(SAN FRANCISCO) — Bob Lee, Cash App founder and current executive at cryptocurrency firm MobileCoin, has died, the company told ABC News. He was 43 years old.
A longtime tech executive, Lee was the first chief technology officer at Square, a digital payment company founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
“Bob was a dynamo, a force of nature,” Joshua Goldbard, the CEO of MobileCoin, told ABC News in a statement.
“He was made for the world that is being born right now, he was a child of dreams, and whatever he imagined, no matter how crazy, he made real,” Goldbard added.
During the 2000s, Lee worked at Google, where he helped develop Android.
Cash App and the San Francisco Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lee is survived by his wife, Krista, and their two children.
“Bob’s real resume is the hearts and minds he touched in his time on earth,” Goldbarb said. “Bob’s legacy is the feeling that you can make a difference if you try, and of course his amazing children.”
Ahead of his debut as the voice of the titular wily plumber in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Chris Pratt got serious on The Drew Barrymore Show. He talked about finding faith and “the woman of his dreams,” wife Katherine Schwarzenegger.
“There was a moment in my life when I was really struggling and felt really broken,” said the Marvel movie star, who was separated from first wife Anna Faris in 2017, after eight years of marriage. They formally divorced in 2018.
“For me, my own journey, [it was] finding a higher power and leaning on that and being like, ‘Please save me,’ and then feeling saved,” he commented.
Pratt said he first met Schwarzenegger, the daughter of Arnold, “five, maybe six years ago,” in church.
“I was in the front row of church – which is like, you kind of don’t want to be like, ‘Woah, who’s that?’ at church,'” Pratt admitted. “But I was sneaking some glances and wondering, ‘Who is that?’ Anyway, ‘What am I doing? Come on, I’m broken, help me. But who’s that?'”
The pair hit it off, and “later on” began dating, he explained. They were married a year later, in 2019.
“God has a fast-forward button,” Pratt said. “When it’s right – boom! – you’re hit. You fall in love, you get married.” He added, “The minute you have faith, it all falls into place.”
He also likened finding Schwarzenegger to spotting a missing puzzle piece: “It just fits together…’Oh, it fits because it was the piece that was made to fit there.’ It felt like that.”
The couple now have two daughters, two-year-old Lyla Maria, and Eloise Christina, 10 months.
Pratt also has a 10-year-old son, Jack, from his marriage to Faris.
(NEW YORK) — Communities across the United States — from small towns to big cities — were on alert for tornadoes on Wednesday, as a major storm system sweeps through areas still reeling from devastating twisters.
There were an unspecified number of injuries and fatalities confirmed in Missouri’s Bollinger County after a tornado hit the Glenallen area, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol.
At least nine other tornadoes had already been reported across Iowa and Illinois, including a “large and extremely dangerous tornado” that touched down near Canton, Illinois, on Tuesday evening, according to the National Weather Service.
On Wednesday morning, the National Weather Service issued a tornado watch for parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. The cities of Little Rock, Arkansas, and Detroit were included in the watch areas, where forecasters said conditions will be favorable for tornadoes and severe thunderstorms. People were warned to seek shelter.
As the storm continues to move east, severe weather is in the forecast for a vast area — from western Texas to western New York. Cities in the bull’s-eye for damaging winds, large hail and tornadoes on Wednesday include Memphis, Louisville, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland, according to the latest forecast.
The forecast comes just days after a powerful storm system unleashed violent tornadoes and severe thunderstorms across the country, killing at least 32 people and leaving thousands without power.
The National Weather Service has confirmed at least 81 tornadoes touched down in 14 states on March 31 and April 1. It was the largest single tornado outbreak to hit the U.S. in a year, since the one that spawned 140 twisters in southeastern states — from Texas to Maryland — on April 12-13, 2020.
Mo’Nique is opening up about her Netflix special, My Name Is Mo’Nique.
The project is a concept that was conceived in 2017, but hit a few bumps in the road, including being dropped by the streamer and her filing a racial and gender discrimination lawsuit against them in 2019 claiming they were paying her less than other stars. The lawsuit was settled and now, over five years later, the special has been released on the platform.
“I think that things happen when they’re supposed to,” the comedian told Entertainment Tonight about the special that premiered on April 4.
Mo’Nique also shared how the content she would have originally put out changed, given that so much time has passed.
“Now, I’m a 55-year-old woman. I’ve seen more life [and] I’ve had more experiences. I’m even more unapologetic now than I was then,” she said. “So I think that with life comes experience comes wisdom comes knowledge comes freedom… I have nothing to hide. I wear everything on my sleeve so I have nothing to hide.”
“You know, sometimes people say, ‘Well, why did you say that?’ Because it’s mine. And because it’s mine, my experience, my journey, my walk, I can say it how I choose to,” she continued. “I can say it when I want to because it is mine. So April 4, baby, the world will hear. It’s mine to tell.”
Coming up, Mo’Nique’s also set to star in Netflix’s The Deliverance, directed by Lee Daniels, whom she feuded with for 13 years over accusations he blackballed her for not promoting the 2009 film Precious during awards season. They have since patched things up.
Bob Dylan and Iggy Pop are among the many headliners booked for the 57th edition of the Montreux Jazz Festival, which runs from June 30 to July 15 on the shores of Lake Geneva, Switzerland.
Dylan is set to headline July 1, with his Rough and Rowdy Ways show, named after his 2020 album, while Iggy will headline July 6, with openers Generation Sex featuring Billy Idol, Steve Jones, Tony James, and Paul Cook.
Other performers confirmed for the two-week festival include Lionel Richie,Nile Rodgers & Chic, Buddy Guy and Joe Bonamassa, Mavis Staples and Norah Jones, Seal and more.
A public sale is set to kick off Thursday, April 6 at noon local time. A complete schedule of artists can be found at montreuxjazzfestival.com.
Bob Dylan and Lionel Richie are among the many headliners booked for the 57th edition of the Montreux Jazz Festival, which runs from June 30 to July 15 on the shores of Lake Geneva, Switzerland.
Dylan is booked to headline July 1, with his Rough and Rowdy Ways show, named after his 2020 album, while Richie will headline July 3.
Other headliners include Nile Rodgers & Chic, Simply Red, Seal,Buddy Guy and Joe Bonamassa, Chris Isaak,Mavis Staples and Norah Jones, Seal and more.
A public sale is set to kick off Thursday, April 6 at noon local time. A complete schedule of artists can be found at montreuxjazzfestival.com.
(SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas) — Victims of the 2017 mass shooting at a Sutherland Springs, Texas, church have reached a tentative agreement with the Justice Department to settle their yearslong legal battle with the government for $144.5 million, according to an attorney for the victims and the Justice Department.
Twenty-six were killed and 22 were injured in the Nov. 5, 2017, massacre at the small, rural First Baptist Church.
The Sutherland Springs families “have gone through so much pain and loss in the most horrific way,” trial attorney Jamal Alsaffar said in a statement to ABC News. “But despite that, these families fought for justice, endured and won two trials against the Federal Government, and made this country safer as a result.”
The agreement is “not final,” Alsaffar said, and will require final signoff from Attorney General Merrick Garland, but if approved, it would bring to a close a complex and uncomfortable process for the DOJ as it sought to appeal a judge’s ruling that found the government largely responsible for the shooting.
In July 2021, a judge ruled that the U.S. Air Force was 60% responsible for the church shooting because it failed to alert the FBI that the shooter, Devin Kelley, was previously investigated and court martialed for assaulting his then-wife and her stepson on an Air Force base, which would have flagged him as barred from purchasing a weapon under the NICS background check system.
The DOJ’s appeal of the ruling was roundly criticized by gun control advocates and survivors of the attack who accused the Biden administration of undermining its own positions on the importance of the national background checks system.
District judge Xavier Rodriguez had ordered the government to pay victims more than $230 million in damages, saying that evidence presented at trial “conclusively established that no other individual — not even Kelley’s own parents or partners — knew as much as the United States about the violence that Devin Kelley had threatened to commit and was capable of committing.”
After the government expressed its intent to appeal, many of the survivors, still struggling with expensive medical care to treat the injuries they suffered, spoke out in excruciating detail how the delays in receiving settlement money left them essentially in limbo.
“No words or amount of money can diminish the immense tragedy of the mass shooting in Sutherland Springs,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in a statement Wednesday. “Today’s announcement brings the litigation to a close, ending a painful chapter for the victims of this unthinkable crime.”
The DOJ added in a statement, “The NICS plays a critical role in combatting gun violence, and the federal government is always striving to improve the functioning of that system. The Department continues to work actively to combat gun violence as part of its comprehensive violent crime reduction strategy.”
(ATLANTA) — As fears of a “tripledemic” die down, health officials say they are seeing an uptick of a particular strain of the flu: influenza B.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of tests that are positive for influenza B has increased from 0.12% the week ending Jan. 7 to 0.36% the week ending March 25.
Meanwhile, over the same period, the percentage of tests positive for influenza A — the most common flu strain — has declined from 8.58% to 0.58%.
Meanwhile, states are showing similar trends. In New York, as of the week ending March 25, of the 2,013 samples subtyped, 64.16% were identified as influenza B, state health department data shows.
Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital, told ABC News that it’s not surprising to see an uptick of influenza B towards the end of the flu season.
However, due to few to no cases of influenza reported during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, people may have forgotten how the flu normally behaves.
“We have to remember that, overall, we’re returning to a somewhat normal respiratory virus season,” said Brownstein, an ABC News contributor. “Influenza B is often later in the season…It’s not a surprise at all that we’re seeing flu B and, as part of our return to normal, we have to remember that flu still has an impact on population health.”
Since the beginning of the year, hospital admissions for flu have been declining, from 12,883 the week ending Jan. 7 to 1,222 the week ending March 25.
Brownstein said the decline of other viruses as helped prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed but advised Americans to stay vigilant.
“Right now, the hospitals are benefiting from a little bit of a break,” he said. “We do have more breathing room in our hospitals than we have in the past, and that’s thankful, because that means that we can perform elective procedures, that means that our frontline health care workers are getting a little bit of a breather.”
Brownstein added, “We still have COVID circulating, there’s still other viruses that are still creating capacity challenges. A bad flu B peak could bring us right back to some of those capacity concerns.”
There are four types of influenza – A, B, C and D – however, A and B are the most common and cause seasonal epidemics in people, what we refer to as “fu season.”
However, flu activity across the U.S. remains in the “low” category and there Is currently no evidence that influenza B is more dangerous or more worrisome than Influenza A or any other strain.
“It just highlights the fact that, we still need to be vigilant about respiratory viruses, to being vaccinated against flu is still important,” said Brownstein.
According to the CDC’s weekly flu vaccination dashboard, about 48.3% of U.S. adults reported receiving a flu shot as of mid-February, higher than the 45.1% who reported doing so the same time last year.
Meanwhile, about 54.9% of all children in the U.S. are currently vaccinated against flu by the end of March, about the same as March 2022.
The federal health agency said flu vaccines are still very effective at preventing hospitalization and death. Flu vaccines administered this season reduced the risk of influenza A-related hospitalization among children by nearly three quarters and among adults by nearly half, the CDC said.
Brownstein said while it’s never too late for someone who hasn’t gotten the flu vaccine yet to be immunized, there will be availability issues as pharmacies and doctors’ offices give out their final doses.
“You will be challenged by availability and, of course, the longer you wait, the further the value of that vaccine is diminished,” Brownstein said. “The value keeps going down the longer you wait.”
ABC News’ Emma Egan and Youri Benadjaoudi contributed to this report.
In a first look for Jeremy Renner: The Diane Sawyer Interview — A Story of Terror, Survival and Triumph, airing Thursday, April 6, at 10 p.m. ET on ABC, the Avengers star reflects on the January accident involving his seven-ton snowcat.
“If I was there, on my own, that’d [have] been a horrible way to die. And surely I would’ve. Surely,” Renner said. “But I wasn’t alone. It was my nephew. Sweet Alex. And the rest of the cavalry came.”
Renner, who says he suffered more than 30 broken bones as a result of the accident, along with blunt chest trauma, said he wrote a goodbye note to his family while in critical condition at the hospital.
“I’m writing down notes in my phone to — last words to my family,” he recalled, tearing up.
Renner said he remembers the pain from the accident. “I was awake through every moment,” he told Sawyer, but said that he would “do it again — because it was going right at my nephew.”
The exclusive also features harrowing recollections of the accident from Renner’s family members, including his nephew he was trying to protect, and behind-the-scenes snapshots from his ongoing journey to recovery.
He told Sawyer that he “chose to survive” after the accident and refused to let it kill him.
When asked about his hope for the future when it comes to stunts that come with action-packed roles, Renner said, “I’ve lost a lot of flesh and bone in this experience, but I’ve been refueled and refilled with love and titanium.”
The special airs Thursday, April 6, on ABC and the next day on Hulu.
(LONDON) — Israeli police officers stormed a mosque in Jerusalem overnight, raising tensions during a high holiday and prompting clashes that continued into Wednesday morning.
Video from the scene released by the Israeli Police Force showed officers entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque, where worshipers were celebrating Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.
Israeli police said they’d entered the mosque to remove “masked and law-breaking youths,” who they accused of taking over the mosque “in a painful manner.” Police accused them of “disturbing and desecrating the order inside the mosque.”
Israeli officers fired rubber bullets and stun guns inside the compound, they said. Palestinian worshipers returned fire with fireworks. More than 350 were arrested after they’d barricaded themselves inside, police said.
“These hooligans harm, first of all, the mass of Muslims who come to pray in the mosque,” Israeli officials said in a statement.
At least 12 people were injured, along with an Israeli officer, officials said. Police released a video of people with zip-tied hands being marched away from the mosque in the early hours of Wednesday.
“We warn the occupation against crossing red lines at holy sites, which will lead to a big explosion,”Nabil Abu Rudeineh, deputy prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority, said in a statement.
In the hours after the raid began, clashes erupted throughout the region. About nine rockets were launched, Israel Defense Forces said.
Four rockets from Gaza Strip were detected as they traveled into Israel, officials said, adding that they’d been intercepted. Another four landed in “open areas,” they said.
“In response to rocket fire from Gaza into Israel earlier, the IDF struck weapon manufacturing sites and a storage site belonging to Hamas, in addition to a military compound used for training terrorist operatives,” security officials said. “IDF tanks also struck military posts along the security fence.”
The Jordanian foreign minister in a statement condemned in the “strongest terms the Israeli occupation police storming the blessed mosque.”
ABC News’ Joe Simonetti, William Gretsky, Bruno Nota, Kerem Inal and Nassar Atta contributed to this report.
