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A Los Angeles judge has denied Kevin Spacey‘s attempt to overturn a $31 million arbitration award he was ordered to pay House of Cards producers for alleged sexual misconduct involving young crew members behind the scenes of the Netflix series, according to Deadline.
Spacey was booted from the hit Netflix series during its sixth season following allegations that he sexually assaulted and preyed on young men.
LA Superior Court Judge Mel Red Recana confirmed an award previously handed down by an arbitrator in 2020, consisting of around $29.5 million in damages and $1.5 million in costs and fees.
An arbitrator had ruled in favor of House of Cards‘ production company MRC’s argument that the 63-year-old actor, who played Frank Underwood on the series, breached his contract by violating anti-harassment policies and failing to provide services “in a professional manner.”
The arbitrator also found that Spacey wasn’t entitled to be paid for the remainder of his contract, even though it contained a pay-or-play provision, and that his breaches caused the show’s sixth season to be shortened and rewritten, resulting in an eight-figure loss for MRC.
Spacey’s lawyer, according to court papers obtained by Deadline, says that while Spacey disagrees with the arbitrator’s factual findings and maintains that he did not sexually harass anyone, he understands and accepts that the arbitrator’s findings on that issue “are entitled to deference.”
(LAUREL, Neb.) — Foul play is suspected after four people were found dead at multiple homes in a small Nebraska town Thursday morning following reports of an explosion and fires, authorities said.
A suspect is in custody, Nebraska State Patrol announced Friday morning. More details on the suspect and arrest are forthcoming.
Nebraska State Patrol Superintendent Col. John Bolduc said during a press briefing Thursday afternoon that state and local authorities were “investigating multiple crime scenes” in Laurel, in northeastern Nebraska.
Authorities first responded to a home shortly after 3 a.m. after a 911 caller reported an explosion at the residence, Bolduc said. There was a fire at the home, he said.
Once inside, responding officers and deputies found one person dead, he said.
While at the first home, a fire was reported at a second home three blocks away, Bolduc said. Three people were found dead inside that home, he said.
Bolduc said foul play is suspected in the four deaths, and that responders at the second home worked to preserve any evidence while putting out the fire.
A Nebraska State Patrol statement after the fires were suppressed said “gunfire is suspected to have played a part” in both homes.
Authorities were searching for a silver sedan in connection with the investigation, Bolduc said Thursday. The car was initially reported leaving Laurel shortly after the second fire was reported, and the male driver may have picked up a passenger before leaving the town, he said. The later Nebraska State Patrol statement indicated the car may have left the town later than initially reported.
Fire investigators believe accelerants may have been used in both fires at the homes, said Bolduc, noting that the suspect or suspects may have burn injuries.
Authorities are working with local residents and businesses to obtain any relevant security camera footage as part of their investigation.
The identities of the victims will be released pending family notification, and a cause of death will be determined following an autopsy, Bolduc said.
It is too early in the investigation to determine any connection between the victims, or if this can be characterized as a domestic incident, Bolduc said.
Cedar County Sheriff Larry Koranda said Thursday the community of 1,000 is shaken by what happened.
“Everybody knows everybody in this small community,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. hiring saw a dramatic increase in July, as the economy added 528,000 jobs and the unemployment rate fell to 3.5%, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday.
The report defied expectations of a hiring slowdown as the Federal Reserve carries out a fight against inflation that aims to slash demand by cooling the economy but risks tipping the country into a recession.
Evidence of a softening labor market had mounted this week amid layoffs at high-profile companies like Walmart and Robinhood, as well as a government report that showed a steep decline in job openings in June.
The 528,000 jobs added in July marks a significant uptick from 372,000 jobs added in June. Moreover, the figures signals an improvement from the already-robust hiring sustained over the first half of 2022, during which the economy added an average of 461,000 jobs each month.
The overall robust hiring in recent months defies typical conditions for a recession, Daniel Zhao, a senior economist at the career site Glassdoor, told ABC News prior to the data release.
“It would be very unusual to have a recession when we’re still adding several hundred thousand jobs a month,” he said.
While a faster pace of hiring may cheer some economists and everyday Americans, the signal of strengthening labor demand may put more pressure on the Fed to sustain its aggressive interest rate hikes. At meetings in each of the past two months, the central bank has increased its benchmark interest rate 0.75% — dramatic hikes last matched in 1994.
Despite a series of borrowing cost increases meant to slash prices, inflation has not only persisted but worsened. Data released last month showed that prices jumped a staggering 9.1% in June, which amounts to the highest inflation rate in more than four decades.
Alarmingly, the price increases have coincided with shrinking economic output. Gross domestic product dropped at an annualized rate of 0.9% in the second quarter after falling 1.6% in the previous quarter.
The recent trend qualifies for the shorthand definition of a recession consisting of two consecutive quarters of GDP decline. But the formal designation of a recession depends on a wider range of metrics weighed by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
So far this year, the tight labor market has offered up a strong corner of the economy. But employment data indicated softening on Tuesday, when a report released by the government showed that job openings fell steeply in June to their lowest level in nine months. The 10.7 million job vacancies reported in June, however, remains an elevated figure.
Meanwhile, a slew of major companies in recent days have announced job cuts or hiring slowdowns. Walmart laid off nearly 200 corporate employees on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. A day before, Robinhood announced plans to cut 23% of its staff. Tech giants Apple, Amazon and Google-parent company Alphabet have recently announced they will slow hiring.
Paramount has announced the title of an animated reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. The studio announced Thursday that the project will be called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, and will hit theaters on August 4, 2023. Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird‘s Mirage Studios comic creation, those “heroes in a half-shell” have been adapted several times, both in live-action for the big-screen and for TV in popular animated shows…
Jamie Pressly, veteran of Fox’s My Name Is Earl and the recently-wrapped CBS comedy Mom, has joined the cast of Fox’s quirky Welcome to Flatch. Variety reports the actress will play Barb Flatch, a realtor who returns to her titular hometown after a messy divorce. Welcome to Flatch also stars The Boys‘ Aya Cash, Sam Straley, and Seann William Scott…
Hulu on Thursday released the trailer for its original drama series Tell Me Lies, premiering September 7. The film, per the streaming service, follows “a tumultuous, but intoxicating, relationship as it unfolds over the course of eight years. When Lucy Albright and Stephen DeMarco — played respectively by Jackson White and Grace Van Patten — meet at college, they are at that formative age when seemingly mundane choices lead the way to irrevocable consequences. Although their relationship begins like any typical campus romance, they quickly fall into an addictive entanglement that will permanently alter not only their lives, but the lives of everyone around them. Catherine Missal, Spencer House, Sonia Mena, Branden Cook, Benjamin Wadsworth, and Alicia Crowder also star…
Get ready Barbs, new music from Nicki Minaj is on the way!
On Thursday, the 39-year-old rapper shared that her new single “Super Freaky Girl” will be released next Friday, August 12.
“8/12 PreSave #SuperFreakyGirl now. Link in BIO,” she wrote alongside the cover art for the track.
The announcement comes after Nicki teased a snippet of the track and it went viral. The song, which samples Rick James‘ 1981 hit “Super Freak,” was originally dubbed “Freaky Girl,” but ultimately Nicki left the name up to fans to decide.
“Thank you for your over 200K votes but we could not legally use the name freak or freaky girl. You’re stuck with this. Love you,” she continued in the caption. “Don’t forget #QueenRadio will be the night b4- on 8/11. So follow me on live.onamp.com/nickiminaj.”
(NEW YORK) — ABC News can report that Kari Lake, a former longtime news anchor in Phoenix who left her career in media last year and received former President Donald Trump’s backing, is projected to win the Republican primary in Arizona’s race for governor, after suggesting foul play in an election she already claimed victory in.
“Though the results took longer than they should have, Arizonans who have been forgotten by the establishment just delivered a political earthquake,” Lake said in a statement after her win was officially projected. “This is more than an election — it is a beautiful movement by so many people across our beautiful state to finally put Arizona First.”
Lake defeats Karrin Taylor Robson, a wealthy real estate developer and former member of the Arizona Board of Regents, who was backed by Trump’s, now estranged, Vice President Mike Pence and Arizona’s current term-limited Gov. Doug Ducey. Trump and Pence traveled to Arizona on the same day last month to stump for the competing candidates, with Pence warning against “those who want to make this election about the past.”
Taylor Robson spent more than $15 million of her own money on the race, but it was Lake’s “ultra-MAGA” and “America First” stance, coupled with her repetition of Trump’s “Big Lie,” that ultimately prevailed, after a campaign season filled with attack ads from all angles, which Democratic nominee for governor Katie Hobbs described as a “primary race to the bottom.”
Hobbs released a statement following the projection calling Lake “dangerous for Arizona” and calling the November general election “a choice between sanity and chaos.”
“Throughout her campaign, Lake has counted Nazi sympathizers and far-right extremists as part of her coalition,” she said. “We know where she stands on the issues that matter most, vowing to ban abortion and reproductive health care, putting cameras in our children’s classrooms, and wasting taxpayer money relitigating the 2020 election and manipulating future elections if she doesn’t like the results.”
Despite a handful of hypocrisy scandals, with Pence swiping her as a “convert” to the GOP who donated to Barack Obama, Lake acknowledged her past support for Democratic causes on the campaign trail, but now takes a far-right stance on social issues. She opposes abortion and transgender rights and made election integrity and border security top campaign issues, saying she would declare an invasion at the southern border on day one as governor.
Entering the general election season, Lake has already said that she would not change her tone but continue to talk about the widely disproven conspiracy that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, even as some Republicans are concerned that if Trump’s candidates don’t moderate their message for the general electorate, it will be harder to win in Arizona in November.
Arizona Republican strategist Barrett Marson, who supported Taylor Robson, told ABC News, “It’ll be up to them [the Trump candidates] to moderate, or to at least start to appeal to the broader audience. I just don’t get telling your voters that there’s fraud in the election that you won and then expect them to continue to come out and vote for you.”
Lake dismissed questions Wednesday on how she could declare victory in an election that she doesn’t have any confidence in and why voters should trust that she won this election fair and square, claiming to have evidence of irregularities but refusing to provide evidence of wrongdoing to the press.
“We’re going with the votes, and we’re going with what the people who really understand what’s happening [in this] this election now,” she said.
A first-time candidate for public office who has said she would not have fulfilled her legal duty to certify it in 2020, Lake said, if elected governor, she would sign legislation to eliminate electronic counting machines and move to “one-day voting” in the state where voting by mail is a popular method. On the night of her election-watch party in Scottsdale, she wielded a wooden sledgehammer she said was intended for electronic voting machines and Hobbs.
With Lake’s win official, Trump sees a slate of winning candidates in Arizona, his most primary wins in any state — and in one that helped deliver the presidency to Joe Biden.
“President Trump went 14-0 in Arizona as the MAGA wave continues to sweep across the nation. America is a nation in decline under Democrat leadership, but President Trump will not stop until America is made great once more through the election of America First fighters,” Taylor Budowich, a spokesperson for Trump, said in a statement Wednesday to ABC News.
One strategist told ABC News the wins prove that Arizona, though it has taken on a purple hue in recent years, is “still very much Trump country.”
Taylor Robson told Good Morning America and World News Tonight weekend co-anchor Whit Johnson that Lake priming her supporters for a stolen election — before Lake ultimately won the election herself — should “disqualify” her from the race, as many voters in Arizona are already mistrusting in the election process.
In a statement late Thursday, Taylor Robson said she accepted the results of the election and congratulated Lake on the win.
“This part of my life’s journey has come to an end. Now I need to be with my family and get back to my business,” she said.
“The voters of Arizona have spoken, I accept the results, I trust the process and the people who administer it,” she continued. “I have spent my life supporting Republican candidates and causes and it is my hope that our Republican nominees are successful in November.”
While Trump’s endorsed candidates are dominating the Arizona primary races, it was unclear if the MAGA agenda would show the same success in November.
(SAN ANTONIO) — Eight years before Uvalde school Police Chief Pete Arredondo led the controversial law enforcement response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, he was demoted from a high-ranking position at the Webb County Sheriff’s Office, according to reporting by a local news outlet Thursday.
Arredondo “couldn’t get along with people,” Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar told the San Antonio Express-News, according to the report. Cuellar also said that he demoted Arredondo from assistant chief to commander in 2014.
“He just didn’t fit the qualifications or the work that I set out for him,” Cuellar said, according to the report.
Arredondo has come under immense scrutiny for his role in the police response to the May 24 massacre, which claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers. Police waited 77 minutes after arriving at the school to breach the door to the classroom containing the 18-year-old gunman.
A special committee in the Texas legislature issued a report last month that found Arredondo had “failed to perform or to transfer to another person the role of incident commander.”
Arredondo previously told the Texas Tribune that he did not consider himself the on-scene commander during the shooting.
According to documents first reported by the San Antonio Express-News and obtained by ABC News, Arredondo, while working for Webb County, was “reassigned from Assistant Chief to Commander” in October 2014, and that two days earlier, a Webb County employee had written “demotion” on his payroll worksheet.
Arredondo left the Webb County Sheriff’s Office in 2017 and took a role in Laredo as a school district police captain, where he stayed for three years. When he applied for the position in Laredo, Arredondo highlighted his role in a hostage negotiation during his time in Webb County.
Cuellar, the Webb County sheriff who demoted Arredondo in 2014, told the San Antonio Express-News that Arredondo “exaggerated a little bit” his role in the hostage negotiations he mentioned in his application to Laredo.
“It wasn’t him completely. I think he exaggerated a little bit,” Cuellar was quoted telling the newspaper, adding that it was a team effort.
Arredondo was announced as the new police chief of the Uvalde Independent School District in February 2020.
Neither Arredondo or Cuellar, or officials with the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, immediately responded to ABC News’ requests for comment.
(NEW YORK) — Wall Street will be closely watching the new U.S. employment data on Friday, the latest sign of whether the U.S. economy is entering a recession as the Federal Reserve carries out a fight against inflation that aims to slash demand by slowing the economy.
Resilient hiring in recent months has so far withstood a series of borrowing cost increases from the Fed but economists expect that the employment data for July will reveal a marked slowdown.
Evidence of a softening labor market has mounted this week amid layoffs at high-profile companies like Walmart and Robinhood, as well as a government report that showed a steep decline in job openings in June.
The median of economic forecasters anticipate 250,000 nonfarm payrolls were added in July, according to Bloomberg. The figure would mark the lowest monthly gain since December and a significant drop from 372,000 jobs added in June. The unemployment rate stood at a near-historic low of 3.6% in June.
Moreover, the expected figure would signal a departure from the robust hiring sustained over the first half of 2022, during which the economy added an average of 461,000 jobs each month.
“The labor market has been a bright spot in the economy but there are signs that the labor market is clearly cooling,” Daniel Zhao, a senior economist at the career site Glassdoor, told ABC News. “It does seem like the labor market is healthy — even as demand slows, layoffs are still very slow.”
While a hiring slowdown may alarm economists and everyday Americans, the signal of weakening labor demand could relieve pressure on the Fed to sustain its aggressive interest rate hikes. At meetings in each of the past two months, the central bank has increased its benchmark interest rate 0.75% — dramatic hikes last matched in 1994.
Despite a series of borrowing cost increases meant to slash prices, inflation has not only persisted but worsened. Data released last month showed that prices jumped a staggering 9.1% in June, which amounts to the highest inflation rate in more than four decades.
Alarmingly, the price increases have coincided with shrinking economic output. Gross domestic product dropped at an annualized rate of 0.9% in the second quarter after falling 1.6% in the previous quarter.
The recent trend qualifies for the shorthand definition of a recession consisting of two consecutive quarters of GDP decline. But the formal designation of a recession depends on a wider range of metrics weighed by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
So far this year, the tight labor market has offered up a strong corner of the economy. But employment data indicated softening on Tuesday, when a report released by the government showed that job openings fell steeply in June to their lowest level in nine months. The 10.7 million job vacancies reported in June, however, remains an elevated figure.
Meanwhile, a slew of major companies in recent days have announced job cuts or hiring slowdowns. Walmart laid off nearly 200 corporate employees on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. A day before, Robinhood announced plans to cut 23% of its staff. Tech giants Apple, Amazon and Google-parent company Alphabet have recently announced they will slow hiring.
Still, the overall robust hiring in recent months defies typical conditions for a recession, said Zhao of Glassdoor.
“It would be very unusual to have a recession when we’re still adding several hundred thousand jobs a month,” he said. “Of course, if we have a surprisingly bad report where we see job losses this month, then that could change the picture.”
(WASHINGTON) — Four people are in critical condition following an apparent lightning strike at a Washington, D.C., park, authorities said Thursday evening.
D.C. Fire and EMS said it had responded to Lafayette Park, located in front of the White House, and was treating the four patients that were found in “the vicinity of a tree.”
Two men and two women were transported to area hospitals with “life-threatening injuries” after the apparent lightning strike, D.C. Fire and EMS said.
Officials said it’s still unclear what the adults were doing prior to the lightning strike, if they knew each other and why they were in the park. The identity of the victims could not be confirmed while the investigation is still ongoing, officials said.
Uniformed U.S. Park Police officers and members of the Secret Service were also on the scene and immediately rendered aid to the victims, an EMS official said during a news conference.
The National Weather Service had issued a severe thunderstorm warning for the area Thursday evening.
ABC News’ Beatrice Peterson contributed to this report.
Marilyn LeBlanc-Downey and her son, Skip Bailey, remember Ferris LeBlanc as a brother, uncle and father figure. – ABC News
(NEW ORLEANS) — The New Orleans City Council is reviving an effort to locate the lost remains of several victims of an arson that killed 32 people at a popular French Quarter gay bar in 1973.
The fire at the UpStairs Lounge was the largest mass murder of LGBTQ citizens in United States history until the Pulse nightclub massacre in 2016.
The council passed a motion on Thursday directing the city’s property management and legal departments to “take any and all appropriate steps necessary” to “facilitate the recovery” of three unidentified fire victims and one identified victim, Ferris LeBlanc, who were buried in an unmarked graves somewhere in the city’s potter’s field.
LeBlanc, a World War II veteran, has yet to be located despite a years-long effort led by his family to find his remains and return them to California for a military burial.
“Poor record-keeping and indifference continue to hamper the efforts of surviving family members to reclaim the bodies of victims and to provide them the dignity of a proper burial,” wrote Councilmember JP Morrell, whose office is spearheading the effort, in the motion. “The Council believes the City has a moral obligation to take all steps within its power to facilitate the recovery and dignified interment of the victims of the UpStairs Lounge massacre.”
LeBlanc’s family told ABC News that they are encouraged that the city’s leaders are taking action on their behalf.
“The council has promised to get to the bottom of this issue and do everything they can to help us bring an end to this story,” LeBlanc’s family wrote in a statement. “We are cautiously optimistic for this renewed interest and are hopeful it will end in a positive resolution.”
In 2018, five members of Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s office were tasked with the search for LeBlanc’s remains shortly after the release of an ABC News documentary investigating the city’s response to the fire and highlighting pleas from LeBlanc’s family — including his sister Marilyn LeBlanc Downey — for help.
But after several months of searching, officials were unable to locate his remains, telling ABC News they “remain stymied by lost or incomplete records,” and the inquiry was quietly discontinued.
On the eve of the tragedy’s 49th anniversary, however, as the New Orleans City Council issued a formal apology to the victims, survivors and families affected by the fire, Councilmember Morrell pledged to take up the search.
“The City of New Orleans’ lack of response to the deadliest fire in our history has kept individuals from mourning their loved ones, but today we took a step in the right direction,” Morrell said in a statement on June 23. “Moving forward, my office will be working with the family of Ferris LeBlanc, a WWII veteran who died in the fire, to exhume his remains and properly memorialize him with full military honors.”
Survivors, family members, first responders, activists and journalists interviewed by ABC News agreed that the city’s response to the tragedy exposed pervasive prejudices toward the gay community in the otherwise famously tolerant city, an attitude that resulted in, among other indignities, the burial of several unidentified victims in unmarked graves in the city’s potter’s field — LeBlanc among them.
According to Robert Fieseler, author of Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation, shock and sympathy were quickly replaced by ignorance and apathy when people learned “what kind of bar had burned down and who the victims had been.”
“The deadliest fire in New Orleans history provoked not an outpouring of grief for the dead,” Fieseler told ABC News, “but instead, among mainstream residents, humiliation for the release of the dead’s secrets: their unconventional sexual tastes, at a time when the mere discussion of homosexuality was taboo.”
It was the failure of the city’s leaders and institutions to recognize and respond to the tragedy in 1973 that prompted a rare public statement of “historic regret” in 2022.
“The City Council deems it not only necessary but past due to formally apologize,” reads the resolution, adopted unanimously last month, “for the way that those who perished were not adequately and publicly mourned as valuable and irreplaceable members of the community.”
Local media hailed the move as a “small but significant step” in the healing process that acknowledged the city’s “indifference, if not hostility, toward the gay community” at the time, the painful legacy of which lingers to this day.
“We will continue,” LeBlanc’s family wrote in a statement. “We all hope for the day when this story will end as it should.”
