they also uncovered a number of social media posts and videos tied to James. They’re determining if they’re relevant to the shooting, they said.
The investigation has been complicated by the fact that none of the surveillance cameras inside the 36th Street subway station were working at the time of the attack, a police official told ABC News. The cameras, which are aimed at the turnstiles, didn’t transmit in real-time due to a glitch computer malfunction, a source said. The same glitch impacted cameras at the stops before and after 36th Street. Investigators said they are looking into how this malfunction happened.
James managed to evade law enforcement for more than a day. The New York City Police Department initially deemed James a person of interest in the investigation on Tuesday night before naming him a suspect on Wednesday morning. Wanted for the attempted murder of 10 people, he became the subject of an expansive search by local and federal agencies, including the U.S. Marshals Service.
James was ultimately apprehended after police received a tip that he was in a McDonald’s near Sixth Street and First Avenue. When responding officers didn’t see James at the fast-food restaurant, they drove around the area and spotted him near St. Marks Place and First Avenue, where he was taken into custody without incident at around 1:45 p.m. ET on Wednesday, according to police.
Sources told ABC News that James may have called police on himself.
Peter Brackney / www.kaintuckeean.com/Getty Images
(FRANKFORT, Ky.) — The Kentucky state legislature has overridden Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of a bill banning abortion after 15 weeks, along with several other abortion restrictions.
Under the bill, any physician that performs an abortion after 15 weeks would lose their license for at least six months.
The bill allows for exceptions if there is a medical emergency in which continuing the pregnancy would result in “serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function” or “death of the pregnant woman.” There are no exceptions for rape or incest.
Last week, Beshear, a Democrat, vetoed the Republican-backed measure after he raised concerns about whether the bill is constitutional and criticized the lack of exceptions for rape or incest.
But on Wednesday, the state House received well over the 51 votes needed to override the veto, and the state Senate far surpassed the 20 votes needed as well. It went into law immediately due to its emergency clause.
Also in the bill, which is known as HB3, is a restriction that drugs used for a medication abortion — a nonsurgical procedure typically used up to 10 weeks in pregnancy — must be provided by a physician who is licensed to practice medicine and in good standing with Kentucky.
The physician must also have hospital admitting privileges in “geographical proximity” to where the abortions are being performed.
An in-person examination needs to be had at least 24 hours prior to the medication abortion, during which women are informed about any risks. The drugs cannot be sent through the mail.
Abortion advocates say this will prevent many women, particularly those who are low-income, from accessing abortion if they must go to a clinic to receive it.
Additionally, minors who seek abortions will need the consent of a judge if the parents are not available, and any fetal remains will need to be buried or cremated by a licensed funeral provider.
Opponents argue the bill has so many restrictions that it makes it virtually impossible for any abortion clinic to comply and say its passage will mean Kentuckians effectively lose access to abortion care.
The bill also requires that the names of physicians who provide medication abortions be published and a state-run “complaint portal” to be set up so people can anonymously report abortion providers who are allegedly violating the program.
In a previous interview with ABC News, Meg Stern, director of the abortion support fund for Kentucky Health Justice Network, an advocacy group, said this could lead to complaints filed by people who have personal vendettas against abortion providers.
The ban is modeled after Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, which is being reviewed by the Supreme Court, with a decision expected in June on whether or not it is constitutional.
If the court determines the Mississippi bill is constitutional, this could mean Roe v. Wade is either overturned or fundamentally weakened.
(NEW YORK) — When Wanda Irving looks into the eyes of her 5-year-old granddaughter, Soleil, she said she instantly sees her daughter, Shalon Irving, whose death shortly after giving birth to Soleil has since shaped the trajectory of their lives.
“She’s got her mom’s eyes and her mom’s smile and her mom’s fearlessness and her mom’s persistence,” Wanda Irving told Good Morning America of her granddaughter, whom the family calls Sunny, after her middle name, Sunshine. “She has her mom’s memory, because her mom wouldn’t forget anything.”
After Shalon’s death in January 2017, three weeks after giving birth, Irving uprooted her life to move to the Atlanta area, where Shalon worked as an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and as a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Public Health Service.
Irving has cared for Soleil full-time ever since, working to make sure her granddaughter knows all she can about her mom, whose ultimate dream was motherhood.
“[Shalon’s] pictures stay up. Everything is around that her mom would have liked,” said Irving, who said Soleil loves to cook because she knows her mom did, too. “I try to tell her every single day what a great mom she had, and she can tell you stories about her mom because of what she’s heard. She asks me repeatedly to tell her mommy’s story again.”
In addition to keeping her daughter’s memory alive, Irving has devoted her life to ending the maternal mortality crisis among Black women in the United States so that other families don’t face grief like hers.
“I have to face my granddaughter every single day, and she’s still asking where’s her mother and why isn’t her mother here,” said Irving, the co-founder of a maternal mortality-focused nonprofit organization called Dr. Shalon’s Maternal Action Project.
“That doesn’t make sense to me, why she has to go through that kind of pain,” said Irving. “So we can’t let this continue to happen.”
According to the CDC, around 700 women die each year due to complications within the first year after giving birth in the U.S., which continues to have the highest maternal mortality rate among developed nations.
As a Black woman, Shalon faced disproportionate odds when giving birth to her first child. Black women in the U.S. die of maternal causes at nearly three times the rate of white women, according to CDC data released in February.
A heartbreaking death and a newborn
As a doctor, Shalon was prepared for the birth of Soleil, according to her best friend, Bianca Pryor, who met Shalon in 2002 as a fellow graduate student at Purdue University and, by chance, became pregnant with her first child at the same time as Shalon.
“She knew her body in and out. She had a Ph.D., but one would have thought she had an M.D. She was brilliant,” Pryor said. “She had researched everything about pregnancy and delivery, and she was so prepared.”
Shalon gave birth successfully to Soleil via C-section on Jan. 3, 2017, with her mom by her side, and then was discharged from the hospital four days later after a routine stay, according to Irving.
After a few days at home, Irving said, Shalon began experiencing complications including a hematoma, blood that collects and pools under the skin, as well as rising blood pressure, swollen limbs and a C-section wound that was not healing well.
“I think she probably went to the doctor at least nine or 10 times in those two weeks,” Irving said. “I know that last week she went almost every single day, and every time she was sent back home.”
Pryor, who lives in New York and had just given birth to her own son in an emergency C-section at 23 weeks, said she remembers getting updates from Shalon about her complications.
“She pushed back on the medical care teams,” Pryor said. “She kept saying that something wasn’t right.”
And then on Jan. 24, Pryor said a missed phone call led to a text from Irving with the message, “B., Shalon stopped breathing.”
At home in Atlanta, Shalon, then 36, had suffered a cardiac arrest and collapsed. She was taken by ambulance to a local hospital, where she was put in the intensive care unit, according to Irving.
For several days, her family and friends stood vigil by her bedside, according to Pryor, who flew in from New York.
“We stood by her side. We prayed,” Pryor said. “The hardest was when we decided that we would bring Soleil in so that Shalon could hold her one last time. I’ll never get that image out of my head.”
“I remember when we put Soleil on top of her, one tear ran out of Shalon’s eye, and we just held space. We stayed in that moment,” she said.
On Jan. 28, two days after learning Shalon was brain dead, Irving said she had to make the decision to remove the respiratory machine that had been keeping her daughter alive.
“We took a look at her medical directive and one of the things that we saw was that in the directive, she had handwritten, ‘Mommy, I will try hard if anything happens, but if there’s no hope, let me go. Just let me go,'” Irving said. “I didn’t want to let go, but I wanted to honor her request.”
Picking up the pieces to create change
Immediately after Shalon’s death, Pryor said she spoke to Irving about the dreams she and her best friend had shared for their children, like how they wanted to raise their kids and the people they hoped they would become.
As the months and years went on, Pryor and Irving also spoke about the dreams Shalon had for her career and the legacy she would want to leave behind.
“We started dreaming together, Wanda and I, picking up where Shalon and I left off, and putting our pain into purpose,” Pryor said.
Together, in late 2019, Irving and Pryor founded Dr. Shalon’s Maternal Action Project to make giving birth in the U.S. an equitable right for all.
“Shalon was such a fierce equity warrior,” Irving said. “She had her motto, ‘I see an equity wherever it exists. I’m not afraid to call it by name, and I fight hard to eliminate it. I vow to create a better Earth,’ and that was Shalon in a nutshell.”
After Shalon’s death, Irving learned that her daughter’s cardiac arrest had been caused by complications from hypertension, or high blood pressure, a condition that, according to the CDC, contributes to a “significantly higher proportion of pregnancy-related deaths” among Black women than among white women.
Both Irving and Pryor said they felt that after Shalon gave birth, her health complications were not taken seriously enough by her medical team.
As a result, they created Believe Her, an app that provides maternal health resources for Black women and gives them a space to share their experiences.
“Our mission is to create that collective line of defense, so for all the Black mothers and birthing people out there to learn, what is the language, how do you push back when someone says, ‘Oh no, you’re fine,'” Pryor said. “We wanted to create this really uncut, raw conversation so birthing people can push back.”
Pryor continued, “That is our response back, believe her.”
Empowering Black women against institutional odds
Believe Her is one of several apps on the market now created by Black women for birthing Black women to help beat the odds that are stacked against them just because of their race.
Why exactly Black women die at a higher rate than any other race during childbirth is the result of a web of factors, experts say.
Pregnancy-related deaths are defined as the death of a woman during pregnancy or within a year of the end of pregnancy from pregnancy complications, a chain of events initiated by pregnancy or the aggravation of an unrelated condition by the physiological effects of pregnancy, according to the CDC.
One reason for the disparity is that more Black women of childbearing age have chronic diseases, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, which increases the risk of pregnancy-related complications like preeclampsia and possibly the need for emergency C-sections, according to the CDC.
But there are socioeconomic circumstances and structural inequities that put Black women at greater risk for those chronic conditions, data shows. And Black women often have inadequate access to care throughout pregnancy which can further complicate their conditions, according to a 2013 study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
On Wednesday, during Black Maternal Health Week, the Biden administration announced an additional $16 million in funding for programs to strengthen programs that aim to address disparities in maternal and child health, including a state-level program to “deliver high-quality maternity care services, provide training for maternal care clinicians, and enhance the quality of state-level maternal health data.”
Anecdotal reports show that the concerns of Black women experiencing negative symptoms during pregnancy and postpartum are specifically ignored by some physicians until the woman’s conditions significantly worsen, at which point it may be too late to prevent a deadlier outcome.
Maya Hardigan, a mom of three in New York, said she created the Meet Mae app for Black women in part because of her own experience giving birth to her first child via C-section.
“I did everything I knew to plan,” Hardigan said of her first pregnancy. “I took a birth education class with my husband. I had a birth plan. I rotated through all the doctors in our OB practice to make sure I knew everyone and I talked to each of them about the birth experience I was seeking.”
Hardigan said she ended up giving birth in an emergency C-section that, though it ended successfully for both her and her daughter, was a scary experience.
“I felt that I just didn’t have a choice, number one,” Hardigan said. “And number two, I felt very confused, because it is such a vulnerable moment.”
The Meet Mae app connects Black women with local support networks and with doulas, who can be a birthing mother’s advocate in the delivery room and provide pre- and post-natal care. It also allows women to create their own birth plans and to track and monitor their conditions during and after pregnancy, according to Hardigan, who left a 20-year career in the health care industry to launch Meet Mae.
Another app on the market, IRTH, provides a platform for Black women to share reviews of care providers. The app’s founder, Kimberly Seals Allers, said she was inspired to create a tool for other Black women after feeling her “wishes were ignored” when she gave birth in a New York hospital.
According to Pryor, the different apps are all working toward the same goal of empowering Black women with the tools and support they need to successfully give birth.
“I really do believe we’re pioneering the way … to solve for this,” Pryor said of the Black birthing crisis.
For Irving, she said she dreams that when her granddaughter grows up, she will not only not see an end to the crisis, but know that her mom played a critical role.
“I hope that [Soleil] will understand and appreciate as she grows up that [her] mom was an important person in this fight, and because of her and her life and what she did, things have changed,” said Irving. “That’s what I want her to be able to say.”
(NEW YORK) — Amid the ongoing humanitarian crisis that has unfolded in the weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, education advocates are working to ensure Ukraine’s displaced children are not forgotten.
More than 4.6 million people have fled Ukraine to neighboring countries since the invasion began, according to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. They have primarily fled to Poland, as well as Romania, Hungary, Russia and Moldova, which, like Ukraine, declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Though one of the poorest countries in Europe, Moldova has welcomed the equivalent of 15% of its population in a matter of weeks, with over 415,000 fleeing there from Ukraine, according to the U.N.
Many refugees have moved on to other European countries, though about 100,000 remain in the country currently, according to Education Cannot Wait, the United Nation’s global fund for education in emergencies. Of those, 50,000 are school-aged children. Only 1,800 of those children are currently enrolled in school in Moldova, the organization said.
As Moldova welcomes refugees, the educational needs are “enormous” and its educational capacity is “overstretched” and “strained,” Yasmine Sherif, director of Education Cannot Wait, told ABC News.
The needs, she said, include teachers who can not only meet the demand, but also address language barriers — the official language of Moldova is Romanian, while most people in Ukraine speak Ukrainian. Teachers who are trained to address the mental health needs of the refugees, who may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, are another.
Sherif, who visited Moldova this week to visit schools and talk with local officials and refugees, recalled meeting a mother who fled from Odessa with her two daughters.
“The mother broke down crying, and her daughters seemed also very traumatized from the experience,” she said. “On top of her mind is not her own suffering but how she can ensure that her daughters feel safe and that they can continue their schooling.”
Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science has coordinated online lessons, though comprehensive remote learning for refugees is also challenging due to damaged infrastructure across Ukraine and impacts on teachers, Sherif said. More than 900 education facilities in Ukraine have been destroyed or damaged during the fighting, according to Education Cannot Wait.
The demands on Moldova may only continue to grow, with a second wave of refugees possible as the conflict continues, Sherif said.
Education Cannot Wait announced on Wednesday a $1.5 million grant to support the educational response to the refugee crisis in Moldova that will be delivered in partnership with the government of Moldova, which has developed a framework for the schooling of refugees, including those who have applied for asylum.
Sherif said the funding could go toward rehabilitating educational facilities and training teachers who speak Ukrainian, including refugees.
Amid the refugee crisis, Theirworld, a global children’s education charity, said it plans to announce additional funding to “support refugee education projects in the coming weeks, harnessing its experiences from other emergencies, and campaigning to ensure donors invest 10% of the humanitarian response funding into education,” the organization’s president, Justin van Fleet, said in a statement.
UNICEF is also working to help refugees “reclaim their learning experience, in a safe and supportive environment, nurturing their resilience against the traumas of war,” UNICEF Representative to Moldova Maha Damaj said in a statement. The organization has set up support centers for families along refugee transit routes that provide services, including psychological counseling and support and child-friendly spaces.
Disruption to education can have lasting impacts, with girls especially vulnerable to human trafficking, Sherif said.
“Education gives you a chance as a girl to be empowered, and for both girls and boys, it offers a very protective environment,” she said.
It also provides the mental health and social services crucial for children, especially those who are refugees.
“Without that, it’s very difficult to start anew,” Sherif said.
(LVIV, Ukraine) — In southern Ukraine, far from the frontlines of the war, the planting season is set to begin. There, farmers are preparing for a crucial upcoming season, which will prove pivotal for not just Ukraine, but the global food supply in the months and years ahead, in what one farmer described as the “second frontline.”
The war has already ushered in a “staggering” humanitarian and economic crisis, according to Anna Bjerde, World Bank vice president for the Europe and Central Asia region, with the Ukrainian economy expected to shrink by 45% this year. Yet the crisis could extend far beyond the country’s borders, with Ukraine’s claim to be one of the world’s “breadbaskets” now at risk.
The country is a top ten global exporter of a number of key agricultural products, including wheat, barley, corn, sunflower oil, soybeans and poultry, and officials and farmers warn the disruption caused by the invasion will have global consequences.
At a NATO summit last month, President Joe Biden said leaders discussed food shortages, saying “it’s going to be real.”
Facing the realities of a land war in the country, farmers have been forced to improvise, but time is running out, Alex Lissitsa, a leading businessman and president of the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club, told ABC News.
“Farmers are very, very flexible and especially the Ukrainians are also very, very flexible and adaptive,” he said. “But right now, even the Ukrainian farmers did not expect the brutality of the Russians. We did not expect actually the whole infrastructure bill will be broken here… the main question is actually about the future because I did talk to two farmers; I did talk to companies and everybody has money left for the next four or five months. But if we cannot sell our products, if we don’t have access to the export markets and the world market, it’s done.”
“The majority of Ukrainian farmers will become bankrupt somewhere [around] the summer,” he added.
Food prices globally are already rising at the fastest rate in history, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture now estimating that Americans are likely to pay between 4.5%-5.5% more for food this year.
An estimated 70% of Ukraine — an area larger than Italy — is used as farmland, according to USAID. Russia has been accused by Ukrainian officials of destroying grain silos and key infrastructure during their invasion, as well as laying mines on significant areas of arable land.
Around 70% of Ukraine’s exports are moved by Black Sea ports, in places like Odessa and Mariupol, which have now been blocked from carrying out this function due to incessant Russian shelling.
“It’s quite clear that their goal is to create harm in Ukraine,” Taras Vysotskyi, Ukraine’s first deputy minister of Agriculture, told ABC News. “The main directions of destroying actual machinery, silos, fuel storages, animal farms and blocking the possibilities to export, which means less of cash, less of money for the agricultural producers to keep working and keep planting for the next season.”
Products, from maize to cattle, can be held in storage for varying amounts of time, but the longer the war drags on the more likely it will be that these cannot be exported and are at risk of being wasted, he said.
“If the ports keep blocked, it’s really a disaster for Ukraine agriculture because it has been export oriented, usually in the last decade, like 70%, 75% of all agricultural commodities have been exported, so we can’t consume them inside,” Vysotskyi said.
Around 300 million people are fed on Ukrainian products around the world on a yearly basis, Vysotskyi said, but current capacity — the export infrastructure is only working at 10% of the usual amount of goods — are leaving the country through alternative means, he said.
Russia, too, is a major player on the global agricultural stage, and senior official Dmitry Medvedev has warned that Russia “will supply food and crops only to our friends” this month, and the country’s increasing isolation on the global stage could have similar consequences to the disaster in Ukrainian agriculture.
Countries in Africa and the Middle East are particularly vulnerable to the crisis. Somalia and Benin have a total dependence on imports of mostly Russian and Ukrainian wheat, and many other countries rely on them for more than half their wheat imports, according to a rapid assessment by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
“The combination of very high prices of food and fuel and macroeconomic tightening will place severe pressure on households in developing countries: real incomes will be squeezed, and economic growth will be constrained,” the UNCTAD stated in its March assessment. “Even in the absence of disorderly moves in financial markets, developing economies will face severe constraints on growth and development.”
“Overall, the war is really going to damage international consumers and theirs, as well as countries where people are less rich,” Vysotskyi said. “Then of course, they will feel it more… So it wouldn’t be as a matter of price, it’s just that they can’t find it physically and what to eat.”
Both Lissitsa and Vysotskyi said a package of international financial support is vital to alleviate the crisis.
“Otherwise, we will have in one year even the war zone situation, because right now we’ll be discussing about global hunger,” Lissitsa said. “But if Ukrainian farmers will go bankrupt actually in that year, then next year will be even worse situation. I think the majority of the countries, especially when it comes to Africa but also in Asia, do not understand how serious is that problem.”
