(ANN ARBOR, Mich.) — Public health officials are investigating an influenza outbreak at a Michigan university that has resulted in more than 500 cases, as several schools have also seen surges in flu activity.
The University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus in Washtenaw County has reported over 525 cases among students since Oct. 6 — about three-quarters of them among people unvaccinated against the flu, school officials said this week.
The university said it is tracking a “large and sudden increase” in cases, with nearly all reported in the past two weeks.
“While we often start to see some flu activity now, the size of this outbreak is unusual,” Juan Luis Marquez, medical director at the Washtenaw County Health Department, said in a statement.
A team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is helping the university and local and state health departments investigate the outbreak, including how the flu is spreading.
Amid the surge, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is calling on people to get the flu vaccine, as vaccine administrations are down by about 26% compared to this time last year and COVID-19 cases are also on the rise.
“This outbreak comes at a time when COVID-19 infections are again surging in Michigan, with case rates, positivity rates, hospitalizations and deaths all increasing,” the department said in a release Wednesday. “State and local public health officials are concerned with the potential for increased strain on health systems if COVID-19 and influenza cases surge at the same time this winter.”
Other campuses are also battling flu outbreaks. Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey, has logged 150 flu cases among students since Nov. 1, most of which were last week, Joe Cardona, the vice president of university relations, told ABC News. In response, the school has been holding flu vaccination clinics for students and staff this week.
Spikes in flu cases have also been seen at Florida State University and Florida A&M University, the Associated Press reported earlier this month.
Public health experts have warned that this flu season might be more severe, following last season’s mild flu activity.
Flu cases saw a significant drop during the 2020-2021 season according to the CDC — likely due in part to people wearing masks, practicing frequent hand hygiene and socially distancing to help limit the spread of COVID-19.
“As we head into respiratory virus season, it is important to take every mitigation measure we can to prevent outbreaks of the flu, RSV and COVID-19,” Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, chief medical executive for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement. “Wearing masks, washing hands, social distancing and getting vaccinated for the flu and COVID-19 will help prevent the spread of illness.”
ABC News’ Sasha Pezenik contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The wife of an American held hostage by Islamist militants in Africa broke years of silence on Wednesday to criticize U.S. government efforts and to make a plea to the leader of an al-Qaida-affiliated group to release her husband.
Els Woodke’s husband, Jeffery Woodke, is a Christian humanitarian aid worker who was kidnapped in October 2016 in Niger, where he had worked for decades aiding nomadic peoples in the Sahel region. She has largely avoided public comments other than several pleas to the captor networks, as her family and U.S. officials worked quietly to bring him home — but now she has decided to speak out.
“That situation has changed, and I’m now asking for help from my brothers and sisters in Christ, from the public, and from the governments of Mali and the United States,” said Woodke, a teacher’s assistant in McKinleyville, California.
Els Woodke appears in the new ABC News feature documentary “3212 UN-REDACTED” on Hulu to tell her husband’s story and reflect on an ill-fated U.S. Special Forces mission in 2017, which a former commanding general of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) claimed publicly was tied to finding Woodke.
On Wednesday she said her family has grown deeply frustrated with the U.S. government’s failure to secure her husband’s release. Woodke’s captivity has now spanned three U.S. administrations.
“I have been repeatedly threatened [by U.S. officials] that if I disclosed certain information that came from certain sources that I would no longer receive any information. I have also had so many restrictions imposed by the U.S. government that any meaningful attempt to raise a ransom is effectively prohibited,” Els Woodke said in her prepared remarks.
U.S. officials have shared with Els Woodke details of her husband’s captivity drawn from classified intelligence under condition of strict secrecy, sources involved in hostage recovery have told ABC News in the past.
Els Woodke disclosed that her family now has reason to believe from their own sources in Africa that her husband has been transferred from the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (IS-GS) to an al-Qaida affiliate in northwest Africa known as JNIM — which would offer hope because the JNIM leader in the past has negotiated the release of Western hostages in the Sahel. In August, French forces killed Adnan Abou Walid al-Sahrawi, the ISIS leader in northwest Africa, which Els Woodke said offers hope for a negotiation with JNIM.
“According to multiple sources of information, we believe that at some point prior to the death of Walid, Jeff was moved from the custody of ISIS-GS to the custody of JNIM,” she said in her remarks. “The circumstances of that movement aren’t understood yet.”
Jeffery “was alive this summer,” she said, adding that she was asking fellow Christians to help her raise funds for a ransom because foreign governments have shared that the captors want to be paid “millions.”
Addressing her husband directly, she said, “Jeff, I hope you hear that we are working hard for your release. Do not lose hope. We love you. Stay strong. Stay strong.”
Woodke also released a new video plea in French addressed to JNIM’s leader, Sheik Iyad ag Ghali.
“I believe that you have kept Jeff safe and healthy and I thank you for that. I believe that you also desire that Jeff should be returned to his home and his work on behalf of the Tuareg and other nomadic people of the region,” Els Woodke said in the video. “You are the only one with the power to make that happen. Releasing Jeff will require compassion and mercy, but these are the characteristics of a strong and courageous leader.”
U.S. counterterrorism and hostage recovery officials have disagreed over intelligence about who kidnapped and held Woodke captive, pivoting more than a year ago toward a belief that JNIM had taken custody of the aid worker, officials have told ABC News. JNIM has held most of the Western hostages kidnapped in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger for motives that range from acquiring ransom to using them as political bargaining chips.
In Woodke’s case, years went by without any communication or ransom demands by the captor network, sources involved in the case have told ABC News.
After a Green Beret team was ambushed leaving four U.S. soldiers dead in October 2017, then-AFRICOM commander Gen. Thomas Waldhauser made the startling claim that the team was attacked by ISIS near the village of Tongo Tongo after they had searched an empty ISIS campsite looking for intelligence on Woodke’s whereabouts. The claim shocked officers in the chain of command and in hostage recovery, whistleblowers say in the new documentary.
“I think it’s important to underscore why, then, was that mission undertaken? Why was it so important to send those people up there?” Waldhauser said at a Pentagon press conference in 2018. “We’ve had an American citizen by the name of Jeffery Woodke who has been captured and held hostage somewhere in that area for the last year and a half, and there was a possibility that what they might find at that target would be a piece of the puzzle of the whole-of-government approach, to try to return an American who’s been held hostage.”
“I had never heard that,” former Assistant Secretary of Defense (Acting) for Special Operations Mark Mitchell said in the ABC News film, regarding the Woodke connection to the ill-fated missions of the American team. “So I’m not sure where that characterization came from.”
Intelligence, military, FBI, and Trump White House officials have told ABC News that despite Waldhauser’s statements, the mission was never pegged to or driven by any efforts to find or recover Woodke and his name appears nowhere in AFRICOM’s 268-page investigative report, Mitchell and others have told ABC News.
Els Woodke and her two sons have wondered, however, if efforts to free her husband somehow led to the loss of the four American special operations soldiers.
“If this [mission] was indeed on my husband’s behalf, I would have to say, ‘Thank you so very much.’ Still, I am very sorry it happened,” she said in the documentary. “It’s a terrible burden to know that people [could] die in the attempt to rescue my husband … I don’t take that lightly.”
(BIALYSTOK, Poland) — Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel talked with Belarus’ authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, on Wednesday, as part of a burst of European diplomatic efforts to end the migration crisis on the Belarusian border with Poland that Lukashenko is accused of orchestrating.
Lukashenko’s office claimed that during a call Wednesday, he and Merkel had come to a “certain understanding” over the crisis and agreed to begin immediate negotiations to resolve it. In a statement, the office said the two had agreed the negotiations would also look at resolving the “refugees’ wish to get to Germany.”
But Merkel’s spokesperson did not confirm the same, saying only that during her call she had “underlined the need to provide humanitarian care and opportunities of return” for the migrants trapped at Belarus’ border.
The call with Merkel — the second in three days — nonetheless raised hopes the crisis at the border may be easing, as at least 2,000 migrants remained trapped in a camp near it on Wednesday night and likely hundreds more in the surrounding forests.
Videos aired by Belarusian state media shows groups of migrants in the camp near the border dancing and cheering, supposedly following the call between Lukashenko and Merkel.
Over 2,000 migrants, mostly from the Middle East, have been stranded in a makeshift camp at the border with Poland in freezing temperatures for over a week, since Belarusian forces escorted them there in what European countries say was an escalation of a months-long campaign to use migrants weapons.
Lukashenko is accused of luring thousands of migrants to Belarus and funneling them to neighboring Poland and Lithuania to create a crisis on the European Union’s eastern border as retaliation for its support of the pro-democracy movement that came close to toppling him last year.
Poland and Lithuania have blocked the migrants, and Belarusian border troops have prevented them from retreating, resulting in hundreds of people finding themselves trapped in the forests along the border without food or shelter, often for weeks. Several thousand are estimated to be in Belarus currently. At least 10 people have died, though activists believe the true toll is likely higher. Hundreds of migrants have been filmed in recent days in central Minsk.
Merkel’s call with Lukashenko followed violent clashes on Tuesday, when Polish border guards fired water cannons into some migrants who were throwing stones and missiles at them at a crossing point near the town of Kuznica. Poland’s government, as well as some migrants in the camp, have accused Belarusian authorities of inciting the violence.
In recent days there has been a flurry of European diplomatic activity to try to resolve the crisis. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has called on Belarus’ foreign minister, while Merkel and France’s President Emmanuel Macron have called Lukashenko’s chief backer: Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Lukashenko’s office said on Wednesday Merkel had conveyed a demand from the European Union’s president Ursula Von Der Leyen to allow international humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, to begin working with the migrants.
Von Der Leyen wrote on Twitter on Wednesday: “People trapped at the border have to be repatriated.” The European Commission also said that it had allocated 700,000 euros in assistance to the people trapped at the border.
Following the violence on Tuesday, Belarus has moved hundreds of migrants to a warehouse near the border. But the vast majority of the migrants remained in the makeshift camp, according to Polish authorities, living largely in the open air and huddled around camp fires.
Migrants and Polish refugee charities have accused Belarusian authorities recently of manipulating migrants and spreading disinformation that they would soon be resettled to Germany and Poland.
Poland’s government has said it is strongly opposed to Germany and the EU’s outreach to Lukashenko over its head. Belarus’ democratic opposition has also cautioned against it.
“Dancing with the dictator is dangerous,” said Franak Viacorka, an aide to Belarus’ main opposition leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, after the call with Merkel was announced. “Appeasement leads to impunity. When he feels that blackmail works, and can give him what he wants, he will escalate and lead to more victims if needed. Your humanity is just a weakness for him.”
Estonia’s foreign minister, Eva-Maria Liimets, said on Tuesday that during the call with Merkel on Monday, Lukashenko had demanded Europe recognize him as Belarus’ legitimate president and lift sanctions as conditions for ending the migrant crisis.
There was no sign on Wednesday of such a concession. Lukashenko’s press office said during his call with Merkel he had not raised the issue of his legitimacy and sanctions because they were “beneath him.”
Activist groups and volunteer medics have been continuing to try to reach migrants that are ill and who find themselves trapped in the forest on the Polish side. Poland’s border guard released a video on Wednesday showing a large number of migrants packing up at the Kuznica camp and being marched somewhere, escorted by Belarusian border guards. It was not clear where they were being taken.
(NEW YORK) — More than 100,000 people in the U.S. died of a drug overdose during the first year of the pandemic, a nearly 29% increase from the same time period in 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday. The vast majority of those deaths were due to opioids, particularly synthetic opioids like fentanyl.
“An American dying every five minutes — that’s game-changing,” Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said at a media briefing.
The new data has prompted concern among officials about the worsening overdose epidemic.
In response to the findings, the White House, the Department of Health and Human Services and other government health officials outlined new initiatives aimed at combating the overdose epidemic, including expanding access to naloxone — a drug used to reverse opioid overdoses, allowing federal dollars to be used to purchase fentanyl test strips to detect the presence of fentanyl in any drug batch and increasing funding toward addiction prevention efforts.
The CDC previously warned that the rate of overdose deaths accelerated during the pandemic — driven largely by synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, according to the National Institutes of Health.
It can also be manufactured to look like real prescription pills and be illegally imported and sold throughout the U.S., contributing to this crisis.
“We have already seized 12,000 pounds of fentanyl,” said Anne Milgram, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration. “This year alone, the DEA has seized enough fentanyl to provide every member of the United States population with a lethal dose.”
The increased number of deaths from overdoses is also concerning for public health experts.
“This alarming data indicates a crisis in the mental health community caused by both the ongoing pandemic and fentanyl’s explosion on the illegal drug scene,” said Dr. Akhil Anand, a psychiatrist with Cleveland Clinic. “This new report should be another continued wake-up call to the overdose deaths happening every day, and people often don’t even know what they are taking. This is a public health crisis, and it is crucial we continue to get people into treatment quickly.”
The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics launched a new interactive dashboard with an overview of the new data, featuring a U.S. map showing the increase in deaths.
Lauren Joseph, a student at Stanford Medical School, is a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit. Alexis E. Carrington, M.D., is an ABC News Medical Unit associate producer and a rising dermatology resident at The George Washington University.
Ghost‘s Tobias Forge guests on a new track from Me and That Man, the solo project of Behemoth frontman Adam “Nergal” Darski.
The track, which is called “Under the Spell,” finds Forge bringing back his character Mary Goore, which was his pre-Ghost stage name.
“It’s rockabilly on steroids,” Nergal says of “Under the Spell.” “It’s a part of Me and That Man that we hadn’t yet explored in this form.”
You can download “Under the Spell” now via digital outlets. It’ll also appear on the upcoming Me and That Man album New Man, New Songs, Same S***, Vol. 2, which arrives this Friday, November 19.
Previous Me and That Man collaborators include Slipknot‘s Corey Taylor and Trivium‘s Matt Heafy.
Ghost, meanwhile, just released a new song in September called “Hunter’s Moon” for the Halloween Kills movie. The band’s most recent album is 2018’s Prequelle.
The Lumineers have released a new song called “A.M. Radio,” a track off the band’s upcoming album, Brightside.
“‘A.M. Radio’ features the biggest chorus we’ve ever recorded, while colliding with an intimate verse,” says Lumineers frontman Wesley Schultz. “The song is an anthem about the supernatural pull of one’s calling in life — for [drummer] Jeremiah [Fraites] and me, it was songs.”
You can download “A.M. Radio” now via digital outlets. It’s the third Brightside cut to be released, following the title track and the song “Big Shot.”
Brightside, the fourth Lumineers album and the first since 2019’s III, arrives in full on January 14, 2022.
Iman and David Bowie in 2009; Kevin Mazur/WireImage
David Bowie‘s widow, Somali-born supermodel Iman, has just released a fragrance called Love Memoir that she says is an homage to her “epic romance” with and “everlasting love” for her late husband, who died of liver cancer in 2016 at age 69.
Iman tells People that creating fragrance, which is available now exclusively via the HSN network and HSN.com, helped to ease her sorrow as she grieved for her rock-legend husband during the COVID-19 pandemic while spending time at the home they shared in upstate New York.
“There is an alchemy and magic to it,” Iman says. “I put in the woodsy vetiver that reminds me of David and the cologne he wore the night we met [Grey Vetiver by Tom Ford], and then the bergamot of Tuscany [Italy], where we were married.”
Iman tells People that she knows Bowie would have been proud of her fragrance venture, noting that he was very encouraging during the 1990s when she started her Iman Cosmetics company.
“As much as I find myself confident, I’m actually very apprehensive of starting things, especially businesses,” she notes. “If David was not in my life, I don’t know if I would have had the courage to start Iman Cosmetics — he’s fearless in that way. He gave me the courage.”
The couple were married in 1992 and had one daughter together, now-21-year-old Alexandra “Lexi” Jones.
Iman says after losing Bowie, she won’t consider getting married again, something he told her daughter when Lexi asked her how she felt about the subject.
“I still feel married,” Iman explains to People. “Someone a few years ago referred to David as my late husband and I said ‘No, he’s not my late husband. He’s my husband.'”
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss have announced a livestream performance to celebrate the release of their upcoming collaborative album, Raise the Roof.
The virtual event is set to premiere the same day Raise the Roof arrives, Friday, November 19. It will feature the debut performances of several of the album’s songs from Sound Emporium Studios in Nashville.
You can tune in to watch via both Plant and Krauss’ YouTube channels starting at 1 p.m. ET.
Raise the Roof is the Led Zeppelin singer and acclaimed country-bluegrass artist’s second joint album, following 2007’s Grammy-sweeping Raising Sand. The record is primarily a covers collection paying tribute to “legends and unsung heroes of folk, blues, country and soul music,” although it does include one original called “High and Lonesome” that Plant co-wrote with producer T Bone Burnett.
Along with the livestream, Plant and Krauss will mark Raise the Roof’s arrival with performances Friday on CBS Mornings and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and Saturday on CBS Saturday Morning.
The IRS is suing Chris Tucker for nearly $10 million in unpaid back taxes. The lawsuit states that the Rush Hour star owes federal taxes, tax penalties and interest from 2002, 2006, 2008 and 2010 that amount to $9.6 million, according to USA Today.
Tucker starred with Ice Cube in Friday in 1995, which was followed by Next Friday in 2002, and Friday After Next in 2002. Chris did not appear in the sequels. He recently revealed on the FlixTalk podcast why he did not continue his role as Smokey.
“I said ‘man that movie became a phenomenon (but) I don’t want everybody smoking weed,’ ” Tucker said. “I don’t want to represent everyone smoking weed, I kinda made it more personal than a movie.”
In other news, Rockmond Dumbar has left 9-1-1 because he refused to be vaccinated, Deadline reports. After more that four seasons, his character, Michael Grant, was written off in Monday night’s episode. “I applied for religious and medical accommodations pursuant to the law and unfortunately was denied by my employer,” Dunbar said in a statement. 20th Television, producer of 9-1-1, requires actors to be vaccinated or they “will not be eligible to work.”
Finally, Porsha Williams from The Real Housewives of Atlanta, reveals in her new memoir that she contemplated suicide as a child growing up in Georgia. She tells People she became depressed after constant bullying.
“I was too young to even understand what I was dealing with,” she recalls. “It wasn’t until I was about 29 that I really identified with the word ‘depression.'”
The Pursuit of Porsha: How I Grew Into My Power and Purpose, will be published November 30. Her new series, The Real Housewives of Atlanta: Porsha’s Family Matters, premieres Sunday, November 28 on Bravo.
If you are in crisis or know someone in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741. You can reach Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860 (U.S.) or 877-330-6366 (Canada) and The Trevor Project at 866-488-7386.
Green Day and Gwen Stefani are part of a star-studded lineup of performers that will participate in the 2022 Bud Light Super Bowl Music Fest, a three-day event taking place February 10-12 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles ahead of the upcoming Super Bowl LVI.
The “American Idiot” trio will be performing on February 12, along with pop superstar Miley Cyrus. The No Doubt singer will headline the festival’s middle date, February 11, with her husband, country star Blake Shelton, and another popular country artist, Mickey Guyton.
The festival’s first day will feature performances by rocker Machine Gun Kelly and his “Forget Me Too” collaborator, pop star Halsey.
Each of the three Bud Light Super Bowl Music Fest concerts will be ticketed separately — tickets go on sale this Thursday, November 18. For more info, visit SuperBowlMusicFest.com.
Super Bowl LVI takes place February 13, 2022, at L.A.’s SoFi Stadium.
