Megan was reportedly recently granted a restraining order against her label, 1501 Certified Entertainment, and her distributor, 200 Entertainment, after she claimed they tried to interfere with her and the forthcoming American Music Awards, according to TMZ Hip Hop.
The outlet reports that in legal documents, Megan claims 1501 engaged in “threatening and retaliatory” actions, though she did not specify what those actions were.
With the restraining order, both companies are blocked from attempting to stop the “WAP” rapper from using her music during the AMAs.
The next court hearing, where both 1501 and 300 will have the opportunity to share their side, is scheduled for Tuesday, November 22 — two days after the AMAs are set to air.
A never-before-released song by TheDoors has gotten the music video treatment and fans won’t have to wait too long to see it. In fact, it’s being released this week.
AXS TV will premiere the all-new music video for “Paris Blues” Thursday at 6 p.m. ET. It will then be available exclusively on their website and on the AXS TV Now Fast Channel for 24 hours.
The track is the last known unreleased tune by the legendary rockers and will be released digitally on Friday. It will also be part of The Doors’ contribution to Record Store Day Black Friday on November 25. That release, available at independent record stores, will be a limited-edition compilation of rare blues recordings, coming out on translucent blue vinyl.
Although it isn’t known exactly when “Paris Blues” was recorded, it is believed to be a product of The Doors’ sessions for either 1969’s The Soft Parade or 1971’s L.A. Woman. Keyboardist Ray Manzarek had the only copy of the song, although it was damaged by his son, Pablo, who, as a toddler, recorded over parts of it. It has now been reconstructed, with use of “creative editing.”
Disney will celebrate the highly anticipated Andor season finale by giving viewers a chance to watch the first two episodes of the Disney+ series on ABC, as wells as FX, Freeform and Hulu. The series follows Diego Luna‘s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story character Cassian Andor, and his early days with the Rebellion against the evil Galactic Empire. Genevieve O’Reilly, Stellan Skarsgård, Adria Arjona, Denise Gough, Kyle Soller, Fiona Shaw, Forest Whitaker and Andy Serkis also star. Andor’s first two episodes will air on ABC November 23, on FX November 24, and on Freeform November 25 — all at 9 p.m. ET — and will be available on Hulu from November 23-December 7. To watch the rest of the season, viewers will have to switch over to Disney+, where the finale airs Nov. 23. Disney is the parent company of ABC News…
Apple TV+ has given a series order to an untitled film industry comedy from Seth Rogen and his partners Evan Goldberg, Peter Huyck and Alex Gregory, according to Variety. Rogen will write, direct and star in the series that follows “a legacy Hollywood movie studio trying to survive in a world where it is increasingly difficult for art and commerce to live together,” per the outlet…
Freeform has pulled the plug on Phoebe Robinson‘s comedy Everything’s Trash after just one season, according to Deadline. The show, which wrapped its first season run in September, was Freeform’s least-watched and lowest-rated original series in linear ratings this year. The series also streams on Hulu, though it’s unclear how it fared there. Everything’s Trash starred Robinson as a 30-something podcaster attempting to navigate the messy nuances of life in Brooklyn…
Dancing with the Stars dropped a few bombshells during Monday night’s episode.
The first announcement of the night came from dance pro Whitney Carson, who revealed she’s expecting her second child with husband Carson McAllister. The pair are already parents to two-year-old son Leo.
The dancer, who is paired with Wayne Brady this season, shared, “I’m so excited to finally announce that Carson, Leo and I are expecting baby number two.”
“I’m so blessed. And this felt like a really really good time to share it. And I can finally share it, which is great,” she said.
Then, later in the show, longtime judge Len Goodman announced that this season would be his last.
“It’s been a huge pleasure to be a huge part of such a wonderful show,” he expressed, adding that he wants to spend more time with his grandchildren. “I cannot thank you enough, the DWTS family. It has been such a wonderful experience for me. I’m looking forward to next week’s finale. I’m sure it’s going to be absolutely brilliant.”
Goodman, who’s 78, has been a judge on DWTS since 2005.
(NEW YORK) — The global population is projected to hit eight billion on Tuesday, according to a report by the United Nations’ population division.
“This year’s World Population Day falls during a milestone year, when we anticipate the birth of the Earth’s eight billionth inhabitant. This is an occasion to celebrate our diversity, recognize our common humanity, and marvel at advancements in health that have extended lifespans and dramatically reduced maternal and child mortality rates,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a news release. “At the same time, it is a reminder of our shared responsibility to care for our planet and a moment to reflect on where we still fall short of our commitments to one another.”
According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, India will surpass China as the world’s most populous country next year.
The global population has been growing at its slowest rate since the 1950s, falling under 1% in 2020.
The latest projections by the U.N. show the global population may reach 8.5 billion in 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050. It is projected to peak at around 10.4 billion during the 2080s and remain at that level until 2100.
According to the U.N., it took 12 years for the global population to go from seven billion to eight billion.
In recent decades, fertility has dipped in many countries. Around two-thirds of the world’s population lives in a country or area where lifetime fertility is under 2.1 births per woman, which is the level needed for no growth in the long term for a population with low mortality, according to the U.N.
Over half of the projected global population growth up to 2050 will happen in eight countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United Republic of Tanzania.
(LONDON) — As Britain’s royal family gathered on Remembrance Sunday to honor members of the U.K. and Commonwealth who died in war, for the first time at the event, a wreath was laid on behalf of Camilla, the queen consort.
The wreath, laid at the Cenotaph war memorial in London, featured Camilla’s racing colors and her new cypher, which is her monogram below a symbol of the crown.
Camilla’s monogram is now CR, which incorporates her initial, “C,” and “R” for Regina, which is Latin for queen.
Camilla, who became queen consort after the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September, watched the Remembrance Sunday service from the balcony of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, alongside her daughter-in-law Kate, the princess of Wales.
With the death of the queen, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, Camilla and Kate are now the two highest-ranking and most high-profile women in the royal family.
It is Camilla who will be crowned next May at the coronation ceremony of her husband, King Charles III.
The stature of Camilla today within both the royal family and public opinion is a far cry from her low popularity more than 20 years ago when she and Charles first began dating publicly.
Much of the public attention on Camilla, a mom of two with ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles, was as the other woman in the failed marriage between Charles and the late Princess Diana. That tangled relationship is the subject of the new season of Netflix’s The Crown, a fictionalized drama focused on Britain’s royal family.
When Charles and Camilla finally married in 2005, there was debate as to what title Camilla would take when Charles became king, including concern that the public might resent Camilla being known as Queen Camilla.
At the time of their wedding, a spokesperson for the couple suggested she would take the title princess consort.
It was not until Elizabeth gave her blessing earlier this year that it was confirmed Camilla would be known as queen consort, the title given to the spouse of a king. Under U.K. law, whoever is married to a king would immediately become queen consort and be known as queen.
Victoria Murphy, an ABC News royal contributor, said that while Camilla’s popularity is not as high as Kate and her husband Prince William, she is now “very much publicly accepted” as a senior member of the royal family.
“When it came to turning around her public image, an aide once told me that she took the view that she just wanted to go out and meet people and let them decide for themselves about her,” said Murphy. “There was a concerted PR effort to get the public to warm to her after years of seeing her as Diana’s enemy, but I don’t think it would have worked if she hadn’t also turned perceptions around by herself through the way she behaved.”
Murphy said of her own observations of Camilla, “She is also very friendly and polite to journalists, often stopping to chat with people covering her engagements, despite the fact that she has been intensely scrutinized and criticized in the media.”
Though she had some guidance from the late queen, it is Charles whom Camilla has leaned on the most to learn the ins and outs of royal life, according to Murphy.
“She grew up in a wealthy family so was familiar with the activities and social circles of the royals, but royal work was still new to her when she married,” said Murphy. “She had not had a career and like many women of her generation had grown up expecting to focus on her family.”
Murphy said Camilla at first did what was expected of her in the royal role to support her husband, but has since forged her own path, saying, “She has become more and more personally invested in her own causes and the impact she can have.”
The causes Camilla has focused her work on include literacy, osteoporosis and domestic violence.
Murphy said she expects Camilla to continue to focus on those issues as queen consort, in addition to supporting Charles in his role as monarch.
“I expect there will be a focus on key royal events alongside the king as far as her diary goes, but she will still keep up many of her charity visits, both publicly and privately,” said Murphy. “We have already seen things like her Reading Room initiative continue under a new name, and I think she will be keen to continue working to advance the causes she has become passionate about.”
Camilla is also expected to maintain some of her independence, as she has throughout her marriage to Charles, according to Murphy.
Camilla was in her late 50s when she married Charles, and was already the mother of two grown children. She is now a grandmother of five, and a step-grandmother to five more, the children of William and Kate and Prince Harry and Meghan, the duchess of Sussex.
“She retained her own home in Wiltshire when she married Charles in 2005,” said Murphy. “This is where she often spends weekends and sees her grandchildren and I would expect this to continue as they are a couple who do like to occasionally have time apart as well as together.”
The role of family matriarch
What role Camilla will play as the new matriarch on Charles’ side of the family remains less certain, according to Murphy, who said Camilla grew close to the late queen over the years, but is less close with Charles’ three siblings, Princess Anne, Prince Edward and Prince Andrew.
“I think Camilla gets along with but is not particularly close to her husband’s siblings,” said Murphy. “Camilla has her own circle of friends and family, such as her sister Annabel Elliot, who are her main confidantes, and I think most important to Camilla is her relationship with her husband.”
Murphy continued, “They are quite different but they have always worked as a team and she has always resolved first and foremost to support him. He can be quite serious and I think she brings a lightness and sense of fun, which is reflected in many of the images that you see of them laughing together.”
In recent years, Charles and Camilla have presented themselves as a united front with William, the heir to the throne, and Kate, with whom Camilla has a warm relationship, according to Murphy.
“Before Kate married William she took advice from Camilla and their relationship has remained on good terms,” she said. “Camilla recently invited Kate to photograph her for Country Life Magazine which I think shows a lot of trust and fondness for her.”
Murphy added of Kate and Camilla’s common goals, “Ultimately, I think both women are first and foremost loyal to, and work in a team with, their husbands.”
Though Charles’ youngest son Harry is now less in the picture after having stepped down from his senior royal role in 2020, both he and William have spoken warmly of Camilla in the past, Murphy said.
“I think that it’s always hard to get a handle on exactly what things are like behind closed doors, but we have certainly heard William and Harry speak warmly of Camilla in the past and frequently seen them greet her warmly publicly,” she said. “Obviously things have changed in the past few years when it comes to Harry’s relationship with other members of the royal family, and I believe it’s fair to say that his relationship with Camilla has followed that trend.”
Elizabeth was known as the great uniter in her family, the one about whom no one had a bad word to say, according to Murphy.
In past years, royal family members would devotedly travel to Sandringham each year to celebrate Christmas together at the queen’s beloved estate.
Murphy said she expects the family to follow tradition this Christmas, their first without the queen, but then new traditions may take shape.
“I still think that family gatherings will be important in the reign of King Charles, but over time it’s possible that we may see the focus shift in terms of who attends,” said Murphy. “Will William’s cousins spend every Christmas with their uncle in the way they did with their grandmother, for example? It’s also possible that Camilla’s children and grandchildren will become part of the Sandringham royal Christmas if she and Charles are hosting.”
(NEW YORK) — A Washington state mother is warning about the dangers of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, after her 7-month-old daughter was hospitalized with the illness.
Mya Walker said her daughter, Ariella Rain, was a happy, healthy baby until the end of October, when she started developing symptoms of RSV.
“She had a cough for like a day and usually she typically was coughing after she ate her bottle so I wasn’t really worried about it,” Walker told ABC News. “And then I was at work and her grandma actually took her temperature and it came back 102 F. So that’s when we took her to the emergency room.”
Ariella was taken to Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center in Vancouver on Oct. 28, where she was diagnosed with RSV.
Across the United States, cases of RSV have been appearing earlier this year than usual and are on the rise. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 13,126 infections were diagnosed in September 2022 — which rose to 47,910 for the month of October.
According to the CDC, other symptoms can include runny nose, sneezing, wheezing and a decrease in appetite.
RSV is especially dangerous among infants and babies, with an estimated 58,000 to 80,000 children under age 5 being hospitalized with the virus, the CDC said.
However, some are at an even greater risk of severe illness, including those born prematurely, immunocompromised children and those suffering from congenital heart and lung diseases.
Ariella was born prematurely on March 24, at 30 weeks, via emergency C-section weighing one pound, five ounces because she was not thriving inside the womb, according to Walker.
She also has pulmonary vein stenosis, a rare condition in which the blood vessels that bring blood from the lungs to the heart are too narrow or even blocked.
However, Walker said that despite Ariella’s medical conditions, she was thriving and hitting her developmental milestones.
“Outside of her sickness, she was pretty much just a normal baby, always laughing and kicking her feet,” Walker said.
However, not long after Ariella was admitted to the hospital, she was transferred to Oregon Health & Science University Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland, where she is currently in the pediatric intensive care unit.
Walker said Ariella’s lungs have been so greatly affected by RSV that she developed bronchitis, or inflammation of her airways. She has since been on a ventilator and even had to be put on an Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) machine.
The machine pumps a patient’s blood outside the body, oxygenates it and then sends it back into the bloodstream, which allows the heart and lungs to rest.
Walker said the past several days have been very difficult. She has been at the hospital every day with Ariella while her partner stays home with their 5-year-old daughter.
Walker said the hospital is not allowing child visitors so her older daughter can’t visit Ariella.
“It’s been really hard on her sister because her sister loves [Ariella] so much and wants to see her but she’s not able to come up here and see her,” she said.
On Nov. 2, Ariella went into respiratory arrest, which is when a person stops breathing, and had to have CPR performed on her as well as intubation.
“It was the scariest [moment of my life],” Walker said. “I never want to see my child get CPR ever again. It was so scary. I lost it.”
Although Ariella has since been taken off the ECMO machine, Walker said she has a long way to go before she’s close to recovering. She said she wants to warn other families about the dangers of RSV and to make sure they receive medical attention if they notice a change in behavior.
“My main message is to warn families of this RSV, and this season is really, really bad,” she said. “So just really pay attention to your child’s behavior, because my daughter, she was just learning how to laugh and the next day she was critically ill.”
(NEW YORK) — A grand jury convened on Monday morning in Louisiana’s Union Parish to hear evidence that could lead to charges in the death of Ronald Greene, who died in police custody in 2019, District Attorney John Belton confirmed to ABC News.
Belton, the district attorney for the Third Judicial District, confirmed to ABC News in a phone call Monday evening that grand jury proceedings in Greene’s case are ongoing and evidence will continue to be presented this week.
As the grand jury convened, the Special Committee to Inquire into the Circumstances and Investigation of the Death of Ronald Greene held a hearing at the Louisiana Capitol on Monday where Greene’s mother, Mona Hardin, was among those who testified.
Hardin told ABC News in a phone interview Monday that she hopes the new development will lead to charges against the officers involved in the deadly arrest of her son.
“This is such a travesty … Here we are almost into 2023,” Hardin said. “No one takes accountability for nothing.”
Greene, a 49-year-old Black man, died in May 2019 after a struggle with Louisiana State Police officers. The struggle took place following a high-speed chase in northern Louisiana, near Monroe, where Greene failed to stop for a traffic violation.
The initial police report said Greene died due to a car crash, but two years after Greene’s death, in May 2021, Louisiana State Police released hours of bodycam video evidence that included a violent struggle between Greene and police.
“It’s sickening,” Hardin said, referring to the bodycam footage. “It was right there for all to see.”
When asked about the grand jury proceedings, a spokesperson for the Louisiana State Police (LSP) told ABC News in a statement Monday that “LSP continues to offer our full cooperation in the legal proceedings.”
“Over the last two years, LSP has and continues to make fundamental improvements to our operations, training and administration leading to the implementation of critical changes throughout the department and progress toward building trust within the communities we serve,” the spokesperson said.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, who previously defended his actions in the wake of Greene’s death, declined an invitation to testify before the committee on Monday, citing scheduling conflicts, his office confirmed to ABC News.
“On Wednesday, the governor was invited to testify at today’s hearing. Due to the short notice, there are conflicts with previously scheduled events and meetings for the governor, including a public event he will be attending out of town. He will not be attending today’s hearing,” a spokesman for Edwards said in a statement to ABC News on Monday.
Edwards previously denied that he delayed or interfered with the investigation into Greene’s death.
“There are implications that I knew more or that one or more of my staff members tried to cover up what happened. I will say that that is simply and categorically false,” Edwards said during a press conference in February. “It is sad. It is regrettable that I am here under these circumstances talking about these things. But unfortunately, it is unavoidable. But we can do better. We must do better.”
Attorney Lee Merritt, who represents the Greene family in a wrongful death lawsuit against the Louisiana State Police, previously told ABC News that authorities initially told the family that Greene died when his car crashed into a tree or shrub during an attempted traffic stop, but the family disputed the initial report.
The family released photos of Greene from after the incident, showing what appear to be multiple bruises and lacerations around his face and head.
An autopsy report by the Union Parish Coroner’s Office obtained by ABC News found blunt force injury to Greene’s head, neck and torso. The cause of death was listed as “cocaine-induced agitated delirium complicated by motor vehicle collision, physical struggle, inflicted head injury and restraint.”
The Louisiana State Police opened an investigation into the case in August 2020, which led to the firing of one officer, the suspension of another and a third who was reprimanded for his involvement in the incident.
“One trooper involved in the death, Dakota DeMoss, was given letters of reprimand and counseling for violating the department’s rules about courtesy and recordings. DeMoss was later arrested for using excessive force while handcuffing a motorist in a separate incident; he was subsequently fired in June 2021,” a spokesperson for the Louisiana State Police told ABC News. “A second trooper, Chris Hollingsworth, died in a single-vehicle car accident in September 2020, hours after learning he would be fired for his role in Greene’s death. A third trooper, Kory York, was suspended for 50 hours for dragging Greene and improperly turning off his body camera, and has since returned to duty.”
Amid ongoing investigations into Greene’s death by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Hardin said she won’t stop fighting for justice.
“This is my son,” she told ABC News. “I couldn’t breathe another moment knowing that I didn’t do all I can.”
(NEW YORK) — Twitter’s struggles have been mounting since Elon Musk bought the social media company and among the challenges are the thousands of employee layoffs.
From top executives to contract workers who kept an eye on misinformation, no one was spared from Musk’s orders.
Melissa Ingle was laid off from the company over the weekend and spoke with “Start Here” Monday about her experience, the harassment she faced and her concerns about the direction that Musk is taking Twitter.
START HERE: Melissa, first of all, can you just describe what you did on Twitter?
MELISSA INGLE: Absolutely. So I was a data scientist in the Civic Integrity Department, which basically means I wrote and monitored algorithms which scanned Twitter for tweets that violated our policies around political misinformation.
My specific department was just the three of us data scientists, and we were just looking for political misinformation. The larger department that we rolled up into was about 30 people, and they were looking for all kinds of misinformation, hate speech, targeted abuse, pornography [and] child abuse.
We were just trying to keep the site as free and as clear as possible and safe to use for so many people.
START HERE:Did you like it?
INGLE:I loved it. I really, really enjoyed working for Twitter. It felt like it was an important job trying to prevent the spread of misinformation… I love the product, and I’m a longtime Twitter user even before I was hired there.
START HERE:Can you give me examples of what you guys would moderate? How would you get involved with some example of how you guys would help the service?
INGLE:Absolutely. So we used a process called Natural Language Processing, which you may have heard about. It’s searches, language…for keywords or phrases which we had identified as belonging to political misinformation.
So we would flag those tweets and a certain subsection of those, say 200 a week, would be sent for human review.
START HERE:Like someone says “so and so’s campaign is committing fraud,” that could be fake.
INGLE:So, No. 1, we would need to check that it had political information at all. Most people are tweeting about politics. And No. 2, we would check that it had political misinformation.
So we’re trying to keep the elections clean as possible. You can express your opinion. We want you to express your opinion. But the moment you start spreading misinformation, we want to make sure that that is curtailed.
START HERE:So after Elon Musk takes over a couple weeks ago…he started having some all-hands meetings. We’ve actually obtained audio of one last Thursday. Can you just describe how he was talking about the company and what employees thought of it?
INGLE: Yeah, absolutely.
The message was that the financial situation of Twitter was shaky, [and] uncertain, let me say that. And he was not ruling out further cuts and he was requiring everybody to come in to work. Those were some of the things that I heard.
I’ve been in the tech industry here for over 12 years, and I’ve never seen anything like it. People were openly saying in meetings, ‘I don’t trust the new CEO.’ And tech is generally [a] very rah-rah place. We’re all committed to the vision and the mission of the company, And I’ve just, I’ve never heard such disparaging terms about the new company leadership. Many of the senior executives were laid off who were people we had trusted.
On Saturday the 12th, I happened to be looking at my phone. At about 5:30 p.m. I had a popup. It said one or more of your access tokens had been removed from this app and it was my Twitter Gmail app. So I tried to log in. I was locked out. I tried to log into the company Slack on my phone, locked out as well. With no warning at all.
START HERE: Ah, that’s the moment when you realized you were laid off. What’s going through your mind then?
INGLE:It’s a horrible feeling. This area, the Bay Area, is extremely expensive to live in, and I’m a single parent, and I was thinking, ‘Well, am I going to be able to afford to live here? Am I going to be able [to pay] my rent? Am I going to be able to give my children a good Christmas? These were my fears throughout the week. There was some uncertainty, and this really drove it home that, well, I don’t have any income, anymore. So I was really terrified for my future.
START HERE: What happened after that? Because you were quite vocal about this.
INGLE:Yeah, for sure. I tweeted immediately.
A journalist reported that they had seen that they heard reports of the contract [workers] were being laid off. And I responded to this and I said, “Yeah, this happened to me.”
I’ve had people say, ‘hey, I’ve heard about this job and why don’t you submit your resume,’ which is just incredible and so heartwarming that people would want to do that for somebody they don’t even know. And not to be cheesy, that’s what’s great about Twitter. It really can help you learn. It’s just empathy machine in a way. It can be at its best.
But then, also not relevant, and I’m a trans woman and I usually keep a pretty low profile. And the amount of hate I’ve received just in the past, I don’t know, 12 to 14 hours, has been absolutely wild. People [were] digging up old posts of mine, tweeting out memes about me. A meme mocking me has over 36,000 likes at this point.
START HERE: Really? Wait, you’re talking about ‘I got laid off’ and then people respond to you with, like, transphobic stuff?
INGLE:Yeah, absolutely. 100%. Not even not dog whistles and outright misgendering. “Good. You are a pedophile. You’re a groomer. You’re a Nazi sympathizer.” Just the worst. “You have a beard. You’re a man.” All this kind of stuff. Yeah.
It’s awful. It’s really upsetting. It’s really upsetting to have to experience it. I’m not talking about that in my post. I’m just talking about being laid off from this company that I really love to work at. I’m expressing my sadness and grief and I’m not saying it to anybody, and it’s just been really tough. People are DM’ing me really awful things and it’s just really terrible.
START HERE:What’s that like for you, knowing that you were part of this team that’s responsible for making Twitter feel safer to use? Because that seems like a really sad, ironic twist.
INGLE:Yeah, it’s a really interesting phenomenon right now. So I want to say that. All right. Now, all of the content moderation is still in place. It hasn’t been removed yet.
But [with] these machine learning models, people like to think that they’re just, they just operate by themselves and they’re great. No. They need constant human input and tuning because over time, with fewer people there, they’re absolutely going to degrade.
Content moderation is important. I know it’s not like a “sexy topic” or some people don’t think it’s important, but without it, your platform can crash and burn.
START HERE:What are you going to do next? Do you have any thoughts about that or what do you do?
INGLE: I understand that there is a class-action lawsuit ongoing under the WARN Act. People on my group chat are mentioning it or actively talking about it. So I know that that is something that people are pursuing. I have not looked into this, as a contract employee, if my rights are still covered. I’m honestly not certain. So in the immediate term, I have to make sure that I can make my rent. I have to make sure that I can get food on the table. And so my immediate concern is just to apply for a bunch of jobs starting immediately.
(NEW YORK) — A woman has been arrested for allegedly attempting to smuggle nearly half a million dollars’ worth of cocaine into the United States in the wheels of her wheelchair after authorities said they noticed the wheels wouldn’t turn as she tried to travel in it.
The incident occurred on Nov. 10 at John F. Kennedy International Airport when Emelinda Paulino De Rivas — a citizen from the Dominican Republic — arrived in New York City on a flight from Punta Cana in a wheelchair when U.S. Customs and Border Protection noticed that the wheels on the wheelchair she was traveling in were not actually turning and decided to interview her.
“[CBP] x-rayed the wheelchair and noticed an anomaly in all four wheels,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement following the incident. “CBP officers probed the four wheels revealing a white powder that tested positive for cocaine.”
Officers ended up seizing approximately 28 lbs. of cocaine from the wheelchair which translates to an estimated 75,000 doses of the drug and a street value of $450,000, according to CBP.
“A lethal dose of cocaine is roughly one to three grams, so the amount seized by CBP and kept out of our neighborhoods amounts to roughly 6,000 lethal doses,” CBP said in their statement following De Rivas’ arrest.
De Rivas is now facing federal narcotics smuggling charges and will be prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the U.S. Eastern District Court of New York, according to CBP.
A trial date has not yet been set.
“CBP stands steadfast and determined in working with our partners to identify the trans- national criminal networks responsible for importing these deadly drugs into our neighborhoods,” said Francis J. Russo, director of CBP’s New York Field Operations. “CBP’s mission is to guard the borders and ports of entry 24/7, 365 days a year to prevent these dangerous drugs from potentially killing our family, friends, and neighbors.”
