Panettiere and Hickerson in 2019 — Hollywood To You/Star Max/GC Images
Hayden Panettiere‘s ex, Brian Hickerson, revealed the former couple have reunited, although they haven’t gotten back together following his recent release from jail for domestic violence.
After an eyewitness told E! Online that Brian and the 31-year-old actress were spotted “enjoying beers” and “line dancing” with friends at a restaurant in West Hollywood, California on Saturday, he spilled the details on what went on that night.
Hickerson says that, while he was “enjoying a Miller [Lite], Hayden — who entered treatment for alcohol abuse in 2020 — was not drinking.” Added Brian, “We went to a new restaurant that is Texas-based, and being a Southern guy, I’m a big fan of country music. So yes, there was some line dancing involved.”
However, Brian stresses that “Hayden and I are not back together but are working on a friendship.”
“We have a long history together, and the first step in my recovery as an abuser is making amends,” he continued. “That’s exactly what Hayden has been gracious enough to allow me to do.”
An insider tells E! that Hayden is focusing on her sobriety and her relationship with Kaya — her six-year-old daughter with her ex, Wladimir Klitschko — while healing from her relationship with Brian.
“Hayden is open to forgiving Brian and starting a new chapter, despite her loved ones concerns,” according to the source. “Hayden has a huge heart and wants to see the best in everyone.”
Panettiere accused Hickerson of abusing her multiple times and, in April, he was sentenced on two felony counts of injuring a spouse or girlfriend after pleading no contest. He was sentenced to 45 days before serving four years of formal probation.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Global Citizen VAX LIVE
Did Selena Gomez shade ex Justin Bieber in her latest TikTok video? That’s what fans believe after the “Lose You to Love Me” singer shared a video of her discussing red flags in a relationship.
Selena, who turns 29 today, shared a video of herself wearing an oversized cranberry-colored sweater while drinking Coca Cola out of a straw. However, it’s the words she mouths along to that has fans buzzing: She lip-syncs to TikToker Owen Unruh‘s judgemental message, “So, you’re telling me that you can read his astrological birth chart, but you can’t read the red flags?”
Selena pauses to take a knowing sip of her drink before mouthing, “Sis.”
The video has gone viral, amassing over three million likes since it was uploaded.
While Selena mogul hasn’t mentioned who, if anyone, the video may be directed at, some fans believe it’s a jab at former boyfriend Bieber, with commenters joking about Justin’s astrological sign — which is Pisces.
However, other fans note that Selena may just be having some fun on TikTok while sharing some solid dating advice with her 31 million followers.
After postponing the 2020 North American leg of their No Filter tour because of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Rolling Stones are ready to start things up again in the fall.
The 2021 edition of their trek will kick off September 26 in St. Louis and is plotted out through a November 20 concert in Austin, Texas.
The 13-date outing includes confirmed stops at most of the venues where The Rolling Stones were scheduled to play in 2020, as well as concerts in three new cities — an October 13 appearance at this year’s New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, an October 13 show in Los Angeles and a November 6 performance in Las Vegas.
The Stones originally had been scheduled to play the New Orleans Jazz Fest in 2019, but they canceled their performance because frontman Mick Jagger needed to undergo emergency heart surgery.
All tickets purchased for rescheduled 2020 concerts will be honored for the new dates. Tickets for the newly added shows will go on sale to the general public on Friday, July 30, at 10 a.m. local time. Some exclusive VIP packages will be available. Visit RollingStones.com for more details.
Meanwhile, the band unfortunately was unable to reschedule concerts in four cities they had been slated to visit in 2020: Vancouver, Canada; Louisville, Kentucky; Cleveland, Ohio; and Buffalo, New York.
People who purchased tickets for these shows will be contacted by Ticketmaster directly with more information. These ticketholders may be given the opportunity to purchase priority tickets for concerts taking place in nearby cities.
“I’m so excited to get back on the stage again and want to thank everyone for their patience,” Jagger says. “See you soon!”
Adds Keith Richards, “We’re back on the road! See you there!”
Here’s the full list of Stones tour dates:
9/26 — St. Louis, MO, The Dome at America’s Center
9/30 — Charlotte, NC, Bank of America Stadium
10/4 — Pittsburgh, PA, Heinz Field
10/9 — Nashville, TN, Nissan Stadium
10/13 — New Orleans, LA, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival
10/17 — Los Angeles, CA, SoFi Stadium
10/24 — Minneapolis, MN, U.S. Bank Stadium
10/29 — Tampa, FL, Raymond James Stadium
11/2 — Dallas, TX, Cotton Bowl Stadium
11/6 — Las Vegas, NV, Allegiant Stadium
11/11 — Atlanta, GA, Mercedes-Benz Stadium
11/15 — Detroit, MI, Ford Field
11/20 — Austin, TX, Circuit of the Americas
(LAS VEGAS) — With coronavirus infections on the rise again in the U.S., hospitals across the country are trying to meet the needs of thousands of patients who are testing positive for COVID-19, and are in need of medical care.
One state that has seen a rapid increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations has been Nevada, where case levels have swelled by nearly 200% in the last month, the state’s highest level since February, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Basically, we’re reliving 2020 in 2021,” Dr. Angie Honsberg, medical director for the intensive care unit at University Medical Center told ABC News. “We, unfortunately, are back to having a very high number of COVID patients. We have had a break for the last two and a half months and unfortunately, now we’re back to feeling like we were back in January in February when close to half of our ICU was critically ill patients with COVID respiratory failure.”
Since mid-June, the average number of patients being admitted to the hospital each day with COVID-19 in Nevada has tripled, according to the CDC. This marks the highest number of patients seeking care in more than five months.
Although hospitalization levels in Nevada and nationwide remain significantly lower than at their peak in January, as of Wednesday, 38 states and territories are reporting an increase of 10% or more in hospital admissions over the last week, with nearly 22,000 patients hospitalized around the country, the CDC said.
In light of the state’s recent viral resurgence, Nevada joined a growing list of states on Chicago’s travel advisory list, which will require travelers to either quarantine for 10 days or present a negative COVID-19 test result.
The majority of the state’s infections, according to the CDC, appear to be coming from Clark County, home to Las Vegas, where cases have been steadily increasing since June. In the last week, hospital admissions there have increased by more than 16%.
“Sadly, we’re reliving a lot of what we experienced last year, in the recent weeks,” Dr. Luis Medina-Garcia, an infectious disease physician at UMC, told ABC News. “As businesses reopened, and there’s more traffic of tourists to our city, this increased exposure has resulted in new cases of COVID-19 almost exclusively in the unvaccinated population.”
Thus, with cases increasing, last week, the Southern Nevada Health District also announced it would recommend both unvaccinated and vaccinated people wear masks in crowded indoor public places, “where they may have contact with others who are not fully vaccinated.”
Health experts say the likely driving force behind the significant increase in cases across the country has been the highly infectious delta variant, which is now estimated to account for more than 83% of all new cases.
Although it is still unknown whether the delta variant is potentially more dangerous, this strain of the virus is more efficient at transmitting the disease, and Honsberg said it appears to more virulent, with patients becoming sicker faster.
“The current group of patients seems to get sick quicker than the patients that we saw with the earlier COVID outbreak and we’re also seeing, for the most part, a younger group of patients,” Honsberg said.
Some of the patients have very severe pneumonia, Honsberg added.
A similar message is conveyed by Robin Ringler, charge nurse in UMC’s Medical ICU, who said that the patients she is seeing in the ICU are very sick, many struggling to breathe, and on ventilators.
In fact, she said, some of these patients are so sick “that the doctors currently are talking about doing tracheostomy on them, and that is going to keep them on the ventilator for prolonged periods of time because they cannot breathe on their own.”
Ringer’s team is now anticipating more COVID-19 ICU admissions, with a growing number of COVID patients appearing in the emergency room.
“In the last two weeks, we’ve had a real increase in COVID infections in the hospital. Our COVID numbers have gone up so high. They’ve almost, I think they quadrupled from two weeks ago,” Ringler said. “The number of patients seeking treatment has been getting higher every week.”
The increases are a discouraging development, said Ringler, when vaccines were introduced, and cases began to decline, her team thought they may have been finally out of the woods.
According to the White House COVID-19 Task Force, nearly all of these patients, 97%, are unvaccinated.
Just 43% of Nevada residents have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, “which is a growing concern for us, when our data shows that about 85% of our COVID-19 patients are without a history for vaccination,” added Alma Angeles, director of Critical Care Services at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center in Las Vegas.
“We’ve had many patients that have told us that they wish they had been vaccinated. Sadly, it’s too late by the time they get to us,” Dr. Luis Medina-Garcia, an Infectious Disease Physician at UMC, told ABC News. “The death toll from this disease is unbearable. It is unspeakable the loss of life, health, and outcomes that we have had to go through. It’s just sad to see people getting sick, for no good reason.”
Disability advocates and elected officials are calling on the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee to rethink its policies after a Paralympic gold medalist swimmer was denied a request to have a care assistant travel with her to Tokyo due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Becca Meyers’ ordeal also speaks to the larger issue of disability inequities amplified by the pandemic, advocates say.
Meyers, 26, who is blind and deaf, was set to compete at the Paralympics in Tokyo with the women’s swim team in August, and requested that her mother join her as her personal care assistant. Assistants are assigned to help the athlete navigate the Olympic village and with any other duties that are limited because of their disability.
Meyers, who won three gold medals in the 2016 Games, announced that she had chosen to withdraw from the team after the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee denied her request, citing COVID-19 restrictions on the number of personnel it could send to Tokyo.
The news stunned the Paralympian and disabled community as they’ve been looking forward to her swimming for over five years, Kristin Duquette, a former Team USA Paralympic swimmer and disability rights advocate, told ABC News.
Duquette, who works as a preparedness officer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, acknowledged the difficulties that COVID-19 poses in keeping the athletes safe during the two-week event, but she said the USOPC could have easily complied with Meyers’ request.
“It is a stain on the USOPC’s efforts to be inclusive and diverse,” she told ABC News.
The committee defended its decision in a statement released Wednesday, citing the strict COVID-19 restrictions. It added that a single personal care assistant has been assigned to the U.S. Paralympics Swimming team who “has more than 27 years of coaching experience, including eleven years with para swimmers.”
“This PCA joins a staff of 10 additional accomplished swim professionals, all who have experience with blind swimmers; totaling 11 staff for 34 athletes,” the USOPC said in a statement.
Meyers noted that her mother has accompanied her to events as her personal care assistant since 2017 and was essential for her to compete.
Duquette, who is friends with Meyers, emphasized that an athlete’s personal care assistant is trained to assist with specific limitations that come from a Paralympian’s particular disability. She noted that Meyers is the only member of Team USA swimming who is both blind and deaf.
“There is a lot of anxiety that goes into travel. A personal care assistant is really dependent on the disability you have,” she said.
Meyers’ announcement sparked calls from Congress to meet the needs of the American Paralympians.
U.S. Sens. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and Ben Cardin, D-Md., both called on the committee to rethink its rules.
Hassan sent a letter to the USOPC reminding them that many disabled Americans are already facing too many hurdles when it comes to athletics and it should set an example for the rest of the world.
“[The athletes] should not be forced to navigate the Tokyo Olympics without the support that they need, particularly in the midst of a global pandemic,” she wrote in her letter.
Move United, a nonprofit group that promotes parasports, also called on the committee to rethink its policies given the limited resources for Paralympians.
“Too often as a community, we are faced with inadequate resources to promote our best selves, and when this happens we should speak up and advocate for our rights to access and accommodation,” the group said in a statement to ABC News. “We are saddened that Becca Meyers will not be competing in the Paralympics next month.”
Duquette said the coronavirus has amplified the day-to-day difficulties that the disabled community faces. From accommodations to assist deaf persons who can’t read lips through a mask to difficulties transitioning to a work-from-home setup, the community has had extra mental stress on top of their fears of catching the virus.
“Disability is at the bottom when we think of diversity and inclusion,” she said.
Duquette said she hopes this situation will open more Americans’ eyes to disability rights and spur change beyond the sports world.
“Hopefully this is a learning lesson,” she said. “But this is at the expense of someone’s dream.”
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. embassy in Afghanistan has issued its first notifications to Afghans who worked for the U.S. mission and will be evacuated to an American military base in Virginia that flights are set to start next week as the U.S. withdraws the last troops after two decades of war.
But for those Afghans and their families who will be relocated, they will have to find their own way to Kabul, according to a senior State Department official, despite deep concerns about their safety.
The Taliban have waged a summer offensive to seize territory and a psychological victory, as the militant group stalls peace negotiations with the Afghan government.
The top U.S. military officer conceded Wednesday that the Taliban have the “strategic momentum” after winning “a significant amount of territory.”
“There’s a possibility of a negotiated outcome that’s still out there. There’s a possibility of a complete Taliban takeover or a possibility of any number of other scenarios – breakdowns, warlordism, all kinds of other scenarios,” said Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The U.S. military withdrawal is 95% complete, but still scheduled to wrap up by Aug. 31, according to the Pentagon. But in the three months since President Joe Biden announced U.S. troops would depart, the security situation has deteriorated, with warnings of all-out civil war or the collapse of the Afghan government.
Before that withdrawal is complete, the Biden administration will evacuate Afghans who have applied for special immigrant visas to the U.S. after working as interpreters, guides and other contractors, a service for which the Taliban have put targets on their backs.
Despite that threat, the State Department said Wednesday it will not be able to provide transportation to Afghans who are approved for evacuation flights but have to make that potentially dangerous journey from home to the capital.
“They would have to get themselves to Kabul. Obviously, we don’t have a substantial U.S. military presence, we don’t have an ability to provide this transportation for them,” the senior official told ABC News.
With the Taliban in control of nearly half of the country’s districts, according to Milley, that risk can be high.
“If they’re, say, in the north of the country and they don’t feel safe staying in Afghanistan, they could go to a neighboring country and finish their SIV application process there,” officials added, using an acronym for the Special Immigrant Visa program.
But the militant group now controls several border crossings to those northern neighbors, leaving it unclear if that journey would be any safer.
So far, the State Department has confirmed that approximately 4,750 Afghan applicants will be relocated, along with their eligible family members like spouses, children and other dependents.
“We owe a great debt to those who have provided valuable and faithful service to the United States, working alongside our military and diplomatic personnel; thereby putting their own lives at risk,” Brian McKeon, the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, who is helping coordinate the effort, told reporters Wednesday.
The first group totals approximately 2,500 Afghans, about 750 applicants and their families, who have already been approved and cleared security vetting, according to senior State Department officials. They will be granted parole to enter the U.S. and be moved to Fort Lee, an Army base in central Virginia, for seven to 10 days as they await the final steps toward receiving their U.S. visa, including a medical evaluation.
An additional 4,000 Afghans, along with their families, will be evacuated from the country to a safe third country or a U.S. military installation overseas, the senior officials said, who declined to say where still, citing ongoing diplomatic conversations with other countries.
That list includes the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait, according to two U.S. officials. All three of those locations host U.S. installations. The list also includes Afghanistan’s neighbors in Central Asia, such as Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
The senior officials declined to provide a total estimate for this group because their own estimations vary widely, but one official told ABC News that each applicant brings on average between three and five dependents, which would put the range between 12,000 and 20,000 Afghans in total.
Approximately 20,000 Afghans have applied for this Special Immigrant Visa, according to a State Department spokesperson. But around half of them have not finished their applications, and the senior State Department official said they are “not in a position to move forward with their case until they do so,” which means leaving potentially 10,000 Afghans and their families behind.
Among the other 10,000 who have finished their application, however, it’s still unclear how many more the administration plans to evacuate beyond the 4,750 applicants and their families.
State Department spokesperson Ned Price told ABC News Wednesday that it’s “looking at all potential contingencies” still, neither ruling in or out more evacuations. But for now, “this is the group that we’re speaking to at the moment, the groups that we’re actively making plans for,” he added.
Among other “contingencies,” the administration is also “looking at other options and pathways for people who’ve helped us,” the senior official said, such as development workers, journalists for U.S. media outlets, and prominent women’s rights activists. That could include refugee status, other special visas, or humanitarian parole, which gives a foreign national temporary eligibility to enter the U.S.
While the administration still weighs those options, some critics have demanded they settle on plans urgently, warning of more targeted Taliban attacks against such high-profile targets, especially as they win control of more territory. U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad noted Tuesday that there are “credible reports of atrocities” emerging from Taliban territory, while the top U.S. diplomat in Kabul, Chargé d’Affaires Ross Wilson, warned the Taliban were shutting down media in territory it now controlled and “attempting to conceal their violence in a press blackout.”
According to Milley, the Taliban now control about half of the country’s 419 district centers and are pressuring about half of the 34 provincial capitals. But they have yet to capture any capital, as Afghan security forces prioritize holding larger towns and cities, he said.
The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces are “taking an approach to protect the population, and most of the population lives in the provincial capitals, in the capital city of Kabul, so they are right now as we speak adjusting forces to consolidate into the provincial capitals and Kabul.”
He conceded that the Taliban had seized “a significant amount of territory… so momentum appears to be – strategic momentum appears to be sort of with the Taliban.” But he warned that the group was trying to create the impression of an inevitable victory.
“I don’t think the endgame is yet written,” he told reporters Wednesday.
(WASHINGTON) — Puerto Rico could lose Medicaid funding in less than two months, putting at risk roughly 1.5 million people — nearly half the island’s population — unless Congress acts quickly.
As COVID-19 continues to batter the island — with at least 2,561 deaths among 141,905 confirmed cases, according to World Health Organization data — several U.S. representatives have teamed up to propose the Supporting Medicaid in the U.S. Territories Act.
“Territories get less funding through Medicaid than states do, and it has led to all sorts of adverse health outcomes, debt and a sub-standard of living in those areas,” Rep. Darren Soto, D-Fla., told ABC News in an interview. Puerto Rico was getting “far less than many states, and that led to an erosion of their health care system.”
The territory’s annual Medicaid needs are predicted to reach about $3 billion, but due to restrictions in the Social Security Act Section 11108, Puerto Rico has instead only been given roughly $375 million in Medicaid for the year, Puerto Rican Gov. Pedro Pierluisi told ABC News.
Puerto Rico, by statute, is only set to receive 55% of what is needed to fund Medicaid each year from the federal government, according to the think tank Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. But since the island’s federal block grant is small and often exhausted, CBPP reports that some years the Medicaid program is funded at less than 20%. Whatever the federal government doesn’t pay for, the island is responsible.
“The funding is not the same we would be getting as a state,” Pierluisi said. “You cannot plan or budget reasonably when you are facing this [Medicaid] cliff every couple of years.”
The new bill states that it would extend the federal Medicaid funding to account for 76% of what is needed for five years, offering much relief during the island’s ongoing economic crisis. Mississippi, the poorest U.S. state, also gets 76%.
But with a 43.5% poverty — more than twice that of Mississippi — and higher rates of diabetes, hypertension, asthma and more, Puerto Ricans need reliable health coverage perhaps more than ever.
Roughly 46% of the island’s population relies on Medicaid, according to the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, and almost 44% of Puerto Ricans live in poverty.
“We need that money to provide good medical and hospital services to our population,” said Jorge Galva, executive director of the Puerto Rico Health Insurance Administration. “There is a dire need to provide the full complement of Medicaid services.”
Providing care, Galva added, is made even more difficult as thousands of physicians and other health professionals continue migrating to the U.S. mainland, where they typically receive better pay and enjoy a higher standard of living.
Even with an increased amount of Medicaid funding for Puerto Ricans, Galva said, this wouldn’t be enough to help the island offer some of the federally mandated services, like nursing home care, home health care and nonemergency medical transportation.
“Over the years,” Galva continued, “the gap between the cap on the federal funds for our Medicaid program and the needs of the program grew bigger and bigger and bigger. As a territory, and under the present state of the law, Congress is fully allowed to discriminate and make differences between the treatment to territories and states.”
Local officials are calling on lawmakers to address what’s seen as the U.S. neglecting Puerto Rico because it’s a territory, not a state.
“It’s a matter of fairness and equity that we receive funding in parity with the states and allow Puerto Rico to provide its medically indigent population with all the services they need and deserve,” Galva said.
(HONG KONG) — Rescue efforts are underway as flash floods in China’s central city of Zhengzhou killed at least 25 people and displaced hundreds of thousands of others.
Local forecasters say it is the heaviest downpour they have seen in decades, with nearly a year’s worth of rain coming down in just three days in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, located on the banks of the Yellow River.
The city is home to more than 10 million people and is one of China’s major transportation and logistical hubs, connecting the countryside to the rest of the nation.
The floods are now threatening to disrupt the food security and supply chain in the region, where major roadways have been transformed into riverbanks. Footage from the ground shows cars floating above the muddy floodwater.
Heavy rains overwhelmed some of Zhengzhou’s flood defenses, causing apocalyptic scenes to unfold, including floodwater cascading into subways and a resident being swept away.
More video from the region shows rescue workers at schools, placing kindergarteners in plastic buckets to float them to safety.
Another clip from China’s state television channel shows passengers in a subway car, trapped with water up to their chest. At least a dozen people died in the city’s underground tunnels, with at least seven more still missing. More than 500 people were eventually rescued.
Officials fear the toll from the floods may be much worse than what is known, and they warn that the danger is not over yet as more rainfall is expected over the coming days.
The floods also caused a massive explosion at an aluminium alloy plant in Henan province. No casualties were reported.
Some distressed family members outside of Zhengzhou used social media to try to find their relatives as power lines in the city had gone down.
Officials said the Yihetan Dam in Luoyang, about 90 miles west of Zhengzhou, is in danger of bursting “at any time.” Soldiers have been mobilized to try to prevent the dam from collapsing, blasting part of it to relieve pressure and divert the flooding.
Floods are common during China’s rainy season, but the threat over the years has worsened. Scientists blame the effects of climate change and urbanization.
As recovery efforts continue, Chinese President Xi Jinping said the floods were “extremely severe” and “demanded that authorities at all levels must give top priority to ensuring people’s safety and property,” according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency.
(LONDON) — The Tokyo Olympics organizing committee fired the director of the opening ceremony on Thursday over a joke he made about the Holocaust as a comedian in 1998.
A video clip resurfaced online of Kentaro Kobayashi’s performance during a comedy show more than 20 years ago, in which he joked about a game he called: “Let’s play Holocaust.” Criticism of Kobayashi, a former member of the popular Japanese comedy duo Rahmens, quickly spread on social media. Then Seiko Hashimoto, president of the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee, announced on the eve of the opening ceremony that Kobayashi has been dismissed.
“We found out that Mr. Kobayashi, in his own performance, has used a phrase ridiculing a historical tragedy,” Hashimoto said during a press conference Thursday. “We deeply apologize for causing such a development the day before the opening ceremony and for causing troubles and concerns to many involved parties as well as the people in Tokyo and the rest of the country.”
It’s the latest scandal to plague the Tokyo Games. Earlier this year, Hashimoto’s predecessor, Yoshiro Mori, was forced to resign over sexist comments he made suggesting women talk too much in meetings. Hiroshi Sasaki also stepped down as creative director for the opening and closing ceremonies after suggesting Naomi Watanabe, a Japanese actress, comedian and plus-size fashion designer, could wear pig ears at the opening ceremony while performing as what he called an “Olympig.”
“Maybe these negative incidents will impact the positive message we wanted to deliver to the world,” Toshiro Muto, CEO of the Tokyo organizing committee, said during the press conference Thursday.
The organizing committee and the Japanese government have also sparked controversy for pushing ahead with the already-delayed 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, despite public health concerns amid the coronavirus pandemic. Recent polls have shown that a majority of the Japanese public want the Tokyo Games to be postponed further or outright cancelled as the capital city and other regions grapple with a resurgence in COVID-19 infections. Meanwhile, Japan’s top medical experts, including some of the government’s advisers on COVID-19, have warned that holding the Games now could help spread the virus both at home and abroad.
The Nomura Research Institute, a Tokyo-based economic research and consulting firm, estimates that cancelling the Games would cost Japan around $17 billion.
At least 91 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed at the Tokyo Games so far. Four of those cases are people staying at the Olympic and Paralympic Village in the Harumi waterfront district of Tokyo. Two are athletes, according to data released Thursday by the Tokyo organizing committee.
The Tokyo metropolitan government reported 1,979 newly confirmed cases in the city on Thursday, up from 671 last Thursday.
Earlier this month, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga declared another state of emergency in Tokyo due to rising infections. The declaration lasts through Aug. 22, meaning the Olympics, which officially kick off on Friday, will be held entirely under emergency measures. The Paralympics will open on Aug. 24.
Various measures and restrictions, including a ban on all spectators from Olympic venues in Tokyo, are in place during the Games in an effort to reduce the risk of infection.
“We have been preparing for the last year to send a positive message,” Hashimoto told reporters Thursday. “Toward the very end now there are so many incidents that give a negative image toward Tokyo 2020.”
Whether it is investing in a coal mining community, or in regional tourism, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo says new “investing in America” grants being announced Thursday are designed so every community in America feels empowered and included to get back on their feet in the wake of the pandemic.
She said the Commerce Department is making $3 billion in grants available for a myriad of programs, using funds passed as part of the American Rescue Plan.
Interested communities will have to apply for the grants, which exclude businesses.
“It’ll be a nationwide competition to quite literally ‘build back better,'” Raimondo told ABC News’s Karen Travers, using the name President Joe Biden uses for his recovery program. “Building back certain communities from the ground up so that everybody can thrive in the new economy.”
With concerns growing about how long current price surges will last, Raimondo said the Biden administration is watching inflation “very closely.”
“And not, you know, not trying to deny that there’s a link between large fiscal stimulus and inflation,” she said, “but inflation is not the only thing we need to be worried about.”
Raimondo said the kind of funding the Commerce Department is investing in communities can be “quite beneficial” in countering inflation.
“These are investments in productivity. And that’s what we need to be making. Every economist will tell you, you want to invest, to enhance productivity, and that’s exactly what this is,” Raimondo said. “This is investments in infrastructure, investments in skills, education, job training, and those are not inflation creating expenditures of money.”
The grants will be distributed through the Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration.
Programs include the “Build back better challenge,” in which regions can apply for up to $100 million to “accelerate recovery and inclusive economic growth by developing new industries or expanding existing ones through planning, infrastructure development, workforce training, innovation and commercialization, access to capital, and more,” the department said.
Those programs include $300 million to invest in communities affected by the shrinking coal mining industry.
“We also need to be there for communities that have been traditionally dependent on coal,” Raimondo explained. “And so that’s what this money is for putting folks to work in those communities, making investments in those communities so they benefit from the transition to renewables, whether that’s retraining, or innovation hubs or building infrastructure.”
Raimondo insisted there would be no political considerations when grants are made to coal mining communities, especially since influential Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin represents West Virginia, a state hit hard by the industry downturn.
“It isn’t just West Virginia. It’s Virginia, it’s West Virginia it’s Ohio with Kentucky it’s you know it’s not about one state it’s about being honest with people and creating jobs for people everywhere,” she explained.
Another program is aimed at getting Americans back to work through investments in worker training and in funding infrastructure projects.
“So, the way it works is pretty simple: a group of companies would come together in a community, they would say, ‘we have 1000 open jobs right now,’ for example, in order to hire people for those jobs. ‘These are the skills they need to have,'” she said. “Then the money that we’re providing would train those people in exactly those skills, and here’s the best part, the businesses have to hire the folks, so that this is not trained, and pray and get a job. This is enroll, train, graduate, get your job.”
The Commerce Department also will focus on providing funds for underserved communities, providing regional tourism grants, and helping communities plan for any potential economic hardship in the future.
Raimondo said the administration is not telling local communities how to invest their money, but rather providing a road map.
“This is bottom up,” she said. “This is not Washington telling any community, how to do economic development. Every community has certain strengths, maybe it’s, a certain talent pool, maybe it’s, I don’t know tourism, maybe it’s a certain kind of skill set, maybe it’s a certain technical know how. So each community wants to build on those strengths, and then use our funds to kind of supercharge those efforts.”
Money will be available almost immediately especially for communities impacted by a lack of tourism because of the pandemic, Raimondo explained.
“There’s so many communities that have lost jobs because of the lack of travel and lack of tourism,” she said. “You need help yesterday and we know that.”
Raimondo also touted the $1.2 billion infrastructure bill being debated in Congress.
In 2016, when she was governor of Rhode Island, she passed “Rhode Works,” a sweeping infrastructure measure targeted at fixing Rhode Island’s roads and bridges, which then were among the worst in the nation. The cornerstone of the program was imposing tolls on truckers to pass through the state in order to fund the project.
“It was none other than Vice President Joe Biden, who traveled to Rhode island with me to stand under a crumbling bridge to say, ‘get behind this governor and let’s make this infrastructure investment happen,'” she said.
She urged Congress to pass the bill, saying that while it might seem controversial now, once communities see money being put into action, it will be seen as favorable.
“It is the right thing to do. And even if it’s controversial at the moment, we got to push it over the finish line is the American people want and deserve better infrastructure,” Raimondo told Travers. “And I promise you, it will be popular once you see the road crews out there making communities better and safer.”
