Gbenga Akinnagbe felt a deep connection to his Modern Love storyline, which follows the relationship between his character Jordan and Zoe, a woman who has delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS).
Akinnagbe, who was one of the stars of Broadway’s How To Kill a Mockingbird, tells ABC Audio that having a late-night sleep pattern is something he’s quite familiar with as an actor.
“Unless I exclusively date actresses, that’s basically what I’m asking people who I date to do,” he says.
“When I was doing Mockingbird, I only was able to see people at night after the show when I got back to Brooklyn,” Akinnagbe shares. “That’s when our dates would start. And to a lot of people… that is strange.. its opposite [of] their sleep patterns and jobs. So I’ve asked people to accommodate this crazy life I lead… so I can have some sort of interaction with with people.”
The actor admits that “not everyone [is] up for it,” noting it’s “triggering” to some.
“There was someone I was seeing and she had come to see the show — seen it like three different times…And then we’d like hang out afterwards,” Akinnagbe says. “But after a while, those hours would start to trigger… old patterns.”
He continues, “And so one time she said to me, ‘Why do I only see you at night?’ ‘Because I’m working!’ [She’s] like, ‘Those are booty call hours.’ I’m like, ‘You know what I’m doing! You’ve seen [the play] three times!”
Even with those overwhelming drawbacks, Akinnagbe says he’d still be down to date a character like Zoe.
“Would I do it? Yeah, because I’ve experienced the other side where I’ve asked people to do it,” he says.
Season two of Modern Love launches on Amazon Prime Friday.
Michael Desmond/Walt Disney Television via Getty Images
Paging Dr. Ellis Grey.
In an announcement that’s sure to delight Grey’s Anatomy fans, Deadline confirmed that one of the medical drama’s original stars, Kate Burton, is returning for the 18th season.
Burton played Ellis, the domineering and intimidating mother of Ellen Pompeo‘s Meredith Grey, who lost her battle with Alzheimer’s during the third season of Grey’s. Following Ellis’ death, she regularly appeared in flashbacks, dream sequences and in episodes exploring alternate realities. Her most recent appearance was in 2019, when she appeared to Meredith in a dream during the episode “Blood and Water.”
It is unknown what purpose Burton will serve in the upcoming season, but the outlet confirms she will star in multiple episodes.
Pompeo’s Meredith was haunted by several familiar faces in the last season, during which she battled COVID-19 and saw a slew of familiar faces as she faded in and out of consciousness.
Most famously, Patrick Dempsey returned as her late husband, Dr. Derek Shepherd. In addition, T.R. Knight and Chyler Leigh reprised their roles as George and Lexie, respectively.
Filming for Grey’sAnatomy season 18 is currently underway, with a premiere set for September 30 on ABC.
(NEW YORK) — As COVID-19 infections surge again in the U.S., health officials are warning of a concerning uptick in pediatric cases and hospitalizations across the country, just as many children head back to the classroom.
With more than 48 million children under 12 still not eligible for vaccination, and less than a third of those ages 12 to 17 fully vaccinated, many youths remain at risk for infection.
Since the onset of the pandemic, nearly 4.3 million children have tested positive for COVID-19, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association, with infection rates growing exponentially in recent weeks.
In the last week, 94,000 new pediatric COVID-19 cases were reported, representing 15% of all reported new infections. Similarly, pediatric COVID-19-related hospital admissions are at their highest level since the onset of the pandemic.
“In the last several weeks, we have seen an enormous increase in the number of positive patients for COVID-19,” Dr. Ronald Ford, chief medical officer at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, told ABC News. “Most of these children are coming from the emergency department, and most of them are not sick enough to come into the hospital. However, those that are admitted are sicker than what we’ve seen before, and many of them are requiring care in our sensitive care units.”
In June, there were just over 20 positive pediatric patients who required care from the hospital’s emergency room team, Ford said.
In the month of July, that number increased to over 200 patients, and in recent weeks, the hospital has already cared for 160 patients, and are “well on our way to breaking July’s record.”
Although severe illness remains uncommon among children, according to experts, there are some children, many with underlying conditions, who are so sick that they require intensive care measures, including ventilation.
The rate of pediatric hospital admissions, in children between the ages of 0 and 17, per capita, is now more than four times higher than it was just a month ago.
The increase in pediatric patients, who are coming in much sicker than those hospitalized with COVID-19 last year, has been an alarming development, said Anthony Sanders, nurse manager in Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital’s Pediatric Emergency Room. It’s “just a lot scarier this time,” he said.
The country’s largest states — California, Texas and Florida — are each dealing with 100 to 200 pediatric COVID-19 patients, according to federal data.
Sanders said that he is often struck by the fact that it is not only the child who tests positive, but also the entire family.
“I think for us the most striking thing is how the increase in the families that are coming in that are positive, not just the one patient but the parents are positive, all the siblings are positive, that’s been the biggest thing for me that’s super concerning because kids are going back to school,” Sanders said.
At Children’s Hospital New Orleans, a federal team has been called in to assist medical staff who are confronted with a significant surge in pediatric patients.
Dr. Nihal Godiwala, a pediatric intensivist at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, told ABC News that he and his team are exhausted.
“This is a surge of COVID happening, and it’s totally preventable, and that’s why it’s been so frustrating for everyone here,” Godiwala told ABC News. “It’s really taking a toll on everybody at this point.”
According to the nearly two dozen states that reported pediatric hospitalizations to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association, 0.1% to 1.9% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in hospitalization. Similarly, in states that reported virus-related deaths by age, 0.00% to 0.03% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death.
However, even for those who may not become severely ill from COVID-19, experts say there is an urgent need to collect more data on long-term impacts of the pandemic on children, including the long-term physical impacts of the virus.
Thus, many of these front-line workers are urging that proper precautions be taken, beginning with wearing masks, particularly in large settings, such as schools.
For children still ineligible for the vaccine, masking will be critical in the months to come, Ford said.
“The best thing you can do to protect your child is to keep them away from the virus,” Ford added. “Masking has been shown to reduce the incidence of transmission and reduce the chances of your children getting COVID-19. So, first and foremost masking is really going to be one of the best defenses we have.”
Getting eligible children vaccinated will also play a crucial role in keeping more children out of the hospital, added Dr. Nick Hysmith, medical director of infection prevention at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
“The majority of the patients who have been admitted, are between 10 and 13 years of age, which puts them right at or just below the age of vaccination,” said Hysmith. “This is why it is critically important for adults and children to get vaccinated as soon as possible.”
For those who are still hesitant about getting the vaccine, Godiwala pleaded for them “to stop thinking about yourself and think about others,” such as medically fragile children, the immunocompromised and the population under 12 not yet eligible for a vaccine.
“The vaccine is a lifeline to getting out of COVID and out of this mess,” said Godiwala.
(WASHINGTON) — As the delta variant spreads nationwide, the Department of Health and Human Services will require vaccination from more than 25,000 of its employees that directly work with patients, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra announced Thursday.
Going a step beyond the general guidelines for the federal workforce — which is to get vaccinated or be required to wear a mask and do frequent testing — the Department of Health and Human Services is mandating the vaccine for its employees who deal directly with patients. The Department of Veterans Affairs has called for the same policy for its 115,000 health care workers.
Both agencies employ doctors or nurses that could be directly exposed to the virus at work, or directly expose vulnerable patients to it.
The roughly 25,000 HHS employees will have until the end of September to be vaccinated, an HHS official said.
“To increase vaccination coverage and protect more people from COVID-19, including the more transmissible Delta variant, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will require more than 25,000 members of its health care workforce to be vaccinated against COVID-19,” the department said in a statement.
The 25,000 HHS employees who will be required to get vaccinated are concentrated within the Indian Health Service and National Institute of Health, as well as the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.
“Staff at the Indian Health Service (IHS) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) who serve in federally-operated health care and clinical research facilities and interact with, or have the potential to come into contact with, patients will be required to receive the COVID-19 vaccine,” HHS said in a statement.
The department will allow exemptions for religious or medical reasons.
After prompting discussions about bathing habits, Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis have reentered the chat to poke fun how things have escalated.
Taking to Instagram Wednesday evening, the Two and a Half Men alum shared a clip of himself and Kunis in the bathroom as their children bathe off camera in the background. He captioned it, “This bathing thing is out of hand. #KutcherBathroomTalks.”
“What’s going on?” Kutcher, 43, asks his wife of six years before panning the camera to show a steamy shower door.
“It’s water, it’s water,” Kunis, 37, laughed.
“You’re putting water on the children? Are you trying to melt them?” Kutcher joked. “Are you trying to injure them with water? This is ridiculous! What’s going on?”
Pointing out the obvious, Kunis responded, “We’re bathing our children,” to which her husband cracked, “it’s the fourth time this week!”
“It’s too much,” the Bad Moms star sarcastically added through giggles.
“Their body oils are going to be destroyed,” Kutcher continued. “What are you trying to do?”
The playful exchange comes after the couple appeared on the Armchair Expert podcast last month and admitted to only bathing their two children — Wyatt, 6, and Dimitri, 4, — when they’re visibly dirty.
“When I had children, I also didn’t wash them every day,” Kunis said candidly. “I wasn’t that parent that bathed my newborns — ever.”
“If you can see the dirt on them, clean them. Otherwise, there’s no point,” Kutcher added.
Since their admission, multiple celebrities have come out to share their thoughts on the matter. While Dax Shepard, Kristin Bell, and Jake Gyllenhaal mirrored the same sentiment, Cardi B and Dwayne Johnson were on the other end of the spectrum.
“Wassup with people saying they don’t shower? It’s giving itchy,” the “WAP” rapper tweeted.
(DYERSVILLE, Iowa) — It was built, and on Thursday night the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees are coming to Dyersville, Iowa to play a historic game.
The ballpark, newly constructed for this event, is located on the Lansing Family Farm, the filming site for the movie Field of Dreams. It features a corn maze behind the right field fence, and a manually operated scoreboard and bullpens behind the center-field wall, meant to resemble old Comiskey Park, where the White Sox played.
Originally scheduled for 2020, the game was pushed back due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Tickets to the game were sold via a public lottery. Winners of that lottery were informed earlier this month, and were given the chance to buy up to two tickets and one parking pass.
On ticket resale site StubHub, the cheapest ticket available for the game as of Thursday morning was selling for $1,100.
(BALTIMORE) — Detroit Tigers star Miguel Cabrera moved one step closer to a major milestone on Wednesday night, bashing the 499th home run of his big league career.
Cabrera launched the homer off of Baltimore Orioles starter Matt Harvey, giving the Tigers a 1-0 lead on Wednesday. Detroit would go on to win the game 5-2.
With just 12 home runs this season, Cabrera’s run to 500 had slowed considerably. He hadn’t hit a home run in over a week.
While there was some expectation that Cabrera would sit out Thursday’s game, the team’s last on their current road trip, so that he could attempt to reach the mark at home, the team says it has decided against that.
“He’s playing,” manager A.J. Hinch said Wednesday night before being asked. “I’ve talked to him, and we’re not going to test baseball fate. We really want him to hit it whenever he’s supposed to hit it. Maybe it’s [Thursday], maybe it’s not.”
Cabrera would become the 28th player in major league history to reach 500 home runs, and the first from his native country of Venezuela.
A two-time MVP and 11-time All-Star, Cabrera’s production has dipped in recent years. Still, he continues to chase multiple milestones. In addition to 500 home runs, Cabrera is also just 50 hits away from 3,000 for his career.
(NEW YORK) — Fresh off a run of success in North American competitions, the United States Men’s National Soccer Team earned the number ten spot in FIFA’s latest world rankings.
The U.S. beat Mexico 1-0 in the final of CONCACAF’s Gold Cup earlier this month, leading to a ten-place rise on the official list.
The squad conceded just one goal in six matches in the Gold Cup, winning all six. They also won five of six games in the CONCACAF Nations League.
FIFA’s World Rankings will play a key role in next year’s World Cup. If the U.S. remains in the top 10, it would have a chance of being seeded, getting a more favorable draw, and avoid having to play other nations within the top 10.
The U.S. has not been among the top 10 in FIFA’s rankings since the 2006 World Cup.
Just above the U.S. in the rankings, Mexico placed number nine. They have been the top-ranked team in CONCACAF since February 2017.
Atop the rankings, FIFA identifies Belgium as the best team. Following them, Copa America runners up Brazil rank second, France sits third, and Euro Champs Italy is in fifth. Euro runners up England sit one spot ahead of Italy in fourth.
The next update to the rankings will be published in September.
(NEW YORK) — As the Taliban sweeps across Afghanistan and claims at least nine provincial capitals in just days, a new U.S. military analysis warns that the country’s capital, Kabul, could become isolated in 30 to 60 days and could fall to the militant group in 90 days, a U.S. official confirmed to ABC News.
The warning is even more dire than a previous intelligence assessment — a sign of how quickly the Taliban have gained momentum on the battlefield, surprising the Biden administration, according to two U.S. officials.
President Joe Biden announced in April that he would withdraw all remaining U.S. forces from Afghanistan, saying it was time to end America’s longest war and let the Afghan people, including the Taliban and the U.S.-backed Afghan government, decide the country’s future.
But that future is increasingly grim, with fears of the government’s collapse and all-out civil war. There are growing concerns for the U.S. personnel that will remain at the embassy in Kabul and the 650 U.S. troops who will stay to protect it, with planning underway for some time now about a possible evacuation, according to two other U.S. officials, who spoke to ABC News on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive plans.
“Our posture has not changed. As we do for every diplomatic post in a challenging security environment, we evaluate threats daily and make decisions on how best to keep those serving at our embassy safe,” a State Department spokesperson told ABC News.
The Taliban’s spokesperson in Doha, Qatar, said Wednesday, “Anyone who attacks international embassies and institutions will be punished.” But the group’s fighters have committed atrocities across the country in districts they’ve retaken, according to U.S. and Afghan officials, including extrajudicial killings of police officers, airmen, women’s rights activists, journalists and more.
The U.S. embassy’s Emergency Action Committee is “no doubt … meeting every day to review the current level of threat and whether any additional steps need to be taken to increase security, reduce the number of personnel, or, if deemed necessary, initiate a full evacuation,” said Mick Mulroy, the former top Pentagon official for the Middle East who served in the CIA and U.S. Marines in Afghanistan.
The question is at what point does one become necessary.
“When does the situation make the continuation of the diplomatic mission untenable? When does it not make sense that 99.99% of the personnel in the embassy are for security? When will putting the remaining U.S. personnel at risk for a mission that has essentially ended not be worth it? These are the questions they will be asking, probably every day,” said Mulroy, now an ABC News contributor.
While two U.S. officials said evacuation planning has been reviewed for some time, State Department spokesperson Ned Price declined to comment on any plans. Instead, he told reporters Wednesday, “We have and will continue to make our own decisions based on, first and foremost, the threat assessment, the safety and security of our people.”
In the meantime, the U.S. embassy has continued to quietly draw down some staff since it went on ordered departure on April 27 — leaving only emergency personnel behind and allowing it to shift certain roles out of Afghanistan “whose functions can be performed elsewhere,” according to a State Department spokesperson.
But the Pentagon is pushing back on the “narrative” that the Taliban will seize the capital and other major cities, with its spokesperson John Kirby saying Wednesday, “No potential outcome has to be inevitable, including the fall of Kabul, which everybody seems to be reporting about.”
Kirby declined to comment on the U.S. military analysis, but he told reporters that while the Taliban “keep advancing,” there is still fight left in the Afghan security forces that the U.S. built, trained and equipped.
“The narrative that in every place, in every way, the Afghan forces are simply folding up and walking away is not accurate,” he said.
One U.S. official told ABC News, however, that those Afghan forces have an uphill battle, as momentum swings the Taliban’s way with their capture of nine provincial capitals — winning over heavy weaponry from Afghan troops, freeing their prisoners from government facilities, and building a powerful narrative about the government’s collapse.
The Afghan military strategy to hold onto major population centers meant deploying its best troops — special operations forces — to top cities like Herat, Lashkar Gah and Kandahar, according to this official. But while the Taliban have been held at bay there, the group’s fighters targeted other opportunities, winning critical successes across the country’s northern provinces.
“Right now what we see is an issue of leadership. It’s both political and military leadership. We need to see Afghans’ leaders united,” Price told reporters at the State Department.
Rallying that leadership has been part of U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad’s job in Doha, where he is trying to pressure both the Taliban and Afghan government delegations to resume peace negotiations — and urge the Taliban to accept a reduction in violence and a ceasefire.
Khalilzad held meetings Tuesday and Wednesday with both delegations and fellow envoys from the United Nations and key countries, including Pakistan, Qatar, China and Russia. On Thursday, he’s expected to meet the Taliban and Afghan government teams “separately to encourage them to engage productively in Afghan peace negotiations and not squander this historic opportunity to end 40 years of conflict,” the State Department spokesperson told ABC News.
Afghan Foreign Minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar said Wednesday that it is the U.S. and other powers that need to do more to “accelerate the negotiation process” and pressure the Taliban to participate in good faith, “backed up by real political, economic, maybe even enforcement measures.”
Critics continue to denounce the Biden administration for pursuing these negotiations — saying the Taliban has demonstrated it has no interest in talks. But Price said the U.S. continues to see diplomacy as the only way forward — calling the week’s meetings a “necessary, but insufficient step” and conceding progress “has been painfully slow.”
In the meantime, the humanitarian crisis for Afghan civilians continues to spiral. Over 18 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across the country, around 400,000 have fled their homes to seek refuge and the U.N.’s humanitarian response remains vastly underfunded with a shortfall of almost $800 million, its spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday.
But Biden himself seems un-phased by the violence, telling ABC News Tuesday, “I do not regret my decision.”
Here’s the latest in Kelly Clarkson‘s divorce from Brandon Blackstock: The singer is reportedly asking to have her famous maiden name legally restored.
According to legal docs obtained by The Blast, Kelly is asking for a default judgment in her case, which will officially make her divorced. She is also asking for her name to be restored and legally changed it moving forward.
The Blast reports that Brandon “isn’t putting up a fight in this department, and most of the time the judge signs off on these sorts of requests right away.”
Kelly and Brandon tied the knot in 2013 and split in June 2020; they are now currently trying to hash out their finances, including spousal support and child support.
