Sesame Place issued an apology after Kelly Rowland and others spoke out against the treatment of two Black girls, who were ignored by a costumed character in the theme park.
In a viral video at a parade, the girls reached out to greet the character, who waved a hand in a “no” gesture after high-fiving multiple people.
Their mother wrote, “The kids wanted to stop to see the characters. THIS DISGUSTING person blatantly told our kids NO then proceeded to hug the little white girl next to us! Then when I went to complain about it, they looking at me like I’m crazy. I asked the lady who the character was and I wanted to see a supervisor and she told me SHE DIDNT KNOW!! I will never step foot in @sesameplace ever again!”
Over 10,000 comments slammed the character’s behavior. Rowland reposted the clip in her Instagram Stories writing, “Had that been me… that whole parade would have been in flames.”
In response, Sesame Place posted an apology on Instagram.
“Our brand, our park and our employees stand for inclusivity and equality in all forms,” the statement began. “That is what Sesame Place is all about and we do not tolerate any behaviors in our parks that are contrary to that commitment. We also are, and have always been, committed to making sure every family and every child has the best possible experience at our parks and we are incredibly disappointed when that does not happen. Regarding the incident yesterday, the costumes our performers wear sometimes make it difficult to see at lower levels and sometimes our performers miss hug requests from guests.”
Taraji P. Henson commented, “This is blatant racism,” and City Girls’ Yung Miami added, “RACIST!” The Black girls’ mother deemed the apology “disrespectful and distasteful.”
(PHILADELPHIA) — Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit that runs Sesame Street, said it will “conduct bias training and a thorough review of the ways in which they engage families and guests” at Sesame Place after a video of a potential racial bias incident went viral online.
“As a global nonprofit educational organization with a mission to help children grow smarter, stronger and kinder, Sesame Workshop has always stood for respect, inclusion and belonging and is committed to providing the highest quality engaging experiences for all children and families,” the organization said in a statement.
In a video posted on Twitter, two young Black girls at Sesame Place Philadelphia waved excitedly and held out their arms as a performer dressed in a Rosita costume approached.
Rosita high-fives parkgoers as she walks down the line, before appearing to shake her head at and wave off the two girls as she walks away from them.
“#BabyPaige & her cute lil friends went to @SesamePlace this weekend to celebrate Paige’s 4th birthday & this is how #SesamePlace treated these beautiful Black children,” the tweet, posted by the apparent aunt of the girl celebrating her birthday, read.
“While we hate to speculate and consider ‘race’ as the motivating factor, which would explain the performer’s actions, such actions both before and after the young girls reached out only leads us to one conclusion,” said attorney B’Ivory LaMarr, who is representing the family.
He continued, “Although Sesame Place purports to stand for inclusivity and equality, this was not demonstrated this past Saturday. We are currently investigating this incident and will exercise every legal remedy possible to further protect this family.”
Outrage ensued online, as more footage of similar incidents with park characters were posted online in response to the viral video. Calls to boycott Sesame Place are growing on social media.
Sesame Place Philadelphia released a statement on the incident, saying, “We know that it’s not OK. We are taking actions to do better. We are committed to making this right.”
The park said it will conduct training for employees to deliver an “inclusive, equitable and entertaining” experience for parkgoers.
Sesame Place is a licensed park partner of Sesame Workshop.
ABC News’ Sabina Ghebremedhin and Kendall Ross contributed to this report.
Queen‘s 1981 Greatest Hits compilation has long been the best-selling album in U.K. history, and now, the collection has reached a new milestone in the band’s home country.
According to the Official Charts Company, Greatest Hits has become the first album ever to reach the seven-million mark in sales in the U.K. The record-breaking sales figure includes physical sales, downloads and streams.
The album has amassed a whopping 1.26 billion total streams in the U.K. with “Bohemian Rhapsody” being the most-streamed track, notching over 240 million. Greatest Hits also has spent more than 1,000 weeks on the Official Albums Chart, making Queen the first British artists ever to achieve this feat.
In celebration of the sales milestone, Queen guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor recorded a video thanking fans.
“We’re here to bring you the joyous news that Queen’s Greatest Hits album has sold 7 million copies, which nobody has ever done before,” says May in the clip that’s been posted on OfficialCharts.com. “No album has done this before in history. Thank you, we appreciate it.”
Adds Taylor, “The British public in their infinitely great taste have made this the biggest-selling album in history. Thank you very much; we’re humbled and honored. We salute you!”
In other Queen news, today is May’s 75th birthday. He has continued to lead the band alongside Taylor since the 1991 death of frontman Freddie Mercury and is responsible for many of the group’s major hits. May wrote six songs on Greatest Hits, including “Fat Bottomed Girls,” “Save Me,” “Now I’m Here,” “Flash” and “We Will Rock You.”
Queen and singer Adam Lambert currently are on tour in Europe. The band’s next show takes place Wednesday, July 20 in Stockholm, Sweden.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Tuesday that codifies a 2020 law dealing with Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad.
Drawing on the 2020 Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act, the new executive order will reinforce the U.S. government’s efforts to support families of Americans wrongfully detained or held hostage overseas, according to the White House.
The order will authorize the federal government to impose financial sanctions on those who are involved — directly or indirectly — in wrongful detaining Americans abroad, the White House said. Moreover, government agencies will be directed to improve engagement with those Americans’ families, including sharing intelligence information about their loved ones and the government’s efforts to free them. The order will also charge experts across agencies with developing “options and strategies to deter future hostage-takings,” the White House said.
A senior Biden administration official told reporters that new sanctions will not be announced on Tuesday.
In addition to the executive order, Biden will introduce a new “risk indicator” — “the ‘D’ indicator” — to the U.S. Department of State’s travel advisories for particular countries to alert Americans of the risk of wrongful detention by a foreign government, according to the White House.
Starting Tuesday, the first countries to receive this additional risk indicator will be China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela, another senior administration official told reporters. The “D” indicator joins the existing “K” indicator that covers the risk of kidnapping and hostage-taking by non-state actors, as well as a range of other existing risk indicators.
China’s “D” risk designation may spark ire in Beijing, where Chinese officials have largely tried to avoid the subject of wrongful detentions and where Western sanctions are a constant trigger.
Experts estimate that roughly 200 Americans are arbitrarily jailed in China, and that even more are subject to unlawful “exit bans,” barring them from leaving the country. Some advocates have pushed for the Biden administration to take a more vocal approach to secure their freedom, rather than the standard behind-the-scenes diplomacy. But the State Department has recently tried a similar strategy — updating their official advisory to American and instructing them to reconsider travel plans to China due to “arbitrary enforcement of local laws.”
Syria, with which the United States does not currently have formal diplomatic relations, will be notably excluded from the “D” risk designation on Tuesday. U.S. officials believe that while the Syrian government may not be currently holding American journalist Austin Tice in its custody, it could have valuable information on his whereabouts and perhaps those of other missing Americans. Tice, 40, was abducted in Syria nearly 10 years ago.
The White House recently held a telephone call for the relatives of detained Americans to share information with them about these new announcements. Some of them are in Washington, D.C., this week for the unveiling of a public mural depicting their loved ones, according to Jonathan Franks, a spokesperson for many of the families.
The mural in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood will depict the faces of 18 American hostages and wrongful detainees, according to Franks, who represents a group called the Bring Our Families Home Campaign. Among those featured will be American basketball star Brittney Griner, 31, and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, 52, both of whom remain detained in Russia, as well as U.S. permanent resident Paul Rusesabagina, 68, who inspired the acclaimed 2004 film “Hotel Rwanda” and was sentenced last September to 25 years in Rwandan prison over terrorism charges.
Franks accused U.S. officials of ignoring these relatives’ requests to meet with Biden, and said the phone call the White House held with the relatives was a “one-way conversation with families.” He said the Biden administration was rolling out these new steps in order to “pre-manage the press attention from many hostage families being in D.C. this week to unveil their mural,” saying the White House was “taking executive action to direct itself to follow existing law.”
A spokesperson for the White House told ABC News that it had invited the families to learn about the new announcements before they were announced publicly.
“As part of our regular communication with families of those who are held hostage or wrongfully detained, we invited them to hear about new policy efforts we are launching to help bring their loved ones home,” the spokesperson said. “We wanted to share information with the families first before we announce them publicly, which the families deserve.”
The spokesperson added that the Biden administration would “continue to be in regular touch with these families through the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell, and the president’s national security team as we do everything we can to support them during these difficult times.”
Whelan’s brother, David Whelan, told ABC News the executive order was “a good next step and shows a long-term commitment by the Biden administration, both in the amount of time it must have taken to craft the framework … and the focus on continued deterrence.”
He said the White House holding the call with families in advance of the public announcement “was exactly what families had been asking for: communication in advance of new announcements that would impact our families.”
According to the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, there are actually 64 publicly known cases of Americans being held hostage or wrongfully detained around the world.
Sally Hayden/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(LONDON) — The International Rescue Committee for the first time on Tuesday issued a “Crisis Alert” update to its annual “Emergency Watchlist” report, warning that millions of people across East Africa could die from “catastrophic famine” without “urgent” international funding and action.
The global humanitarian aid organization releases its “Emergency Watchlist” at the end of each year, identifying the countries it believes are most at risk of the worst humanitarian crises over the course of the coming year. But since early 2022, Russia has been waging a war against Ukraine that has disproportionally affected food security in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, which were reliant on Russia and Ukraine for about 90% of their wheat imports and are now in the midst of their longest, most severe drought in decades.
The IRC said its first-ever “Crisis Alert” update was issued in light of this fallout from the war in Ukraine, which — combined with the increasingly detrimental impact of climate change, conflict and COVID-19 — has driven those three East African nations into a “predictable crisis dangerously neglected by the international community.”
“There is nothing natural about famines in the 21st century. While a complex set of factors are driving extreme hunger, the slide into famine and mass death is man-made, driven by international inaction,” IRC CEO David Miliband said in a statement Tuesday. “This crisis was predictable and preventable. It has been unfolding over two years of repeated warnings and worsening hunger. What we are witnessing is an unnatural disaster of catastrophic proportions.”
The war in Ukraine would not have had such a significant impact on East Africa if drought had not already devastated agriculture, IRC said.
After a record four consecutive failed rainy seasons, the number of people going hungry across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia is set to surpass 20 million by September — nearly a doubling compared to late 2021. Over three million of them are already experiencing the most extreme levels of hunger, increasing their risk of death, according to the IRC.
The IRC’s “Crisis Alert” update noted “specific concern” for Somalia, which it said is the worst affected and is entering a famine that is expected to be even more severe than the 2011 one that killed an estimated 260,000 people. In one IRC’s nutrition clinic in Mogadishu, from April to May, the organization has seen a 265% increase in admissions for children under the age of 5 suffering from severe malnutrition. IRC teams on the ground report that people are already dying from starvation.
“There is no time to wait for data collection to confirm what the IRC is already seeing on the ground: a country hurtling towards a catastrophic famine,” the organization said in the update. “A famine declaration will tell us when it is too late — that people are already dying en masse, not how many lives we can still save. Waiting to respond based on retrospective data will condemn hundreds of thousands to an unnecessary death. Instead the international community needs to look forward, applying a no-regrets approach.”
The warning came a day after the U.S. Agency for International Development announced nearly $1.3 billion in additional humanitarian and developmental assistance to the Horn of Africa region. The IRC said the humanitarian-response plan for the region would be funded at only 40%, even accounting for the new funding.
“Severe underfunding of humanitarian responses is depriving millions of the assistance they need to survive,” said Miliband, the IRC’s CEO. “The new U.S. funding announced this week must be a first step, not a last one.”
(SPOILERS)Ms. Marvel had its exciting finale last week, and fans are still buzzing about an after-credits scene that finally links Iman Vellani‘s young heroine to the “M” word: mutant.
The final episodes also revealed the true nature of Rish Shah‘s character Kamran, who begins as something of a love interest to Vellani’s Kamala Khan and becomes something else entirely by the series’ end.
Both Shah and his co-star Yasmeen Fletcher had an idea of who they were being cast to play — despite Marvel’s notoriously strict security — so that made the auditioning process all the more nerve-racking.
“It’s difficult when you’re auditioning for something you really care about,” Shah tells ABC Audio. “It’s the most difficult thing sometimes!”
He adds, “And so when you finally get the call, then you’re going to be a part in this project, it is like a huge sigh of relief and also just pure excitement and a lot of tears. So yeah, it was it was probably the best, best night of my life.”
Fletcher agrees. “I knew Nakia and I was a fan of the comics before, so I liked her character already,” she says. “But I remember reading the breakdown for the audition being like, ‘She’s so similar to me, like, this is going to be so fun and so easy!’ And I immediately connected with her as a person.”
She adds of the role, “When I got the call, I had already thought that I didn’t get it. So I had mourned it, had the funeral for it, and then out of the blue got the call that I did get it. So it was all the more of a shock and excitement and all of the emotions all at once!”
Trivium has announced a U.S. headlining tour for this fall.
The outing is dubbed the Deadmen and Dragons tour, named after Trivium’s last two albums: 2020’s What the Dead Men Say and 2021’s In the Court of the Dragon. It’ll run from October 2 in Boise, Idaho to November 10 in Los Angeles.
Between the Buried and Me, Whitechapel and Khemmis will also be on the bill.
Tickets go on sale this Friday, July 22 at 10 a.m. local time. For the full list of dates and all ticket info, visit Trivium.org.
Ahead of the headline dates, Trivium will be opening for Iron Maiden‘s U.S. tour, kicking off in September.
(NEW YORK) — Dangerous heat has tightened its hold on the U.S. with 100 million Americans across 24 states on heat alert Tuesday from Texas to Massachusetts.
While many of these areas will find refuge in overnight drops in temperature, the Southern Plains will not drop below 80 degrees overnight, putting the region in an excessive heat warning.
Experts say such consistent, intense temperatures are dangerous to an individual’s health.
Oklahoma City is expected to reach 111 degrees on Tuesday, with nearby cities staying above 100 degrees throughout the day.
Texas residents are projected to face continuing, stifling temperatures on Tuesday, with Dallas having the potential to break its July heat record of 110 degrees.
The heat continues to spread on Tuesday, tightening its hold on the Northeast.
Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York City and Boston are forecast to have a prolonged heat wave with temperatures in the 90-degree range throughout the week. On Tuesday, the four cities have highs of 90, 93, 91 and 92 degrees, respectively.
Those temperatures are expected to go even higher, as Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia face a high of 97 degrees on Thursday.
The National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory for Philadelphia, New York City and Boston as of Tuesday morning.
For many, Wednesday is expected to feel worse than Tuesday’s heat, as temperatures are expected to rise and humidity is expected to worsen, according to the NWS.
On Wednesday, Syracuse and Albany, New York, are expected to reach 99 degrees and Hartford, Connecticut, is set to reach 100 degrees.
With the heat, severe storms have hit the Northeast.
Flash flooding was reported from Virginia to Connecticut on Monday, with 4 to 6 inches of rain dumped along the Interstate 95 corridor.
Some areas of New York City had several inches of rain during a single hour on Monday, leaving highways, streets and subway stations flooded.
According to the MTA, some New York subway stations faced delays and canceled services due to water damage.
At the Dyckman Street station in the Bronx, the third rail — which provides electrical power to subway trains — was impacted as the roadbed was flooded by up to 14 inches of water on Monday, the MTA reported.
Some train services were canceled for several hours as crews worked to drain the water and clear debris from the tracks.
Storm reports also came in from Montana to the Mid-Atlantic, as residents faced damaging winds over 70 mph and baseball-sized hail.
On Tuesday, the Great Lakes and Upper Midwest will continue to see severe and damaging winds alongside large-scale hail.
Severe storms are expected to return to the Northeast on Thursday, with heavy rains and damaging winds posing the largest threat to the region stretching from Connecticut to Maine.
(NEW YORK) — A Delaware court on Tuesday determined that the trial in a lawsuit brought by Twitter against Elon Musk should take place in October, granting an expedited timeline for the case.
Twitter sued Musk — the chief executive of Tesla and the richest person in the world, according to Forbes’ Billionaires List — in an attempt to force him to complete his purchase of the company, after he declared in early July he was walking away from the deal.
The scheduling decision made Tuesday — to hold the trial over five days in October — appeared to align more closely with a timeline requested by Twitter, which had sought a four-day trial in September. Musk asked the court to set a trial date no earlier than mid-February 2023.
“The reality is that delay risks irreparable harm” to Twitter, said Court Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick.
Attorneys for Musk and Twitter alleged on Tuesday that their opponents held ulterior motives for the timelines they sought.
William Savitt, an attorney from Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, who is representing Twitter, accused Musk of delaying the court proceeding in the hope of increasing his negotiating leverage or scuttling the deal with Twitter altogether.
“The company is faced with substantial increasing risk specifically by the overhanging of the merger agreement — and it’s by design,” Savitt said.
“Mr. Musk has been and remains contractually obligated to use his best efforts to close this deal,” Savitt added. “What he’s doing is the exact opposite of best efforts. It’s attempted sabotage.”
Andrew Rossman, an attorney for Musk and a managing partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, rebuked the claim. Instead, he argued that Twitter has sought to accelerate the case to prevent Musk and his representatives from assessing the company’s estimate in an SEC filing that less than 5% of accounts on the platform are bot or fake accounts.
“There’s no reason to try to do this in two months, except for one. The one reason is what Twitter wants to do is continue to shroud in secrecy the issue regarding their less than 5% spam and false account representation,” he said.
“As long as is necessary to get this deal railroaded through and force Mr. Musk to close,” he added.
“Twitter’s bid for extreme expedition rests on the false premise that the Termination Date in the merger agreement is October 24, glossing over that this date is automatically stayed if either party files litigation. By filing its complaint, Plaintiff has rendered its supposed need for a September trial moot,” Alex Spiro, an attorney for Musk, wrote in a court filing on Friday.
The Delaware Chancery Court will determine whether Musk remains obligated to purchase Twitter.
Musk has claimed Twitter failed to disclose the number of fake accounts on the platform. Twitter has said 5% of active users are bots but Musk has said he believes the figure is higher.
“Post-signing, Defendants promptly sought to understand Twitter’s process for identifying false or spam accounts. In a May 6 meeting with Twitter executives, Musk was flabbergasted to learn just how meager Twitter’s process was,” Musk’s filing said.
The legal battle marks the latest chapter in a monthslong saga that began in January when Musk started investing in Twitter.
Musk reached an acquisition deal with Twitter in April, but in the weeks since, he has raised concerns over spam accounts on the platform, claiming Twitter has not provided him with an accurate estimate of their number. Twitter has rebuked that claim, saying it has provided Musk with information in accordance with conditions set out in the acquisition deal.
Last Tuesday, Twitter sued Musk to force him to complete the deal.
“Musk refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests,” Twitter said in the lawsuit. “Musk apparently believes that he — unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law — is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Secret Service is preparing to notify the House Jan. 6 committee that it has found no new text messages related to the Capitol riot, a source says — the same day the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) sent a letter requesting the agency investigate the deletion of some its records from Jan. 6, 2021, which drew the scrutiny of an internal watchdog.
The Secret Service’s plans were confirmed to ABC News on Tuesday by a source familiar with the matter.
A Secret Service spokesman last week acknowledged that text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, were deleted after being sought by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General.
A letter sent Wednesday by the inspector general to the heads of the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees said the messages were deleted “as part of a device-replacement program” despite the inspector general requesting such communications.
The director of communications for the Secret Service, Anthony Guglielmi, subsequently dismissed any “insinuation” the agents had intentionally deleted the texts.
The Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed the Secret Service on Friday — its first such order to an executive agency.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a member of the Jan. 6 committee, said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that the panel expected more information about the Secret Service texts by Tuesday.
“We need all of the texts from the fifth and sixth of January. I was shocked to hear that they didn’t back up their data before they reset their iPhones. That’s crazy, and I don’t know why that would be,” Lofgren, D-Calif., said then. “But we need to get this information to get the full picture.”
In its letter on Tuesday, the NARA wrote that “if it is determined that any text messages have been improperly deleted” — “regardless of their relevance” to Jan. 6 investigations — “then the Secret Service must send NARA a report within 30 calendar days of the date of this letter with a report documenting the deletion.”
“This report must include a complete description of the records affected, a statement of the exact circumstances surrounding the deletion of messages, a statement of the safeguards established to prevent further loss of documentation, and details of all agency actions taken to salvage, retrieve, or reconstruct the records,” NARA wrote.
The Secret Service — which has faced fresh controversy over its conduct amid the insurrection and then-President Donald Trump’s behavior that day — has repeatedly said it is readily cooperating with both the inspector general and the Jan. 6 committee.
“Over the last 18 months, we have voluntarily provided dozens of hours of formal testimony from special agents and over 790,000 unredacted emails, radio transmissions, operational and planning records,” spokesman Guglielmi said Friday. “We plan to continue that cooperation by responding swiftly to the Committee’s subpoena.”
