Dead & Company won’t be playing in the Mexican sand after all this month, as the band has just announced that it’s called off its entire two-weekend Playing in the Sand destination festival.
The news of the cancellation comes after drummer Bill Kreutzmanndropped out of the event earlier this week due to health issues, and then singer/guitarist John Mayer dropped out because he got COVID-19.
On Instagram, Dead & Company posted a message that reads, “With much sadness and after great consideration of every possible scenario, the Playing in the Sand shows in Riviera Cancun on January 7-10 and January 13-16 have now been canceled…due to the spiking COVID-19 cases.”
The statement continues, “Dead & Company…tried everything possible to bring normalcy and to deliver a great experience and amazing music, but with each day it became increasingly clear that canceling is the correct thing to do for the fans and for our crew.”
Noting that anyone who has tickets will receive an email about refunds, the statement ends by saying, “See you soon, hug your loved ones, stay safe and be kind.”
The event was to have featured multiple performances by the Grateful Dead spinoff group and other artists at the Moon Palace Cancún resort.
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris was inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters on Jan, 6, 2021, when a pipe bomb was found outside the building, a White House official confirms to ABC News.
She was then evacuated.
The news was first reported by Politico.
“On that day I was not only vice president elect, I was also a United States Senator. And I was here at the Capitol that morning, at a classified hearing with fellow members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Hours later, the gates of the Capitol were breached,” Harris said in remarks Thursday morning. “I had left, but my thoughts immediately turned, not only to my colleagues, but to my staff, who had been forced to seek refuge in our office, converting filing cabinets into barricades.”
Both the DNC pipe bomb and another placed outside the Republican National Committee were discovered after the vote counting had started — at 1p.m.
It’s still a mystery to federal officials who planted them.
The FBI has done over 900 interviews on the case alone, they have collected 39,000 video files and 400 tips regarding the identity of the suspect. The FBI and ATF are offering a reward of $100,000.
(NEW YORK) — As police across the country have grappled with illegal guns on American streets, an increasing number of those weapons are “ghost guns” they say — guns that lack serial numbers or other traceable components.
On Thursday, federal prosecutors in New York charged a Rhode Island man who they said trafficked dozens of ghost guns to the Bronx and the Dominican Republic.
Robert Alcantara has been involved in the sale or attempted sale of what appear to be more than 100 firearms, mostly “ghost gun” handguns that he purchased in incomplete form and then finished at a workstation at his house, Kiran Mathew, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said in a sworn complaint.
Alcantara is charged with conspiracy to traffic firearms and with making false statements about it when questioned by the ATF.
Alcantara showed off his skill at building ghost guns in a video the complaint said he posted to YouTube in 2019
The Justice Department reported last year that between 2016 and 2020, more than 23,000 weapons without serial numbers were recovered by law enforcement at potential crime scenes, including scenes connected to 325 homicides or attempted homicides.
An intelligence bulletin issued last year and obtained by ABC News said violent criminals and domestic extremists “likely favor use of (‘ghost guns’) in lethal attacks based on a review of recent incidents and investigations and the challenges of tracking un-serialized firearm components.”
Alcantara contributed to the proliferation by assembling these guns at a home workshop using components he purchased at gun shows, according to the complaint.
He was arrested in Rhode Island Thursday morning and made an initial court appearance in Providence.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether Alcantara had a lawyer.
(WASHINGTON) — House investigators looking into the siege of the U.S. Capitol a year ago have contacted a former spokesman for the Oath Keepers militia, seeking to interview him about his time with the militia group and its founder, Stewart Rhodes, according to the former Oath Keeper, Jason Van Tatenove, and a congressional source familiar with the matter.
The request to interview Van Tatenhove, who says he left the Oath Keepers by 2018, suggests that House investigators are casting a wide net as they gather information about Rhodes as they wait to see if he will cooperate with their probe.
Van Tatenhove told ABC News that he plans to answer the panel’s questions, but he is first seeking legal counsel.
According to congressional sources, House investigators have been discussing Van Tatenhove for much of the day, after ABC News featured him in its new documentary “Homegrown: Standoff to Rebellion,” now on Hulu, and in a story online about his ongoing efforts to “atone” and “make amends” for his time with the Oath Keepers.
Investigators issued a subpoena to Rhodes two months ago, seeking testimony and documents from him, but Rhodes has yet to appear before them or provide documents.
“Prior to January 6th, Mr. Rhodes repeatedly suggested the Oath Keepers should engage in violence to ensure their preferred election outcome,” the committee said in a statement when issuing the subpoena. “On January 6th, Mr. Rhodes was allegedly in contact with several of the indicted Oath Keepers members before, during, and after the Capitol attack, including meeting some of them outside the Capitol.”
Rhodes, however, has said he wasn’t on Capitol grounds until after the violence began, and there’s no evidence he entered the Capitol building. He has denied any wrongdoing.
Nevertheless, according to an ABC News count, more than 20 people charged in the federal investigation of the Jan. 6 riots have alleged ties to the Oath Keepers.
The chairman of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., recently told ABC News that in order to “put the pieces of the puzzle together,” an upcoming hearing will explore the role of the Oath Keepers and other far-right organizations on Jan. 6.
Now an artist and writer in Colorado, Van Tatenhove served as a spokesman for the Oath Keepers between 2014 and 2018. He published stories and posted videos online that promoted claims of federal government overreach and highlighted Oath Keepers’ efforts to intervene in politically-charged matters around the country.
However he now describes much of what he promoted as dangerous “propaganda” that can create violent confrontations.
“And I think we saw the culmination of that come Jan. 6, when the Capitol riots happened,” he said.
Van Tatenhove left the group after it took what he said was “a very hard right turn,” associating with white nationalists and Holocaust deniers at the start of Donald Trump’s presidency.
“I became a propagandist for what they were doing. I feel awful about that now,” Van Tatenhove said.
Rhodes has insisted over the years that his organization is nonpartisan and that it only seeks to help people ensure their rights are protected.
ABC News’ Benjamin Siegel contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — One year after the Jan. 6 insurrection, Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin reflected on the whirlwind period between the death of his 25-year-old son and the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump following the attack.
Raskin’s son, Tommy Raskin, died by suicide on New Year’s Eve 2020. The day after his son was buried, Raskin was on Capitol Hill when supporters of Trump stormed the Capitol.
“The day after we buried Tommy in a small family COVID-19 graveside service, we had the violent insurrection at the Capitol and the attempt to overthrow the 2020 presidential election by Donald Trump,” said Raskin, who wrote about the experience in his new book, “Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy.”
Soon after, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked Raskin to be the lead impeachment manager in Trump’s impeachment trial.
“Speaker Pelosi asked me to be the lead impeachment manager over in the Senate for the trial, and I describe in the book, how to me that was throwing me a lifeline because I felt like I was drowning and that I might not ever do anything again,” said Raskin.
Raskin told ABC News Live that he felt compelled to take the role in honor of his late son.
“I felt like I had an obligation to do it, that Tommy would be completely with me the whole way,” said Raskin. “And this was a chance to try to stand up and articulate, not just my love, but our family’s love, of our Constitution and our freedom and our democracy and the idea of human rights — the opposite of everything that was on display on Jan. 6.”
Raskin is also a member of the Jan. 6 House select committee and is tasked with investigating the cause and who was behind the Jan. 6 insurrection, among other things.
After a year of gathering evidence and conducting voluntary interviews, he said he’s confident the committee will be able to produce results and prevent another attack in the future.
“We are getting the evidence we need in order to tell a comprehensive and fine-grained portrait about what took place and how it happened and what we need to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” said Raskin.
Unfortunately, Raskin believes that Jan. 6 wasn’t the end of something, but rather the beginning. He said he’s concerned about what political scientists call a “self-coup” on American democracy.
“Donald Trump decided to try to seize the presidency, and so there was a riot surrounding an insurrection, surrounding a coup against Vice President [Mike] Pence, who on that day was a great constitutional patriot and refused to bow down to Donald Trump,” said Raskin. “The apparatus of insurrection is in place every day in lots of states across the country to try to guarantee the victory of Donald Trump if and when he comes back again in 2024.”
Also, a year since his son’s death, Raskin has become a vocal advocate for mental health. He said his son had long struggled with depression and that his son had left a note before he died that read: “Please forgive me. My illness won today.”
“[Tommy] was overcome with this disease, and it’s no less of a disease than cancer or leukemia,” said Raskin. “Depression kills, and so we need to get people into treatment and get people the best medical treatment possible and then to continue to talk and to listen to people.”
Oscar winner Nicolas Cage is expecting his third child, his first with fifth wife Riko Shibata.
A rep for the couple, who met via mutual friends, tells People, “The parents-to-be are elated!”
Cage, who changed his surname from Coppola early in his career to distance himself from his uncle Francis Ford Coppola, already has two sons: 31-year-old Weston Coppola Cage, and 16-year-old Kal-El Coppola Cage, from respective previous relationships with ex-girlfriend Christina Fulton and ex-wife Alice Kim.
Cage, 57, married Shibata, 27, in Las Vegas in February of last year.
(NEW YORK) — An Egyptian American has been charged with acting as an illegal agent of Egypt as he “tracked and obtained information regarding political opponents” of the Egyptian president, federal prosecutors in New York said.
It’s the latest example of an autocratic leader extending their grip beyond their borders to quash political dissent — a hand that in recent years has even extended into the U.S., according to some analysts.
Pierre Girgis, 39, “operated at the direction and control of multiple employees of the Egyptian government,” according to the criminal complaint, as he spied on critics of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Egyptian general who seized power in 2013.
Sisi has overseen a widespread crackdown on human rights in Egypt, which is among the least free countries in the world, according to the think tank Freedom House. Sisi’s government has imprisoned tens of thousands of political prisoners, criminalized expressions of dissent and deployed security forces with impunity, according to human rights groups.
“At the behest of Egyptian officials, Girgis’ alleged prohibited conduct included attempting to covertly gather non-public intelligence about the activities of political opponents of Egypt’s president, and attempting to gain access for foreign officials to attend law enforcement-only trainings in Manhattan,” U.S. attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.
Girgis is charged with acting as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the attorney general of the United States and with conspiracy.
The Egyptian Embassy in Washington, D.C., has not yet responded to a request for comment. The government has previously denied harassing dissidents or defended arrests as critical to national security, and Sisi once claimed his government held no political prisoners.
Critics, such as the Freedom Initiative, have alleged that Sisi’s repressive tactics now extend beyond Egypt’s borders to target dissidents overseas.
“Mr. Girgis’ activities are not isolated. Egypt has engaged in a pattern of intimidating and harassing rights defenders, journalists and the families of political prisoners in the U.S. for years,” said Allison McManus, research director of the human rights organization founded by Mohamed Soltan.
Soltan, an Egyptian American, spent nearly two years in prison for protesting Sisi’s 2013 seizure of power. He was tortured in prison, he said, and went on hunger strike to demand his release, but after being returned to the U.S., his outspoken advocacy has resulted in Egyptian authorities harassing his family, he claimed.
Soltan’s father has been arrested by Egyptian authorities and has had no communication with his family since, according to Soltan, while five cousins have been arrested and released twice now. The Freedom Initiative alleged in a May 2021 report that at least a dozen American citizens have had family members back in Egypt detained throughout 2020, five of which were in direct response to their political activity in the U.S.
The State Department declined to comment on Girgis’ case, saying it is an active law enforcement matter. But spokesperson Ned Price told ABC News, “We are seeking to hold to account countries that would pursue dissidents, that would undertake such activity extraterritorially.”
Critics say that little has been done to punish Egypt, one of the United States’ key Middle East allies and a major recipient of military aid.
The Biden administration withheld $130 million in military aid last fall, which human rights groups in a joint statement said “undermines the human rights of Egypt’s citizens and further erodes the standing of the United States.”
Examples of this kind of “extraterritorial” activity by autocratic governments have grown in recent years, too.
The Saudi government ordered the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at its consulate in Turkey, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko grounded a Ryanair flight to arrest a dissident blogger on board, and Russian agents poisoned former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the United Kingdom. Saudi Arabia claimed it was a rogue operation, while Russia denied any responsibility for Skripal’s poisoning.
This is also not the first case of a foreign agent spying on dissidents in the U.S.
Last summer, the Department of Justice accused four Iranian citizens, including one intelligence agent, of attempting to kidnap activist and writer Masih Alinejad from her New York apartment. Federal prosecutors said the suspects were directed by the Iranian government to bring Alinejad back to Tehran because of her criticism of the government.
It’s unclear what Girgis’ information was being used for, if at all, but an Egyptian official allegedly made its value to the government clear in encrypted communications sent in 2018, according to the criminal complaint.
“You do a lot of good things,” one message from an unnamed Egyptian official said, according to the complaint. “You have become an important source for them to collect information.”
In a 2019 message, Girgis and the same Egyptian official reportedly discussed an upcoming trip of certain Egyptian officials to the United States.
“Tell me what you want me to do,” Girgis asked his handler, according to the criminal complaint.
The Egyptian official responded by inquiring about Girgis’ relationship with a particular U.S. law enforcement officer.
“Ask [the U.S. law enforcement officer] for something,” the official reportedly said. “We want you to find out if there are any police trainings happening in Manhattan in the coming days, and if so, who are the people in charge of these trainings? We would like to attend.”
Girgis surrendered Thursday morning to the FBI and was due to make an initial appearance in Manhattan federal court later in the day. It wasn’t immediately clear if he had arranged a lawyer.
Taraji P. Henson has been very public about suffering from depression, and she explores mental health issues in her Facebook Watch program,Peace of Mind with Taraji. Now she’s taking the show on the road. On February 16, the 10-time NAAACP Image Award winner will appear in Boston at the Museum of Science for “Peace of Mind: An Evening with Taraji P. Henson,” the Boston Globe reports.
The event will feature the Empire star talking about her mental health advocacy, and breaking down stigmas around mental health, specifically in communities of color.
In other news, following Tuesday night’s premiere of the eighth and final season of black-ish, featuring MichelleObama, series star Tracee Ellis Ross says she’s proud of the program’s legacy.
“I don’t take it lightly, the cultural value and importance of our show. It’s not lost on me that we were thriving for eight years within a system that really isn’t designed to bring shows like black-ish into people’s homes,” she tells EW.com
Finally, 9-1-1 star Angela Bassett‘s iconic career continues to thrive at age 63, and after acting for 37 years, she’s loves seeing other Black actresses making their mark in Hollywood.
“It’s wonderful with 9-1-1 that I get to work with Aisha [Hinds] because I was such a big fan of hers watching Underground. And then for them to bring in Marsha Warfield to portray her mother, who I grew up watching on Night Court, ” the Golden Globe winner tells InStyle.
“I’m so proud of Halle [Berry] for making her directorial debut [with the Netflix movie Bruised]. Whatever a woman’s doing, I’m supporting and applauding her. Because we don’t feel 100% every day,” Bassett says. “We need to be able to look out and find inspiration.
Don’t expect to get your hands on a physical copy of The Weeknd‘s new album, because he hasn’t made any… yet.
Taking to Twitter on Thursday, hours before Dawn FM arrives, he announced that he is only selling digital copies of his new album. The revelation came after a fan noted a since-deleted tweet that declared because there will be “no physical copies (vinyls, CDs, cassettes)” during the first week of release, it will “obviously impact first week figures.”
The Canadian artist didn’t sweat the possibility of losing out on possible sales, and shot back, “This doesn’t matter to me. what matters is getting to experience the album together with the fans during these times.”
If you’re more traditional with your music consumption, no fear: you’ll soon be able to listen to The Weeknd’s new album the old-fashioned way. According to his online store, cassette, CD and vinyl copies of Dawn FM are on sale but won’t start shipping until January 28.
Saturday Night Live is coming back on January 15 with West Side Story‘s Ariana DeBose as host, and musical guest Roddy Rich.
The long-running sketch show posted the news to social media Thursday afternoon.
Not only will it be the first SNL show of the new year, it will be the first since the sketch show’s Christmas episode with Paul Rudd was sidetracked by the Omicron spike.
Instead of the traditional show with an audience, Rudd, and guests like Tom Hanks and Tina Fey introducing pre-taped content, as well as favorite sketches from holiday episodes past.
SNL cast members Kenan Thompson and Michael Che also appeared, the other joining Fey for a stripped-down version of “Weekend Update” presented with them sitting on simple chairs on stage.
