Brandy joined Jack Harlow on stage at the BET Awards 2022.
Harlow took the stage as one of the first performers at the award ceremony, which was held live at Los Angeles’ Microsoft Theater on Sunday, and during his hit “First Class,” the rapper surprised the audience by bringing out Brandy, who performed her previously released freestyle over the beat.
The moment was an interesting one given that about a month ago the two artists appeared to be beefing after Harlow failed to realize that Brandy was Ray J‘s sister.
After watching the viral interview clip where Harlow asks, “Who’s Ray J’s sister?” Brandy tweeted, “I will murk this dude in rap at 43 [years old] on his own beats and then sing [h]is a** to sleep.”
While the iconic singer could very well give the “Nail Tech” rapper a run for his money, she posted a follow-up tweet saying, “See, I can have a little fun too hehe…all love.”
Responding to Brandy’s clapback, Harlow posted an image of Brandy and Ray J accompanied by Kanye West‘s 2005 track, “Bring Me Down,” on which Brandy sings the chorus.
Brandy then hit back by putting her spin on Harlow’s “First Class,” releasing a freestyle over the beat in which she introduced herself as “world-famous,” “one of the greatest” and a “living legend” before adding, “Did I mention my resume is amazing?”
Any beef these two artists may have had though seems to have officially been squashed when they united together on stage.
Harlow was also joined by Lil Wayne during the performance, where they rapped their song “Poison” from Harlow’s latest album, Come Home the Kids Miss You.
(EL ESPINAL, Colombia) — At least four people have died and dozens were injured after an accident occurred at the venue of a bullfight in Colombia.
The spectators were watching the bullfight in El Espinal, Colombia — about 100 miles southwest of Bogota — on Sunday when several stands collapsed, the Tolima Civil Defense told ABC News.
In addition to the four people who died, about 60 people were treated on-site for minor injuries, while another 10 were transferred to local hospitals.
It is unclear what caused the stands to collapse.
Additional information was not immediately available.
The ethics surrounding bullfighting, which involves killing the bull at the end of the contest, has come into question in recent years. While the practice is customary in many Spanish-speaking countries, a judge in Mexico City extended a ban on bullfighting indefinitely earlier this month over complaints that bullfights violated resident’s rights to a healthy environment free from violence, The Associated Press reported.
While four states in Mexico have already banned bullfighting, a ban in Mexico City could mark the end of nearly 500 years of bullfighting in Mexico and could threaten the practice internationally, The AP reported.
ABC New’s Christine Theodorou contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said Sunday that women shouldn’t be prosecuted for seeking abortions following the Supreme Court’s ruling last week overturning Roe v. Wade, which allowed state-level abortion bans in South Dakota and elsewhere to take effect.
Noem, a Republican, celebrated the high court’s finding that there is no constitutional guarantee to abortion access, but she told “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz, “I don’t believe women should ever be prosecuted. I don’t believe that mothers in this situation [should] ever be prosecuted. Now doctors who knowingly violate the law, they should be prosecuted.”
South Dakota was one multiple states that had in place a so-called “trigger law,” which immediately banned abortions once the Supreme Court announced its ruling, according to the research and policy group Guttmacher Institute. Following the court’s decision, all abortions in the state became illegal “unless there is appropriate and reasonable medical judgment that performance of an abortion is necessary to preserve the life of the pregnant female.”
The law makes performing an abortion — either through a procedure or via medicine — a felony.
However, Noem said Sunday, “I don’t believe there should be any punishment for women, ever, that are in a crisis situation or have an unplanned pregnancy. And South Dakota has been strong on that argument.” She called the new court ruling “wonderful news in the defense of life. Every life is precious.”
“We want to help support these mothers,” she continued. “I think we can do better in this country making sure that we’re walking alongside them in these situations.”
Raddatz cited data from the nonpartisan social policy think tank Commonwealth Fund that “the 14 states that have the most restrictive abortion laws, including South Dakota, invest the least in policies and programs for women and children.”
“So what do you mean when you say these mothers will never be alone?” she asked, challenging Noem.
“I would say that the facts on the ground are that South Dakota’s doing a lot to coordinate with nonprofits, with churches, and then also the state in a new way by launching this website,” Noem answered, referring to a government portal with information about resources for pregnant women and new mothers.
The Supreme Court handed down its decision reversing Roe on Friday, ruling that there was not a constitutional guarantee to abortion access and that abortions could be regulated, or banned, by each state individually.
Raddatz noted in 2006 and in 2008 that South Dakota voters rejected initiatives for complete bans on abortion. She asked Noem if the governor would “be willing to let the voters of the state decide the issue again?”
Noem said voters decide the issue of abortion “every single year when we come to legislative sessions.”
“They vote for their representatives to come to sessions,” she said.
President Joe Biden, responding to the Roe reversal, said Friday that his administration would work to protect certain medications that are approved by the Food and Drug Administration, “like contraception, which is essential for preventative healthcare [and] mifepristone, which the FDA approved 20 years ago to safely end early pregnancies and is commonly used to treat miscarriages.”
When Raddatz pushed Noem on her stance on abortions via medication, using the “so-called abortion pill,” Noem said she didn’t believe telemedicine abortions were safe.
“I don’t believe that telemedicine abortions are safe for individuals, for women to conduct at home, many times they’re doing it unsupervised. It’s a medical procedure, and so I do believe that there should be a physician supervision in place when that is being conducted by individual,” Noem said.
Medication abortions are considered safe, according to the nonprofit organization Kaiser Family Foundation, “with a 0.4% risk of major complications, and an associated mortality rate of less than 0.001 percent (0.00064%).”
She also said she thinks there will be continued discussion among local lawmakers about the legality of constituents who travel across state borders to get an abortion elsewhere.
“That, certainly, isn’t addressed in our statute today and so I think that there’ll be a debate about [it], but also we’re having lots of debates in South Dakota,” she said.
(TACOMA, Wash.) — At least eight people were injured early Sunday when gunfire broke out at a dance party being held in an industrial area of Tacoma, Washington, police said.
The shooting occurred at 12:45 a.m. at a private venue in South Tacoma, where police said the rave attracted a large crowd.
A barrage of gunfire erupted during an argument that broke out in an alley behind the venue, located in an area filled with mostly car dealerships and auto repair shops, according to police.
Police immediately closed streets around the crime scene as officers and paramedics responded and began treating the wounded.
There were no immediate reports of fatalities and no arrests were immediately announced.
The victims appear to have all suffered non-life-threatening injuries and were hospitalized in stable condition, the Tacoma Police Department said in a statement.
Officers responded to the scene after multiple 911 callers reported shots being fired at the rave.
“Officers arrived to find a chaotic scene with a large crowd and multiple shooting victims,” according to the police statement.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(EAST LONDON, South Africa) — At least 22 people were found dead in a South African tavern early on Sunday morning, officials said.
The South African Police Service said they were found dead inside a local tavern in Scenery Park in the area of East London, according to Police Spokesperson Brigadier Tembinkosi Kinana said.
“We received this report in the early hours of this morning. The circumstances surrounding the incident are under investigation,” Kinana said. “We do not want to make any speculation at this stage as our investigations are continuing.”
Police responded to the Enyobeni Tavern at about 4 a.m. local time, Kinana said, and were combing the scene for evidence midday. Scenery Park is in East London, a city in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province.
Kinana said the dead were between up to 20 years old.
The youngest victim was 13, South African Police Service Spokesperson Col. Athlenda Mathe told reporters.
ABC News’ Christine Theodorou contributed to this report.
(KRUN, Germany) — The Group of Seven nations on Sunday began rolling out a global infrastructure initiative in a bid, as they described it, to promote “stability” and improve conditions in developing and middle-income countries around the globe.
The Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment plans on disbursing $600 billion by 2027 in infrastructure investments, with President Joe Biden announcing the U.S. alone would aim to spend $200 billion in public and private partnerships.
Biden and other world leaders, speaking in Germany’s Bavarian Alps, cast the investments as “critical” amid crises on multiple fronts, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, an energy crunch fueled in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and more.
“These strategic investments are in areas critical to sustainable development and to our shared global stability: health and health security, digital connectivity, gender equality and equity, climate and energy security,” Biden said.
“We need a worldwide effort to invest in transformative clean energy projects to ensure that critical infrastructures resilient to changing climate. Critical materials that are necessary for clean energy transition, including production of batteries, need to be developed with high standards for labor and environment,” he added.
The G-7 announcement comes as the alliance looks to lay down markers of tangible investments and accomplishments at a time when China and Russia are looking to make inroads elsewhere.
China has become increasingly involved in Africa and Latin America, investing hefty sums in building roads, bridges and more in an aggressive diplomatic effort on both continents.
In his remarks on Sunday, Biden directly contrasted the new announcement with what China has done, emphasizing that the G-7’s investments will be based on “shared values,” a signal to nations that it’s in their benefit to align with the U.S. and others compared with China.
“What we’re doing is fundamentally different because it’s grounded on our shared values of all those representing the countries and organizations behind me. It’s built using the global best practices: transparency, partnership, protections for labor and the environment,” he said.
He said the infrastructure program was not “aid or charity,” but instead “an investment that will deliver returns for everyone, including the American people and people of all” nations.
“It’ll boost all of our economies, and it’s a chance for us to share our positive vision for the future …. Because when democracies demonstrate what we can do, all that we have to offer, I have no doubt that will win the competition, every time,” he said.
The investments in energy and climate infrastructure have taken on heightened on importance both as nations race to combat climate change’s effects and make themselves less reliant on countries like Russia for oil and natural gas — a dependency that has hindered the response to Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
There was no question-and-answer session at the end of the G-7 announcement, but when one reporter shouted a question, it was about whether the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade had come up in meetings.
“What decision?” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen could be heard asking as she walked off stage.
ABC News’ Justin Gomez contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Jeffery Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell has been put on suicide watch days before her sentencing on five criminal counts, including sex trafficking, according to her lawyer.
She is awaiting sentencing, ahead of Tuesday morning’s hearing, at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
“Yesterday, without having conducted a psychological evaluation and without justification, the MDC placed Ms. Maxwell on suicide watch,” her lawyer, Bobbi Sternheim, wrote to a federal court in New York on Saturday. “She is not permitted to possess and review legal documents and is not permitted paper or pen. This has prevented her from preparing for sentencing.”
Nearly three years ago, her accomplice, Jeffery Epstein was found dead by suicide at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. The federal government announced last year that MCC would close due to its poor conditions.
Maxwell’s lawyers told the court she is not suicidal and has been deemed so by outside psychologists.
“Ms. Maxwell was abruptly removed from general population and returned to solitary confinement, this time without any clothing, toothpaste, soap, legal papers, etc,” her lawyer’s letter said on Saturday. “She was provided a ‘suicide smock’ and is given a few sheets of toilet paper on request. This morning, a psychologist evaluated Ms. Maxwell and determined she is not suicidal.”
Her lawyers said she is unable to prepare for sentencing and “is prohibited from reviewing legal materials prior to sentencing, becomes sleep-deprived, and is denied sufficient time to meet with and confer with counsel.” They said if this doesn’t change by Monday, they will formally request to have sentencing date delayed.
“I met with Ms. Maxwell today (after a 97-minute delay following my arrival at the facility),” her lawyer said. “She is not suicidal.”
The Department of Justice responded to Maxwell’s legal team Sunday afternoon, saying she was put on suicide watch after she allegedly emailed the Bureau of Prisons Inspector General’s Office claiming she feared for her safety. However, it said Maxwell does have a hard copy of all her legal documents and “is able to confer with defense counsel.”
“Here, the Warden and Chief Psychologist assessed that the defendant is at heightened risk of self-harm, particularly given her upcoming sentencing and sex offender status. As a result, they are not comfortable placing the defendant in the SHU (Special Housing Unit), but they also need to remove the defendant from general population to investigate the threat she reported to the IG,” United States attorney Damian Williams wrote to the court Sunday.
Following Maxwell’s email, and her alleged refusal to answer questions from the prison’s psychology staff, she was removed from the general population and placed on a suicide watch, according to the US Attorneys Office.
“Although the defendant has claimed to psychology staff that she is not suicidal, she has refused to answer psychology staff’s questions regarding the threat she reported to the IG. While she claimed to the IG to be in fear for her safety, she refused to tell psychology staff what that fear is,” Williams wrote.
“Given the defendant’s inconsistent accounts to the IG and to psychology staff, the Chief Psychologist assesses the defendant to be at additional risk of self-harm, as it appears she may be attempting to be transferred to a single cell where she can engage in self-harm. The defendant will remain on suicide watch until the MDC assesses that she is no longer at heightened risk of self-harm,” Williams wrote.
Prosecutors said despite her legal team’s claim, there’s no reason to delay Maxwell’s sentencing on Tuesday.
The Bureau of Prisons said it doesn’t comment on individual inmates.
“The BOP is committed to ensuring the safety and security of all inmates in our population, our staff, and the public. Humane treatment of the men and women in our custody is a top priority,” a Bureau of Prisons spokesperson told ABC News.
ABC News has previously reported that while she was awaiting trial, Maxwell was given paper clothes as a precaution.
(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, said Sunday that criminal charges against the people involved in trying to overturn the 2020 election — including former President Donald Trump — were not his “principal interest” compared to understanding how the violence unfolded to avoid it being repeated.
“Our democracy is on the line here. Our Constitution is at stake. Are we going to have violent assaults against our elections? Are we going to have politicians who, disappointed with the results, try to overthrow the election and just seize power? Is that what American democracy is going to look like in the 21st century?” the Maryland Democrat told “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz.
“So, for me, I’m principally interested in telling the American people the truth so we can fortify our institution against coups and insurrections going forward,” Raskin continued.
“But I know that there’s a great public hunger for individual criminal accountability, and I’ve got confidence in the Department of Justice, in Attorney General Merrick Garland, to do the right thing in terms of making all the difficult decisions about particular cases,” he said.
Raskin’s remarks come after the Jan. 6 committee held its latest public hearing, on Thursday, outlining evidence of then-President Trump’s pressure campaign on the Department of Justice to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.
The committee says its investigation showed the sprawling campaign involved, among other things, an attempt to replace the acting attorney general with a loyalist more willing to concede to Trump’s demands as well as suggestions of seizing voting machines and talks of pardons for conservative lawmakers who cooperated in the scheme.
On “This Week” on Sunday, Raskin expressed alarm at the effort but also praised local officials who ensured that the 2020 race was not overturned.
“We saw a series of successive shakedowns of the election officials of secretaries of state like Brad Raffensperger, of state legislative officials. And we saw a lot of heroes, people who hung tough, like Shaye Moss, and were not willing to be deterred from doing their public duties,” he told Raddatz, referencing officials in Georgia who faced pressure over the election. “We saw the same thing at the Department of Justice as Trump’s own appointees, who were telling him they could not do what he was asking them to do.”
Raddatz pressed Raskin on what he saw as the “real impact” of the hearings in the public consciousness, citing a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll that 34% of Americans had been following the hearing somewhat or very closely — “as much as some people are very riveted,” Raddatz said.
“People are busy and so we know a lot of people, especially younger people, will learn about the hearings through snippets that go out on TV or online and people now are able to process information in different ways,” Raskin said. “It’s not like the Watergate hearings where everybody had to be watching at the same moment because of the relatively primitive state of technology then. People are going to be able to absorb this over time.”
Raskin also discussed the testimony of Arizona state House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican who was also pressed to overturn Trump’s loss in the state in 2020. Bowers told the committee it was contrary to his faith to do so but that he would still vote for Trump in 2024 if Trump were to be the GOP nominee against President Joe Biden.
“I was very moved by Rusty Bowers’s testimony and his constitutional faith and patriotism,” Raskin said. “When he said that, I thought to myself, well, if you want to get Donald Trump back in office, and that were actually to materialize, you got to be prepared to do the exact same thing next time because Trump has proven himself to be absolutely disrespectful of the rule of law and completely ungovernable by the Constitution.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court has “burned whatever legitimacy they may still have had” with their ruling last week overturning Roe v. Wade, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said on Sunday.
“They just took the last of it and set a torch to it,” Warren, a Democrat, told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz in an exclusive interview. “I believe we need to get some confidence back in our court and that means we need more justices on the United States Supreme Court. We’ve done it before, we need to do it again.” (Warren has previously called for expanding the number of justices, including in an op-ed in The Boston Globe in December.)
In a Friday decision, the high court overturned the landmark holding in Roe, instead ruling that there was no constitutional guarantee to abortion access. Justices voted five to four to reject Roe and six to three in favor of Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, in the underlying case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
The reversal was widely celebrated by anti-abortion lawmakers and advocates but sparked protests across the country and drew condemnation by Warren and other leading Democrats.
In the days since the decision, at least eight states have outlawed abortion and in the coming weeks a total of 26 states are expected to ban or severely restrict it, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group focusing on sexual and reproductive health.
Raddatz asked Warren on “This Week” why abortion should not just be decided by individual states and their elected officials, rather than ensured as a constitutional right.
“‘Go to the polls,’ you say. President [Joe] Biden says, ‘Go to the polls.’ But look at the states outlawing abortion,” Raddatz pressed. “Those are largely conservative states, Gov. [Kristi] Noem had a point there — people go to the polls. They went to the polls just like your constituents in Massachusetts where abortion is legal, so why not leave it to the states?”
“We have never left individual rights to the states. The whole idea is that women are not second-class citizens and the government is not the one that will decide about the continuation of a pregnancy,” Warren responded. “Access to abortion, like other medical procedures, should be available across the board to all people in this country.”
Warren also called for Biden to use his available tools to “make abortion as available as possible, including medication abortion and using federal lands as a place where abortion can occur.”
She urged people to vote “like a laser on the election in November” and elect lawmakers who will codify Roe, which is a priority among some Democrats but doesn’t have the 60 votes needed to avoid a Senate filibuster.
“We [need to] get two more senators on the Democratic side, two senators who are willing to protect access to abortion and get rid of the filibuster so that we can pass it,” Warren said. “John Fetterman, I’m looking at you in Pennsylvania. Mandela Barnes, I’m looking at you in Wisconsin. We bring them in, then we’ve got the votes, and we can protect every woman no matter where she lives.”
Warren said she was also “deeply concerned” about Justice Clarance Thomas’ opinion last week that agreed with overturning Roe but also called on the high court to go on to reject its past rulings on contraception and gay marriage.
“I understand that the rest of the court said, ‘No, no, we’re not going there,’ but remember how we got to where we are,” Warren said. “When Roe v. Wade first came down, there was a tiny minority that really put a lot of energy in effect for themselves and for Republicans, putting Roe on the ballot over and over.”
Raddatz asked Warren whether the Supreme Court Senate confirmation process should change, given that some justices who joined to overturn Roe had said at their hearings and elsewhere it was settled law or respected precedent.
“Sen. Susan Collins, who voted for Justice Kavanaugh, as well as Joe Manchin, have said they were misled. Do you think the process should change, now, of confirming justices?” Raddatz asked.
“I understand that Justice Kavanaugh — I don’t know what he said to Sen. Collins, I wasn’t in the room,” Warren said, referring to a private meeting between the two. “But I do know this: that the Republicans have been very overt about trying to get people through the court who didn’t have a published record on Roe but who they knew, wink, wink, nod, nod, were going to be extremist on the issue of Roe v. Wade and that is exactly what we have ended up with.”
