The Celebration of Black Cinema & Television typically honors achievements in Black filmmaking, and this year is no different. On Monday, December 5, many will gather at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles to celebrate a group of talented individuals and their accomplishments in 2022.
Included in this year’s class of honorees are Angela Bassett, who will receive the Career Achievement Award, and Michael B. Jordan, who’ll be honored with the Melvin Van Peebles Trailblazer Award. The event’s Groundbreaker Award will go to Kid Cudi for his Netflix series, Entergalactic, and the Icon Award to Motown founder Berry Gordy.
Quinta Brunson, P-Valley‘s Nicco Annan, Creed III‘s Jonathan Majors, Atlanta‘s Brian Tyree Henry and more will also be recognized at this year’s event.
“The Celebration of Black Cinema & Televisionhas grown tremendously over the last five years,” CCA CEO Joey Berlin said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to be able to recognize such outstanding projects across both film and television, and to honor these incredible actors and filmmakers for their work.”
The 2022 Celebration of Black Cinema & Television, sponsored by the Critics Choice Association, will air on KTLA in January and on Nexstar stations during Black History Month. Comedian Bill Bellamy will host the event.
(NEW YORK) — Minnesota elections officials are working to coordinate law enforcement responsibilities on Election Day after the husband of a GOP nominee for the state’s top election post was heard on a leaked recording calling for off-duty law enforcement officers to police poll workers at election sites — in apparent violation of state regulations.
In an audio recording of a Tea Party Patriots meeting in Champlin, Minnesota, last month, Marty Probst, the husband of Minnesota GOP Secretary of State candidate Kim Crockett, is heard urging conservative supporters to send sheriffs and deputies to form an Election Day “SWAT team.”
“If you got friends or family or whatever in sheriff deputies or sheriffs, we need them on Election Day,” Probst said. “That’s part of the SWAT team to get out when certain places don’t follow the rules that they are supposed to.”
The comments represent a growing trend across the country, in which some supporters of former President Donald Trump, driven by misinformation surrounding the results of the 2020 election, are recruiting off-duty law enforcement and ex-military personnel to serve as poll watchers.
“They won’t be able to steal this election the same way they stole 2020!” tweeted Joseph Flynn, president of The America Project, one of the organizations leading the effort to recruit first responders for that purpose.
The Minnesota meeting included several high-profile attendees from the Minnesota Republican Party and the Republican National Committee. Following Probst’s remarks, RNC Minnesota Election Integrity Director Lukas Severson said, “He brought up a great point there — we are still looking for folks who would like to join us in our War Room to answer calls from the hotline.”
Cassondra Knudson, the spokesperson for incumbent Secretary of State Steve Simon, told ABC News that Minnesota law does not allow law enforcement to be situated in a polling place for any purpose other than responding to a call for assistance.
“We’re working in coordination with the [Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension] to ensure law enforcement know their role on Election Day,” Knudson said. “Minnesota has guidelines for who can be in be in polling places and how they can behave. This would not allow for law enforcement to be situated in a polling place for any purpose other than responding to a call for assistance.”
“Recruiting people based on lies is problematic,” Sean Morales-Doyle, acting director of voting rights at the nonprofit, nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, told ABC News last month. “Skepticism is one thing, but coming to that job believing that the election was stolen and on the lookout for nonexistent conspiracies and fraud is problematic.”
In addition, said Morales-Doyle, “There’s a history of problems with intimidation by poll watchers in this country — specifically a history of efforts to use off-duty law enforcement and poll watchers to accomplish racially discriminatory intimidation, so it gives me concern when you see that kind of recruitment.”
The recording of the Tea Party Patriots meeting was obtained and published by the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Other high-profile attendees included Minnesota GOP Deputy Chair Donna Bergstrom and Minnesota RNC Committeewoman Barb Sutter.
Neither Probst nor representatives for Crockett’s campaign responded to ABC News’ requests for comment.
Patrick McMullan/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Billy McFarland, the convicted founder behind 2017’s Fyre Festival, which rocked social media, is apologizing for his role in controversial music festival.
“I need to apologize. And that is the first and the last thing that needs to be done,” McFarland said. “I let people down. I let down employees. I let down their families. I let down investors. So I need to apologize. I’m wrong and it’s bad.”
McFarland pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud in federal court in 2018, and admitted to using fake documents to attract investors, who put more than $26 million into his company, Fyre Media, the host of the Fyre Festival.
He has since served almost four years of a six year sentence, including two stints in solitary confinement, but is now out of prison on supervised release. He recently told ABC News’ Good Morning America that he’s had time to reflect on his wrongdoings while in prison.
“I was wrong. I messed up. And I was so driven by this desperate desire to prove people right … I think I was just so insecure that I thought the only way to prove myself to them was to succeed,” he said. “That led me down just this terrible path of bad decisions.”
“I started lying to get the money and I would literally wake up every day to a document that we called, ‘Urgent Payment Sheet.’ And it had an amount of money that I had to acquire before the bank closed that day to stop the company from going underwater,” he continued. “So I was literally day-by-day doing whatever it took. And looking back, it was so incredibly stupid.”
In 2017, word spread of a music festival that promised “an immersive” experience on a small island in the Bahamas. The event was touted by top models and social media influencers and nearly 5,000 hopeful attendees bought in.
Tickets ranged from $500 to $12,000 and customers were led to expect extravagant accommodations and celebrity chef-cooked meals. Instead, the first guests to arrive to the scheduled two week experience received boxes with plain cheese sandwiches and lodging in the form of Federal Emergency Management Agency and U.N. disaster tents.
As chaos quickly ensued on the island and the event’s failure went viral on social media, Fyre Festival co-founders McFarland and rapper Ja Rule were forced to cancel the event.
Ja Rule later apologized in a note on Twitter, writing, “I’m heartbroken at this moment. My partners and I wanted this to be an amazing event. It was NOT A SCAM … I truly apologize as this is NOT MY FAULT… but I’m taking responsibility. I’m deeply sorry to everyone who was inconvenienced by this.”
Ja Rule has never been charged in connection with the festival and he was later dismissed as a defendant in a civil lawsuit filed by attendees.
“I think the hardest thing for me is the trust that I violated and whether it was friends, investors, or employees, people gave up a lot to try to make this happen,” McFarland told GMA. “How do I call them now and look them in the eye when I let them down?”
McFarland has roughly $26 million in restitution to pay investors, vendors and concert-goers. His earnings will be garnished until it’s all been paid back.
Moving forward, McFarland is trying something new, launching a venture called “PYRT.” He said he knows he’ll need time to “slowly” win back trust, but said he’s changed and plans to keep evolving.
“I went way too fast before. So I need to do everything now in a manageable way that I can actually make work,” he said, adding, “I hope I continue to change for the next 40 years. So I’m certainly not done changing yet.”
Good Morning America co-anchor Robin Roberts will host 20/20 Presents Black Panther: In Search of Wakanda on Friday, in advance of the highly anticipated premiere of Marvel Studios’ Black Panther sequel, Wakanda Forever, on November 11. The one-hour program will explore the evolution of Black Panther from the comics to the big screen, and Wakanda Forever director Ryan Coogler will discuss the sequel to the 2018 blockbuster, and how it honors the legacy of its late star, Chadwick Boseman. Boseman’s widow, Simone, will also sit down for an exclusive interview with The View moderator Whoopi Goldberg. Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News…
The Time Traveler’s Wife‘s Theo James has been tapped to lead the Netflix series The Gentlemen, based on Guy Ritchie‘s film of the same name, according to Deadline. The series centers on James’ character Eddie Halstead, “who has inherited his father’s sizeable estate only to discover that it’s sitting on top of a weed empire owned by the legendary Mickey Pearson,” per the entertainment website. Mickey was played by Matthew McConaughey in the 2019 movie. Halstead, a “straight-up soldier,” must navigate the British criminal underworld and take control of the operation. Ritchie co-wrote the pilot script, will direct the first two episodes and serve as an executive producer on the series…
The Wall Street Journal reports HBO Max has scrapped its new Degrassi series, according to Variety. The series, originally picked up for 10 episodes, would have been the sixth TV show in the franchise to date following The Kids of Degrassi Street, Degrassi Junior High, Degrassi High, Degrassi: The Next Generation and Degrassi: Next Class…
U2 frontman Bono was Stephen Colbert‘s guest on Thursday’s edition of CBS’ The Late Showwith Stephen Colbert promoting his new book, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, and revealed the clever, if not so honest way they got their big break.
“When we were kids…we had a big TV producer…come into our high school, cause he heard we wrote our own songs. And it was a break, gonna get our big break, on the national [television]. And we were arguing about how the song was going, it wasn’t going anywhere, none of the songs,” Bono told Colbert.
As they were arguing back and forth, Bono said, they heard a knock on the door, which turned out to be the TV exec.
“What are we gonna do? What are we gonna tell him? What are we gonna say,?” Bono recalls the band saying to each other. “And he walks in and [he says] ‘You write your own songs?…Could you play me one?'” Bono adds that he and bandmates Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. “improvised” by playing The Ramones‘ “Glad to See You Go,” claiming it was theirs.
That deception got U2 a TV appearance, though Bono was quick to explain that they did actually perform one of their own songs on the show.
Bono also performed a partly spoken-word, down-tempo orchestral version of the U2 The Joshua Tree classic “With or Without You.”
Surrender, out now, follows Bono from his childhood in Dublin, to the loss of his mother when he was 14, to the founding of U2 and their rise to global stardom. It also covers his activism, including his work to fight AIDS and extreme poverty.
After a week of spoofs, reveals, and more, Drake and 21 Savage‘s collaboration album, Her Loss, has arrived.
The highly anticipated album dropped Friday at midnight and boasts a total of 16 tracks. Although the majority of the songs feature both rappers, they also each have solo songs. 21 Savage has “3AM in Glenwood” all to himself while Drake takes the solo reins on “Middle of the Ocean,” “Jumbotron S*** Poppin,” “I Guess It’s F*** Me,” and “BackOutsideBoys.”
Her Loss sees Drake return to more traditional hip hop beats, a complete 180 from his most recent album Honestly, Nevermind, which saw the Canadian artist dabble in techno. Fans also get a bit of R&B Drake on this new project.
21 Savage and Drake first announced their new album on October 22, in the middle of their “Jimmy Cooks” music video. About 1:25 into the clip, they revealed the album is called Her Loss and it’ll be here on Friday, October 28. A few days later Drake shared that the release was pushed back a week to November 4 after their producer producer Noah “40” Shebib caught COVID-19.
Drake and 21 Savage are frequent collaborators, having previously teamed up on “Knife Talk,” from Drake’s album Certified Lover Boy, and “Mr. Right Now,” off 21 and Metro Boomin’s album Savage Mode II. They also joined forces on the tracks “Sneakin’” and “Issa.”
(NEW YORK) — Broad, bipartisan numbers of Americans are concerned that political divisions are increasing the risk of politically motivated violence in this country, with majorities across the board highly concerned about it in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll.
Who gets the blame, however, differs sharply among partisan and ideological groups.
A week after the attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a vast 88% of adults express concern that political divisions have gotten to the point that there’s an increased risk of politically motivated violence in this country. Sixty-three percent in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, are “very” concerned.
By contrast, asking which political party is more to blame for this risk produces a closely divided, strongly partisan result: 31% blame the Republican Party, 25% blame the Democratic Party and 32% blame both parties equally. Just 11% don’t blame either or both.
Overall concern is striking for how it crosses political lines, with rare levels of partisan agreement. Ninety-five percent of Democrats, 87% of Republicans and 86% of independents are concerned about the risk of political violence. So are 95% of liberals, 89% of moderates and 84% of conservatives.
That said, there are gaps as to the degree. About three-quarters of Democrats and liberals are very concerned about the risk, dropping to 58% of conservatives and 56% of Republicans — albeit still majorities in all cases.
In another political measure, 93% of voters for President Joe Biden in the 2020 election and 83% of Donald Trump voters are concerned about the risk of violence. Although, again, there is a difference in intensity: 78% of Biden voters are very concerned, compared to 55% of Trump voters.
There are other differences among groups. Women are 10 percentage points more apt than men to be very concerned about the risk of politically motivated violence — 68% vs. 58%. Just among Democrats, this includes a 13-point gap in strong concern between women and men.
Additionally, older people are much more apt to be very concerned, declining linearly with age — from 75% of those ages 65 and up, down to 47% of 18- to 29-year-olds.
Placing blame
As noted, blame reverts to partisan predispositions. Sixty-six percent of Democrats blame the Republican Party for the risk of violence, and 56% of Republicans blame the Democratic Party. Political independents, for their part, are likeliest to blame both parties equally.
There’s also a sharp difference between men and women, reflecting political preferences between the sexes. Women broadly blame the Republican Party more than the Democratic Party (38% vs. 18%). Men blame the Democratic Party over the GOP, albeit more narrowly (32% vs. 24%).
Methodology
This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone from Oct. 30 to Nov. 2, 2022, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,005 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 4.0 percentage points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions in the full sample are 27%-27%-39%, Democrats-Republicans-independents.
(NEW YORK) — American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech announced Friday that a booster dose of their bivalent COVID-19 vaccine performs better against two circulating versions of the omicron variant, compared with a booster shot of their original vaccine.
According to a joint press release, updated data from a Phase 2-3 clinical trial shows the Pfizer-BioNTech bivalent vaccine produced antibody responses against the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants that were three- to four-fold higher, compared with the original formula, when measured in adults approximately one month after receiving a booster dose. The safety and tolerability profile of the bivalent booster remains favorable and similar to the original vaccine, Pfizer and BioNTech said.
“As we head into the holiday season, we hope these updated data will encourage people to seek out a COVID-19 bivalent booster as soon as they are eligible in order to maintain high levels of protection against the widely circulating Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 sublineages,” Pfizer chairman and CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement Friday. “These updated data also provide confidence in the adaptability of our mRNA platform and our ability to rapidly update the vaccine to match the most prevalent strains each season.”
Other smaller studies by independent scientists have suggested there is very little difference between antibody responses produced by the original and updated shots, though both boosted antibody protection.
All of these studies are conducted by taking blood samples from recently vaccinated people and measuring antibodies in a lab. They give us a hint of how well the vaccines might work, but do not tell the full story of their effectiveness. Vaccines are still expected to offer a high level of protection against severe illness.
In late August, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized two updated booster vaccines — the one developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, and another by American biotechnology company Moderna — that were designed to be a better match against the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants. Since then, just over 26 million eligible Americans have received the updated booster shots, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The BA.5 subvariant currently is estimated to account for half of all new COVID-19 cases in the United States, according to the CDC, but it’s unlikely to remain the dominant viral strain for much longer. Newer versions of the omicron variant, such as BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, are slowly overtaking as a proportion of estimated cases. These subvariants are descendants of BA.5, but it remains unclear how well the bivalent boosters will work against them.
As the world nears its third year of the COVID-19 pandemic and the virus continues to evolve, booster shots are expected to bolster protection against severe illness but not necessarily mild or asymptomatic breakthrough infections.
“These data demonstrate that our BA.4/BA.5-adapted bivalent vaccine works as conceptually planned in providing stronger protection against the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 sublineages,” BioNTech CEO and co-founder Ugur Sahin said in a statement Friday. “In the next step and as part of our science based approach we will continue to evaluate the cross-neutralization of the adapted vaccine against new variants and sublineages. Our aim is to provide broader immunity against COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2, including Omicron and other circulating strains.”
(SEOUL, South Korea) — Air Force military trainings took place in both North and South Korean airspaces as the two nations continue to ratchet up tensions on the Korean Peninsula as 180 North Korean warplanes flying over four hours just north of the military border were detected by South Korea’s military on Friday.
“North’s military planes were active in multiple areas such as the inland area in the North and above the East and West Sea,” South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
In response, South Korea’s air force “urgently scrambled its predominant air force,” including 80 F-35As. The JCS added that 240 planes that were already participating in the ROK-US “Vigilant Storm” joint training “maintained a readiness posture” while conducting the planned exercises.
North Korea had test fired a mix of almost 30 long- and short-range ballistic missiles, including a failed intercontinental ballistic missile, this week.
These provocations prompted the U.S. and South Korea to extend air force drills which North Korea considers as joint training to invade and topple their regime.
This week’s provocations by the North is more or less Pyongyang responding to ROK-US drills, analysts say.
“Since denuclearization talks stalled, North Korea is in an unfavorable situation. Biden administration in and South Korean government now are both hardline, so North Korea is reacting even more strongly,” Wi Sung-Lak, Secretary general in the Seoul-based Korea Peace Foundation, told ABC News.
(NEW YORK) — In what could signal the promise of progress to come for newborn infants at risk for RSV, a new monoclonal antibody is being granted approval in Europe as a preventative measure to protect against RSV infection in very young babies — those most at risk of contracting the virus — during their first RSV season.
Developed jointly by Sanofi and AstraZeneca, commercially called “Beyfortus®,” this monoclonal antibody is given via a single dose intramuscular injection to infants aged 0 to 12 months, to protect against RSV before they get infected, from birth up through their first RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) season. The European Commission announced Friday morning it had approved the drug.
This does not mean it is an option for American babies, at least not yet. Sanofi and AstraZeneca will still have to go through the U.S. regulatory process for that — Food and Drug Administration approval, and recommendation by advisory panels like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
While the European approval does not impact the US regulatory process — FDA makes its own decisions — this new European approval shows it’s good enough to get the green light there, and could get the green light here as well.
If and when the FDA does approve this antibody, it won’t be in time for this season’s surge. But it could get approved in time for next year.
Sanofi tells ABC News they and AstraZeneca have already submitted their clinical trial data to the FDA. They expect to finalize their submission to the FDA by the end of this year, with the hopes of it being approved and available by the fall/winter of 2023/2024.
“It’s really exciting news. We’ve been looking for solutions to be able to prevent RSV for close to 50 years,” Dr. Michael Greenberg, a pediatrician and vice president, Sanofi’s Medical Head of Vaccines for North America, told ABC News in an interview.
He noted that once available, it could offer an important “first tool that we have to be able to protect all babies going into their first RSV season.”
This monoclonal antibody, called Beyfortus, is a lab-made, synthetic version of RSV immunity that newborn babies don’t have time to develop on their own, with their short time on earth.
That could change once a maternal RSV vaccine is approved and available — but for now — it could offer an important stopgap of protection for a vulnerable population, especially looking ahead from amid the current influx of pediatric RSV infections currently surging in the U.S.
A sampling of national CDC data shows RSV cases recorded for all ages are occurring more than twice as high at this point this year compared to last year, with more than twice as many cases per week, and likely leading towards more severe cases, especially in pediatric emergency departments and pediatric hospitalizations, which have limited resources to begin with, according to Chief Innovation Officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and ABC News Contributor, Dr. John Brownstein.
Newborn infants are at the highest risk of RSV infection, especially those who are born prematurely or immune compromised. Their heads are big, their airways small, and they have no built-up immunity. It is a leading cause of hospitalization in infants in the U.S.
This monoclonal could be a notable measure of protection for babies, wherever it’s approved, available and accessible to those who need it.
“Speaking as a pediatrician as someone who’s worked in public health, we always try to prevent, rather than having to treat — which is why we use vaccines for example — it’s better to prevent illnesses than to treat it,” Greenberg said.
“The idea is that a baby would get it for example, if they’re born during the time when RSV is circulating, like now, they would get it before they leave the hospital after being born, or if they’re born before the RSV season, they would get it in their pediatricians office during a normal well child visit,” Greenberg continued. “It’s designed to be able to protect from a very rapid standpoint, for that first RSV season.”
It is designed to keep RSV from being as serious as it can be in the population most vulnerable to severe infection — newborns.
So, while Beyfortus may not prevent all infections, like milder ones, it does buy important time for the most vulnerable tiny babies to grow larger and stronger and less likely to get hit as hard by RSV.
During the pandemic, many kids weren’t as exposed to many of the viruses they would have been otherwise, during the course of a normal childhood — because of masking, social distancing, remote learning, etc. during their very early years.
One theory to explain the unusually high number of RSV infections says that babies who would have been affected earlier on in life in a normal setting were instead born into the COVID bubble — which may have caused a delay in their built-up immunity, experts say.
Now, as the masks have come down, the infection rates are going up at even higher rates, and experts emphasize how COVID-19 has thrown the typical seasonality of our respiratory viral waves.
There is also no vaccine for RSV yet, while there is, of course, for COVID and the flu.
“The holy grail for durable RSV protection remains the illusive vaccine which now seems to be on the horizon,” Brownstein said. “Nonetheless the availability of these therapies will play an important role as a stop gap, likely an important tool to protect high risk babies from complications of RSV infection.”
There have been recent and promising developments with the data on Pfizer’s maternal RSV vaccine candidate — and while they can now move forward with the approval process, that vaccine won’t be immediately available to families worried about the current surge. FDA approval and CDC recommendation are possible next year.
And in the newborns most at risk for severe RSV, they have not lived long enough for a vaccine given directly to them to have enough time to build sufficient immunity.
Enter, alternatives like this monoclonal antibody: a synthetic version of that immunity which can help ward off infection.
In a randomized placebo-controlled phase 2/3 trial, Beyfortus showed an efficacy of more than 77% (77.3%) against infants’ RSV lower respiratory tract infection hospitalizations.
“I think we just have to be able to be prepared, and have tools like this to be able to respond,” Greenberg said. “So that whatever the epidemiology is, we’ve got the means to be able to protect all infants going into the RSV season, whenever the RSV season happens.”
