CDC guidelines to reopen schools met with criticism
Critics say the guidelines are too strict or too loose despite COVID-19 numbers dropping among children.
Critics say the guidelines are too strict or too loose despite COVID-19 numbers dropping among children.
Another result of the pandemic has been a temporary reduction in emissions, such as carbon dioxide, which is "the primary greenhouse gas that is emitted from human activity," according to the Environmental Protection Agency. "Preliminary estimates," according to a recent World Meteorological Organization bulletin, "indicate a reduction in the annual global emission between 4.2% and 7.5%." Greenhouse gases trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere, which increases the average temperature.
Elizabeth Olsen revealed she had an identity crisis when she was just starting in Hollywood. The "WandaVision" star admitted she even once considered dropping her last name entirely to stop being compared to her sisters, twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Speaking with Glamour UK, the 32-year-old said the thought to ditch her surname first crossed her mind in 1999 -- at the height of her big sisters' fame.
Paris Hilton recently spoke about the leak of her infamous sex tape with ex Rick Salomon and revealed the moment in her life gave her PTSD. "It was even more hurtful to me to have these people think that I [released it] on purpose -- that killed me," Hilton said during a conversation in Vanity Fair's pre-Oscar special, "Vanity Fair Cocktail Hour, Live!" "It still gives me post-traumatic stress disorder to talk about it." Hilton, who's back in the headlines recently thanks to the Oscar-nominated film "Promising Young Woman" resurrecting her 2006 single "Stars Are Blind" in a key scene, spoke of feeling betrayed after the taped was released in 2004.
The last two years has seen an explosion in the sales of digital artworks, which have been embraced by major auction houses and have fetched prices ranges from a few dollars to the tens of millions. Unlike traditional artworks, these can be duplicated exactly with a couple of clicks of a mouse, which raises a divisive question: Can a digital artwork ever really be as valuable as a piece that was physically created by an artist? Behind the explosion in the digital art marketplace are nonfungible tokens, known as NFTs.
A late season cold blast is moving through the country this morning with record lows and snow. On Thursday, nearly four dozen record lows could be tied or broken from Little Rock, Arkansas, to New York City’s JFK airport. Up to 8 inches of snow fell near Cleveland yesterday making roads a mess in northern Ohio.
Dozens of inmates at an Iowa prison were given overdoses of a COVID-19 vaccine, officials said. Two medical staff members from the Iowa Department of Corrections incorrectly administered the vaccine -- developed by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech -- to 77 inmates at the Iowa State Penitentiary, a maximum-security prison for men located in Fort Madison, about 90 miles southeast of Iowa City. Upon learning of the error, the Iowa Department of Corrections immediately contacted Pfizer and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for guidance.
Women all over the world are playing integral roles in the fight against warming temperatures. For Earth Day 2021, ABC News is highlight three scientists and one activist who are leading the charge against climate change. Allison Fong, 39, is a trained biological oceanographer and sea ice ecologist for the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, has spent more than 300 days in the Arctic since 2015.
Climate change may be the focus of the environmental movement, but restoring the Earth, the theme of this year's Earth Day, will play a crucial role in keeping global temperatures down. The theme "focuses on natural processes, emerging green technologies, and innovative thinking that can restore the world’s ecosystems," according to the Earth Day Network. Re-planting the forests of the planet, which have been cleared in vast amounts to make room for homes, transportation and agriculture, chopped down for timber and scorched by wildfires, will aid in getting Earth back to its equilibrium in more ways than mitigating climate change, experts told ABC News.
With more than half of U.S. adults now having received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, the country is on the precipice of a new vaccination challenge: hesitancy. According to new estimates from a U.S. Census Bureau survey conducted from October to March, we know more about which Americans are most likely to say they're "definitely not" or "probably not" going to get a vaccine once it's available to them. Wyoming has emerged as the most vaccine-hesitant state in the country -- an estimated 33% of adults said they were are reluctant to get a COVID-19 vaccine, compared with an estimated 16% of nationwide.
Starting Oct. 1, any flyer over 18 will need to have a REAL ID-issued driver’s license or another federally approved identification card if they are going to fly domestically. The regulation was put in place in 2005 to ensure that travelers’ identity in light of the 9/11 attacks, according to the Department of Homeland Security, but only recently did all 50 states come into compliance. Tori Emerson Barnes, the executive vice president of public affairs and policy at the U.S. Travel Association, a non-profit that represents the travel industry, said there are millions of Americans who either aren’t aware of the new rules or are stuck in a backlog at their local department of motor vehicles (DMV) that have been hindered by the pandemic.
Devastating hurricanes, wildfires, droughts and other environmental disasters have been linked to climate change by researchers. The increased intensity and frequency of these disasters have caused mass death and destruction, shattering communities across the world. The climate crisis was in full swing in 2020, and there's no sign of an end to the upward trend in global temperature extremes, according to a new report from the UN World Meteorological Organization.
On April 13, the CDC and FDA recommended temporarily pausing use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after six women experienced a rare blood clot out of nearly 7 million shots given. While some vaccination clinics were able to quickly pivot to using vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, the impact was felt acutely at more than 7,000 sites that were only using the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at the time. According to the CDC's website, approximately 10 million Johnson & Johnson shots are now sitting at pharmacies, waiting for the pause to be lifted.
President Joe Biden will announce a new goal on greenhouse gas emissions Thursday -- calling on the U.S., by 2030, to slash emissions by 50-52% from record-high 2005 emission levels. Biden is set to make the announcement during his global climate summit kicking off on Earth Day, with 40 world leaders taking part in the virtual gathering, including major economies like China, India and Russia. Administration officials said the announcement was in line with Biden's aim to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement -- to prevent worsening impacts of climate change by dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions -- and he would pressure other countries to follow suit.
A sheriff's deputy shot and killed a Black man while executing a search warrant in North Carolina on Wednesday, authorities said. The shooting occurred at approximately 8:30 a.m. ET as deputies from the Pasquotank County Sheriff's Office attempted to serve the man -- identified as Andrew Brown Jr. -- a search warrant at his home in Elizabeth City, about 170 miles northeast of Raleigh. Brown was fatally wounded during the encounter, according to Pasquotank County Sheriff Tommy Wooten.
White House national climate adviser Gina McCarthy said the United States needs to be humble going into this week's Earth Day summit after four years away from global climate negotiations while President Donald Trump was in office. "There's no question that that we have to come back with a lot of eating a lot of humble pie," she told ABC News' Chief Meteorologist Ginger Zee, saying the U.S. has not been engaged with our allies the last four years. "They know the leadership that we can provide, and as long as we continue to listen to them and learn from some of the work they're doing, I think we'll do just fine," McCarthy said.
Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, said wearing masks outdoors gained momentum when “we were in the height of surges, when there was not a huge amount of insight into how transmission was occurring.” As we’ve gathered more data, Brownstein said “the bulk of all transmission events are taking place indoors and outdoor transmission is very low.” When you are alone outside or with your household, you may not need to mask up, although you’ll want to keep your mask handy, experts suggest.
With Apple signaling the return of conservative-leaning social media platform Parler to its app store, some social media advocates are worried that right-wing extremist groups could use the app to recruit individuals to other messaging spaces and fringe platforms that make it easier for spreaders of misinformation to do harm. Parler was kicked off app stores by Apple and Amazon following the Jan. 6 insurrection, after the platform was accused of not moderating posts that incited violence and allowed some coordination of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. In response, Parler officials said in a statement this week that they have made changes to the app and its content moderation practices.
World-renowned photographer Brian Skerry is sharing some of his extraordinary work documenting the lives of whales over three years in 24 locations. "Secrets of the Whales" is an in-depth look into whale culture through a series on Disney+, a National Geographic cover story and a book. The project documents the various communication skills and social structures of five different whale species: orcas, humpbacks, belugas, narwhals and sperm whales, including the never-been-seen moment of a sperm whale calf nursing.
The daily pace of vaccinations nationwide appears to be flattening out and could be on the decline, suggesting that America is moving from a phase of desperate vaccine searches to one of aggressive government outreach and education to sway those who have not yet scheduled an appointment. More than half of U.S. adults have had at least one vaccine shot.
The idea was sparked by the power of the anti-war protests of the 1960s, and events that brought the issue of the environment and its vulnerability to pollution center stage. "You know, back then we didn't have an internet, we didn't have email, we didn't have social media, we didn't have cellphones," said Denis Hayes, the organizer of that first celebration. "As the 1960s progressed a number of environmental issues popped up," he continued, "an oil spill in Santa Barbara, the Cuyahoga River catching on fire, Rachel Carson's enormous visibility for Silent Spring, efforts to save the whales and freeways cutting through dynamic inner-city areas."