It’s nearly inevitable that in every awards show an in memoriam segment comes up short, and this year’s Oscars was no exception.
While the Motion Picture Academy explained a special QR code was shown that included some forgotten names, it wasn’t enough to salve hurt feelings.
“Paul Sorvino was one of the greatest actors in cinematic history in Hollywood. It is unconscionable that he would be left out of the In Memoriam segment of the Oscars,” said the Goodfellas star’s widow, Dee Dee, in a lengthy statement obtained by ABC Audio.
Demanding an apology, she noted, “It’s a three-hour show, they can’t give a couple more minutes to get it right? Paul Sorvino gave decades to this industry and was loved by all.” She added, “A QR code is not acceptable.”
Sorvino’s Oscar-winning daughter, Mira, tweeted, “I for one am remembering Dad on this Oscars night” with a video of her embracing her father after her win in 1996.
She later added, “It is baffling beyond belief that my beloved father and many other amazing brilliant departed actors were left out.” She commented, “The Oscars forgot about Paul Sorvino, but the rest of us never will!!”
Other stars who were left out were Sorvino’s Goodfellas co-star — and Sopranos actor — Tony Sirico, Anne Heche, and actress and model Charlbi Dean, who was in the cast of the Best Picture nominee Triangle of Sadness.
Sirico died at 79 on July 8; Sorvino passed on July 25.
Heche died on August 11 aged 53 after a car accident; Dean, 32, died weeks later, also in August, after suffering from a rare infection.
(NEW YORK) — The largest bank failure since the 2008 crisis has triggered a major U.S. government intervention to protect the financial system.
Silicon Valley Bank, the nation’s 16th largest bank, collapsed on Friday, forcing a government takeover and calling into question the fate of almost $175 billion in customer deposits.
On Sunday, Signature Bank, the 29th-largest bank in the U.S., closed its doors, suggesting the financial panic had spread.
Many bank stocks plummeted in early trading on Monday. First Republic Bank dropped 65% before trading was halted; Western Alliance Bancorp fell almost 60%. Charles Schwab, the eight-largest U.S. bank, dropped nearly 10%.
“This has been riding on a roller coaster the last couple of days,” Joe Lynyak, a partner at the international law firm Dorsey & Whitney and an expert on bank failures, told ABC News. “Suddenly, we’re in a crisis.”
Here’s what you need to know about what caused the Silicon Valley Bank failure, how far it has spread and what it means for you.
Why did Silicon Valley Bank collapse?
The failure of Silicon Valley Bank resembles an “old-fashioned bank run,” William Chittenden, a professor of finance at Texas State University, told ABC News.
The bank’s deposit base, which draws heavily from startup firms in the tech industry, tripled in size during the pandemic-era tech boom between 2020 and 2022. Rather than invest all of the deposits into other startups or venture firms, the bank placed a sizable share of the funds into long-term Treasury bonds and mortgage bonds, which typically deliver small but reliable returns amid low interest rates.
In short order, however, the low-interest rate environment evaporated. Over the last year, the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate 4.5%, the fastest pace since the 1980s. The sudden spike in interest rates dropped the value of Silicon Valley Bank’s Treasury bonds and mortgage bonds, punching a hole in its balance sheet.
Facing a difficult business environment for tech companies, some large clients pulled money from the bank last week and it was forced to sell some of the distressed securities in order to provide the cash.
“When the bank started selling the assets, it became more evidence of the value that they’d lost,” Anat Admati, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, told ABC News.
“Imagine that your entire assets are your house and you bought the house with very little down payment and housing prices go down,” Admati added. “You’re basically under water, meaning if you sell the assets, you can’t pay your debt.”
The vulnerable condition of the bank’s balance sheet scared other major depositors, who in turn pulled their funds from the bank, prompting a bank run that gained momentum quickly since the bank depended on a relatively small number of large depositors. It collapsed within days.
“The bank simply didn’t have enough cash on hand to meet all of their depositor needs,” Chittenden said.
Escalating the financial risk, New York-based Signature Bank shuttered on Sunday at the order of state officials. The bank, which had recently welcomed cryptocurrency deposits, fell prey to fears of a bank run among those who held risky assets, Chittenden said.
“The run on Silicon Valley Bank kind of spooked those customers,” Chittenden added. “So Signature Bank went under.”
What did the government do in response to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank?
The U.S government has taken speedy and extraordinary steps to limit the risk posed to the financial system.
“The government was caught unawares and had to take extreme emergency action,” said Lynyak of Dorsey & Whitney.
Almost immediately, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which protects the stability of the financial system, took over Silicon Valley Bank on Friday in an effort to protect depositors.
Since the bank is FDIC-insured, depositors are guaranteed protection of up to $250,000 in funds for each different type of account held.
The group of depositors in Silicon Valley Bank is made up of a relatively small set of venture capital firms, startups and other large investors, many of whom held deposits that far exceeded $250,000. In turn, those depositors risked losing a portion of or all of their money that exceeded that threshold.
“Everybody panicked,” Admati said. “They were anxious all weekend long about whether they could make payroll and pull money out because it’s stuck there.”
In response to the outcry and fearing wider spread of the crisis, the FDIC, the Treasury Department and the Fed took further action on Sunday, telling depositors in Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank that the FDIC would protect all of their funds, including those that exceed the $250,000 limit.
Later on Sunday, the Fed announced an emergency lending program to cover the deposits at issue and restore wider confidence in the financial system.
Under the program, the Federal Reserve will allow distressed banks to borrow funds on favorable terms directly from the Fed, instead of generating cash by selling underwater securities, as Silicon Valley Bank had done. Those funds will equip banks to pay depositors who may want to quickly pull out funds amid the turmoil.
Now, the banks can use distressed securities as collateral to borrow from the emergency lending program as if the securities had retained their full value, allowing the banks to raise cash and ensuring the Fed will take on much of the risk tied to the banks’ declining assets.
Returning to the analogy of a home mortgage in a declining housing market, Admati said the program resembles a homeowner getting a loan against their mortgage as if conditions had remained as strong as they were when the house was purchased rather than taking into account the new, worse market.
“They’re lending to the bank more than the assets are worth,” Admati said.
The federal agencies behind the emergency response refuted notions that the moves amount to a taxpayer bailout. “No losses associated with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank will be borne by the taxpayer,” said the official statement from Treasury, the Fed, and the FDIC.
Prominent critics have asserted instead that the government response should be considered a bailout, including the editorial board at The Wall Street Journal.
Has the Silicon Valley Bank collapse triggered a banking crisis?
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank has prompted fears of a wider contagion throughout the financial industry.
However, the spread of financial distress remains limited, in part because Silicon Valley Bank served a narrow swathe of the economy concentrated in startup tech firms, some experts told ABC News. Other experts cautioned that the situation continues to be in flux and could escalate significantly.
Chittenden, who downplayed the risk of a wider financial crisis, said Silicon Valley Bank serves a niche market set apart from the economy as a whole.
“It really is relatively isolated,” he said. “It doesn’t have all those interchangeable relationships.”
“It’s not a systemic problem that lots and lots of banks are going to be facing,” he added.
Darrell Duffie, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, echoed the sentiment, citing the relatively small size of the failed banks compared to the largest in the sector.
“At this point, it doesn’t look like a broadspread crisis,” Duffie said. “The affected banks have taken more risks than most others and they are not among the very biggest banks, which are more heavily regulated and have a lot more small depositors.”
Admati disagreed, saying recent events should be considered a financial crisis and the outcome remains uncertain.
In rescuing depositors in Silicon Valley Bank, federal agencies invoked the “systemic risk exception,” a stipulation that allows the government to intervene on behalf of depositors.
“It’s certainly a crisis because the bank wasn’t considered systemic and all of a sudden it is considered systemic,” Admati said. “They themselves defined it as bigger than just one failed bank.”
“These things are very hard to predict,” she added, noting that the outcome depends in part on theemotional response and behavior of depositors, which stands apart from the underlying financial damage.
What does the current banking emergency mean for you?
The vast majority of banking customers hold deposits below the FDIC insurance threshold of $250,000, ensuring the protection of funds, regardless of a potential bank collapse, Lynyak said.
The recent bank collapses offer an important reminder that customers should scrutinize the banks that hold their money.
“People should probably be careful about looking at the capital levels and the business plan of their particular bank,” Lynyak said. “Some small inquiry is always very useful.”
As depositors big and small monitor a financial emergency, their assessment ultimately determines the outcome for the wider economy, he added.
“As long as the public believes their deposits are safe, our system is safe,” Lynyak said.
(DALLAS) — A pair of suspects were arrested in Dallas in connection with a quadruple shooting that left four people dead inside an apartment that allegedly stemmed from a custody dispute, according to police.
Cops responded to the scene in northwest Dallas around 7 p.m. Sunday and found four people shot dead inside. Although police didn’t immediately identify the victims, court documents later revealed them to be Juan Diego Cruz, Lupe Cruz, Jasmine Borja-Santos and a fourth person who was only identified as “Fatima.”
An infant was also found inside the apartment but the child was unharmed, according to police.
A neighbor told police they heard gunshots around 1 a.m. but didn’t immediately call the police, court documents said. Family members of the victims alerted the authorities after the victims didn’t return phone calls during the day, court documents said.
Investigators tracked a vehicle linked to the shooting. About two hours later, police said they found it and arrested Artemio Maldonado, 18, and Azucena Sanchez, 20, according to police. Court documents said a gun was allegedly recovered between the door and the driver’s seat.
Court documents allege Sanchez was Juan Diego Cruz’s ex-girlfriend and the two were in a bitter dispute over the custody of their son.
Sanchez and Maldonado allegedly told investigators they broke into the apartment and had a confrontation with the victims, the court documents said. They allegedly told investigators that Maldonado opened fire on the four and left through the front door, according to court documents.
Attorney information for the suspects and details about their arraignment weren’t immediately available.
(NEW YORK) — Millions of residents in the Northeast are bracing for a massive winter storm that will bring inclement weather to the region over multiple days.
A coastal storm is expected to develop in the Northeast Monday night and transform into a nor’easter on Tuesday, forecasts from the National Weather Service show.
On Monday afternoon, the coastal low was gaining off the mid-Atlantic as it moved up the coast and gained strength. As a result, most from Washington, D.C., to Boston will see only rain on Monday, while the snow is starting across inland areas of New England.
Much of upstate New York, western Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire will get heavy snow by Tuesday morning. Along the coast from Rhode Island to Boston, heavy rain and strong winds will be possible.
As the nor’easter continues to pound the region, most areas across the Northeast will have completely changed over to snow.
Utility companies in the Northeast are bracing for possible outages, while New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is expected to issue a state of emergency at 8 p.m. Monday over the threat of widespread energy impacts.
“New Yorkers should prepare now for a multi-day event that will bring up to three feet of snow in certain parts of the Capital Region and Mid-Hudson region,” Hochul said in a statement Monday. “This storm will create hazardous road conditions through Wednesday morning, and I encourage New Yorkers in impacted regions to stay home and avoid any unnecessary travel to allow plow crews to do their job.”
Hartford, Connecticut, to Boston to Maine will likely see heavy snow Tuesday evening into early Wednesday.
Hartford and Boston are under inter storm watches for 4 to 8 inches of snow expected through early Wednesday morning. Albany, New York, is under a winter storm warning for 8 to 16 inches of snow.
Winter storm warnings have been issued from Pennsylvania to Maine, while a winter storm watch has been issued for the Boston area and a winter weather advisory issued for north New York City, where a couple of inches of snow are possible.
In the mountains, from Poconos to the Catskills to the Berkshires, some areas could see up to 2 feet of snow by Tuesday night.
Winds could gust up to 60 mph along the coast, especially in southeastern New England. With strong onshore winds, coastal flooding and erosion are possible from New Jersey to Maine.
A high wind warning is in effect for coastal Massachusetts and Cape Cod for gusts to 65 mph Tuesday into Wednesday.
(WASHINGTON) — Americans lost $10.3 billion to a wide variety of internet scams last year, according to an FBI report released this month.
The losses were the highest in five years, according to the annual report from the FBI. The bureau’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) lodged more than 2,000 complaints per day.
The most highly reported crimes were phishing expeditions, with 300,497 victims reporting over $52 million in losses in 2022, according to the bureau. Phishing, defined as “the use of unsolicited email, text messages, and telephone calls purportedly from a legitimate company requesting personal, financial, and/or login credentials,” is frequently successful because phishing emails will often resemble those from people victims know personally, prompting them to click on unsecured links.
Data breaches and non-payment scams were the next most common internet scams in 2022, claiming 58,859 and 51,679 victims, respectively, per the report.
Ransomware, a type of cyber intrusion which locks up a device’s data until a ransom is paid, is of particular concern for cybersecurity professionals due to the underreporting of ransomware attacks by victims. In 2022, the FBI “received 2,385 complaints identified as ransomware with adjusted losses of more than $34.3 million,” according to the report.
“The IC3 has seen an increase in an additional extortion tactic used to facilitate ransomware. The threat actors pressure victims to pay by threatening to publish the stolen data if they do not pay the ransom,” the IC3 warns.
By far, the most heavily targeted industry for ransomware attacks was the healthcare industry, followed by critical manufacturing’ and government.
“The FBI does not encourage paying a ransom to criminal actors,” the report says. “Paying a ransom may embolden adversaries to target additional organizations, encourage other criminal actors to engage in the distribution of ransomware, and/or fund illicit activities. Paying the ransom also does not guarantee that a victim’s files will be recovered.”
Earlier this year, the Justice Department disrupted a ransomware gang called HIVE, which was responsible for 87 incidents targeting critical infrastructure, the report says.
Call center scams, which emanate from India primarily, are responsible for over $1 billion in losses to victims.
“Call centers overwhelmingly target the elderly, with devastating effects,” the report says. “Almost half the victims report to be over 60 (46%), and experience 69% of the losses (over $724 million).”
In total, the elderly lost $3.1 billion to internet scams in 2022, the most of any age group.
The FBI has a 73% success rate in getting victims their funds back, according to the report.
Angela Bassett‘s been acting for more than 30 years, but she’s never won an Academy Award. That thought came to SZA‘s mind early Sunday morning, hours before the annual ceremony took place.
“Realizing Angela Basset [sic] doesn’t already have an Oscar make me wanna knock sh** over,” she tweeted. Angela would later lose the Best Supporting Actress award to Jamie Lee Curtis of Everything Everywhere All at Once, which upset the acting icon’s fans.
Creed III stars Jonathan Majors and Michael B. Jordan sent their love to Angela onstage following the loss. While presenting the award for Best Cinematography, Michael said, “Hey Auntie,” with Jordan adding, “We love you.”
Kid Cudi is making headway on what he hopes will be an inspiring memoir. After announcing the project in September, he took to Twitter to give fans an update on his progress and share his goal for the book.
“I’m working on my memoir, and I have about four or five chapters so far and I touched on a lot,” Cudi said in a Twitter voice note Sunday. “I talked about a lot of sh** that y’all have no idea and stuff that you’ve never heard about. My upbringing, you know, how I got started with music and even how I got interested in acting.”
“This book is gonna be something I hope inspires people. Anybody that has a dream or wants to do anything, especially those kids in those small towns somewhere in the United States or anywhere outside the world, in another country, that just wants to do something great with their lives,” he continued. “This book is gonna give you that push.”
The memoir, Cudi adds, will “continue the same formula I started with the music,” which he believes will also guide and help some people. He hopes the book can be released sometime next year, but noted he’d keep fans updated.
Cudi’s also working on a new album, which he already claims will be album of the year. “I’ve never made a project this powerful before in my life. Sitting, listening to these mixes, I just know that this sh** is going to move you,” Cudi previously said. “I just wanted to get on here and just let y’all know that I’m not gonna let y’all down. This is gonna be the album of the year right now, I’m not playing.”
Just one week after the death of guitarist and founding member Gary Rossington, Lynyrd Skynyrd was back onstage Sunday at the Plant City Strawberry Festival in Florida, where they paid tribute to their late guitarist.
Rolling Stone reports that in the middle of the show the band played “Tuesday’s Gone” as video and images of Rossington, who passed away March 5 at the age of 71, were projected on the screen, along with the words “For Gary.”
Rossington hasn’t played with the band since November, with Damon Johnson filling in for him alongside their other guitar players, Rickey Medlocke, who’s been with the band since 1996, and Mark Matejka, who’s been with them since since 2006.
The rest of the set featured such Lynyrd Skynyrd classics as “What’s Your Name,” “Gimme Three Steps” and “Sweet Home Alabama,” along with the show closer “Free Bird,” which saw Rossington’s picture projected on the screen alongside the other late members of Skynyrd.
Lynyrd Skynyrd has a little time off the road before their next gig. Their next show is scheduled for April 29 in Brandon, Mississippi. They’re also due to hit the road with ZZ Top this summer. A complete list of tour dates can be found at lynyrdskynyrd.com.
(NEW YORK) — A jury has spared Sayfullo Saipov the death penalty after it was unable to come to a unanimous decision Monday in the penalty phase deliberations for a Halloween 2017 terror attack in New York City that killed eight people.
The jury agreed “sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of release is a harsh punishment,” according to the verdict form. It also agreed Saipov intentionally killed his victims after “substantial planning and premeditation” and did it for ISIS. However, the jury did not unanimously find that Saipov represented a future danger or would likely commit acts of violence while in prison.
A decision for death had to be unanimous. Instead, Saipov will spend life in prison without the possibility of release at ADX in Colorado.
Saipov was convicted in January of killing eight people and trying to kill 18 more in the ISIS-inspired truck attack on a bike path adjacent to the Hudson River. It was the deadliest terror attack in New York since Sept. 11, 2001.
Nine of the 28 counts he was convicted of carry the possibility of the death penalty.
After beginning deliberations on March 8, jurors had to begin anew the following day after a distraught juror was excused after informing the court that his brother had suffered a heart attack.
The defense moved for a mistrial, invoking a strict interpretation of the federal death penalty statute that says the sentence must be put “before the jury that determined the defendant’s guilt,” which the judge denied. An alternate was added to the jury for final deliberations.
“There are three or four circuit courts who have considered this issue and found that courts can use an alternate even if they haven’t sat in the trial phase,” Judge Vernon Broderick said.
Minutes after starting their deliberations on March 8, jurors sent a note to the judge asking if they could discuss that the current method of execution for federal inmates is lethal injection. They also asked if they could mention the current moratorium on execution by Attorney General Merrick Garland.
In response, Broderick instructed jurors to disregard both lethal injection and the Biden administration’s death penalty moratorium, saying they were “not proper considerations for your deliberations.”
All federal executions since at least 1963 have been carried out by lethal injection.
Garland announced a moratorium on executions in September 2021 so officials could review policies and procedures though has upheld decisions of the prior administration to pursue the death penalty for Saipov, Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof and Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
During closing arguments last week, Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Houle told the jury that Saipov deserved the death penalty for his “unremorseful slaughter of innocent civilians.”
“Murder is always terrible but when the defendant made the choice to murder multiple people he exposed himself to a harsher punishment,” Houle said. “He stole eight lives.”
Meanwhile, defense attorney David Patton told jurors they face “an awesome responsibility and power” and should spare Saipov the death penalty and let him “die in obscurity, not as a hero, not as a martyr.”
“It is not necessary to kill Sayfullo Saipov, not for our safety or anyone else’s and not to do justice,” Patton said. “In this case, we are asking you to decide that meeting death with more death is not the answer.”
A death sentence for Saipov, a citizen of Uzbekistan, would have been the first by a federal jury in New York in decades. Federal juries in Brooklyn approved a death sentence for a man who murdered two New York police detectives in 2007 and 2013, but both sentences were tossed out on appeal.
The last time the death penalty was carried out in a New York federal case was in 1953 when husband and wife Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed after being convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
(WASHINGTON) — The White House on Monday asked former Vice President Mike Pence to apologize for what it called a “homophobic joke” he made over the weekend geared at Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
“The former vice president’s homophobic joke about Secretary Buttigieg was offensive and inappropriate, all the more so because he treated women suffering from postpartum depression as a punchline,” White House press secretary Karine-Jean Pierre said in a statement. “He should apologize to women and LGBTQ people, who are entitled to be treated with dignity and respect.”
Pence, headlining at the annual Gridiron Club dinner in Washington for journalists and politicians, mocked Buttigieg for taking parental leave after the birth of his adopted twins while he said Americans faced issues with air travel.
“He took two months ‘maternity’ leave whereupon thousands of travelers were stranded in airports, the air traffic system shut down, and airplanes nearly collided on our runways. Pete is the only person in human history to have a child and everyone else gets postpartum depression,” Pence said, according to reporters present.
Notably, Buttigieg’s twins were born prematurely, developed Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infection (RSV) and one was hospitalized and put on a ventilator, a point his husband, Chasten, called out in a tweet directed at the rumored 2024 presidential hopeful.
“An honest question for you, @Mike_Pence, after your attempted joke this weekend. If your grandchild was born prematurely and placed on a ventilator at two months old – their tiny fingers wrapped around yours as the monitors beep in the background – where would you be?” he said.
Marc Short, Pence’s former chief of staff, called the response from the White House “faux outrage.”
“The White House would be wise to focus less on placating the woke police and focus more on bank failures, planes nearly colliding in mid-air, train derailments, and the continued supply chain crisis,” Short said in a tweet.
It’s far from the first time that Buttigieg has faced criticism from those on the right for taking paid parental leave, with Pence’s language echoing lines repeatedly espoused by Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
“Pete Buttigieg has been on leave from his job since August after adopting a child. Paternity leave, they call it. Trying to figure out how to breastfeed, no word on how that went,” Carlson said on his prime-time show two months after the twins were born.
But Pence notably broke with Carlson’s recent whitewashing of Jan. 6 in his speech Saturday and offered his strongest rebuke of former President Donald Trump yet.
“History will hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6,” Pence said at the dinner. “Make no mistake about it: What happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way. President Trump was wrong. His reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day.”
“Tourists don’t injure 140 police officers by simply sightseeing,” he added. “Tourists don’t break down doors to get to the Speaker of the House. Tourists don’t threaten public officials.”
ABC News has reached out to Pence’s team for comment.
