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(NEW YORK) — USWNT player Alex Morgan says she’s “still not sure” about whether the new Tokyo Olympics policy for nursing mothers will allow her to bring her 1-year-old daughter to the games.
The soccer superstar took to Twitter to verbalize her confusion on Thursday.
“Still not sure what ‘when necessary’ even means. Is that determined by the mother or the IOC?” she tweeted. “We are Olympic mothers telling you, it is NECESSARY. I have not been contacted about being able to bring my daughter with me to Japan and we leave in 7 days.”
Several athletes have complained about the initial restrictions, which banned them from bringing their families along. On Wednesday, the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee issued a statement that the restrictions have now been eased to allow nursing mothers to bring their children with them to the Games.
“It is inspiring that so many athletes with young children are able to continue competing at the highest levels, including at the Olympic and Paralympic Games, and we are committed to doing everything possible to enable them to perform at the Tokyo 2020 Games,” the committee said in a statement obtained by “ABC News.” “After careful consideration of the unique situation facing athletes with nursing children, we are pleased to confirm that, when necessary, nursing children will be able to accompany athletes to Japan.”
The committee stated that the residential zone of the Olympic and Paralympic Village is restricted to athletes and team officials only so nursing children “must stay in private accommodation approved by Tokyo 2020, e.g. hotels.”
“It is great to see so many mothers compete at the highest level, including at the Olympic Games,” the International Olympic Committee said in a statement. “We are very pleased to hear that the Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee has found a special solution regarding the entry to Japan for mothers who are breastfeeding and their young children.”
The wording of the policy, however, is now drawing criticism, with Morgan’s teammate Megan Rapinoe also showing support for Olympic parents.
Earlier this year, officials announced their decision to bar all foreign spectators from attending the games, which includes any of the visiting athletes’ families. Officials also recently stated that all venues would be at 50% capacity, with a maximum of 10,000 people, to adhere to the Japanese government’s limits on public events.
Prior to the rule update, athletes were saying they felt forced to decide between being an Olympic athlete and a mom.
Marathon runner Aliphine Tuliamuk posted a photo Monday on Instagram saying she “feels torn” and has “cried a lot” thinking about not being able to bring her 5-month-old daughter, Zoe, with her to the Olympics.
Tuliamuk qualified by placing first at the Women’s 2020 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials back in February 2020 and has been training since giving birth to be ready for the event.
“I have been working my butt off since having my daughter, I want to produce the best result possible, my long runs & workouts are coming together nicely, body is holding together well,” she wrote.
In her post, Tuliamuk stressed the difficulty in being apart from her daughter for even half a day, let alone the 10 days she’ll be away at the Olympics.
“I know that I will be leaving her for only 10 days, and she will be just fine, and that so many other moms have done the same, but I can’t even imagine being away from her for half a day,” she said.
“Motherhood is a beautiful thing, I love being Zoe’s mom more than life itself, I have never felt such immense, immeasurable love for someone before,” Tuliamuk continued. “Motherhood is also scary, I go down this rabbit hole sometimes, sometimes I think, what if something horrible happens and I never come home, like what if I never make it back from Tokyo? I am sure all moms understand this exact feeling. Motherhood has made me so vulnerable, I feel like my heart is hanging outside of my body.”
The 2021 Tokyo Olympics will begin July 23 and end Aug. 8.
Ed Sheeran opened up about the special meaning behind his daughter’s unique name. Last summer, the “Bad Habits” singer welcomed Lyra Antarctica alongside wife Cherry Seaborn.
“I realize some people think it’s quite a strange name,” Ed said on the British morning show Lorraineon Thursday. “But my wife’s called Cherry, and she is the only Cherry that I’ve ever met and I think that she’s the only Cherry that she’s ever met and I quite like that.”
Ed continued with a smile, “In my class at school, there were probably more Eds.”
Because of that, Ed revealed that he and Cherry “wanted to give [our daughter] a name that was unique, so that she would be the only one.”
However, the singer noted the name Lyra may continue to grow in popularity because of the successful fantasy trilogy-turned-television-series His Dark Materials, which features a protagonist with the same name.
Ed also divulged why he gave his daughter the middle name Antarctica, saying he visited the continent with Cherry before she became pregnant.
“I’ve basically toured every single continent but I’ve never been to Antarctica so that was always on our list,” he gushed. “So we went down there in 2019 and it was just incredible. The most amazing place on earth.”
The “Shape of You” singer also noted that his experiences as a first-time father influenced his upcoming album that is due out later this year.
(SURFSIDE, Fla.) — At least 18 people, including two children, have been confirmed dead and 145 others remain unaccounted for since a 12-story residential building partially collapsed in South Florida’s Miami-Dade County last week.
The partial collapse occurred around 1:15 a.m. on June 24 at the Champlain Towers South condominium in the small, beachside town of Surfside, about 6 miles north of Miami Beach. Approximately 55 of the oceanfront complex’s 136 units were destroyed, according to Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Assistant Chief Raide Jadallah. Since then, hundreds of first responders have been carefully combing through the debris in hopes of finding survivors.
Meanwhile, 139 people who were living or staying in the condominium at the time of the disaster have been accounted for and are safe, according to Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who has stressed that the numbers are “very fluid” and “continue to change.”
The massive search and rescue operation, now in its ninth day, was temporarily halted for much of Thursday due to safety concerns regarding the structural integrity of the still-standing section of the building. Movement in the pile of rubble as well as in the remaining structure prompted the hours-long pause, according to Scott Nacheman, a structure specialist with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Urban Search and Rescue support team.
Structural engineers, who have been on site monitoring the situation, are currently planning for the likely demolition of the rest of the condominium amid the ongoing search and rescue mission, according to Levine Cava. Nacheman, who is helping develop those contingency plans, told reporters it would be “weeks” before a “definitive timeline” is available.
The structure was cleared by crews last week, and all search and rescue resources have since been shifted to focusing on the pile of rubble. But the two sites are side-by-side and the remaining building has posed challenges for the rescuers trying to locate any survivors or human remains in the wreckage.
“Given our ongoing safety concerns about the integrity of the building, we’re continuing to restrict access to the collapse zone,” Levine Cava said during a press briefing in Surfside on Thursday evening.
Shortly after search and rescue efforts resumed Thursday evening, the Miami-Dade County mayor noted that the crews “looked really, really excited to get back out there.”
Heat, humidity, heavy rain, strong winds and lightning storms have also made the conditions difficult for rescuers, periodically forcing them to pause their round-the-clock efforts in recent days. Officials are monitoring weather systems in the region as the Atlantic hurricane season ramps up.
Although officials have continued to express hope that more people will be found alive, no survivors have been discovered in the rubble of the building since the morning it partially collapsed. Bodies, however, have been uncovered throughout the site.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden traveled to Surfside on Thursday to meet with officials, first responders, search and rescue teams, as well as families of the victims. Recalling the 1972 car accident that killed his first wife and 1-year-old daughter as well as badly injuring his two sons, the president told reporters: “It’s bad enough to lose somebody but the hard part, the really hard part, is to not know whether they’ll survive or not.”
The cause of the partial collapse to a building that has withstood decades of hurricanes remains unknown and is under investigation.
Bessemer Trust, the wealth management firm approved Wednesday to act as co-conservator over Britney Spears‘ finances, has asked to be removed from the role.
Attorneys for Bessemer Trust filed resignation paperwork Thursday, noting that Britney’s testimony on June 23 indicated the conservatorship was not voluntary, as the firm understood it to be.
Bessemer Trust was not authorized to act as a co-conservator until Wednesday, so it has not taken any actions in the position, or had it taken any fees, according to the court documents.
Once the resignation is approved, Jamie Spears, the pop star’s father, will once again be the sole conservator of his daughter’s estate.
“Petitioner has become aware that the Conservatee [Spears] objects to the continuance of her Conservatorship and desires to terminate the Conservatorship,” the documents read. “Petitioner [Bessemer Trust] has heard the Conservatee and respects her wishes.”
A conservatorship governing Britney’s personal affairs and finances has been in place since 2008, when the pop star was hospitalized twice for psychiatric evaluations. Jodi Montgomery was appointed to serve as conservator of Spears’ personal affairs in 2019, after Jamie Spears stepped down from the position.
Jamie Spears is still in charge of his daughter’s finances, despite the singer’s request last year to remove him from her conservatorship. The pop star had petitioned for her father to be suspended as a conservator as soon as a corporate fiduciary was put into a position of control.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda J. Penny agreed to appoint Bessemer Trust as a co-conservator last November, but she declined to remove Jamie Spears from his role. That order was officially signed Wednesday.
Britney pleaded with a judge last month to end her conservatorship, claiming that it is “abusive” and is “doing me way more harm than good.”
(CHICAGO) — A 1-month-old girl and a 9-year-old girl were both shot in the head in separate acts of violence in Chicago on Thursday, according to police.
Seven people, including the 1-month-old baby, were shot shortly after 8 p.m. Thursday when three men got out of a black Cherokee Jeep and began spraying bullets on the city’s South Side, Chicago police said.
The baby was hit in the head and hospitalized in critical condition, police said.
The other six people shot were listed in good condition, police said.
The gunmen fled the scene and no arrests have been made, police said.
Hours earlier, at about 2:45 p.m., a 9-year-old girl was shot in the head while in a car on the city’s South Side, police said.
The 9-year-old was hospitalized in critical condition, police said.
A man in the car was also shot and hospitalized in good condition, police said.
The suspects, who may have been in a white SUV, fled the scene, and no arrests have been made, police said.
Chicago has had 1,489 shootings incidents this year, as of June 27 — a 12% increase from 1,333 shootings over the same time period last year, according to police department data.
These latest shootings come as the Chicago Police Department says it has a summer focus on removing illegal guns from the streets.
Police have seized 5,901 guns, including 290 assault weapons, so far this year — a 26% increase from the number of guns seized by the same time last year, David Brown, superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, said at a news conference Thursday.
The city is on pace to recover over 12,000 illegal guns by the end of the year, he said.
“There’s a lot of work to be done,” Brown said. “When crime happens, which is likely late evening into the early morning … is when our schedules are being adjusted. Because we are sworn to protect the people of Chicago. But we have also acknowledged 12-hour shifts and canceled days off are impacting our officers. … and we have implemented an officer wellness plan as a part of this.”
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. employers added 850,000 jobs to their payrolls last month, the latest figures released Friday by the Labor Department show, exceeding economists’ expectations.
Economists had expected to see more than 700,000 jobs added in June, a jump from the revised 583,000 added in May.
The biggest increases in employment last month occurred in leisure and hospitality, public and private education, professional and business services, retail trade, and other services, according to the Labor Department.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate ticked up slightly from 5.8% in May to 5.9% in June.
(NEW YORK) — Amid the coronavirus pandemic, another health crisis has been lurking.
It affects people of all backgrounds and in some cases can have profound impacts on their health.
Burnout in the American workforce, which surveys indicate was a widespread problem even before the pandemic, is an issue that employers and managers can no longer afford to ignore as many companies contemplate return-to-office strategies and the future of work in general.
“This is a historic time; we’ve never been through anything like this. Our mental health and our physical health are really being taxed,” Darcy Gruttadaro, the director of the American Psychological Association Foundation’s Center for Workplace Mental Health, told ABC News. “If there was ever a time to raise these issues, it’s now.”
“If you’re experiencing burnout and you’re trying to ignore it, that will eventually catch up with you,” Gruttadaro warned.
Burnout is also killing people, new data indicates. Last month, the World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization said that working long hours led to 745,000 deaths from stroke and ischemic heart disease in 2016, a 29% increase since 2000. In a statement accompanying the study, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus linked the COVID-19 pandemic to “blurring the boundaries between home and work,” which resulted in longer hours for many — and thus a higher risk of premature death.
And if that isn’t enough for business leaders to take action, experts note that burnout is also linked to plummeting productivity, poor retention and other factors that can impact a company’s bottom line.
Data shows that pandemic-battered workers are now leaving their jobs at some of the highest rates ever. The share of workers who left their jobs in April was 2.7%, marking the highest “quits rate” since the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping records, according to data released by the agency earlier this month.
Here is what experts say defines burnout, why it’s been exacerbated by the pandemic, and what can be done to address it:
What burnout is and why it’s been magnified by the pandemic
While the term has been used colloquially for decades, the World Health Organization used three factors — energy depletion or exhaustion, distance or cynicism to one’s job and reduced professional efficacy — to define burnout as an occupational phenomenon for the first time in 2019. It is not classified as a medical condition.
“Burnout is when an individual is experiencing high levels of stress — and usually a person becomes cynical and kind of distant from their job. They just really are not feeling good about their job at all,” Gruttadaro said. “And then the third big area is their efficiency or their ability to perform their job really drops.”
It does not just have to do with workload, however, but also whether there is a sense of fairness in the workplace and the amount of control workers have over their tasks. While the self-help industry and employers may place the blame on the individual, experts say it usually has more to do with the workplace than a specific employee.
High levels of stress associated with burnout can manifest in people experiencing depression, anxiety, substance use, heart disease, obesity and a number of other illnesses, according to Gruttadaro.
Reports of depression and anxiety amid the pandemic have spiked significantly, she added, and overdose deaths have also soared — likely showing that many are turning to substance use in high numbers.
The pandemic has been linked to higher rates of burnout for both essential workers and white-collar office workers, many of whom had the privilege of continuing their jobs remotely.
For essential workers, the pandemic brought a myriad of new and chronic stressors related to trying to stay healthy and safe while working on site or getting to and from work, as well as many new restrictions and changes outside of their control at work.
For those who have been working remotely, many reported working longer hours — marked by days spent eating lunch at their desks or working through the time they would have spent commuting. As a shift to remote work blurred the boundaries between being on and off the clock, some data indicates work productivity actually ticked up during the health crisis.
New caregiving responsibilities as schools and day cares shuttered throughout the past year also disproportionately impacted mothers, leading to an alarming exodus of women in the workforce — many of whom cited “burnout” as the reason for leaving or downshifting their careers, one study found.
“Burnout is essentially saying there’s something not healthy, or not fair, in a lot of different places,” Christina Maslach, a professor emerita of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and a core researcher at the school’s Healthy Workplaces Center, told ABC News.
Maslach noted a feeling of unfairness — in pay, treatment and work assignments — within the workplace is especially linked to burnout.
That sense of unfairness can lead to negative feelings and cynicism toward your work, which often means “that people, in trying to cope with that, are doing the bare minimum rather than their very best,” Maslach added.
Maslach pioneered research on burnout, creating the Maslach Burnout Inventory, a research measure that was a key contributor to the WHO’s later work on burnout.
While there is a common fallacy that burnout and stress is a personal weakness or flaw, Maslach said it usually has to do with an unhealthy work environment rather than an individual not being able to take care of themself.
“It’s rarely something that affects an individual alone; it’s not just about workload,” she added. “It’s about how much control that you have and it’s also affected by the extent to which you get recognized and rewarded for doing good things as opposed to ‘a good day is a day when nothing bad happens.'”
What can be done to address burnout
Maslach warned that many of the solutions to burnout touted by the self-care industry and beyond deal more with coping rather than prevention, and sustainable solutions would require overhauls that tend to be very job-specific but address the root causes of what makes a workplace stressful and exhausting.
“It’s analogous to the canary in the coal mine,” Maslach said. “When the canary goes down in the coal mine and is having trouble breathing, and not surviving and not doing well, you don’t worry about how to make the canary stronger and tougher; you say what’s going wrong in the mine? Why are the fumes getting so toxic that a community can’t survive?”
Gruttadaro said that one thing employers can certainly do, however, is recognize that leadership matters with regards to burnout.
“Leadership sets the culture and organization,” she said, which is why it is so critical to make sure that “managers and leaders are modeling good behavior and not sending emails very late at night, not sending weekend emails all the time.”
Effective communication between managers and workers is also key, Gruttadaro said, such as having check-ins where workers can feel comfortable voicing their concerns to their managers and not just through human resources departments.
Microsoft’s annual 2021 Work Trend Index report warned that business leaders are “out of touch with employees and need a wake-up call.” The report found high levels of overwork and exhaustion among employees, but a major disconnect compared to managers. Some 61% of business leaders say they are “thriving” — 23 percentage points higher than those without decision-making authority.
At the individual level, Gruttadaro recommended doing what you can control — such as “setting healthy boundaries” — and if you’re working remotely to try and mimic the hours you would do if you were still going into the office.
When it comes specifically to dealing with stress management, Gruttadaro emphasized that exercise and sleep are essential, as well as engaging with activities that you enjoy.
“There are likely to be higher incidence of burnout at jobs in which people don’t have as much control over the activities they do during the day as part of their job,” Gruttadaro added. “So the more that employers offer opportunities for people to find meaning and purpose in their work, and really feel like they’re making a difference and they have some control and there’s a certain level of fairness associated with the way they’re treated during the day — these are all elements of a healthier work environment.”
Some companies, including Bumble, LinkedIn, and Hootsuite, have responded to post-pandemic burnout recently by giving all staff an entire week off.
Maslach added that the present time provides the ideal opportunity for organizations to get creative with solutions that aren’t just treating the symptoms of burnout but creating a work environment that people actually want to be a part of.
“The changes in the pandemic I think underscored an important bottom line, which is the importance of a healthy workplace,” she said. “We have to rethink what makes for healthier environments in which people can do productive, meaningful and valuable kind of work.”
“And if anything, the pandemic is pointing out you could do things differently,” Maslach said. “Let’s get creative, let’s rethink this.”
“It may not be the ‘same old, same old’ going back to normal workplaces,” she said. “How do we learn from this and figure out better ways of doing what we do?”
L-Taylor, R-Aaron Dessner; Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
Two days after it was announced Taylor Swift would be again teaming up with her folklore and evermore collaborators, Bon Iver‘s Justin Vernon and The National‘s Aaron Dessner, the trio dropped “Renegade” at the stroke of midnight Friday.
The song was recorded for Vernon’s and Dessner’s indie rock band Big Red Machine and will be featured in its upcoming album How Long Do You Think It’s GonnaLast?,due out August 27. Taylor recorded another song for BRM’s upcoming album, “Birch.”
“Renegade” is about wanting someone to drop their defenses and become a better person so a romance can bloom.
“You’ve come a long way/ Open the blinds, let me see your face/ You wouldn’t be the first renegade/ To need somebody/ Is it insensitive for me to say/ Get your s*** together/ So I can love you,” Taylor gently sings in the chorus.
Taylor gushed about her latest collab, writing on Instagram following the song’s release, “I can’t believe I get to work with Aaron Dessner. When Aaron came into my life, I was ushered into his world of free-flowing creativity where you don’t overthink, you just make music.”
“His generosity of spirit and humility bleeds into every part of his life, and that’s why so many artists have jumped at the chance to be a part of his collaborative project, Big Red Machine,” she continued.
Dessner also raved about the collab on social media, writing, “Taylor’s words hit me so hard when I heard her first voice memo and still do, every time.”
“I’m so grateful to Taylor for continuing to share her incredible talent with me and that we are still finding excuses to make music together,” he added.
Dessner was one of several people who shared the Album of the Year Grammy for folklore with Taylor.
World of Wonder/Getty Images for World of Wonder/Stonewall Inn Gives Back
Alyson Stoner opened up about one of the lowest moments of her life, revealing she went through conversion therapy in 2018.
Conversion therapy is described as a practice to forcibly change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity. At least 20 states have banned the practice on minors.
The Suite Life of Zach & Cody star recently spoke to Insider and admitted she struggled to come to terms with her sexuality because it conflicted with her religion. Stoner, who identifies as pansexual, said her struggles worsened after she fell in love with another woman.
“I felt stuck. I felt wretched. I felt like everything was wrong with me,” Stoner, 27, explained. Shortly after, she said she admitted herself into an “outpatient variation” of conversion therapy “because I just wanted to do the right thing.”
Stoner admits what she experienced while undergoing conversion therapy three years ago is “legitimately difficult” to discuss.
“My mind doesn’t want to even go there,” the actress confessed, noting that trying to recall the memories makes her shake. “I’m not capable yet of going back and recounting specifics, which is an indicator of just how difficult that chapter was for me.”
The Mind Body Pride author hopes her story will serve as a cautionary tale for others considering conversion therapy, noting, “The dangers are measurable.”
LGBTQ youth who undergo conversion therapy are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide compared to those who do not, reports LGBTQ suicide prevention organization The Trevor Project. Stoner admits the therapy made her wonder if her “life was worth living.”
“Even if someone comes out of it on the other side and says, ‘Hey, no, I’m living a great life,’ there are scars there. There are shadows,” she expressed, noting she now understands that her sexuality is “very natural.”
If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, or worried about a friend or loved one, help is available. Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 [TALK] for free confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even if it feels like it, you are not alone.
(NOTE LANGUAGE) Former The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air actress Janet Hubert isn’t happy about Phylicia Rashad‘s support for Bill Cosby after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his sexual assault conviction.
Rashad, who played Cosby’s onscreen wife in The Cosby Show, reacted to the news by tweeting, “FINALLY!!!! A terrible wrong is being righted- a miscarriage of justice is corrected!”
“Phylicia what are you thinking!!! I don’t know you but to say this was terribly wrong. EVERYONE knew what he was doing back then,” Hubert, 65, tweeted on Thursday. “How could you NOT! Get your umbrella sista here comes the s*** shower. I am outraged that he has been released. Yes he is an old a** guilty man!”
Hubert added that Rashad could have said, “He’s old he’s out and I’m happy for him, but he still …guilty.”
“I know 5 women who have not come forward,” Hubert continued. “Enough ya’ll, we know better. Powerful men do wrong things, black or white…”
Rashad has since deleted her original tweet, while posting another expressing her support for survivors of sexual assault.
“I fully support survivors of sexual assault coming forward,” the actress wrote. “My post was in no way intended to be insensitive to their truth.”
“Personally, I know from friends and family that such abuse has lifelong residual effects,” Rashad continued. “My heartfelt wish is for healing.”
