(NEW YORK) — Two girls set up a lemonade stand to raise money for organ donations in honor of their late sister.
Makenzie Madsen was born with congenital heart disease and received a heart transplant at 17 months old. In 2019, her heart and kidneys started shutting down and she was taken to the hospital, where she went into cardiac arrest. She waited there for almost a year for a new heart and kidney transplant when she died on July 13, 2020, at age 14. Now, her sisters, Myleigh, 9, and Makayla, 7, have set up a lemonade stand in her honor.
“We just talked about what we could do because her anniversary is coming up,” the girls’ mother, Monica Madsen, told ABC News’ Good Morning America.
The idea was inspired by Makenzie herself, who would often set up a table and chair outside of their West Jordan, Utah, home to sell everything from baked goods to snow cones while growing up.
“She just loved to bake and cook,” Madsen said. “She even made her own snow cone flavors out of Kool-Aid.”
While she leaned toward making sweets, Madsen said Makenzie didn’t have a sweet tooth or like to eat them.
“I think she just loved interacting with people and seeing people smile,” she said.
The stand’s design is also an ode to Makenzie.
“Teal was our older sister’s favorite color,” Myleigh told GMA. “The other stripe is pink — Makayla’s favorite colors.”
Myleigh and Makayla want to use the stand to raise awareness on the importance of organ donation and how it can save lives.
“They want to open people’s eyes and hope people understand how important it is to say yes to organ donation,” their mother said. “They don’t want other kids to feel this — if their siblings have been waiting for a transplant and they didn’t make it. That’s what they talked to me about.”
According to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, around 17 people die each day while waiting for an organ transplant in the U.S. The average wait time for one is three to five years and, at the time of publication, the current amount of people on the waitlist for a heart is 3,601. For a kidney, that number soars to 90,567.
So far, the family has raised approximately $6,000 and will be donating all of the proceeds to DonorConnect, a nonprofit organization that assists families in the Mountain West with the organ donation process.
Myleigh said that she and her sister want to “get even more money to help other kids.”
In addition to lemonade, the girls are making cake pops to sell and will also try their hand at cotton candy.
“We’ve just tried to keep her spirit alive,” Madsen said. “She’s up there cheering them on and helping them out and rallying people to go see the stand.”
The family will be wrapping up the lemonade stand for the summer shortly, but plan to continue every year just like they said Makenzie would have.
(NEW YORK) — Guests visiting Disney Parks in recent days might have noticed being greeted a little differently when waiting for a performance or show.
As a step towards inclusivity, Disney Parks has announced it’s removing the mention of, “ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,” from its automated announcements, including for the nighttime shows.
This change is one of many ways Disney is working to promote a more inclusive experience for all guests and families.
Changes to Disney’s language have already begun to roll out and will continue to change across Disney Parks globally.
“We want our guests to see their own backgrounds and traditions reflected in the stories, experiences and products they encounter in their interactions with Disney,” Chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products Josh D’Amaro recently said in a statement.
“Inclusion is essential to our culture and leads us forward as we continue to realize our rich legacy of engaging storytelling, exceptional service, and Disney magic,” D’Amaro added.
(NEW YORK) — Chanel No. 5 lovers can now bathe themselves in the iconic scent — literally.
In honor of the 100th anniversary of Chanel No. 5, the brand has launched a collection of bath products.
“To celebrate No. 5 and its one hundred years of celebrity, CHANEL has developed CHANEL FACTORY 5, a revolutionary experience that has made it possible to produce a completely new collection, with No. 5 as its sole ingredient,” the company wrote in a press release.
Chanel Factory 5 includes 17 limited-edition products from soap to body lotion.
All products in the collection include the signature rose and jasmine No. 5 scent.
“Through this concept, we want to return to the creation process of the first N°5 packaging. At the time, it was a simple laboratory bottle, a functional object that became luxurious and iconic. There was already this notion of transforming a common, ultra-functional object into a precious one,” Thomas Du Pré De Saint Maur, head of global creative resources for fragrance and beauty, said in a statement.
The line is available on Chanel’s website and ranges from $45 to $138.
Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Bumble will be opening its first-ever café and wine bar in New York City this summer.
A partnership between the dating app and restaurant Pasquale Jones of Delicious Hospitality Group, Bumble Brew Café and Wine Bar will open in Manhattan’s Nolita neighborhood on July 24. According to a statement by Bumble, it’ll be a space for “the community to gather, for genuine connections to be built, and for guests to interact.”
“At Bumble, we’re fueled by bringing people together to build genuine connections — both on and off the app,” said Julia Smith, head of brand partnerships at Bumble. “We hope that people can gather at Bumble Brew and connect over an espresso or delicious meal, whether it’s with friends, a potential partner, or a new business connection.”
Designed by FLOAT Studio, the 3,760-square-foot restaurant will have an 80-seat dining room, a cocktail bar, and patio and private dining. The Italian-inspired menu was created by chef Ryan Hardy, and will feature vegetables, handmade pasta and shareable plates.
“We’re thrilled to join forces with Bumble and open a new space in our community, especially after this challenging year,” said Hardy. “We’ve always designed our restaurants so that people can connect over delicious food and drinks in a fun and energetic environment, so our mission aligned perfectly with Bumble.”
In line with how Bumble lets women make the first move with messaging on the app, the music will be mostly comprised of women artists.
The idea to open up a permanent location was inspired by the success of the Bumble Hive pop-ups, which act as a physical embodiment of the app where visitors can meet new people while enjoying food and entertainment.
“We’ve seen a resounding response to the Bumble Hive pop-ups we’ve hosted around the world and noticed a clear appetite for a permanent space where people could connect,” Smith said.
Bumble Brew will initially be open for breakfast Wednesday through Sunday, from 8 a.m. to noon. It’ll expand its hours to include lunch service on July 31 and dinner on Aug. 7.
(NEW YORK) — The number of Americans seeing crime as an extremely serious problem in the United States is at a more than 20-year high, President Joe Biden is underwater in trust to handle it and broad majorities in an ABC News/Washington Post poll favor alternative crime-fighting strategies to address it.
A sweeping 75% in the national survey said violent crime would be reduced by increasing funding to build economic opportunities in poor communities. Sixty-five percent said the same about using social workers to help police defuse situations with people having emotional problems.
These measures, aimed at underlying causes of crime, are most apt to have been seen as effective, by substantial margins, of five that were tested. Among the others, 55% think increasing funding for police departments would reduce violent crime, 51% say the same about stricter enforcement of existing gun laws and 46% say so about stricter gun-control laws.
Broad support for alternative anti-crime measures comes against a backdrop of heightened high-level concern. Twenty-eight percent of Americans see crime in the United States as an extremely serious problem, a relatively small group but the most to hold this view compared to nearly annual polls by Gallup from 2000 to 2020. The average across those previous polls is 19%.
Views of crime in the country as a high-level problem expand to 59% when including those who see it as very serious, not just extremely serious. As typically is the case, far fewer, 17%, see crime as an extremely or very serious problem in the area where they live, though this is at a numerical high — by a single percentage point — compared to Gallup polls since 2000.
This poll, produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, finds a troubling difference in the experience of crime along racial and ethnic lines. While 13% of white people and 17% of Hispanic people call crime an extremely or very serious problem in the area where they live, this jumps to 31% among Black people.
Politically, just 38% of adults overall approve of how Biden is handling the issue of crime in this country, with 48% disapproving. That said, Americans divide almost exactly evenly on which political party they trust more to handle crime — 36% pick the Republicans, 35% the Democrats, about the average difference between the parties on this question in polls going back to 1990. Twenty percent volunteered that they don’t trust either party on crime.
(SURFSIDE, Fla.) — At least 18 people, including two children, have been confirmed dead and 145 others remain unaccounted for since a 12-story residential building partially collapsed in South Florida’s Miami-Dade County last week.
The partial collapse occurred around 1:15 a.m. on June 24 at the Champlain Towers South condominium in the small, beachside town of Surfside, about 6 miles north of Miami Beach. Approximately 55 of the oceanfront complex’s 136 units were destroyed, according to Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Assistant Chief Raide Jadallah. Since then, hundreds of first responders have been carefully combing through the pancaked pile of debris in hopes of finding survivors.
Meanwhile, 139 people who were living or staying in the condominium at the time of the disaster have been accounted for and are safe, according to Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who has stressed that the numbers are “very fluid” and “continue to change.” Officials previously were including the number of deceased among those accounted for but are now separating the figures.
The massive search and rescue operation, now in its ninth day, was temporarily halted for much of Thursday due to safety concerns regarding the structural integrity of the still-standing section of the building. Movement in the pile of rubble as well as in the remaining structure prompted the hours-long pause, according to Scott Nacheman, a structure specialist with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Urban Search and Rescue support team.
Structural engineers, who have been on site monitoring the situation to ensure the safety of rescue workers, are currently planning for the likely demolition of the rest of the condominium amid the ongoing search and rescue mission, according to Levine Cava. Nacheman, who is helping develop contingency plans for the demolition, told reporters it would be “weeks” before a “definitive timeline” is available.
The structure was cleared by crews last week, and all search and rescue resources have since been shifted to focusing on the pile of rubble. But the two sites are side-by-side and the remaining building has posed challenges for the rescuers trying to locate any survivors or human remains in the wreckage.
“Given our ongoing safety concerns about the integrity of the building, we’re continuing to restrict access to the collapse zone,” Levine Cava said during a press briefing in Surfside on Thursday evening.
Shortly after search and rescue efforts resumed Thursday evening, the Miami-Dade County mayor noted that the crews “looked really, really excited to get back out there.”
Heat, humidity, heavy rain, strong winds and lightning storms have also made the conditions difficult for rescuers, periodically forcing them to pause their round-the-clock efforts in recent days. Officials are monitoring weather systems in the region as the Atlantic hurricane season ramps up.
Although officials have continued to express hope that more people will be found alive, no survivors have been discovered in the rubble of the building since the morning it partially collapsed. Bodies, however, have been uncovered throughout the site.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden traveled to Surfside on Thursday to tour the scene of the disaster and meet with officials, first responders, search and rescue teams, as well as families of the victims. Recalling the 1972 car accident that killed his first wife and 1-year-old daughter as well as badly injured his two sons, Biden told reporters: “It’s bad enough to lose somebody but the hard part, the really hard part, is to not know whether they’ll survive or not.”
The cause of the partial collapse to a building that has withstood decades of hurricanes remains unknown and is under investigation by local and federal agencies. Built in the 1980s, the Champlain Towers South was up for its 40-year recertification and had been undergoing roof work — with more renovations planned — when it partially collapsed, according to officials.
A structural field survey report from October 2018, which was among hundreds of pages of public documents released by the town of Surfside late Sunday, said the waterproofing below the condominium’s pool deck and entrance drive was failing and causing “major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas.”
A slew of lawsuits against the Champlain Towers South Condo Association have already been filed on behalf of survivors and victims, alleging the partial collapse could have been avoided and that the association knew or should have known about the structural damage. A spokesperson for the Champlain Towers South Condo Association told ABC News they cannot comment on pending litigation but that their “focus remains on caring for our friends and neighbors during this difficult time.”
(NEW YORK) — As Bill Cosby awoke Thursday to his first full day of freedom in nearly three years, women who accused him of sexual assault and victim advocates we’re left reeling from the fallout of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision to vacate his 2018 conviction.
Two women who alleged Cosby drugged and assaulted them told ABC News they felt sick to their stomachs, including one who said the ruling retriggered her post-traumatic stress disorder.
“What we’re seeing is a lot of people are expressing feelings of trauma, retraumatization, feeling helpless and hopeless in the criminal justice system,” Elizabeth Jeglic, a professor of clinical psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies sexual violence prevention, told ABC News on Thursday.
Jeglic said the court’s decision came across as a giant step back from the progress made during the #MeToo movement, in which rich, powerful men like Cosby and movie mogul Harvey Weinstein were convicted and imprisoned in sexual assault cases.
“Following #MeToo, we had some hope,” Jeglic said. “It’s very difficult for survivors to come forward and make accusations, and to go through the criminal justice system process. So when you see that it has failed yet again, you just kind of feel like, ‘What can I do?’ ‘How is this ever going to end?'”
Jeglic said that only 25 out of every 1,000 cases of sexual abuse end with the assailant going to prison.
Cosby was convicted on April 26, 2018, on three counts of felony aggravated indecent assault, stemming from accusations made by Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee, that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in 2004 at his suburban Philadelphia mansion. Cosby was given a sentence of three to 10 years in prison.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned Cosby’s conviction on Wednesday, ruling he should have never been prosecuted because of a deal he and his attorneys cut with former Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor in 2005. As part of the deal, Castor agreed not to criminally prosecute Cosby if he testified in a deposition for a civil suit Constand filed against him, one that resulted in a $3 million settlement.
During a four-day deposition, Cosby, believing he had immunity from criminal charges, made incriminating statements, including that he obtained drugs, specifically the sedative Quaaludes, to give women for sex. Castor’s successor, Kevin Steele, then used Cosby’s statements as grounds to file criminal charges.
The state Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors violated Cosby’s constitutional rights to due process and described Steele’s decision to file felony charges as an unconstitutional “coercive bait-and-switch.”
“The court is saying the entire process was fundamentally unfair,” Dan Abrams, ABC News’ chief legal analyst, said Thursday on Good Morning America.
There were no conditions placed on Cosby’s release and he does not have to register as a sex offender.
The state Supreme Court justices took their ruling a step further by concluding the only way to remedy the miscarriage of justice was to release Cosby from prison and bar prosecutors from trying him for the third time.
“We do not dispute that this remedy is both severe and rare. But it is warranted here, indeed compelled,” the justices wrote in their 79-page decision.
“That was the most surprising part of the ruling to me,” Abrams said, adding that the justices could have ordered a new trial.
Following the ruling, Steele released a statement saying Cosby “was found guilty by a jury and now goes free on a procedural issue that is irrelevant to the facts of the crime.”
Steele could conceivably face sanctions by The Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania if a complaint is filed over how he and his office handled the prosecution, a spokesperson for the Supreme Court told ABC News on Thursday. The Disciplinary Board declined to comment on whether a complaint has been filed against Steele.
Cosby has maintained his innocence throughout the legal ordeal, saying he never engaged in non-consensual sex.
In an interview Wednesday night with ABC News Live Prime anchor Linsey Davis, Cosby slammed prosecutors and the media.
“Nobody had the sense to say, ‘Wait one second, this doesn’t match up with the truth, this is not what I was taught in college, this is not what I was taught at home,'” Cosby said.
But California attorney Gloria Allred, who represents 33 women who have accused Cosby of sexual assault, said at a news conference on Wednesday that “Mr. Cosby is not home free.”
Allred said she is charging forward with a civil case she filed against Cosby on behalf of a woman alleging he sexually abused her as a child at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles. She said the suit had been stayed for trial until the conclusion of Cosby’s criminal case.
Allred said a status conference on the case has been scheduled for August in Santa Monica, California, and that she expects Cosby to testify at a deposition under oath.
“Because his criminal case is now concluded and because he is not in jeopardy of being criminally prosecuted, he will not be able to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination in our case,” Allred said.
Despite the state Supreme Court’s decision, Allred told ABC News that the accusers she represents have found Cosby’s prosecution an “empowering experience” that has allowed them to speak out and demand changes in the laws to make it easier to prosecute perpetrators of sexual violence.
But Constand and her attorneys said in a joint statement that the Supreme Court’s decision “may discourage those who seek justice for sexual assault in the criminal justice system from reporting or participating in the prosecution of the assailant.”
Tarana Burke, a founder of the #MeToo movement, told ABC News that the decision by the state Supreme Court will not derail her group’s mission to support survivors of sexual assault and to “expand the possibilities for ending sexual violence.”
“We don’t owe anybody anything. We don’t owe anybody our survival,” Burke said. “We just owe ourselves to survive.”
Burke added, “As much as I feel sort of appalled by this overturn … the legal system in this country was not built to support survivors, it wasn’t made to give us accountability. So, when we see these failures of accountability, it’s to be expected.”
Lise-Lotte Lublin, who accused Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting her in 1989, was one of five Cosby accusers to testify at his trial to help prosecutors establish prior bad acts and a pattern of practice by the comedian. She told ABC News that she takes some solace in the notion that Cosby will likely never regain his reputation as “America’s Dad.”
(NEW YORK) — In reassuring news for the more than 12 million Americans vaccinated with Johnson & Johnson, a new study indicates the single-shot vaccine will likely offer good protection against the delta variant, according to the company.
The highly transmissible delta variant is now predicted to become the dominant strain in the United States.
The findings are preliminary but promising. In a laboratory experiment, researchers analyzed the blood of 10 people who had been vaccinated with the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and tested it against multiple concerning variants, including delta.
They found that the vaccine appeared to work against new variants, as indicated by so-called “neutralizing antibody titers” and other indications of immune system response.
Prior data has indicated that other vaccines, including those made by Pfizer and Moderna, are likely to hold up against the delta variant. But some experts worried the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which unlike the others, only includes one dose, might not fare as well.
“I would say it’s reassuring,” Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who helped lead the research, told ABC News. “We found the J&J vaccine induces neutralizing antibodies.”
In fact, Barouch said another reassuring finding of the study was that people vaccinated with the Johnson & Johnson shot appeared to have a strong immune system response up to eight months later.
“We saw surprisingly good durability of responses,” Barouch said. “We followed these individuals for eight months, and over eight months, the antibody and T cell responses were very stable.”
A growing body of evidence suggests that COVID-19 vaccines may offer longer-lasting protection than some scientists initially anticipated. That’s because other parts of the immune system, cells called memory B cells, continue to mature over time, and retain their ability to fight infection.
Barouch cautioned there are limitations to this research, which offers researchers helpful clues from laboratory experiments rather than real-world evidence from thousands of people.
“Our findings show that a single shot of the J&J vaccine raises robust neutralizing antibody levels against the delta variant. Our study does not show clinical protection,” he said.
But for those who were vaccinated with the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, this study is a reassuring indication that the vaccine is likely to work just as well against the delta variant as it does for other circulating variants.
(WASHINGTON) — Attorney General Merrick Garland has ordered a temporary halt to the Justice Department advocating any scheduling of further executions of federal inmates, according to a memo.
Garland in a memo to senior officials at the department Thursday echoed his own recently stated reservations about use of the death penalty, noting a number of defendants who were later exonerated as well as statistics showing possible discriminatory impact on minorities.
“The Department of Justice must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, but is also treated fairly and humanely,” he wrote in the memo. “That obligation has special force in capital cases. Serious concerns have been raised about the continued use of the death penalty across the country, including arbitrariness in its application, disparate impact on people of color, and the troubling number of exonerations in capital and other serious cases.”
“Those weighty concerns deserve careful study and evaluation by lawmakers. In the meantime, the Department must take care to scrupulously maintain our commitment to fairness and humane treatment in the administration of existing federal laws governing capital sentences,” he continued.
The new directive comes after Garland’s predecessor in the job, William Barr, had resumed the department’s use of capital punishment against inmates a year ago, after a nearly two-decade lapse. He also pushed for executions of several federal prisoners during the transition period before President Joe Biden — who opposes the death penalty — took office.
The federal government in 2020 executed more people than all 50 states combined, according to a year-end report from the Death Penalty Institute, a non-partisan, death penalty information center that tracks death row inmates and executions.
The directive, however, is not expected to impact the department’s position taken recently in the case of Boston bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev, a person familiar with the matter told ABC News. Officials last month urged the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s ruling and reinstate Tsarnaev’s death penalty despite Biden’s stated opposition to capital punishment.
This is a developing news story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — Richard Branson announced Thursday he will be joining the crew of his next spaceflight with Virgin Galactic, besting fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos to space.
The first fully crewed spaceflight for SpaceShipTwo Unity will take place July 11, pending weather and technical checks.
Branson, 70, will join the crew to “evaluate the private astronaut experience and will undergo the same training, preparation and flight as Virgin Galactic’s future astronauts,” according to a press release. Branson announced last week that Virgin Galactic was given the OK by the Federal Aviation Administration to launch customers into space.
“I truly believe that space belongs to all of us,” Branson said in a statement. “After 17 years of research, engineering and innovation, the new commercial space industry is poised to open the universe to humankind and change the world for good. It’s one thing to have a dream of making space more accessible to all; it’s another for an incredible team to collectively turn that dream into reality.”
The mission, dubbed Unity 22, will be a 20-second test flight for VSS Unity. It’s the company’s fourth crewed spaceflight. Unity’s pilots will be Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, both of whom have flown Unity previously.
Unity is launched from a separate “mothership” aircraft called VMS Eve.
Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is expected to join the crew of Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft’s first flight on July 20.
Bezos announced on Wednesday that accompanying him, and his brother, on New Shepard will be pioneering female pilot Wally Funk.
Joining Branson on his flight will be Beth Moses, Virgin Galactic’s chief astronaut instructor; Colin Bennett, the company’s lead operations engineer; and Sirisha Bandla, the company’s vice president of government affairs and research operations. Moses was also on the ship’s first test flight.
The British-born Branson founded Virgin Group in the 1970s and has delved into everything from music to cellphones and airlines.
Branson will turn 71 exactly one week after the flight.
ABC News’ Catherine Thorbecke contributed to this report.
