New Jersey fitness studio on perfecting the pandemic pivot
The Max Challenge explains how they’ve pivoted during the pandemic to keep clients safe and healthy
In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., Friday, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell has sued former President Donald Trump and some of his allies, including his son, Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani and GOP Rep. Mo Brooks over their alleged roles in the events leading up to and surrounding the Capitol assault on Jan. 6. In the 65-page lawsuit Swalwell alleges that they all directly incited the violence at the Capitol. "Trump directly incited the violence at the Capitol that followed and then watched approvingly as the building was overrun," the lawsuit states.
After a record number of Americans chose to cast their ballot by mail in 2020, Republican-led states and Democrat federal lawmakers are fighting a pitched battle over the rules governing the future of voting in the United States -- with special attention on whether voters will still be permitted to send their ballots through the mail. This "great clash," as it is framed by Michael Waldman, president of the bipartisan Brennan Center for Justice public policy institute, pits multiple Republican-controlled state legislatures pushing bills for tighter restrictions against a Democrat-dominated federal government that has pressed ahead with a nationwide voting rights package. "In states across the country, Republican legislatures are racing to enact restrictions on voting rights -- the most significant wave of such restrictions since the Jim Crow era," Waldman said.
"Pose" is returning for a third and final season on May 2, co-creator and executive producer Steven Canals announced Friday on "Good Morning America." "It was a very difficult decision for us to make, but this has been an incredible journey and we have told the story that we wanted to tell the way that we wanted to tell it," Canals told "GMA." The FX series, created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Canals, premiered in June 2018 and followed a of queer and transgender people of color in the ballroom scene of New York City in the late 1980s and early 1990s at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Britain's Prince Philip has been transferred back to a private hospital in London after undergoing a "successful procedure" for a pre-existing heart condition, according to Buckingham Palace. The 99-year-old Duke of Edinburgh was transferred to King Edward VII’s Hospital on Friday morning. Philip, who will turn 100 in June, was initially transported by car from Windsor, England, to King Edward VII's Hospital on Feb. 17 for what Buckingham Palace described as a "precautionary measure" after the duke reported feeling unwell.
Ian Desmond, a two-time Major League Baseball All-Star at the top of his professional game, stunned sports fans when he decided to stop playing. The 35-year-old Colorado Rockies centerfielder and father of five spoke exclusively to "Good Morning America" in his first interview since opting out of a second consecutive season. Just last week Desmond took to social media to share his thoughts on the sport and his future with Major League Baseball.
Royal Caribbean said this week its newest ship is set to hit the seas in May from Israel -- and all passengers must be vaccinated. The news and interest in safely planning summer travel as first reported by the Washington Post, comes as President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday that the U.S. will have enough vaccine supply for every adult by the end of May. According to Hayley Berg, the head of air intelligence at Hopper, a travel booking app, there's been an increase in demand for summer travel.
Authorities believe they have found the body of a Kentucky man who disappeared at the Grand Canyon last week. John Pennington, 40, of Walton, Kentucky, was thought to have entered the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona on or around Feb. 23, abandoning his vehicle at the South Rim near Yaki Point. After days of searching the area, National Park Service personnel spotted a body and a motorcycle on Wednesday, below the South Kaibab Trailhead, south of Yaki Point.
Winter is back for the Northeast. Upstate New York and New England are seeing below zero-degree wind chills Friday morning, as the I-95 corridor is seeing wind chills in the teens and single digits. The chilly weather will linger through the weekend for the Northeast, but a nice warm-up is expected by the middle of next week.
Appointments at a federally run vaccination hub at Chicago's United Center opened on Thursday, with the first shots there scheduled to be given next week. It will be the first site in Cook County to offer the Johnson & Johnson vaccine against COVID-19. The United Center is one of 18 community vaccination centers included in a White House plan to reach hard-hit, high-risk communities.
Julius' Bar is staying open for business. The historic bar in the heart of New York City's West Village neighborhood is a getting a financial boost to stay open amid the brutal economic downturn brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Gill Foundation, one of the nation's leading funders of efforts to secure full equality for LGBTQ people, announced it will match donations up to $25,000 to protect Julius' Bar, which prides itself as "the oldest continuously operated LGBTQ bar in the city."
The U.S. would never be the same after March 2020. Former President Trump and other federal leaders initially claimed that the virus would not be a major problem, but many changed their stance by the end of the month and the virus was declared a national emergency. In fact, masks were recommended and the required in some places, like New York, the next month.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Thursday that it has arrested Federico Klein, one of former President Donald Trump's appointees to the U.S. Department of State, for his alleged role in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Klein, 42, was picked up by federal agents in Virginia, according to a spokesperson for the FBI's field office in Washington, D.C. Details on the charges against him and his alleged role in the deadly riot were not immediately available. It was unclear whether Klein has obtained legal representation.
Jorge Figueroa was willing to drive eight hours round trip. Instead, he was planning to get a life-saving shot to protect him from COVID-19 -- a shot that many Americans can now conveniently access at their neighborhood pharmacy. After scouring social media for pop-up vaccine events and putting his name on waiting lists at local clinics, he eyed a vaccine hub in Odessa, some four hours away.
A barrage of attacks on Asian Americans, reported to be fueled in part by biases pertaining to the coronavirus pandemic, have filled communities around the country with fear and rage. "Our people are getting attacked, our people are getting harassed, spat on, beat up, you know, slashed," Rep. Grace Meng, D-NY, told ABC News. There have been nearly 3,000 hate incidents towards Asian Americans in 2020 alone, according to data from the Stop AAPI Hate coalition, which set up a website to help track the cases, some of which were not reported to police.
The killing of three female journalists and one doctor this week have once again thrown the issue of violence against women in Afghanistan into sharp focus, even as peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government continue. ISIS in Afghanistan has claimed responsibility for an attack on Tuesday in the city of Jalalabad, which saw journalists Mursal Waheedi, Saadia Sadat and Shahnaz Raufi, of the Enikas television station, shot dead. Then, on Thursday morning, a female gynecologist, Dr Sadaf Elyas, was killed in another attack.
The wait is over for "Coming 2 America," the sequel to Eddie Murphy's classic comedy from 1988, and Paakow Essandoh, a Black fashion designer who partnered with Paramount Pictures to create African-inspired jerseys ahead of its release, offers another way for fans to celebrate. "Eddie Murphy made it cool and funny to be African and I, for one, have to appreciate that," Essandoh told "Good Morning America." The Zamunda-themed jerseys are based on the fictional African kingdom from the original "Coming to America" and the sequel.
Asian American communities have experienced a rise in hate incidents since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and with a resurgence in reports of racist behavior, restaurants, food industry professionals and policy leaders are sending a resounding message: "Stop Asian Hate." Jason Wang changed his operating hours to ensure a safe commute home for his cooks and staff who could potentially be targeted. "We had decided to close earlier than restaurants usually do because employees' safety had always been a top priority for us," the Xian Famous Foods CEO told "Good Morning America."
The Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada-directed animated film stars Kelly Marie Tran as Raya, Disney's first Southeast Asian princess. Raya is on a journey to save the world of Kumandra, a fantasy land where humans and dragons once lived peacefully with one another. Five hundred years later, the Druun is back, so the warrior Raya embarks on a journey to locate the last dragon in order to save humanity.
The San Diego Zoo announced on Thursday it was in the process of inoculating many of its great apes after several of its gorillas became sick with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in January. The zoo would only say "some of the members of the great apes" were being vaccinated. "Zoetis provided our veterinarians with a limited supply of recombinant purified spike protein vaccine, intended for use in protecting animals against SARS-CoV-2," San Diego Zoo said in a statement.
Bill Magness, CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, was fired on Wednesday in the wake of February's deadly blackouts that left millions without electricity and heat in freezing temperatures. As power grid manager, Magness was given a 60-day termination notice by the company's board of directors. "The ERCOT Board is expected to begin an immediate search for a new President and CEO, and will continue to discuss the transition plan at future meetings during this time period," the agency said in a statement.