During Bad Bunny’s history-making set at Coachella Friday night, a screen behind him displayed a tweet that many outraged fans felt was a jab at Harry Styles, who’d won the Album of the Year Grammy over the Puerto Rican superstar. But now, Bad Bunny’s team says no disrespect was intended.
The tweet in question showed up on the screen while Bad Bunny, born Benito Ocasio, performed his song “El Apagón.” It read, “goodnight benito could do as it was but harry could never do el apagon.”
Some interpreted this as meaning that Bad Bunny was capable of writing and/or singing Harry’s hit “As It Was,” but Harry wouldn’t be able to do the same for “El Apagón.”
Now, Benito’s team tells Rolling Stone that the rapper didn’t approve the image of the tweet. The visual content company that created the look for the set confirmed that in a statement on Instagram — apparently, the text in that tweet wasn’t supposed to be included.
According to Rolling Stone, the statement, which no longer appears on the company’s Instagram, read, “Our intention is to create light-hearted designs that embody Bad Bunny’s personality and amplify the experience he presents as a performer. The request from the artist during the visuals for ‘El Apagón’ performance was to use the image only and not text from the tweet, which we take responsibility for…these visuals are a celebration of Bad Bunny and his dedication to empowering his native island, Puerto Rico.”
(WASHINGTON) — A new report from Senate Republicans doubles down on the theory that COVID-19 emerged from an accidental lab leak in Wuhan — and possibly, even more than one leak.
While their investigation concedes that “both hypotheses are plausible,” the nearly 300-page document released by the minority on the Senate health subcommittee makes a circumstantial case that the “preponderance of circumstantial evidence” points to “an unintentional research-related incident” — an undetected aerosol leak — likely at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), as the first spark which would ultimately ignite the pandemic.
The WIV has long been known for not just its extensive research on bat coronaviruses, but also poor biosafety conditions while dealing with risky contagion samples which need proper containment, investigators wrote.
The document says an initial leak may have occurred “sometime before September 2019” and began circulating in Wuhan. Then, once WIV and Chinese government authorities realized what had happened, officials scrambled to quickly and quietly develop a vaccine that could be deployed to contain the outbreak — all before the world could learn the truth, according to the authors.
That rush to develop a vaccine may have led to a second accidental lab leak — one which, in turn, would lead to the global pandemic, the investigators believe.
No definitive conclusion has yet been reached on the origins of COVID but the intelligence and scientific communities remain split on whether the most likely scenario is a natural spillover or an accidental lab leak.
How, where and when the pandemic began that has killed nearly seven million people still remains a highly contentious and unsolved geopolitical debate.
The latest report unpacks the theories the committee originally shared last November which, they say, requires further investigation. The investigators said they were “concerned” that possible vaccine experiments at the WIV were conducted under “inadequate biosafety containment conditions” and “may be the proximate cause of the initial outbreak in Wuhan.”
And while they “could not determine whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus was a product of nature alone or possible genetic manipulation,” the “preponderance of information affirms the plausibility of a research-related incident that was likely unintentional resulting from failures of biosafety containment during vaccine-related research,” investigators continued.
“The nature of the identified biosafety vulnerabilities increased the likelihood that such containment failures were not immediately recognized,” and, combined with COVID’s propensity for asymptomatic spread, the initial outbreak may have gone unnoticed at first, according to the report.
“Such initial unrecognized infections could serve as the nidus of the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan and is a plausible proximate cause of the pandemic,” the report said.
The Huanan wet market in Wuhan has long been viewed as a potential early epicenter of the pandemic — the place where an animal disease jumped to humans. But the team that worked on this new report said they believe the market could well have been a “super spreader,” where the virus exploded once it was already coursing through the region.
This is not a peer-reviewed scientific study. It is a report released by Republicans on the Senate health subcommittee.
The report says their core investigative team was comprised of two attorneys, three research assistants, a China foreign area specialist along with one medical and one veterinarian epidemiologist.
That core group was “supported by an outside scientific advisory group consisting of three former U.S. national high- containment laboratory directors, a medical infectious disease physician, medical epidemiologist, two veterinarians, two biosafety experts, and two molecular biologists. Additionally, technical experts were consulted on topics ranging from specific biosafety equipment and processes, vaccine development and production and animal experimentation.”
The core team on this report — which numbered 60 experts — cite several parallel timelines indicating that COVID infections may have begun to swirl in the population months before the Chinese government told the World Health Organization or the world.
That timeline puts initial infections far earlier than December clusters at the wet market — suggesting an animal spillover from there may not have been the origin. Additionally, the report says, the outbreak began to gather steam at the same time as Chinese scientists were beginning to develop a vaccine, according to their experts’ analysis of early Chinese vaccine patents.
Among the clues this report cites that COVID was brewing months earlier than has been publicly admitted, it nods to some of ABC’s early reporting:
• Satellite data from the fall of 2019 showing a dramatic and unusual spike in auto traffic around major hospitals in Wuhan.
• Keyword queries on Chinese search engines substantially increasing in October and November 2019 for symptoms of COVID, like “cough.”
• A “significant” and “abnormal increase” in mysterious flu-like illnesses confirmed by Chinese epidemiologists. Public schools began to close.
• Officials on the ground began to worry, according to the report, and the team at the American embassy in Beijing may have received early word of that concern.
• As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population.
• By mid-October 2019, the “dedicated team at the U.S. Consulate General in Wuhan knew that the city had been struck by what was thought to be an unusually vicious flu season. The disease worsened in November. When city officials began to close public schools in mid-December to control the spread, the team passed the word to Embassy Beijing and continued monitoring,” the report says.
Congressional investigators spent 18 months interviewing dozens of subject matter experts, digging into hundreds of peer-reviewed articles, public reports and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
This report does not include the still-classified intelligence that may shed more light on the pandemic’s origins but that intelligence is due to be released within the next two months.
The investigation was originally commissioned as a bipartisan effort but ended up becoming a Republican document after the leadership of the Senate HELP Committee changed, said Dr. Robert Kadlec, the lead investigator who ran the pandemic response in 2020-2021 as assistant secretary of HHS.
Sen. Roger Marshall tells ABC News he has reviewed some of that classified intelligence and thinks it will not contradict the conclusions in this report.
“I think number one is that the facts are solid in this investigation,” Marshall told ABC News, adding the team had set out to pressure-test and “shoot down” both theories. Having done that, he said, “a preponderance of evidence” points to that unintentional lab leak, he claims.
“I think that this– if it was a civil lawsuit, I think that the jury would say, ‘Yes, indeed, we think that this came from a laboratory, an unintentional laboratory leak in Wuhan, China,'” he said.
When pressed by ABC News, Marshall conceded the case might not stick in criminal court.
“These are theories, these are not facts,” Kadlec told ABC News, but acknowledged there are potential telltale clues that point to the possibility of an accidental lab incident.
“I would fully expect that there may be some insights that can be shared with the American public that would give them greater confidence as to what was known, when it was known, and provide, hopefully — at least some — collaboration or corroboration of our study,” Kadlec said. “I think to move onto the next phase of this conversation, which is, how do we work collectively with China and other countries around the world to prevent the next pandemic, whether it be deliberate, accidental or natural?”
Said John Brownstein, Chief Innovation Officer at Boston Children’s and an ABC News Medical Contributor: “We have to remember that most evidence still is circumstantial and inconclusive. And unfortunately, the scientific community has had its hands tied because of the lack of data. So we need more data to unlock this mystery, to really for once and for all figure out what took place in Wuhan.”
(NEW YORK) — Dominion Voting Systems, in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit, has accused Fox News of knowingly pushing false conspiracy theories that the voting machine company rigged the 2020 presidential election in Joe Biden’s favor, in what Dominion claims was an effort to combat concerns over declining ratings and viewer retention.
Fox has defended its coverage, dismissing the suit as a “political crusade in search of a financial windfall.”
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Apr 18, 9:30 AM EDT
Jury selection underway
Jury selection is underway Tuesday morning at Delaware Superior Court in Wilmington, Delaware.
The jury is expected to be seated by the end of the morning, with opening statements expected to begin shortly thereafter, according to the judge in the case.
(NEW YORK) — McDonald’s burgers have been an American classic since 1955.
Now, the iconic fast food chain is planning some changes, including how they cook their quintessential burgers.
For their signature Big Mac, McDouble, cheeseburger and hamburger, McDonald’s is promising softer buns, caramelized patties cooked with white onions on the grill, cheese slices that melt more and even an extra special sauce.
McDonald’s claims the improvements are so good even the Hamburgler is coming out of retirement to steal a bite.
The updated menu items have already been rolling out in restaurants along the West Coast, according to McDonald’s, and a few lucky ABC staffers and their families stopped by the Golden Arches in Los Angeles for a taste test.
Staffers agreed the food was indeed “very saucy” and “very cheesy” and one staffer’s young daughter added, “Yeah, very good!”
The McDonald’s changes are coming at a time when the burger business is heating up and McDonald’s continues to hang on to its market shares amid competition from other popular chains like Shake Shack, In-N-Out Burger and Five Guys.
Business experts like strategist Kathleen Griffith said these tweaks may help McDonald’s keep up with its rivals.
“Being that burger that people know, pulling out the original mascots, that sort of strategy is never going to get you into trouble when you work on driving a consistent customer experience. It’s a good recipe,” Griffith said.
The rolling launch is anticipated to be completed by 2024 and while McDonald’s is not planning to increase prices for these burgers, some individual franchises may update prices.
Bebe Rexha is speaking out after noticing her weight was a trending topic over the weekend.
Taking to Twitter Sunday, the “I’m Good” singer shared a screenshot of a TikTok where the trending search read “bebe rexha weight.”
“Seeing that search bar is so upsetting,” she wrote. “I’m not mad cause it’s true. I did gain weight. But it just sucks. Thank you to all the people who love me no matter what.”
In a following tweet, Bebe, 33, added, “I’ve always struggled with my weight. A b**** likes to eat.” And, when one fan reminded her, “As long as YOU are happy then it doesn’t matter!!!! Don’t starve yourself and lose your happiness,” she responded, “I’m working on myself everyday. Just discouraged a bit right now.”
Bebe was met with encouraging messages from fans, with one tweeting, “You look amazing, don’t let that get to you! Dream body fr.”
Another added, “And you look beautiful no matter what there are more important things in the world that people should focus on instead of other peoples weight or appearance.”
In Netflix’s new romantic comedy The Perfect Find, Gabrielle Union plays Jenna Jones, a 40-year-old woman attempting to pick up the pieces after losing her fashion industry job and long-term boyfriend. A first look of the film has been shared, featuring photos of Gab as Jenna and her eventual love interest Eric, played by Keith Powers. He’s a younger co-worker at the job that marks her fashion comeback and also her boss’s son. The film will follow Jenna as she decides whether her secret romance is worth taking the risk.
Gabrielle says the idea for the film came to her as she and her I’ll Have Another production company were producing Robinne Lee’s The Idea of You, “a very specific story to an aging white woman.”
“I knew it wasn’t something I could just shove myself into, because it really wasn’t the right story for me,” Gab tells Vanity Fair. “It made me be on the lookout for a story that made me feel the same way.” After re-reading Tia Williams’s novel The Perfect Find, a lightbulb went off. The story also hit close to home.
“[It] really sparked something inside of me about older women and how we can oftentimes disappear from society, almost, in terms of people looking at us as like we are past our prime. That we carry no value, that no one sees value in a woman over 28, much less over 35, much less over 40,” says Union, who also serves as a producer on the film. “But baby, I’m thriving. So I wanted something that spoke to that I hadn’t done before. Which is tough, because I’ve done a lot of rom-coms. This one is new. I’m thrilled.”
James McAvoy is re-teaming with Blumhouse, the studio behind his M. Night Shyamalan films Split and Glass, for Speak No Evil, a remake of the Danish psychological horror thriller Gaestern, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The new feature centers on a family that goes on a dream vacation, only to have it turn into a psychological nightmare. Speak No Evil is slated to open August 9, 2024…
ABC has renewed The Rookie for a sixth season, the network announced on Monday. The series stars Nathan Fillion as the LAPD’s oldest rookie officer who decides to join the force after a life-altering incident. Mekia Cox, Alyssa Diaz, Richard T. Jones, Melissa O’Neil, Jenna Dewan and Shawn Ashmore co-star…
The legal drama Reasonable Doubt has been renewed for a second season at Hulu, with The Best Man‘s Morris Chestnut joining the cast. The series, from executive producers Raamla Mohamed, Kerry Washington and Larry Wilmore, follows high-powered Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Jacqueline “Jax” Stewart — played by Emayatzy Corinealdi — as she deals with past traumas, a failing marriage, motherhood and a murder case, all while trying to keep her life together. Chestnut will play Corey Cash, “a charming, media-savvy defense attorney who often represents the underdogs. When Jax brings in Corey to help on a new high-profile case, she soon realizes that he’s more shine than substance and threatening her position at the firm”…
State Department Photo by Ron Przysucha/ Public Domain
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that an American diplomatic convoy was attacked in Sudan, where forces loyal to two rival generals are battling for control of the resource-rich North African nation.
“I can confirm that yesterday we had an American diplomatic convoy that was fired on,” Blinken told reporters during a trip to Japan. “All of our people are safe and unharmed, but this action was reckless, it was irresponsible and, of course, unsafe. A diplomatic convoy with diplomatic plates, a U.S. flag being fired upon.”
Since heavy fighting erupted in Sudan on Saturday, at least 185 people have been killed and more than 1,800 others have been wounded, according to United Nations Special Representative for Sudan Volker Perthes. The Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate, a pro-democracy group monitoring casualties, put the civilian death toll at 144 and said 796 others were injured. The number of casualties was expected to continue to climb with the ongoing violence.
The fighting started in Khartoum and quickly spread to other parts of the country, though “the heaviest concentration of fighting” remains centered in the densely populated capital, according to the World Health Organization, the global health arm of the U.N.
Among those killed were three World Food Programme employees who were working in Sudan’s hunger-stricken North Darfur state. Two other employees were injured in the same incident on Saturday, according to the World Food Programme, the food assistance branch of the U.N., which was forced to temporary halt all operations in Sudan due to the violence.
The widespread clashes are the culmination of weeks of tensions between Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, the commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces, and Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, the head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a Sudanese paramilitary group. So far, neither has shown any indication of backing down. The two men were once allies who had jointly orchestrated a military coup in 2021 that dissolved Sudan’s power-sharing government and derailed its short-lived transition to democracy, following the ousting of a long-time dictator in 2019.
Blinken said he spoke separately with Burhan and Dagalo via telephone on Tuesday morning, making “very clear that any attacks, threats, dangers posed to our diplomats were totally unacceptable.” While Monday’s attack on the American diplomatic convoy remains under investigation, the secretary said the initial reports suggest “it was undertaken by forces associated with the RSF.”
During his conversations with both generals, Blinken said he urged “them to agree to a 24-hour ceasefire to allow Sudanese to safely reunite with their families and to obtain desperately needed relief supplies.”
“Indiscriminate military operations have resulted in significant civilian deaths and injuries, and are recklessly endangering the Sudanese people, diplomats including U.S. personnel, and humanitarian aid workers,” the secretary told reporters. “If implemented successfully, a ceasefire for 24 hours can create a foundation to build upon for a more sustained halt to the fighting and a return to negotiations on a durable end to the hostilities.”
Dagalo, who is also known as Hemedti, took to Twitter on Tuesday to confirm his “vital conversation” with Blinken.
“We discussed pressing issues in Sudan and our shared dedication to freedom, justice, and democracy for our people,” the RSF commander tweeted. “Although reluctant participants in this war, it is necessary to protect our people and defend our values.”
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Burhan said in a statement Tuesday that all those fighting for the RSF who lay down arms will be pardoned and absorbed into the Sudanese Armed Forces.
Perthes, the U.N. envoy for Sudan, told a virtual press briefing on Tuesday that he’s been in near-constant contact with leaders on both sides as the fighting continues “almost uninterruptedly.” He said U.N.-brokered, short-term ceasefires were put in place on Sunday and Monday but that clashes broke out again before the time was up.
“It’s a very fluid situation, so it’s very difficult to say where the balance is shifting to,” Perthes said. “There are objective difficulties with access to this country and mediators would not easily be able to come here and, to be very honest, the two sides that are fighting are not giving the impression that they want mediation for a peace between them right away.”
Since the fighting began, virtually all U.N. operations on the ground have seen their staff and facilities caught in the crossfire, Perthes said, making it “extremely difficult if not impossible for humanitarian agencies to deliver aid.”
“We cannot deliver when our staff is attacked, when they’re thrown out of their offices, when their offices are destroyed and their vehicles looted,” he added.
A number of hospitals in Khartoum and other Sudanese cities have been severely damaged or destroyed, according to the Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate, which called the issue “a clear violation of international humanitarian law.” The group said in a statement Monday that some facilities are now completely “out of service” after being bombed, while others lack power or adequate staff and are running dangerously low on medical supplies, food and water.
During Monday’s press briefing in Washington, D.C., White House spokesperson John Kirby called for de-escalation and an “immediate ceasefire without conditions” between the warring parties in Sudan, while warning any Americans there to “treat this situation with the utmost seriousness”
“This dangerous escalation jeopardizes the progress made to date in the negotiations to restore Sudan’s democratic transition and it undermines the aspirations of the Sudanese people,” Kirby told reporters.
(LONDON) — A Russian judge denied the appeal of Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who has been charged with spying, in a Moscow court on Tuesday.
The reporter, a correspondent with the paper’s Moscow bureau, stands accused of “acting on the instructions of the American side” and collecting state secrets about the military.
Moscow City Court was expected to hear an appeal of the espionage charge from Gershkovich’s legal team, Tatyana Nozhkina and Maria Korchagina of the ZKS law firm, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Gershkovich arrived after noon local time, wearing a checkered shirt and jeans. He stood inside a glass detention area within the courtroom, a standard practice for criminal defendants in the Russian court system. Members of the press were escorted out of the courtroom and into a nearby viewing area before the hearing began.
Lynne Tracy, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, was present in the courtroom. Speaking outside the court following the denial, Tracy said the charges were “baseless” and called again for Russian authorities to release Gershkovich.
“I can only say how troubling it was to see Evan, an innocent journalist, held in these circumstances,” Tracy said.
Russia’s FSB intelligence agency said on March 30 that it had detained the WSJ journalist for spying.
“It is established that Evan Gershkovich, acting on the instruction of the American side, was collecting information consisting of state secrets, about the activity of one of the enterprises of the Russian military industrial complex. He was arrested in Ekaterinburg during an attempt to receive secret information,” according to Interfax, a Russian state-affiliated news agency, which quoted FSB officials.
The Wall Street Journal said the same day that it “vehemently denies” the spying allegations brought by Russia’s intelligence service against its reporter.
The paper “seeks the immediate release of our trusted and dedicated reporter,” a WSJ spokesperson said in a statement, adding, “We stand in solidarity with Evan and his family.”
“He is a distinguished journalist and his arrest is an attack on a free press and it should spur outrage in all free people and governments around the world,” Emma Tucker, WSJ editor-in-chief, and Almar Latour, WSJ publisher and Dow Jones CEO, said in a joint statement.
U.S. officials on April 10 said they determined Gershkovich had being “wrongfully detained” by Russia, a designation that would allow the U.S. government to more aggressively advocate for his freedom.
Tracy visited the detained reporter on Monday, according to the State Department.
“I can report based on what Ambassador Tracy has said, he’s in good health and good spirits considering the circumstances,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters. “We continue to call for his immediate release from this unjust detention.”
Speaking outside the court on Tuesday, Tracy called for the release of both Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, another American detained in Russia.
“We also call for the immediate release of Paul Whelan,” Tracy said. “Paul has been held for more than four years in Russia. Both men deserve to go home to their families now.”
(NEW YORK) — The leak of dozens of highly classified documents on the social media platform Discord has elicited concern over online spaces where users can post sensitive government material without notice of authorities.
Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old airman in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, allegedly posted documents as early as December in a private Discord server, akin to a members-only chat room, according to charging documents.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was first informed of the leak months later in early April, he said at a press conference last week.
Teixeira was charged on Friday with unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information and willful retention of classified documents, which collectively carry a maximum of 15 years in prison.
The blockbuster leak underscores the challenge posed by social media platforms like Discord on which sensitive material can spread from private chat rooms into the public square, legal and national security experts said.
However, some experts and civil liberties advocates cautioned that expanded government surveillance of social media could violate privacy protections and limit free speech.
In an online statement on Friday, Discord Chief Legal Officer Clint Smith acknowledged the difficulty posed by the presence of sensitive government material but said the company had removed posts in connection with the Russia-Ukraine leak.
“Classified military intelligence documents pose a significant, complex challenge for Discord as they do for other online platforms – only authorized government personnel can determine whether a document is classified, unclassified, or even authentic,” Smith said.
“However, what is clear is that unauthorized disclosure of classified government documents violates Discord’s Terms of Service, which prohibit the posting of illegal content on our platform. Because of this, in connection with this incident, we have removed content, terminated user accounts, and are cooperating with the efforts of the United States Departments of Defense and Justice in their investigation of this incident,” he added.
The Biden administration, meanwhile, is considering an expansion of its surveillance of social media sites and chat rooms in the aftermath of the leak, NBC reported last week.
Discord, a platform with more than 150 million users worldwide, grew in popularity during the pandemic. Popular with young people and gamers, the site hosts different servers, or online communities, many of which are private.
In a 2021 cybersecurity report, the app drew scrutiny over its potential for enabling data theft.
“The Discord domain helps attackers disguise the exfiltration of data by making it look like any other traffic coming across the network,” a study from Cisco’s Talos cybersecurity team found.
The federal government faces robust legal limits in monitoring sites like Discord, however, since the U.S. cannot surveil private domestic communications without a warrant, James Lewis, a former senior intelligence official and a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told ABC News.
“Here’s an easy rule of thumb: Can you get it in a Google search?” Lewis said. “If the answer is ‘yes,’ it’s public; if you can’t, it’s private. Then you go down the route of a warrant.”
“If you had a private club and gathered around the table to talk, the government doesn’t have a right to break into that club,” he added.
In turn, social media platforms such as Discord face government pressure to monitor for illicit material but they encounter formidable challenges due in part to user preferences for data privacy, Eric Goldman, a Santa Clara University law professor who studies social media and content moderation, told ABC News.
“Social media providers are stuck in the middle. On the one hand, we want them to police against the dissemination of classified information,” Goldman said. “On the other hand, we don’t want them removing documents at the government’s request.”
While the images of the documents appeared to originate on a private Discord server, they later spread on publicly accessible social media platforms, such as 4chan and Twitter.
Enhanced government surveillance online could hinder free speech across social media, Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the National Security Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, told ABC News.
“The disclosure of classified documents on one gaming website doesn’t justify pervasive monitoring of our social media by intelligence agencies,” Toomey said.
“Suspicionless monitoring of social media chills speech and threatens Americans’ right to live without fear of constant government scrutiny,” he added.
Focus on social media in the aftermath of the leak overlooks the issue of how Texeira got a hold of the trove of documents in the first place, said Lewis, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Why did a 21-year-old air national guardsmen have access to this material?” Lewis said. “That’s probably a better place to start because it doesn’t raise as many civil liberties concerns.”
While reexamining the pool of employees with access to highly classified information, the U.S. could also reconsider how it monitors such employees after granting them access, Lewis said.
“When you work for the government, particularly if you’re given security clearance, they usually make you sign a form giving them a right to access your bank account and other information,” he said.
“It seems like there’s a need for employees to expand that to include some monitoring of social media,” he added.
