Season two of the drug, sex, and financial dramaIndustry debuted Monday night on HBO, with the junior investment bankers at Pierpoint & Co. back for their second year of deals and debauchery.
Despite what’s shown on-screen, Myha’la Herrold, who plays Harper, admits that behind the scenes, it can get “a little bit messy.”
“Especially when you’re snorting things and then also doing intimacy,” she tells ABC Audio. “In between takes, you’re, like, blowing your nose and then going and kissing.”
Explaining one particular scene, Marisa Abela, who plays Yasmin, adds that it’s more awkward when you’re fully clothed and someone else is naked.
“There was a scene where…we were doing some drugs and a guy came in and took all clothes off complete and was like stark naked,” she explains. “So I kept being like, ‘do you want a snack? Do you need anything?'”
Nakedness aside, the most challenging part of the gig was understanding the financial jargon.
“It’s like another language. It is so difficult,” Herrold admits. “You really have to know the words by heart in your sleep, so that once you get [on set], you can let the words fall out and you can play the intention.”
And when it comes to getting things right, Herrold says that she’s had “a lot of particularly Black people in finance reach out and say how seen they felt by every character.”
What Herrold loves most about the show though is that none of the characters are “stereotypical” or “archetypal.”
“For Harper particularly, she goes left every time you assume a young Black American woman would go right,” says Herrold. “And whether or not you like it or it’s morally correct is beyond the point. It’s that she’s a human being and she’s multifaceted and she is different.”
The Marilyn Monroe estate has come to the defense of Ana de Armas.
After the trailer dropped for Blonde, the upcoming drama in which de Armas is cast as Monroe, many viewers took issue with the actress’ accent and criticized her for not sounding more like the Hollywood legend.
Despite what some people think,Variety reports that Marc Rosen, president of entertainment at Authentic Brands Group, which owns the Marilyn Monroe Estate, applauded the casting decision.
“Marilyn Monroe is a singular Hollywood and pop culture icon that transcends generations and history,” he said. “Any actor that steps into that role knows they have big shoes to fill. Based on the trailer alone, it looks like Ana was a great casting choice as she captures Marilyn’s glamour, humanity and vulnerability. We can’t wait to see the film in its entirety!”
Based on the novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates and also starring Oscar winner Adrien Brody and Emmy winner Julianne Nicholson, Blonde debuts September 28 on Netflix.
(NEW YORK) — American basketball star Brittney Griner was back in court for her drug possession trial in Russia on Tuesday, as the United States floats a proposal to secure her release.
Griner, a 31-year-old Houston native who plays professional basketball for the Phoenix Mercury, was returning to Russia for the WNBA’s offseason when she was detained at Sheremetyevo International Airport in the Moscow suburb of Khimki on Feb. 17, after being accused of having vape cartridges containing hashish oil, which is illegal in the country. She pleaded guilty to drug charges in court last month, saying the cartridges were in her luggage by mistake and that she had no “intention” of breaking Russian law. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years in prison and also has a right to an appeal.
Griner, who had last appeared in court on July 27, again held up photographs of her loved ones as she was escorted into the defendant’s cage where she remained behind bars for Tuesday’s proceedings at a Khimki courthouse. An employee who works at the Russian state lab where Griner’s vape cartridges were tested took the stand, while defense attorneys called into question the testing methods and the competency of the staff conducting the tests.
Last week, in a sharp reversal, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that he will hold a call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov “in the coming days” to discuss securing the freedom of Griner and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who has been detained in Russia since late 2018.
“[They] have been wrongly detained and must be allowed to come home,” Blinken told reporters in Washington, D.C, on July 27. “We put a substantial proposal on the table weeks ago to facilitate their release. Our governments have communicated repeatedly and directly on that proposal, and I’ll use the conversation to follow up personally and I hope [to] move us toward a resolution.”
Two days later, Blinken told reporters that he had a “frank and direct conversation” with Lavrov about a U.S. proposal to exchange convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout in return for Griner and Whelan’s freedom.
“I pressed the Kremlin to accept the substantial proposal that we put forth on the release of Paul Whelan and Brittney Griner,” Blinken said. “I’m not going to characterize his responses and I can’t give you an assessment of whether I think things are more or less likely, but it was important that [he] hear directly from me on that.”
During a press conference in Moscow on July 28, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Vladimirovna Zakharova confirmed that “the issue of mutual exchange of Russian and American citizens, staying in places of detention on the territory of the two countries, was discussed at one time by the presidents of Russia and the United States,” but “a concrete result has not yet been achieved.”
Calls to free Griner and Whelan escalated following the release of U.S. Marine veteran Trevor Reed, who was imprisoned in Russia for nearly three years and was freed on April 27 as part of a prisoner swap.
The U.S. Department of State has classified both Whelan and Griner as “wrongfully detained.”
Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine began one week after Griner was detained, and some officials have expressed concern that Americans jailed in Russia could be used as leverage in the ongoing war.
Last month, Griner’s legal team told ABC News in a statement that her guilty plea was recommended by her Russian attorneys.
Griner took the stand on July 27, telling the court she did not mean to violate Russian law when bringing vape cartridges into the country.
She testified that she has permission to use medical cannabis and used a certificate to buy it in the U.S. Two weeks earlier, one of Griner’s attorneys presented a letter from an American doctor in court, giving her permission to use cannabis to reduce chronic pain.
Griner also said she did not mean to leave the cartridges in her bag, but that she was in a hurry and was stressed after recovering from COVID-19 that month. The WNBA star said she was aware that the U.S. had warned Americans about traveling to Russia, but she didn’t want to let her team down in the playoffs.
(NEW YORK) — At least 37 people have been killed in Kentucky’s devastating flooding, which Gov. Andy Beshear has called the most “devastating and deadly” of his lifetime.
Among those killed are four siblings — ages 8, 6, 4 and 2 — who were swept away in the water, according to family members.
The number of deaths “will grow,” the governor said.
Over 1,300 people have been rescued from flooded areas, the governor said Tuesday.
Kentucky was bracing overnight for new storms moving through the already flood-ravaged areas. But Beshear said Tuesday morning that the ground stayed “pretty much dry” overnight.
A few passing showers are possible on Tuesday but the state should stay dry through Sunday, when residents may get hit with more rain.
Beshear said he’ll visit more areas impacted by flooding on Tuesday.
President Joe Biden has approved a disaster declaration.
Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell take flight in the official trailer for the new film drama Devotion, set to open this Thanksgiving. The film looks at the military careers of Jesse Brown and Tom Hudner — played respectively by Majors and Powell — Black and white Navy fighter pilots who developed a close camaraderie during the Korean War, despite the racism Brown experiences as one of the first Black military aviators. Devotion also stars Christina Jackson, Joe Jonas and Thomas Sadoski…
Showtime has cancelled The First Lady after one season, according to Deadline. The anthology’s first season focused on three different eras of the White House, following the political and private lives of Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty Ford and Michelle Obama — played respectively by Gillian Anderson, Michelle Pfeiffer and Viola Davis…
NBC has renewed The Weakest Link for a 20-episode third season, the network announced on Monday. Regarding the renewal, host and executive producer Jane Lynch commented, “I’m very much looking forward to a third season of mocking contestants and encouraging discord.” Production on season three is set to begin in fall 2022, with casting open at TheWeakestLinkCasting.com…
(NEW YORK) — Puzzled scientists are trying to figure out what a giant shark native to the Arctic was doing in considerably warmer waters thousands of miles south of its frigid home.
Researchers from Florida International University and the Belize Fisheries Department recently discovered a Greenland shark, which typically lives in the freezing waters of the Arctic, in the tropical waters of the Caribbean Sea while working with local Belizean fishermen to tag tiger sharks, according to a press release from the university.
The shark was swimming near the Belize Barrier Reef, the second-longest barrier reef in the world, the scientists said. The discovery marks the first time a shark of its kind has been found in western Caribbean waters.
Devanshi Kasana, a marine biologist at FIU and a Ph.D. candidate in the university’s Predator Ecology and Conservation lab, at first thought that what she was looking at was a sixgill shark, which is known to live in the deep waters off coral reefs.
“I knew it was something unusual and so did the fishers, who hadn’t ever seen anything quite like it in all their combined years of fishing,” Kasana said in a statement.
Kasana then conferred with her adviser and other shark experts, texting a photo of the creature. The final determination was that it was “definitely” in the sleeper shark family due to its large size, and was most likely a Greenland shark or a hybrid between a Greenland shark and a Pacific sleeper shark, according to FIU.
It is unclear whether the researchers were able to tag the shark.
“This finding is so exciting because it suggests that these ancient predators are potentially roaming the world’s oceans from pole to Equator, but staying very deep in tropical waters,” Kasana, who is still in Belize, said in an emailed statement to ABC News. “It feels great to be a part of this and be a part of what could be the first step in protecting sleeper sharks in this region.”
Little is known about the Greenland shark. The half-blind shark subsists by scavenging on polar bear carcasses and can live up to 250 and perhaps even 500 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, making them the longest-living vertebrate known to science.
Greenland sharks are also massive in size and can reach up to 23 feet long and weigh up to 1.5 tons, according to National Geographic.
“Because little is known about them, that means nothing can be definitively ruled out about the species,” the scientists said. “Greenland sharks could be trolling the depths of the ocean all across the world.”
Greenland sharks, or Somniosus microcephalus, are listed as a vulnerable species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species. The biggest threats they face are climate change and severe weather, which are causing their habitats to alter and shift, and fishing and harvesting.
Hakarl, fermented Greenland shark or other sleeper sharks, is a national dish of Iceland. Greenland shark meat is poisonous until it is dried and fermented over four or five months, and emits a strong odor and tastes of ammonia.
Kasana emphasized that the discovery of the Greenland shark was a joint effort among members of the Belizean shark fishing community, the Belize Fisheries Department and FIU researchers.
The Belizean government recently declared three atolls, including Glover’s Reef where the Greenland shark was found, and the deeper waters around it as protected areas for sharks. This declaration will help keep animals, including undiscovered ones that may be roaming the waters around Glover’s Reef, safe, Kasana said.
“Great discoveries and conservation can happen when fishermen, scientists and the government work together,” said Beverly Wade, director of the Blue Bond and Finance Permanence Unit in the Office of the Prime Minister of Belize. “We can really enhance what we can do individually, while also doing some great conservation work and making fantastic discoveries, like this one.”
(NEW YORK) — After a near-historic decline over the first half of the year, the S&P 500 — a popular index to which many 401(k) accounts are pegged — bounced back in July with its strongest month since November 2020. The other major indices, the tech-heavy Nasdaq and the Dow Industrial Average, reversed their performance, too.
The sudden shift arrived despite little change in the economy. In keeping with recent months, the government released mixed economic data and the Federal Reserve escalated a series of borrowing cost increases meant to slow economic activity, slash demand and dial back inflation.
The explanation behind the bounce back, investment strategists told ABC News, is the reason why investors should not expect it to endure: expectations.
It hardly sounds like the makings of a stock boom, which relies on investor optimism about the outlook for corporate profits.
Over the first half of the year, as the market plummeted and pessimism reigned, investors lowered their expectations, the strategists said. Last month, when the Federal Reserve signaled it would someday ratchet down rate increases and many corporations reported better-than-anticipated earnings, investors saw a reason for a turnabout in sentiment, they added.
The strong returns in July raise expectations, however, the market is setting up for underperformance amid persistent economic challenges, such as inflation, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the pandemic-induced supply chain disruptions, the strategists said.
“It’s not about good or bad,” Ryan Detrick, the chief market strategist at Carson Group, told ABC News. “It’s about better or worse.”
“Expectations were so low — the wick was there,” he said. “We needed anything to light that fire.”
Sameer Samana, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, said it will prove difficult to keep that fire lit.
“Unfortunately, along with rising stock prices, you have rising expectations as well,” he said.
For months, market sentiment has strained under the weight of an economy beset by a stark imbalance between supply and demand. A surge in demand followed a pandemic-induced flood of economic stimulus that combined with a widespread shift toward goods instead of services. Meanwhile, that stimulus brought about a speedy economic recovery from the March 2020 downturn, triggering a hiring blitz.
But the surge in demand for goods and labor far outpaced supply. COVID-related bottlenecks in China and elsewhere slowed delivery times and infection fears kept workers on the sidelines. In turn, prices and wages skyrocketed, ultimately prompting sky-high inflation that had not only endured for many months but had also gotten worse, even as economic growth slowed and recession fears grew.
Taken together, the near-historic inflation and sluggish economic activity drove away stock market investors over the first half of the year, said Samana, the senior global market strategist at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute.
“People, to a certain extent, had been throwing in the towel on equities. They were worried about the Fed, worried about China, worried about commodity prices, worried about a recession,” he said. “There was no shortage of worries.”
“What often happens when you get that level of concern is that everybody is on one side of the boat,” he added. “Then what happens is you get a piece of data that isn’t as bad as feared, and people shift to the other side. It causes a herd mentality.”
Market strategists largely attributed the July turnaround to the Federal Reserve signaling it would raise its benchmark interest rate 0.75%, which it ultimately did on Wednesday — a significant hike but less than the 1% increase that some observers had originally feared. Plus, investors seized on comments made by Fed Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday that the pace of rate hikes would eventually slow.
“People think the Fed will have to change its mindset sooner rather than later,” Mike O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading, told ABC News.
Over the first six months of the year, the S&P 500 plummeted 20.6%, marking its worst first-half performance of any year since 1970. But the index added back 9.1% last month alone.
The blistering pace from July isn’t sustainable, the strategists said. Further, investors should expect volatile highs and lows for the remainder of the year, they added.
O’Rourke said investors should expect a volatile market for the next six to 12 months. Other strategists echoed that view, including Detrick, who warned that investors shouldn’t treat July as a turning point. That said, he urged them to stay the course.
“This year has been historically volatile and disappointing for investors,” Detrick said. “To panic and sell when everything is darkest, that’s the worst time to do it. Hopefully this bounce back in July reminds investors of that.”
“But the truth is, we’re not out of the woods,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — A 49-year-old Texas man was sentenced by a judge to more than seven years in prison Monday for his role in the Capitol attack, the harshest sentence yet for a Jan. 6 defendant — but legal and national security experts say another decision made by the judge could carry potentially broader implications.
In handing down an 87-month sentence to Guy Wesley Reffitt, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich declined to characterize the defendant as a domestic terrorist, as prosecutors had requested.
Prosecutors had sought a 15-year prison term for Reffitt, predicated on the use of an increasingly rare legal tool called the “terrorism enhancement,” which empowers judges to issue sentences above the federal guidelines for certain crimes. Federal sentencing guidelines in Reffitt’s case called for a prison sentence between nine and 11 years.
On Monday, Friedrich brushed aside the government’s motion for a terrorism enhancement, citing other Jan.6-related defendants whose conduct appeared to be more serious than Reffitt’s — and for whom the Justice Department chose not to pursue the terrorism enhancement.
Experts said Fridrich’s decision demonstrates the challenge prosecutors face in meeting the exceptionally high standard to formally label someone a terrorist under the law.
“In the court of common sense, individuals who went into the Capitol to engage in destructive behavior and disrupt a lawful government proceeding may have, by definition, committed an act terrorism,” said John Cohen, a former Homeland Security official who is now an ABC News contributor. “But the challenge for prosecutors is to prove that a defendant has met the specific legal elements of a terrorism offense.”
The terrorism enhancement, codified in section 3A 1.4 of the federal sentencing guidelines, traces its roots back to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, after which Congress enacted tougher penalties to deter acts of “intimidation or coercion” aimed at the government or civilian population.
In the intervening years, terrorism sentences have most frequently been applied to defendants with ties to ISIS or al-Qaeda, or to violent domestic extremists like Cesar Sayoc, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to mailing pipe bombs to members of Congress.
But critics complain that the law is too broad and too inconsistently applied.
In 2017, for example, prosecutors secured a terrorism enhancement for Jessica Reznicek, a climate activist who pleaded guilty to damaging pipeline infrastructure across the Midwest. A federal appeals court upheld her sentence in June.
Meanwhile, neither Dylann Roof, who pleaded guilty to massacring nine people at a Charleston bible study, nor James Fields, who was convicted of killing a Charlottesville demonstrator with his car, were sentenced with the terrorism enhancement.
Reffitt, for his part, brought a weapon to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and threatened to “physically attack, remove, and replace” lawmakers, making him a “quintessential” case for the enhancement, prosecutors wrote in a July sentencing memorandum. In March, a jury found him guilty on five felony counts, including obstruction of justice, as well as entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a firearm.
The case marked the first time the Justice Department sought to have a terrorism enhancement applied to a Jan. 6 defendant.
“We do believe that what he was doing that day was domestic terrorism and we do believe that he’s a domestic terrorist,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler told Judge Friedrich Monday, before the judge declined to apply the terrorism enhancement.
In rejecting the enhancement, Friedrich sided with Reffitt’s defense counsel, who accused prosecutors of utilizing the tool as retribution for Reffitt taking the case to trial.
“This is the only case where the government has asked for the terrorism enhancement, and this is the only case where the defendant has gone to trial,” said Clinton Broden, a lawyer for Reffitt. “I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to figure that out.”
Friedrich’s decision to reject the enhancement in Reffitt’s case serves as further evidence of its “undisciplined, arbitrary use” in federal cases, according to Bill Quigley, a lawyer for Reznicek.
“How can Jessica Reznicek be a terrorist in the eyes of the law, and this person who stormed the Capitol and threatened members of Congress not be?” Quigley said.
“It is ironic that prosecutors managed to secure this enhancement for a person who damaged infrastructure belonging to a private company, but the courts failed to apply the same label to someone who used violence to further their extremist ideological beliefs in the seat of our democracy,” Cohen said.
Jordan Strauss, a former national security official in the Justice Department, pointed out that the government’s pursuit of a terrorist enhancement against Reffitt could mark a shift in its handling of Jan. 6-related cases — and could foreshadow a more aggressive approach in future cases.
“This case is noteworthy in that it may reflect a policy change for January 6th cases moving forward,” said Strauss, who now serves as the managing director at the Kroll Institute, a corporate consulting firm. “We should expect to see more enhancements sought, particularly if there are guilty verdicts in the more complex sedition cases.”
(NEW YORK) — Doctors and other health care providers are being warned to look out for symptoms of a virus that can cause seizures and severe illness in infants.
Nearly two dozen infants were admitted to a Tennessee hospital this spring due to parechovirus, a virus that is especially dangerous for babies under 3 months old, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
While the majority of the infants, ages 5 months and under, recovered without complications, two may have long-term complications, including hearing loss and severe developmental delay, from the virus, the CDC said.
The agency’s report follows an alert it issued last month to health care providers warning about the presence of parechovirus.
Here are five things for parents to know about the virus and the CDC’s warning.
1. Parechovirus is especially dangerous for babies under 3 months old.
The virus, known as PeV, can cause severe illness in babies under 3 months old, and is most dangerous to newborns.
According to the CDC, the virus can cause sepsis-like illness, seizures and infection around the brain and spinal cord called meningitis — or meningoencephalitis — in infants, and can lead to long-term neurological complications in rare cases.
2. The type of parechovirus currently spreading is the most severe.
Most types of human parechoviruses are common childhood pathogens and less serious in kids older than 6 months, spreading through sneezing, coughing and saliva and feces.
The type that has been detected in newborns and young infants, PeV-A3, is the type “most often associated with severe disease,” according to the CDC. The specific strain of parechovirus was not identified in the report from the cases in Tennessee.
3. Symptoms include seizures.
The CDC has instructed health care providers to watch for symptoms of fever, sepsis-like syndrome, seizures and meningitis without a known cause in young infants.
PeV can be detected through lab tests from stool swabs and respiratory specimens, as well as cerebrospinal, blister or blood specimens, depending on the symptoms. Because this isn’t a virus that is routinely tested for, health care providers are being told to keep this virus in mind in case this extra testing is needed.
4. The rise in cases could be due to more testing.
The CDC acknowledged in its alert that the higher number of cases reported over the past few months could be a result of better testing.
“Because there is presently no systematic surveillance for PeVs in the United States, it is not clear how the number of PeV cases reported in 2022 compares to previous seasons,” the CDC said. “PeV laboratory testing has become more widely available in recent years, and it is possible that increased testing has led to a higher number of PeV diagnoses compared with previous years.”
The study authors also note, “This peak in infections might reflect relaxation of COVID-19 isolation measures consistent with increased prevalence of other respiratory viruses.”
5. There is no treatment for PeV.
The CDC said that while there is no specific treatment for PeV, getting a diagnosis matters.
“Diagnosing PeV in infants might change management strategies and provide important health information for families,” the CDC said.
(NEW YORK) — WNBA star Brittney Griner is set to appear in court Tuesday in Russia, where she has been detained for more than five months, as the United States floats a proposal to secure her release.
Griner, a 31-year-old Houston native who plays professional basketball for the Phoenix Mercury, was detained on Feb. 17 at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Khimki as she returned to Russia to play during the WNBA’s offseason after she was accused of having vape cartridges containing hashish oil, which is illegal in the country. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years in prison and also has a right to an appeal.
In a sharp reversal, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced last week that he will hold a call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov “in the coming days” to discuss securing the freedom of Griner and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who has been detained in Russia since late 2018.
“[They] have been wrongly detained and must be allowed to come home,” Blinken told reporters on Wednesday. “We put a substantial proposal on the table weeks ago to facilitate their release. Our governments have communicated repeatedly and directly on that proposal, and I’ll use the conversation to follow up personally and I hope [to] move us toward a resolution.”
Blinken told reporters on Friday that he had a “frank and direct conversation” with Lavrov about a U.S. proposal to exchange convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout in return for Griner and Whelan’s freedom.
“I pressed the Kremlin to accept the substantial proposal that we put forth on the release of Paul Whelan and Brittney Griner,” Blinken said.
“I’m not going to characterize his responses and I can’t give you an assessment of whether I think things are more or less likely, but it was important that [he] hear directly from me on that,” he added.
At a press conference in Moscow on Thursday, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Vladimirovna Zakharova confirmed that “the issue of mutual exchange of Russian and American citizens, staying in places of detention on the territory of the two countries, was discussed at one time by the presidents of Russia and the United States,” but “a concrete result has not yet been achieved.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began one week after Griner was detained, and some officials have expressed concern that Americans jailed in Russia could be used as leverage in the ongoing conflict.
The U.S. State Department classified Griner’s case on May 3 as “wrongfully detained.”
Calls to free Griner and Whelan escalated following the May release of U.S. Marine veteran Trevor Reed, who was freed from a Russian prison as part of a prisoner exchange.
Griner pleaded guilty to drug charges in court last month, saying that the vape cartridges containing hashish oil were in her luggage mistakenly and that she had no “intention” of breaking Russian law.
Her legal team told ABC News in a statement last month that her “guilty” plea was recommended by her Russian attorneys.
Griner, who last appeared in court on July 27, testified that she did not mean to violate Russian law when bringing vape cartridges into the country.
She testified that she has permission to use medical cannabis and used a certificate to buy it in the U.S. Last month, one of Griner’s attorneys presented a letter from an American doctor in court, giving her permission to use cannabis to reduce chronic pain.
Griner also said she did not mean to leave the cartridges in her bag, but that she was in a hurry and was stressed after recovering from COVID-19 that month. The WNBA star said she was aware that the U.S. had warned Americans about traveling to Russia, but she didn’t want to let her team down in the playoffs.
