(WASHINGTON) — A top Justice Department official has a stern warning for Russian oligarchs who attempt to evade U.S. sanctions: Nobody is out of the DOJ’s reach.
“The point of going after Putin’s cronies and Russian oligarchs who seek to violate our laws and shield their assets is to say that nobody is beyond the reach of our system of justice, beyond the reach of our work and cooperation with our allies, and that these cronies and oligarchs who seek to support and bolster the Russian regime shouldn’t be able to get away with that while people are dying,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco told ABC News’ Byron Pitts.
The Justice Department on Wednesday announced a task force to target the assets of Russian oligarchs after President Joe Biden previewed the move in his State of the Union address Tuesday night.
The U.S. says some of the oligarchs have ties to President Vladimir Putin and he uses them to launder or hide hundreds of millions of dollars obtained through corruption.
Dubbed Task Force KleptoCapture, the group will investigate and implement new sanctions, combat unlawful efforts to undermine restrictions taken against Russian financial institutions, go after oligarchs who use cryptocurrency to evade U.S. sanctions and seize the assets of Russian oligarchs.
The deputy attorney general urged U.S. businesses to shore up their compliance with sanctions and make sure they know who they’re doing business with.
“Because if they don’t and they run afoul of the sanctions, the consequences can be quite severe,” she said. “And our investigations are often aided by companies and financial institutions that say, ‘You know what, we’re seeing some unusual activity,’ and sharing that information with us, and that’s critically important.”
Monaco said the task force is a “commitment” from the DOJ to put the full weight of the agency behind combatting “efforts of oligarchs and Putin’s cronies to evade sanctions, to launder money, to violate the sanctions that we’re imposing in an unprecedented way with our international partners.”
The deputy attorney general juxtaposed the images playing out on TV of people suffering in Ukraine with some of Russia’s wealthiest citizens evading sanctions.
“We’ve got people dying, bombs falling on civilian populations. All the while you’ve got oligarchs, Putin’s cronies who have engaged in corruptly acquiring billions of dollars, shrouding it and hiding it in luxury items in the West,” she said.
(NEW YORK) — Environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, claiming the agency has failed to help preserve Florida manatee habitats as the species faces rising deaths.
Nearly 1,100 manatees died in 2021, which is roughly 20% of the east coast population of manatees, according to a lawsuit filed by Save the Manatee Club, the Center for Biological Diversity and Defenders of Wildlife.
“We’ve now had almost 300 [die] in 2022,” aquatic biologist Patrick Rose told ABC News. Rose is the executive director of Save the Manatee Club, the non-profit organization started by singer Jimmy Buffet in 1981 that is dedicated to protecting manatees and preserving their natural habitat.
The group tells ABC News that popular waterways for manatees, like the Indian River Lagoon on Florida’s east coast, have suffered years of pollution from sources like failed septic tanks, improperly treated sewage and fertilizer that deposits nutrients into the water.
“That excess nutrient causes algal blooms that were so severe that it shaded out the seagrass that manatees and other species depend on. The seagrass died,” Rose said.
Manatees typically eat 100 to 200 pounds of seagrass and other plants every day, or roughly 10-20% of their body weight. With so little seagrass available, the manatees have been starving, and in 2021 U.S Fish and Wildlife declared the high number of manatee deaths “an unusual mortality event”.
According to the lawsuit, the Florida manatee was first listed as an endangered species in 1967, but to help protect the animals even further, USFWS designated areas where manatees are found as a “critical habitat” in 1976. Critical habitats are specific areas that have biological and physical features that are important for the survival of a species.
When the critical habitat was first established, important components of the habitat, such as the seagrass, were not taken into consideration, Rose said.
But by 2008, updated Congressional and USFWS definitions of a critical habit and new scientific information required that the manatee’s critical habitat designation be adjusted, according to the lawsuit.
Environmental groups requested that USFWS update the term in 2008 and the agency agreed, but never followed through, according to the lawsuit.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did not respond to an ABC News request for comment on the lawsuit.
Save the Manatee Club hopes the USFWS “will work with us now to ensure that seagrasses and warm water habitat are better protected to prevent a continuation of the devastating losses of so many manatees due the continuing loss of seagrasses, which are literally “critically important” to the future survival of manatees,” Rose said.
Save the Manatee is also appealing to the United States Environmental Protection Agency in hopes to upgrade water quality standards so that seagrass will not continue to die from pollution.
“Ultimately, we believe that we must use the provisions of both the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act to ensure that manatees are protected today and for the foreseeable future,” Rose said.
If the court rules in favor of the environmental groups, it will result in higher standards and stiffer penalties for those who pollute waters which kill seagrass. According to Rose, until the standards are raised, the manatees and their ecosystems will continue to be under threat.
After giving Spotify a Weezer makeover, Rivers Cuomo and company have now turned their attention to Wordle.
The “Buddy Holly” rockers have launched Weezle, their own version of the popular word game that’s been sweeping the internet over the past few months. Just like with the original Wordle, Weezle gives you six chances to guess a five-letter word, though this version, of course, is all Weezer-themed.
“If you like Wordle and Weezer, you’ll probably like Weezle,” Cuomo says.
If that describes someone like you, you can try out the first Weezle now at Weezle.web.app. If you need a hint — spoiler alert — try looking at the track list for Weezer’s Blue Album.
As for that Weezer version of Spotify, that would be Weezify. Cuomo launched Weezify in January amid artists including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell removing their music from the streaming platform in protest of its continued hosting of Joe Rogan‘s podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, which has been criticized for spreading misinformation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines.
Meanwhile, Weezer has been working on new music, and plans to release four albums this year as part of the band’s SZNS project.
Iron Maiden has become yet another rock artist to have concerts canceled because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The legendary U.K. heavy metal band has scrapped shows in Kyiv, Ukraine, on May 29 and in Moscow on June 1. In a statement, Iron Maiden writes, “We are very sorry to announce that due to the ongoing situation in Ukraine, the promoters have cancelled the two Iron Maiden shows…on the 2022 Legacy of the Beast World Tour.Ticket-holders for both shows will be informed by the respective promoters on refunds at the appropriate time.Our priority is, and will always be, the safety of our fans.”
The rockers launch their 2022 trek with a European that that begins May 22 in Zagreb, Croatia. The Legacy of the Beast tour’s North American leg gets underway with a September 11 show in El Paso, Texas.
ESSENCE has revealed the lineup for its 27th Essence Festival of Culture this year, and Janet Jackson and The Isley Brothers are among the many stars slated to perform at this year’s event, which after being held virtually the last two years will take place live and in person from June 30 to July 3 in New Orleans.
“This is Not a Drill ESSENCE FEST has returned to NOLA with an All-Star lineup that literally can’t be touched!” ESSENCE wrote in an Instagram announcement.
In addition to Janet and The Isleys, ESSENCE has lined up a variety other big names to help celebrate the theme for this year’s fest, “It’s the Black Joy for Me,” including Nicki Minaj, New Edition, The Roots and Friends, Jazmine Sullivan and comic Kevin Hart.
Over the course of four days, festival-goers will have the opportunity to enjoy good food and free daytime experiences, take advantage of career advancement workshops and, of course, witness many musical performances.
“As the nation’s largest festival by per day attendance, the ESSENCE Festival of Culture is a staple that celebrates community and empowers equity,” says ESSENCE CEO Caroline Wanga. “We are excited to welcome the family back live to New Orleans and thrilled to connect with more of our diasporic family through new digital experiences.”
Additional talent and experiences will be announced soon. Tickets for the festival are on sale now at EssenceFestival.com.
(WASHINGTON) — Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s daughter once penned a letter to then-President Barack Obama requesting he nominate her mom for a seat on the Supreme Court.
Leila, who was an 11-year-old middle schooler in 2016, wrote the missive touting the credentials of her mother following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Jackson was serving on the U.S. District Court of Washington, D.C. at the time.
“I would like to add my mother, Ketanji Brown Jackson of the District Court, to the list,” Leila wrote, referring to Obama’s shortlist of potential nominees.
“She is determined, honest, and never breaks a promise to anyone, even if there are other things she’d rather do,” the letter reads. “She can demonstrate commitment, and is loyal and never brags.”
Jackson read the entire letter aloud in a 2017 speech and tells the story around it and how she first explained to her daughter the process of becoming a justice.
Obama ended up selecting Merrick Garland to fill the opening, but Senate Republicans fused to hold hearings on the now-attorney general, leaving the seat to be filled by President Donald Trump, who nominated Justice Neil Gorsuch.
It took another six years for President Joe Biden, who served as Obama’s vice president when Leila sent her letter, to come to the same conclusion that Brown “would make a great Supreme Court Justice, even if the workload will be larger….”
In February, Biden tapped to Brown replace Justice Stephen Breyer, who announced his retirement earlier this year.
It is the first time a Black woman has been nominated to the Supreme Court.
(NEW YORK) — While much of the country is relieved to move into a new phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of families with young, unvaccinated children have looked on with frustration, feeling forced to now raise their guard even higher.
“Just going to the grocery store is less safe now, because we can’t rely on other people protecting him by wearing a mask,” said Rebecca Sanghvi, the mother of a 2-year-old son.
Vaccines for children under 5 years old aren’t expected until sometime in the spring. During his State of the Union address, President Joe Biden said scientists were working hard to get them authorized and pledged to “be ready with plenty of vaccines if and when they do.”
Sanghvi, an instructional coach with the Washington, D.C., Public Schools, her husband and their 5-year-old have led a cautious life during the pandemic to protect their youngest family member.
She knows that there’s a very low chance of her son getting severely sick, but after two years of near-misses, her and her husband can barely afford taking time off work for another quarantine.
They do the necessities, like going to work and attending school, but they don’t dine indoors or go to crowded indoor places, like museums. They don’t see friends indoors. Playdates are at the park, outside.
She wishes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had waited for young kids to get access to vaccines before easing the national guidelines for masks, which put 70% of the country in areas where it was no longer required.
“I want to protect my kids. And [masks] seem like not an overwhelming price to pay with all of the unknowns that there are,” Sanghvi said.
Her son is one of about 20 million kids in the U.S. who still can’t get vaccinated — the last age group in the country.
Doctors urge parents to hang on for a few more months
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends all kids under 5 continue to wear masks — a recommendation that will likely stand until vaccines are available for that group sometime in late spring, said Moira Szilagyi, president of the organization.
The hope is that transmission continues to decrease until then, at least reducing some stress around the virus, and the vaccine could arrive before a potential increase in cases over the summer.
“I share their pain. We see families in our offices and practice settings every day whose children are stuck in this in-between world,” Szilagyi said.
But now is not the time to let your guard down, Szilagyi and other doctors emphasized.
“You should continue to do everything you can to prevent the infection, because we don’t have a great way of telling if your kid will do great or your kid will not,” said Dr. Diego Hijano, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Many parents also worry about their young children developing long COVID, even if the initial infection is mild. But the research is still limited.
Children can get long COVID, experts said, but it’s less common than in adults. When vaccines become available, that is expected to further reduce the risk, as it has for kids ages 5 to 11.
So what are the best ways to stay protected?
In the meantime, experts say that even if other people aren’t wearing masks around kids, they can still be relatively protected if they wear high-quality masks themselves, like surgical masks, N95-equivalent masks made for children, or even cloth masks with at least two layers.
“It will be at least some defense — and enough to make it worthwhile,” said Szilagyi.
Doctors also recommend “cocooning” children with vaccinated people — surrounding them with family and friends who are up to date on their vaccines and boosters.
“If you can get parents, siblings, grandparents on board — that’s the first step because that’s the best way to protect the kid in the house,” Hijano said.
And playing outside without masks is relatively safe, said Hijano, who has young kids.
Traveling has also been proven to be low risk, particularly road trips, and outings to the movie theater, where the seats are relatively spaced out, can be a good activity, he said.
And in the next few weeks, watch for continued improvements in the pandemic’s trajectory.
“Clearly, when masks come off, then that will increase the risk, particularly for unvaccinated children under 5,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
“But that is somewhat counterbalanced by the fact that the overall number of cases is much, much reduced compared with where we were a month or two ago and the severity of illness with omicron is lower than the severity of illness with delta or the prior variants,” he said.
Barouch, too, recommended continued mask-wearing and avoiding public indoor gatherings until things improve, as did Dr. Robert Frenck, a vaccine researcher at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
“There’s no data to show that the masks are dangerous. There’s no data to show that kids can’t recognize emotion. In fact, there’s data to show kids can recognize emotion because they pick up most of the emotion out of the eyes,” Frenck said.
He urged people to respect one another’s decisions around masks.
“A parent should be allowed to make their decision about a mask,” he said. “And they should feel no recrimination by anyone because they made the decision for their child.”
Disgraced former studio head Harvey Weinstein has reportedly been busted in a Los Angeles jail for being in possession of contraband. And while “prison contraband” usually conjures up images of drugs or spoon shanks, Variety reports that his forbidden items were Milk Duds.
Weinstein, who suffers from a variety of health conditions, including diabetes, is being housed at the medical unit of the Twin Towers jail in downtown Los Angeles while awaiting trial on 11 charges of rape and sexual assault.
According to the trade, the disallowed Duds were discovered there on November 10 of last year, following a visit from one of his attorneys. “The Milk Duds were confiscated, and the guards warned that they would have to search his attorneys’ legal binders and laptop bags on future visits,” Variety reports.
Although Weinstein reportedly tried to deny that he was passed the candy, his attorneys told the trade that the situation was a “misunderstanding” and his client has been a “model prisoner.”
Weinstein shared a statement with Variety apologizing for the incident that reads, “This was an innocent misunderstanding. It will not happen again. I have been a model inmate, following the rules and regulations and I am sincerely sorry.”
Last year, the Oscar-winning former producer was extradited to Los Angeles from New York, where he’d been sentenced to 23 years in prison on sex assault charges in 2020. Late last year, his attorneys argued to an appeals court that the conviction should be thrown out.
(NEW YORK) — It’s a dramatic tale of money, power, tragedy and deceit.
Elizabeth Holmes, once the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire and lauded by some as the next Steve Jobs for her supposedly “revolutionary” blood testing company, Theranos, fell from grace after being convicted of defrauding investors.
Holmes awaits sentencing this September, facing up to twenty years in prison for four counts of fraud for which she was found guilty in January. Her former boyfriend and ex-COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani claims he is innocent and is set to go on trial later this month.
The gripping story is recapped in a new 20/20 special, “The Dropout: The Rise and Con of Elizabeth Holmes,” airing March 4.
The television event features behind-the-scenes access to the new Hulu original limited series “The Dropout”, starring Oscar-nominee Amanda Seyfried. The limited series is based on the top ranked ABC News podcast hosted by ABC News Chief Business Correspondent Rebecca Jarvis. It premieres on Hulu on March 3.
The podcast, which first aired in 2019, chronicles the rise and fall of Holmes and Theranos through first-hand accounts and deposition tapes of Holmes, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, and other employees.
Listeners hear from the whistleblowers who say they tried to speak out about what was happening inside Theranos while being stalked and legally threatened. From broken machines to faulty test results, the company starts to go downhill as Holmes attempts to mitigate the damage to her reputation by traversing down a path of lies.
Season two of the podcast picks up in the middle of a worldwide pandemic three years after Holmes settled with the SEC with no admission of wrongdoing, at the beginning of her criminal trial. Holmes, now a mother, charged with 2 counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and 9 counts of wire fraud, faces the toughest and most important challenge of her life: convincing 12 jurors that she’s innocent of the charges at hand.
Each week, “The Dropout” team takes you behind the scenes and inside the courtroom to provide a detailed description of what is happening. In addition to courtroom coverage, the podcast also interviews legal experts, witnesses, and investors to help understand where Theranos went wrong.
Tune in to the limited series “The Dropout” exclusively on Hulu on Thursday, March 3, and “The Dropout: The Rise and Con of Elizabeth Holmes” on Friday, March 4. Hulu is a division of Disney, ABC’s parent company.
If there’s an artist you really hope to see live in concert soon, here’s a great reminder why you need to access those ticket pre-sales. Ticketmaster announced that BTS managed to sell out their Las Vegas concerts before general admission sales even started.
Ticketmaster tweeted, “Due to overwhelming demand during today’s @BTS_BigHit BTS GLOBAL OFFICIAL FANCLUB ARMY MEMBERSHIP Presale, all tickets for the @AllegiantStadm shows have been purchased.” Four shows had been set for Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas next month.
Because members of the BTS Global Official Fanclub Army had first dibs at tickets, Ticketmaster explained, “All shows are now sold out. There will not be a General Verified Fan Presale or General Public Onsale.”
Upset fans were quick to vent their frustrations, and it appears they had good reason. Those hoping to catch BTS in Vegas will now have to purchase tickets another way, such as via StubHub, SeatGeek or elsewhere, at inflated prices.
The BTS PERMISSION TO DANCE ON STAGE – LAS VEGAS show runs for four dates between April 8 and April 16 in Vegas.
