Disney is closing itsStar Wars: Galactic Starcruiser experience at Walt Disney World Resort later this year, the company announced Thursday.
The vacation experience, which launched in March 2022 and provided guests with an immersive two-night adventure that blended Star Wars-like interiors with live entertainment like alien lounge singers and a live-action role-play element for guests, will embark on its “final voyage” September 28 to 30.
The hotel attraction, set aboard a cruise ship in space, had been praised for its innovation, but derided online after its launch in 2022 when fans found out a two-night stay could run as much as $6,000 for a family of four.
The statement announcing the closure alluded to the latter, noting, “This premium, boutique experience gave us the opportunity to try new things on a smaller scale of 100 rooms, and as we prepare for its final voyage, we will take what we’ve learned to create future experiences that can reach more of our guests and fans.”
(NEW YORK) — As medications like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro used by some for weight loss experience a surge in popularity, they remain out of reach for many people.
The reason is the medications’ cost, which can run more than $1,000 a month without insurance coverage.
“Patients may not have [insurance] coverage, and so, if they elect to use them, they often are paying out-of-pocket,” Dr. Veronica Johnson, an obesity medicine specialist at Northwestern Medicine, told ABC News. “And the costs can be anywhere between $1,000 to $1,500 a month.”
Both Ozempic and Mounjaro are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat Type 2 diabetes, but some doctors prescribe them “off-label” for weight loss. Wegovy is FDA-approved for weight loss for people with obesity or who are overweight.
Insurance coverage for the medications varies, depending on everything from a person’s medical diagnosis to where they live and their insurance plan.
Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro are not covered for weight loss under most Medicare and Medicaid programs.
“Health insurance providers work to ensure the right medications are prescribed to the right patients and at an affordable cost,” America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade association of health insurance companies, told ABC News in a statement, adding, “Evidence … suggests that patients may not be able to maintain their weight loss once they stop taking the drug.”
Among people whose insurance does not cover the medications, some are turning to an alternate option, finding a cheaper off-brand version at a compounding pharmacy.
Tina Straw of Ohio told ABC News she chose to use a compounding pharmacy when her insurance company denied coverage.
“I was like, ‘OK, I can do $1,200 a month for a year, but I can’t … do $1,200 a month indefinitely,” she said. “I’m planning on, you know, hopefully retiring soon.”
Instead of paying $1,200 per month, Straw said she is paying around $300 per month for a generic semaglutide compound.
Semaglutide is the active compound that Ozempic and Wegovy are made of, while Mounjaro contains a compound called tirzepatide.
Compound pharmacies create their own semaglutide or tirzepatide compounds using the raw ingredients.
“A compounding pharmacy is a pharmacy that takes drug components and mixes them together to make a drug,” Dr. Al Carter, executive director of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, told ABC News. “Patients [use compound pharmacies] if they need a specific drug, it’s not available in a market, or if they need a drug that doesn’t have a specific inactive ingredient because of allergy or something else.”
Some medical experts say there are risks associated with getting semaglutide through that route because the compounds can be altered and it’s not clear in many cases from where the drugs are sourced.
“It could be combined with something else that’s not tested or safe, so in general, it’s just really not recommended,” Johnson said of the use of compound pharmacies.
The FDA said while the medications are eligible for compounding because of shortages, the compounded versions “pose a higher risk.”
“Compounded drugs pose a higher risk to patient than FDA-approved drugs because compounded drugs do not undergo FDA premarket review for safety, effectiveness, or quality,” the agency said in a statement. “The FDA’s compounding program aims to protect patients from poor quality compounded drugs, while preserving access to lawfully marketed compounded drugs for patients.”
The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy says many compound pharmacies are safe and are regulated by the states.
“Of these medications [used for weight loss], where I would get concerned is when you are going to purchase these compounded products online,” Carter said.
Experts say people who would like to take the brand names of the medications should check on their insurance coverage every few months because the coverage may change.
Eli Lilly, the maker of Mounjaro, said in April that it expects the medication could be approved by the FDA for weight loss as early as the end of the year.
(WASHINGTON) — House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mike McCaul, R-Texas, accepted the State Department’s latest offer to review a classified communication sent by American diplomats during the final days of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, at least temporarily ending a standoff where he threatened to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over subpoenaed materials.
“I am available to view the documents as soon as possible,” McCaul wrote to Blinken in a letter shared Thursday. “In light of this invitation, I will pause efforts to enforce the Committee’s subpoena pending my review of the documents.”
McCaul added that despite his decision, the subpoena remains “in full force and effect” and pressed for additional access, arguing that all members of the panel were “undoubtedly entitled” to review the material.
McCaul and other Republicans on the panel have been engaged in a monthslong pursuit of the document that sources say was sent in July 2021 and warned Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the government of Afghanistan was at risk of collapse at the hands of the Taliban.
The committee chairman initially issued several requests for the document, followed by a subpoena in March. When the State Department refused to comply, he threatened to hold Blinken in contempt of Congress, going as far as to schedule a hearing on the matter in the coming days.
On Wednesday, State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel said the department would send a letter on Monday offering McCaul and the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, an opportunity to privately review the document, known as a “dissent cable,” and that only identifying information of department personnel involved would be redacted.
“Chairman McCaul himself has said this is what he is interested in,” Patel said.
ABC News obtained a copy of the letter, which states that the State Department is prepared to make the cable available “as an additional extraordinary accommodation” to the two members of Congress “as soon as possible.”
The letter also notes that the department is extending the invitation to McCaul and Meeks “despite the materially increased risk that additional disclosures of the Dissent Channel cable could further deter Department employees from using the Dissent Channel in the future for its intended purposes of informing internal deliberations.”
The State Department had repeatedly declined to produce the cable, arguing the dissent channel needed to be protected to preserve its integrity and offering McCaul and other members of the committee a closed door briefing and a summary of the document instead.
Despite the administration’s concession, Patel made it clear that the State Department still saw its previous disclosures as adequately meeting the department’s needs.
“We believe that we have provided sufficient information through our classified briefing, through the written summary, and we believe these efforts already should have and would satisfied their request for information,” he said.
During a televised interview on Monday, McCaul called the State Department’s offer “a really significant step forward.”
McCaul said the only remaining issue he had was that the other members of the committee, including veterans of the war in Afghanistan, would not also be able to view the document.
“If we can work out this last step, then I think we’ve resolved a litigation fight in the courts,” McCaul said.
On Thursday, Hulu dropped a teaser to the eighth season of the beloved, Emmy-winning one-time Fox animated series Futurama, noting its return on July 24.
The streaming service made a deal for 20 new episodes — two 10-episode seasons — of the show back in 2022, and after some negotiation with holdout John DiMaggio, who voices the robot Bender, managed to reunite the entire cast, which also includes Katey Sagal, Billy West and Phil Lamarr.
Hulu teases, “New viewers will be able to pick up the series from here, while long-time fans will recognize payoffs to decades-long mysteries – including developments in the epic love story of Fry and Leela, the mysterious contents of Nibbler’s litter box, the secret history of evil Robot Santa, and the whereabouts of Kif and Amy’s tadpoles. Meanwhile, there’s a whole new pandemic in town as the crew explores the future of vaccines, bitcoin, cancel culture, and streaming TV.”
Simpsons creator Matt Groening created the show with David X. Cohen, and it launched on Fox in 1999, running for four years. In 2008, Comedy Central aired a fifth season culled from four direct-to-video movies, before picking up new episodes of the show that ran for two more seasons between 2010 and 2013.
(HELENA, Mont.) — A TikTok ban enacted by Montana — the first state to impose such a law — marked a major step in the growing U.S. backlash against the Chinese-owned social media platform over concerns about data privacy.
Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte said he signed the measure on Wednesday to “protect Montanans’ personal and private data from the Chinese Communist Party.”
TikTok serves hundreds of thousands of users in Montana and more than 5,000 businesses, TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter told ABC News.
In a statement, Oberwetter denounced the ban and reminded users in Montana that they remain allowed to use the app.
“Governor Gianforte has signed a bill that infringes on the First Amendment rights of the people of Montana by unlawfully banning TikTok,” she said. “We want to reassure Montanans that they can continue using TikTok to express themselves, earn a living, and find community as we continue working to defend the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana.”
Here’s what to know about the TikTok ban in Montana, according to experts:
How can Montana ban TikTok?
The Montana ban, which takes effect in January 2024, does not prevent current users from accessing the app or penalize them for doing so.
Instead, the ban targets the availability of the app by threatening entities such as TikTok, Google and Apple with a $10,000 fine for each day that the platform remains accessible in app stores for users in Montana.
“This is not doing anything with respect to existing users,” Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute, told ABC News, noting however that the law will hinder current users eventually as they fail to download new updates to the app.
“Users need updates to have TikTok run smoothly and efficiently,” Kreps said. “Over time, it will have a siphoning off effect on these existing users.”
The law will be nullified if TikTok is no longer headquartered in “any country designated as a foreign adversary” by the U.S. government.
How will Montana enforce the TikTok ban?
State officials will be able to enforce the law by observing whether app stores display TikTok for users in Montana, and the relevant companies should be largely capable of identifying where users reside and denying access accordingly, experts said.
However, users in Montana will likely be able to elude the restrictions by using technology that falsifies their location and allows them to download the app, they added.
“There’s this myth that because there are technical workarounds with the internet, the law doesn’t matter,” Timothy Edgar, a computer science professor at Brown University and a former national security official, told ABC News. “That’s not true.”
Still, users could likely circumvent the ban through the use of a Virtual Private Network, or VPN, which allows one to pose as a user logging on from a different location, thereby circumventing the state-specific ban, experts said.
The outcome of enforcement is ultimately difficult to predict, since a state has never carried out a comparable ban of a widely popular app, Kreps added.
“Montana is really pioneering here,” she said.
Can the TikTok ban in Montana withstand a legal challenge?
The TikTok ban in Montana will likely face a formidable challenge on First Amendment grounds that could ultimately knock down part or all of the measure, experts said.
Free speech advocacy groups such as the ACLU have sharply criticized the measure. “We will never trade our First Amendment rights for cheap political points,” Keegan Medrano, policy director at the ACLU of Montana, said in a statement on Wednesday.
When considering a limit on speech, courts typically weigh the extent of a national security or privacy concern against the restriction placed on expression, Edgar said.
“The court will say this clearly has an impact on the expression rights of TikTok users and creators, so what’s the government’s compelling justification?” Edgar said.
Ringo Starr has certainly had a memorable life, but music fans will likely never read a first-person account of it, because Starr says he has no desire to pen a memoir.
He tells USA Today that he’s been offered “lots of money over the last many years” to write a book about his life but he “got fed up” with the idea because folks only want to know about The Beatles. He said “it’d be three volumes before I get to that year,” referring to 1962, when he joined the legendary band.
“I have just never found interest in it,” he says. “I don’t want to do Ringo the drummer, because we’re all a bit more than that.”
Instead, fans are just going to have to settle for seeing Ringo on the road. He and his All-Starr Band, which includes Steve Lukather, Colin Hay, Edgar Winter, Warren Ham, Hamish Stuart and Gregg Bissonette, kick of their 2023 tour Friday, May 19, in Temecula, California, and Ringo seems raring to go.
“I love playing, it’s just part of me now, and it was then, at 13,” he says. “I had the dream to play drums, and I ended up being that person, and I’m still that person,” noting, “There’s nothing like it. You’re onstage, with the audience, there’s the band, it’s magical nights. You can’t explain it, it’s just wow.”
A complete list of Ringo dates can be found at ringostarr.com.
(SAN FRANCISCO) — The suspect in the murder of Cash App founder Bob Lee pleaded not guilty in a San Francisco court on Thursday.
Nima Momeni, a fellow tech executive, has been accused of killing Lee last month with a kitchen knife after driving him to a secluded area.
The judge ordered Momeni to be held without bail.
Paula Canny, the defense attorney for Momeni, said after the hearing that Lee’s death arose from a mix of self-defense and accidental harm.
“There was no premeditation,” Canny said.
Rejecting that account, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said Momeni intended to kill Lee.
“We believe this was an intentional killing,” Jenkins said. “Mr. Momeni’s DNA is on the handle of that knife.”
Jenkins said that Momeni poses a flight risk because he is a person of means and “anyone that’s capable of violently killing someone is a public safety risk.”
Momeni, 38, appears to be the owner of an Emeryville, California-based company called Expand IT.
Lee, an executive at cryptocurrency firm MobileCoin, was killed in the early morning hours on April 4 in the San Francisco neighborhood of Rincon Hill, the San Francisco Police Department said last month.
During the previous afternoon, Lee spent time with Momeni’s sister and a witness, who identified him or herself as a close friend of Lee, prosecutors said. Prosecutors have not named the witness.
Later in the day, at Lee’s hotel room, he had a conversation with Momeni in which he asked Lee about whether his sister was “doing drugs or anything inappropriate,” the witness told the police, according to the document.
Lee reassured Momeni that nothing inappropriate had taken place, the witness said to police.
Early the following morning, at about 2 a.m., camera footage showed Lee and Momeni leaving Lee’s hotel and getting into Momeni’s car, a BMW Z4, prosecutors said.
Video showed the BMW drive to a secluded and dark area where the two men got out of the car. Momeni “moved toward” Lee and the BMW drove away from the scene at high speed, according to the court document.
Police later found a roughly 4-inch blade at the scene that appeared to have blood on it, the document said.
The doctor who conducted the autopsy found that Lee had been stabbed three times, including one strike that penetrated his heart, the document said.
London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco, said in a statement to ABC News last month that Lee’s death marks a “horrible tragedy.”
(LOS ANGELES) — A California reparations task force has voted to approve recommendations on one of the most significant reparations campaigns for African Americans in modern U.S. history. However, some critics have questioned whether the proposed reparations are sufficient to address systemic issues in the Black community.
The task force was established through a bill authored by then-Assemblymember Shirley Weber, currently California’s first African American Secretary of State, according to task force chair Kamilah Moore. The bill was signed into law in September 2020 by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The task force’s next and final meeting will be on June 29 when the report will be released to the California legislator. Its supporters hope the report will be the foundation of a state bill, which could go to the legislature for a vote by the end of 2023 or early 2024.
Task force recommendations
The task force’s report follows the United Nations’ guidelines to remedy victims of international human rights violations, Moore told ABC News.
“The task force hasn’t necessarily endorsed any particular dollar amounts,” Moore said “We just endorsed a methodology that the economists and public policy experts we hired used to calculate the total losses in the areas of health harms, the devaluation of black businesses, housing segregation, mass incarceration, and over policing and unjust property takings.”
According to Moore, the task force proposed that eligible Californians should receive atonement under international law’s five forms of reparations: compensation, restitution, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition.
Moore cited reparations for Japanese Americans who endured internment camps during World War II and remedies for Holocaust survivors in Germany as examples used in the task force’s proposal to state legislators.
She said all African Americans in California who can trace back an enslaved or freed ancestor in the United States dating back to the late 19th century would be eligible.
Moore said $1.2 million is the most economists determined a resident could get if they were at the life expectancy mark of 71 years of age, or older, and endured more acute forms of racism for longer periods of time. She said some media outlets have reported misleading news, including claims that the task force is pushing for every Black Californian to receive $1.2 million.
‘Deflects attention away’
According to the Pew Research Center, 77% of African Americans support reparations for the descendants of enslaved people.
But at least one prominent critic says reparations do little to address persistent issues faced by the community, such as poverty and gun violence.
Bob Woodson, a Black civil rights activist and founder of the Woodson Center, which aims to reduce crime and violence, said he believes that reparations would serve as a distraction from other issues.
“It really deflects attention away from the critical problems,” Woodson said. “That is the moral and spiritual freefall that is consuming, not just Black Americans – that the highest death rate for our young people is homicide.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the leading cause of death for Black men under 44 years is homicide, at 26.1% for men ages 20-44 and 35.1% for those 19 and under.
But Andre Perry, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute who studies majority-Black communities and has done studies on reparations, says it is dangerous to separate these disturbing statistics from the root cause.
“Wealth is a predictor of many behaviors,” Perry said. “People who are low wealth or have negative wealth, are much more likely to exhibit risky behaviors like violence.”
Woodson said he was concerned about the economic toll the reparations payments would inflict on the state and its residents.
“For us to be taking seriously a discussion about whether or not a state should go bankrupt, almost, paying Blacks for reparations as if that would solve the problem,” Woodson said.
Perry pointed out that states often create emergency funds when necessary and the same could be done for reparations.
Moore offered a suggestion from a state lawmaker to make payments in installments for a set number of years.
She said the economic loss faced by Black Americans in California due to systemic discrimination over the years is staggering. The amount calculated by the task force’s economists is $800 billion, she said.
‘The most important thing’
On the federal level, Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri announced a nationwide reparations bill on Wednesday that calls for $14 trillion to help close the wealth gap between African Americans and white Americans.
“The United States has a moral and legal obligation to provide reparations for the enslavement of Africans and its lasting harm on the lives of millions of Black people,” Bush said at a press conference on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
When asked how the government would pay out the sum of $14 trillion, Bush said she is engaged in talks to find the answer.
“We’re still having those kinds of conversations,” the congresswoman said at the press conference. “We’re working with this administration, we’re talking with other members of Congress… but I’ll say this, if we can continue to fund these endless wars, or we can continue to put trillions of dollars into forever wars… we’re talking about things that are happening now.”
“The most important thing – our descendants,” Andrea Jordan of Sacramento, California, said when describing what she would do with compensation through reparations. “To be able to leave that tangibles for them and otherwise I would not be able to do.”
Jordan told ABC News of the toll inflicted on her grandfather after laws were passed decades ago in Mississippi to take his land.
“He understood as a man and as a Black man what they had done,” Jordan said. “He was a mean person because of what they had done and died with a frown on his face from what he knew that he was not able to leave [for his family].”
Jordan believes African Americans deserve reparations.
“We started with such a deficit that our entire life couldn’t even dig us out of it. So, this would even the playing field. And it’s long overdue,” Jordan said. “This country is drenched in our blood.”
(WASHINGTON) — A Secret Service officer was recalled from Bulgaria after there was “an off-duty altercation with hotel staff,” according to an agency spokesperson.
Former President Bill Clinton was scheduled to visit Bulgaria this month “for a convening of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI),” the Clinton Foundation announced last month.
“On May 10, a Secret Service officer assigned to support protective functions on an overseas trip to Sofia, Bulgaria was recalled to the United States by the Secret Service after an off-duty altercation with hotel staff,” a Secret Service spokesperson said. “A second employee who witnessed this incident was also recalled. The individuals were removed prior to the arrival of the protectee, and our Office of Professional Responsibility has opened an internal investigation into the incident.”
The Secret Service made headlines this week after it was reported that an unidentified man entered national security adviser Jake Sullivan’s Washington, D.C., home in late April. The alleged incident prompted a Secret Service investigation into how it could happen with agents supposedly on guard, according to an agency spokesperson. The news came to light this week.
As for the incident on President Clinton’s trip, the Secret Service says it has “extremely strict codes of conduct governing employee behavior and should this investigation reveal any policy violations or misconduct, individuals will face disciplinary action.”
“All employees involved in this incident have been placed on administrative leave and access to Secret Service sites, facilities and computer systems has been suspended pending the results of this investigation,” the federal law enforcement agency said.
(NEW YORK) — A Texas man pleaded guilty to smuggling a firearm that authorities linked to the deadly kidnapping of four U.S. citizens near the border in Mexico, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas.
Roberto Lugardo Moreno Jr. admitted to purchasing the pistol and then taking it to Mexico for the Gulf Cartel, the Wednesday statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
“These weapons often contribute to fueling the violence committed by drug cartels, which drastically affects communities both in Mexico and in the United States,” said Acting Special Agent in Charge Craig Larrabee of Homeland Security Investigations San Antonio. “This investigation and prosecution highlight the fine work federal border security agencies perform each day, often behind the scenes and often unknown to the public.”
After the four Americans arrived in Matamoros, Mexico, in March, “unidentified gunmen fired upon the passengers in the vehicle,” the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City said at the time. Two of the Americans were killed, and the other two were found days later in Mexico.
Five alleged members of a powerful Mexican cartel were charged with aggravated kidnapping and murder a day after the Gulf Cartel allegedly took responsibility for the kidnapping. The five men were found tied up near a pickup truck, and a handwritten note, purportedly written by members of the cartel, was found placed on the truck’s windshield.
“We have decided to deliver those involved and directly responsible,” the note said, presumably referring to the five men found tied up at the scene.
Moreno is expected to be sentenced in August. He faces up to 10 years in federal prison and the potential for $250,000 in fines.
The public defenders’ office handling Moreno’s case did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
ABC News’ Anne Laurent contributed to this report.
