Tropical Storm Henri brings strong winds and heavy rain as it makes landfall on Rhode Island
Tropical Storm Henri has brought strong winds and rain to the north-eastern US as it makes landfall on the coast of Rhode Island.
Henri has sent bands of rain westward, knocking out power to 140,000 homes and causing deluges that have shut bridges and flooded roads.
The storm was downgraded from a hurricane before it reached New England.
Emergency personnel and first responders work to help residents from their flooded homes. Pic: AP
However, the National Hurricane Centre has warned the slow-moving storm could continue to dump heavy rain on wide swathes of the region.
Heavy rains flooded areas as far southwest as New Jersey.
The storm also threatened to stall near the New York-Connecticut border overnight on Sunday, before turning east and heading out towards the Atlantic Ocean on Monday.
Henri had sustained winds of around 60mph and gusts of up to 70mph when it made landfall near Westerly, Rhode Island, according to the National Hurricane Centre.
By late Sunday, it had sustained winds of around 30mph as it moved across Connecticut towards the New York state line.
Some of the harshest rain arrived ahead of the storm’s centre, forcing some 200 residents in Helmetta, New Jersey, to flee to higher ground as water flooded their homes.
“It came so quick – in the blink of an eye,” said the town’s mayor, Christopher Slavicek, whose parents were spending the night after fleeing their home. “Now there’s clean up. So this is far from over.”
Fallen tree branches obstructed roads as Storm Henri brought strong winds and heavy rain. Pic: Associated Press
The National Weather Service recorded what could be the wettest hour ever in Central Park, as 1.94 inches of torrential rain fell between 10pm and 11pm on Saturday.
Some communities in central New Jersey had seen up to eight inches of rain by midday on Sunday.
A bicyclist rides through a flooded street as Tropical Storm Henri approaches South Kingstown, Rhode Island
President Joe Biden has declared disasters in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.
“We’re doing everything we can now to help those states prepare, respond and recover,” the president said.
He also offered condolences to Tennessee, after severe flooding from an unrelated storm killed at least 22 people and left dozens missing.
Waves crash onto a fallen fence during Tropical Storm Henri in Montauk, New York
Around 250 residents from four nursing homes on the shoreline had to be relocated, while several major bridges in Rhode Island were briefly closed and some coastal roads were nearly impossible to use.
The hurricane centre predicted that Henri will pass back through New England and sweep out into the Atlantic in the next couple of days, where it “will lose its identity”.
A sailboat sits washed up on shore after becoming loose from its mooring when Storm Henri passed through Jamestown. Pic: AP
In the meantime, areas from northeast Pennsylvania to New England are preparing for heavy rain.
The swimmer who was the first victim in the 1975 blockbuster Jaws has died.
Susan Backlinie died in her home in California at the age of 77, according to her agent. Her death was first reported by The Daily Jaws website.
The opening scene of Steven Spielberg‘s classic features Ms Backlinie running along the beach and before diving into the water and skinny dipping.
The poster for the film Jaws. Pic: HA/THA/Shutterstock
Her character Chrissie Watkins is then suddenly pulled under the water and she screams as she is violently attacked by an unseen great white shark.
Ms Backlinie had been a champion swimmer when cast in the film. She told The Palm Beach Post in 2015 that Spielberg told her: “When your scene is done, I want everyone under the seats with the popcorn and bubblegum.
“I think we did that,” she said.
In the documentary, Jaws: The Inside Story, Spielberg called Ms Backlinie’s sequence “one of the most dangerous” stunts he’s ever directed.
“She was actually being tugged left and right by 10 men on one rope and 10 men on the other back to the shore, and that’s what caused her to move like that.”
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Ms Backlinie worked with Mr Spielberg again in the 1979 parody war film 1941, in which she spoofed her Jaws character.
The first person to have a pig kidney transplant has died nearly two months after the procedure.
Richard “Rick” Slayman, 62, underwent the four-hour transplant at a hospital in Boston in March.
It marked the first time a genetically modified pig kidney was transplanted into a living patient. Surgeons said they believed the organ would last for at least two years.
Slayman’s family announced his death yesterday, thanking the doctors who carried out the world-first surgery for their “enormous efforts”.
They said the animal-to-human transplant – known as a xenotransplant – gave them “seven more weeks with Rick, and our memories made during that time will remain in our minds and hearts”.
Rick Slayman in his hospital room in March. Pic: Michelle Rose/Massachusetts General Hospital Hospital
The transplant team at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) said they did not have any indication he died as a result of the transplant.
Slayman, from Weymouth, Massachusetts, previously had a kidney transplant at MGH in 2018, but had to go back on dialysis last year after it showed signs of failure.
As he needed frequent procedures as a result of dialysis complications, his doctors suggested a pig kidney transplant.
His family said Slayman wanted to undergo the procedure to give hope to those on waiting lists for transplants, adding: “Rick accomplished that goal and his hope and optimism will endure forever.”
Read more on Sky News:
Switzerland wins as chaos engulfs Eurovision
Thunderstorms to put end to sunshine
‘Eunuch maker’ who castrated victims jailed
Pic: Michelle Rose/Massachusetts General Hospital
Pig kidneys had previously been transplanted into brain-dead donors, but only temporarily. Two men have also received hearts from pigs, with both dying within months of their prodecures.
A month after Slayman’s transplant, New Jersey’s Lisa Pisano became the second person in the world to undergo a pig kidney transplant, and the first to have surgery while also having a mechanical heart pump surgically implanted.
The 54-year-old said she “took a chance” after suffering heart and kidney failure, which left her too ill to qualify for a traditional transplant.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
More than 100,000 people are on the transplant waiting list in the US – most need a kidney, but thousands die waiting.
In the UK, the NHS said that in the year to March last year, there were 6,959 patients waiting for an organ transplant.
It said 439 patients died while on the active list waiting for it and a further 732 were removed from the transplant list, “mostly as a result of deteriorating health and ineligibility for transplant”.
Oprah Winfrey has admitted playing a role in perpetuating diet culture during her career and said a dieting item from a 1980s show was one of her “biggest regrets”.
The 70-year-old star – who has been ranked among the most influential women in the world – has been open about her struggles to maintain a healthy weight and attempts to lose weight.
In March she said “making fun of my weight was a national sport” for more than two decades.
In comments reported by NBC, Sky’s US partner, the talk show host told a livestream and live audience: “I want to acknowledge that I have been a steadfast participant in this diet culture through my platforms, through the magazine, through the talk show for 25 years.
“I’ve been a major contributor to it. I cannot tell you how many weight loss shows and makeovers I have done and they have been a staple since I’ve been working in television.”
Oprah Winfrey shows off her new figure on a 1988 edition of The Oprah Winfrey Show. File pic: AP
But she admitted an item on a 1988 edition of The Oprah Winfrey Show was one of her “biggest regrets” when she rolled a wagon of fat on to the stage to represent the weight she had recently lost thanks to a liquid diet and exercise.
She had starved herself for months, she said, admitting that it “sent a message that starving yourself with a liquid diet and set a standard for people watching that I, nor anybody else, could uphold. The very next day, I began to gain the weight back.
“I own what I’ve done, and now I want to do better.”
Winfrey was speaking on Thursday at an event organised by WeightWatchers, whose board of directors she joined in 2015, before saying in February she was leaving.
In 2016, she used an interview in the magazine O to reveal she had lost 12kg, sharing the cover with nine other woman to celebrate their “best body”.
In the issue, Winfrey said, “It was my idea to share the cover with other women who are on the same journey that I am. My own struggles with the scale are well known. I’ve never believed in hiding them.”
Oprah Winfrey in 2018. File pic: AP
Read more:
TV Baftas – who’s in the running?
Eurovision in pictures
Bridgerton cast chat about season three
In December, she told People she had started taking a weight loss drug, saying she used it “as I feel I need it, as a tool to manage not yo-yoing.
“The fact that there’s a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier, in my lifetime, feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for.”
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Environment12 months agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports1 month agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports7 months agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment1 year agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Environment1 year agoTesla advances Powerwall pilot project with German electric company