It’s Chip ‘n Dale, for a new generation. Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, a Roger Rabbit-style revival of the early 90s cartoon that premieres today on Disney+.
The Lonely Island‘s Akiva Schaffer directed the film, tells ABC Audio that its mix of live-action and animation “allowed for this Roger Rabbit world,” but on a whole new level.
“There’s been 30 years of technology that has changed animation so much with so many different styles,” he explains, “and the fun of getting to see them all together was really enticing to me.”
Akiva says that like Roger Rabbit, the movie features so many animated characters and Easter eggs, animation fans are going to go crazy — and it’s not just Disney.
“Third party characters that aren’t Disney was super important because, you know, Roger Rabbit had like Looney Tunes and all that stuff and it felt so much bigger because of that,” he shares. “So in the same way, to keep it from feeling like a Disney+ ad and to just be a love letter to animation. So it was the lawyers deserve, you know, a big bottle of wine.”
Kiki Layne is one of the only humans in the movie, and the The If Beale Street Could Talk and Coming 2 America star says acting alongside a bunch of animated animals brought her back to her early days.
“It’s just fun to play make believe. Like, you know, it took me back, You know, even the fact that I was acting by myself, I thought, yeah, that’s what I used to do in my bedroom,” she reveals. “You know, I take my Barbies and stuffed animals and create a whole new world in my bedroom. That’s where it starts.”
(NEW YORK) — The production of firearms in the U.S. has ramped up exponentially in recent decades with domestic manufacturing more than doubling and imports more than quadrupling, according to a new study by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The increases between the years 2000 and 2020 were fueled by the mass proliferation of the pistol as the most widespread firearm type and a 24,080% percent increase in manufacturing of short-barreled rifles, according to the ATF report. The number of firearms made in the U.S. increased by 187% and the number imported increased by 350% over the same period.
The report comes as the nation is still reeling from a mass shooting that left 10 Black people dead in a Buffalo, New York, supermarket last weekend. The suspected gunman legally purchased the Bushmaster rifle used to carry out the shooting with some modifications currently illegal in the state of New York, sources familiar with the investigation told ABC News.
The nation’s patchwork of gun laws has been largely relaxed by Supreme Court decisions as well as state and federal legislation over the time period studied. Two Supreme Court cases that struck down local gun control ordinances in Chicago and Washington, D.C, paved the way for fewer restrictions on individual firearm purchases.
The report also looked at the more recent adoption of untraceable firearms called “ghost guns” — often assembled from parts bought online or made at a private residence.
“One of the most significant developments affecting lawful firearm commerce and law enforcement’s ability to reduce illegal access to guns in this period has been the proliferation of privately made firearms also known as “ghost guns,” the ATF Los Angeles Field Office said in a statement on the report.
The number of firearms recovered by law enforcement believed to be privately made increased 1,000% between 2016 and 2021, according to the report.
The U.S. ranks first in the world for the number of firearms in the hands of civilians, according to a 2018 report by the nonpartisan Small Arms Survey. Yemen, Montenegro, Serbia and Canada round out the top five when adjusted for population size, although all have less than half the number of firearms per capita than the U.S.
(NEW YORK) — It was another volatile day on Wall Street as investors worry that high inflation may finally be catching up with consumers.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 236 points, one day after plunging more than 1,100 points, while the S&P 500 inched closer to bear market territory — market shorthand for a 20% fall from a recent high.
“It’s important to remember that the market is not the economy,” Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities told ABC News. “The market is a predictor of what the economy might look like six or 12 months down the road. So right now, I think the market is trying to tell us there’s a chance the economy could get worse than it is right now.”
This week’s stunning stock sell-off was triggered by weaker-than-expected profits from retail giants including Target (TGT), Walmart (WMT) and Kohl’s (KSS). Each company cut its profit outlook for the year and said higher costs for labor and transportation hurt its bottom line.
Consumers are still spending despite surging prices. Retail sales rose 0.9% in April, about in line with estimates, but they’re starting to adjust their spending habits.
On Walmart’s earnings call, CEO Doug McMillon said shoppers are beginning to switch from discretionary purchases to lower-margin items such as groceries and other household staples.
Record-high gas prices continue to take a bite out of household budgets. Gas prices are now above $4 per gallon in all 50 states, and analysts expect prices to go even higher. JPMorgan Chase predicted the busy summer driving season could push the national average past $6 per gallon by August.
Economists expect those higher gas prices to fan inflation, which is already at a 40-year high thanks to a perfect storm of factors: strong consumer demand, persistent supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, COVID-19-induced lockdowns in China and now the war in Ukraine.
The Federal Reserve is answering back by aggressively raising interest rates to curb consumer demand and bring down inflation. Investors fear those higher rates will slow growth so much that they will tip the economy into a recession.
Sixty-eight percent of CEOs surveyed by The Conference Board now expect the Fed’s war on inflation to trigger a recession sometime next year, according to a press release.
After postponing the first two dates of his new run of European concerts this week because he recently contracted the COVID-19 virus, Eric Clapton has now postponed two more shows — a pair of performances that had been scheduled in Bologna, Italy, this Friday and Saturday, May 20 and 21.
A message posted on the official Where’s Eric website explains, “Clapton, whilst feeling fine in himself, has again tested positive for Covid this morning. Whilst there is a strong body of medical opinion that after several days since the first positive test, a person is no longer infectious, it is by no means agreed by all. Accordingly, Eric does not want to travel while still testing positive and take the risk of infecting others.”
The note adds that, under the circumstances, it’s possible that “the Italian authorities would not…permit [Eric’s] entry into Italy.”
All four postponed concerts, which also include shows originally scheduled for May 17 in Zurich, Switzerland, and May 18 in Milan, Italy, will be rescheduled by the end of 2022. The new dates will be announced within the next two weeks, and tickets purchased for the postponed concerts will be valid for the rescheduled dates.
Clapton’s next scheduled show is now a May 29 performance in Berlin. According to the message on the Where’s Eric site, “by [that] time we have every hope that there will be no obstacle to Eric being able to perform that concert and the remainder of the scheduled concerts.”
Visit EricClapton.com to check out Clapton’s full tour schedule.
Twenty-three-year-old Isaiah Lee, the man still behind bars after being charged with tackling Dave Chappelle onstage, has been slapped with an attempted murder charge.
However, controversial Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced today the charge wasn’t related to Lee’s alleged assault of the comedian earlier this month.
Gascón on Thursday says a man who had been stabbed in December identified Lee, his former roommate, as his attacker. “The publicity generated by the attack on Mr. Chappelle helped police solve this crime,” he noted.
Lee was found to have had a gun-shaped knife when the alleged attack of Chappelle happened, but the LA DA’s Office, which has been under fire for what critics see as Gascón’s soft on crime policies, didn’t charge Lee with any felonies. Instead, he was charged with four misdemeanors, for which he recently pleaded not guilty, and a judge refused to reduce his $30,000 bail and release him.
Gascón added of Thursday’s new charge, “The incident that occurred at the Hollywood Bowl was misdemeanor conduct and rightfully referred to the City Attorney’s Office. Based on the nature and severity of the December attack, Mr. Lee is now facing felony charges which my office will prosecute.”
Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — A Massachusetts resident has tested positive for monkeypox, health officials confirmed Wednesday, making it the first case of the rare virus detected in the United States this year.
According to a release from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the patient is an adult male who recently traveled to Canada. The department completed initial testing Tuesday and was confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The case poses no risk to the public, and the individual is hospitalized and in good condition,” MDPH stated in a press release. “DPH is working closely with the CDC, relevant local boards of health, and the patient’s health care providers to identify individuals who may have been in contact with the patient while he was infectious.”
The New York City Department of Health announced Thursday that it was investigating a possible case of monkeypox. The patient is being cared for at Bellevue Hospital and all appropriate isolation measures are being followed, according to the department. The patient’s tests will be sent to the CDC for confirmatory testing, the department said.
It comes after four more cases of monkeypox were identified in the U.K recently, bringing its nationwide total to nine since the beginning of May.
The resident was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston on May 12 and “during the course of their admission they were identified as a possible monkeypox suspect,” Dr. Erica Shenoy, associate chief of the hospital’s infection control unit, told reporters during a briefing Wednesday.
Hearing about cases of monkeypox in the U.K. encouraged doctors to “think more broadly about the patient’s diagnosis,” Shenoy said.
Hospital officials said they are unaware of any cases in Canada at this time and do not know where the resident may have contracted the disease.
Monkeypox is a rare disease caused by the monkeypox virus. The first case among humans was recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970, and the illness has since spread to several other nations, mostly in central and western Africa.
It can transmit from animals to humans when an infected animal — such as a rodent or a primate — bites or scratches a person. The CDC said humans can also be infected when hunting wild animals or preparing bush meat for consumption.
The disease can also spread from person to person via large respiratory droplets in the air, but they cannot travel more than a few feet, so two people would need to have prolonged close contact.
The most common symptoms are fever, headache, fatigue and muscle aches.
Very few cases of monkeypox have been identified among Americans.
According to the CDC, the disease does not naturally occur in the U.S. Infections are usually identified among people who recently traveled to countries where monkeypox is more commonly found.
In 2003, 47 confirmed and probable cases were reported in six U.S. states, the first human cases reported outside of Africa.
All the infections occurred after coming into contact with pet prairie dogs, which in turn became infected “after being housed near imported small mammals from Ghana,” the CDC stated.
Since then, just two other cases have been detected in the U.S., both associated with travel.
In July 2021, a case was confirmed in a Texas resident who had recently returned from Nigeria and in November 2021, another case was found in a Maryland resident who had also traveled to Nigeria.
ABC News’ William Gretsky contributed to this report.
The Johnny Depp/Amber Heard defamation case rolled on in a Fairfax, Virginia courtroom today, with the jury listening to hours of pre-taped testimony from various people involved with the former couple.
As reported, Depp is suing heard for $50 million for defamation, claiming her 2018 Washington Post op-ed devastated his career when it falsely branded him as a domestic abuser.
One of the tapes the jury heard today was from 2019, when actress Ellen Barkin testified about the actor, whom she briefly dated in the 1990s. “We had a romantic relationship,” Barkin said in the video deposition, before adding, “Actually, can we change that to ‘sexual’?”
Depp’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas co-star said Depp was “always drunk” and witnessed him throwing a bottle against a hotel wall during an argument with some of his associates.
There was also taped testimony from more recently, January of this year, from the Pirates of the Caribbean star’s former psychiatrist. Dr. Alan Blaustein testified Depp used drugs and alcohol to cope with “psychic wounds” and anxiety. The therapist also claimed the actor told him he was hesitant to marry Heard.
Heard is counter-suing Depp for $100 million, and her attorneys had the jury hear from Heard’s former agent, who claimed Heard’s op-ed actually hurt her own career.
Jessica Kovacevi noted that Heard’s level of fame should have been on par with that of Bond girl Ana De Armas if it weren’t for blowback she says the actress received in the wake of the bombshell article.
(MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.) — The family of the man who had previously been named a suspect in the 2009 disappearance of 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, said the investigation had ruined their lives for years.
Timothy Taylor was named by the FBI as a suspect in Drexel’s disappearance in 2016, ABC Charleston affiliate WCIV reported. An informant told FBI agents that he saw Taylor, who was 16 at the time of Drexel’s disappearance, and others sexually abusing Drexel at a home in McClellanville, South Carolina, about 60 miles south of Myrtle Beach.
Drexel had been on a spring break trip when she disappeared.
On Monday, authorities announced that Raymond Moody, 62, had been arrested for Drexel’s murder after her remains were found in a wooded area in Georgetown County, South Carolina, last week.
Timothy Taylor’s mother, the Rev. Joanne Taylor, for years insisted her son was innocent, saying the teen spent time in church, had a strict bedtime and could not have been involved in Drexel’s murder.
When federal agents named Timothy Taylor a suspect, he was in federal court on unrelated charges stemming from a 2011 robbery at a McDonald’s.
He was convicted on state and federal armed robbery charges and was sentenced in 2019 to three years of probation.
The FBI told WCIV Monday that Taylor was no longer a suspect in Drexel’s disappearance after a man who had been named a person of interest as early as 2012 was arrested. The portion that included the investigation into Taylor’s alleged involvement “has been concluded,” the FBI spokesperson said.
“We are confident that with Moody’s arrest we have the man responsible for Brittanee’s murder,” the FBI spokesperson told the station.
During a press conference on Thursday, Taylor’s family and friends expressed how devastating the investigation had been.
“Following investigations is one thing, but deliberately and intentionally making them strange fruit that is hung before the court system at the hand of a gavel, and unjust investigators is definitely unfair,” said the Rev. Lawrence Bratton. “This family has been devastated, ruined for the last 15 years, emotionally, psychologically, financially, and in every way that you can imagine down to the next generation.”
An FBI spokesperson did not immediately respond to an ABC News request for comment on the family’s statement.
Bratton said that even as the criminal justice system abandoned them, the community, as well as groups such as the National Action Network, the NAACP and the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance stood firmly beside the Taylor family.
“How do you do that? How do you take a family, devastate them and walk away and say no harm, no foul,” Bratton said in response to the FBI’s announcement that Timothy Taylor had been cleared.
The Rev. Joanne Taylor said that while the family’s heart goes out to the loved ones of Drexel, her son was “suspected without any credible evidence of a crime he did not commit” and “maintained his innocence in the face of relentless pursuit by local and federal law enforcement, investigators and the media.”
“The years long fight against accusations, false accusations, and the media frenzy that shoot us has traumatized us, affecting every aspect of our lives,” she said. “It has publicly questioned without reason our family, our families character, and it has shaken us to the core.”
Timothy Taylor did not appear at the press conference with his family.
Drexel traveled to Myrtle Beach from her parents’ home in the Rochester, New York, area in April 2009, despite her mother denying her permission to go, Melissa Drexel told ABC News. She was last seen on April 25, 2009, on a hotel surveillance camera as she was leaving a friend’s room at the Blue Water Resort to walk back to the hotel where she was staying — about a mile-and-a-half walk down the busy Myrtle Beach strip, ABC Rochester station WHAM reported.
Her remains were found less than 3 miles from a motel where Moody had been living at the time of Drexel’s disappearance, Georgetown County Sheriff Carter Weaver said.
Authorities said that Moody buried Drexel’s body, but did not answer questions on how Drexel’s remains were found.
Moody is being held without bond at the Georgetown County jail and is expected to be charged with rape, murder and kidnapping, said Jimmy Richardson, solicitor for Horry and Georgetown Counties, on Monday.
“In the last week, we’ve confirmed that Brittanee lost her life in a tragic way, at the hands of a horrible criminal who was walking our streets,” said FBI special agent in charge Susan Ferensic during a press conference on Monday.
In 2012, Moody had been identified as a person of interest in the disappearance but there was not enough evidence to name him as a suspect, officials said.
Even though Timothy Taylor’s name has been cleared, his “name and face will forever be linked to Brittanee Drexel,” his mother said.
“I call for law enforcement to halt the practice of disclosing unfounded leads and names of potential suspects without credible evidence,” she said. “Doing this has real life consequences and a lasting dispersion effect on so many, particularly us Black families.”
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has requested information from a sixth House Republican, Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, suggesting in a letter Thursday that he may be linked to a tour through parts of the Capitol on the day before the attack.
“We believe you have information regarding a tour you led through parts of the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021,” Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., wrote in a letter to Loudermilk Thursday.
The letter comes in response to a Democratic House member’s request for Capitol security to investigate allegations that GOP lawmakers led reconnaissance tours around the Capitol complex ahead of the attack.
“In response to those allegations, Republicans on the Committee on House Administration — of which you are a Member — claimed to have reviewed security footage from the days preceding January 6th and determined that ‘[t]here were no tours, no large groups, no one with MAGA hats on.’ However, the Select Committee’s review of evidence directly contradicts that denial,” the letter to Loudermilk says.
The panel, which is looking to hold public hearings in June, suggested meeting with Loudermilk on the week of May 23.
In a statement, Loudermilk and Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., the ranking member of the House Administration Committee, accused the committee of promoting a “verifiably false narrative.”
Loudermilk said that on Jan. 5, he met with a constituent’s family in a House office building, but never entered the Capitol Building. No member of the family was on Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, or was investigated or charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack, Loudermilk said in the statement.
The request for Loudermilk’s cooperation comes a week after committee issued subpoenas to five House Republicans — Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., and Ronny Jackson, R-Texas — after they refused to cooperate voluntarily with the panel.
The first trailer for the upcoming third season of The Umbrella Academy has arrived.
The clip picks up after the cliffhanger of season 2, which — spoiler alert — ends with our beloved family of misfit superheroes jumping into an alternate timeline where the Umbrella Academy doesn’t exist. Instead, they find that their eccentric, estranged father figure Reginald Hargreeves has formed a new super family, the Sparrow Academy.
As the trailer’s tag line puts it, “Too many siblings, not enough timeline.”
The Umbrella Academy, which first debuted in 2019, is based on the comic book series created by My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way.
Season 3 will star returning cast members Elliot Page, Tom Hopper, David Castañeda, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Robert Sheehan, Aidan Gallagher and Justin H. Min. It premieres June 22 on Netflix.
