The nine-year-old boy who had been hospitalized on life support since being trampled at Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival has died, his family confirmed to ABC Houston affiliate KTRK on Sunday.
Ezra Blount suffered severe injuries when he was trampled in a crowd surge at the November 5 concert at Houston’s NRG Park. He was at the concert with his father, Treston Blount, and was on his father’s shoulders when the surge began.
Treston told KTRK that he lost consciousness in the crush of the crowd and Ezra fell to the ground. When Treston regained consciousness, he could not find his son, and was eventually alerted by police that his son was in the hospital. Ezra’s major organs had been damaged, his brain was swollen, and he was on life support.
“The Blount family is grieving the incomprehensible loss of their precious young son,” the family’s attorney Ben Crump said in a statement obtained by KTRK. “This should not have been the outcome of taking their son to a concert, what should have been a joyful celebration. Ezra’s death is absolutely heartbreaking. We are committed to seeking answers and justice for the Blount family. But we stand in solidarity with the family, in grief, and in prayer.”
The death toll from the concert is now 10. Eight of those victims were pronounced dead the night of the concert and the ninth victim, Bharti Shahani, died on Wednesday of last week.
Blount’s family is one of the many who have since filed lawsuits against Travis Scott and other festival organizers.
Marvel’s Eternals topped the box office for the second straight week, delivering an estimated $27.5 million. After two weeks, the film — starring Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Gemma Chan and Richard Madden — has earned $118.8 million domestically and has pulled in another $162.6 million from overseas, bringing its current worldwide total to $281.4 million. Marvel is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.
Clifford the Big Red Dog debuted in second place with an estimated $16.4 million. The live-action-CGI
feature — starring Jack Whitehall, Darby Camp, Tony Hale and Kenan Thompson — opened on Wednesday, bringing its total first week earnings to an estimated $22 million.
Dune finished in third place with an estimated $5.5 million in its fourth week of release. The sci-fi epic has has collected $93.1 million at the domestic box office so far, to go with $258.1 million overseas, for a global tally of tally of $351.2 million.
Fourth place belongs to No Time to Die, which earned an estimated $4.6 million in its sixth week of release. The latest Jame Bond film has earned a total of $150.5 million stateside in addition to $558.2 million overseas, bringing its worldwide tally to $708.7 million. That makes it just the second pandemic-era film to surpass the $700 million global mark, behind F9: The Fast Saga‘s $721 million.
Rounding out the top five is Sony’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage, grabbing and estimated $4 million after seven weeks.
Kenneth Branagh’s coming-of-age drama, Belfast, collected an estimated $1.8 million in limited release.
Proposed drilling in the Gulf of Mexico – ABC News Photo Illustration, U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
(WASHINGTON) — On the heels of his stirring plea at the just-completed Glasgow Climate Conference for “every nation to do its part” to solve the climate crisis, President Joe Biden’s administration is preparing this week to hold an auction for drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico over impassioned objections from environmental organizations.
“It’s hard to imagine a more dangerous, hypocritical action in the aftermath of the climate summit,” said Kristen Monsell, a lawyer for the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. “Holding this lease sale will only lead to more harmful oil spills, more toxic climate pollution, and more suffering for communities and wildlife along the Gulf Coast.”
The auction, set for Wednesday, will grant oil companies the opportunity to bid on nearly 80 million acres of lucrative federal waters, which would produce an estimated 1.12 billion barrels of oil and 4.2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over the next 50 years.
The winning bidder will have the right to build platform rigs up to 231 miles from shore and drill for oil at underwater depths of up to 11,000 feet. Environmental groups say the distance from shore and depth of drilling increases the likelihood of a repeat of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which caused 4 million barrels of oil to leak into the Gulf.
Brettny Hardy, an attorney with the environmental nonprofit group Earthjustice, said the development of those waters would amount to a “huge climate bomb” that would “compromise our future and move our climate action in the exact wrong direction.”
Biden promised to end new drilling on federal lands during his presidential campaign, and issued an executive order pausing the lease sales during his first week in office, pending a review of their environmental impact.
In June, however, a federal judge ordered the resumption of those lease sales, siding with 13 states that sued the administration for overstepping its authority.
The administration has appealed the judge’s ruling, but agreed to go forward with the leases while the matter works its way through the courts.
A spokesperson for the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which is tasked with coordinating the auction, said the administration is just adhering to the court’s orders.
“[The administration] is complying with a U.S. District Court’s injunction regarding [the auction] while the government appeals the decision,” said spokesperson John Filostrat. “The Biden Harris Administration is continuing its comprehensive review of the deficiencies associated with its offshore and onshore oil and gas leasing programs.”
The Interior Department said in August that, while it would adhere to the court’s ruling, it will also “continue to exercise the authority and discretion provided under the law to conduct leasing in a manner that takes into account the program’s many deficiencies.”
But environmental advocates argue that the Biden administration has not exhausted its legal “authority and discretion” — and in fact has several options at its disposal to delay or cancel the bidding.
“The administration has more than sufficient authority to choose not to hold the lease sale and to cancel it,” Monsell said.
The Justice Department could file an emergency injunction to pause the lease pending its appeal, according to Hardy, or make the case in court that the environmental effects of the sale could conflict with other federal laws, like the National Environmental Policy Act.
Monsell and Hardy are leading a coalition of environmental groups in suing the administration to prevent the auction from moving forward, with the goal of winning an injunction before the leases come into effect, which the government said would be on Jan. 1.
In a press release announcing their lawsuit, the environmental groups accused the Biden administration of “folding to the oil industry,” which has promoted the auction as “welcome news for the American worker and our national security.”
“As global energy prices rise, continued Gulf of Mexico leasing can help avert inflationary risks and proactively ensure affordable energy for all walks of life, especially low-income communities,” said Erik Milito, the president of the National Ocean Industries Association, an offshore energy trade group.
Neither the Interior Department nor the White House has responded to allegations that the administration is buckling to pressure from the oil industry.
In Glasgow, Biden promised a return of American leadership on climate change issues, pledging to halve greenhouse emissions by 2050.
“We’ll demonstrate to the world the United States is not only back at the table, but hopefully leading by the power of our example,” he said.
Environmental groups said Biden’s words ring hollow as long as these oil leases move forward.
“This isn’t just hypocritical, it’s outright deceitful,” said Jeremy Nichols of WildEarth Guardians, a nonprofit environmental group. “It truly calls into question whether the Biden administration’s climate agenda is nothing but broken promises.”
(WASHINGTON) — Shortly after the Jan. 6 insurrection, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell did something extraordinary: He decided to disinvite Donald Trump from President Joe Biden’s upcoming inauguration because he was worried Trump could use the occasion to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, according to a new book by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl.
Karl’s book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, details how after the Capitol attack, McConnell told aides he wanted the top Congressional leaders to draft a letter telling the then-sitting president that he was not welcome to attend the inauguration.
The events eventually prompted Trump to send off what would be his final tweet before being banned by the social media platform, according to Betrayal, set to be released on Nov. 16.
“McConnell felt he could not give Trump another opportunity to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power,” Karl writes in the new book. “McConnell wanted to get a letter together from the top four congressional leaders informing Trump that he had been disinvited.”
But not everyone in Republican leadership was on board with McConnell’s plan.
“Kevin McCarthy opposed the idea, arguing it would be an important message of unity to have Trump attend the ceremony as Biden took the oath of office,” according to the book. “But McConnell was determined to disinvite Trump regardless of whether McCarthy would sign the letter.”
McCarthy, Karl writes, would alert the White House about McConnell’s plan to disinvite Trump. And before the letter could be drafted, “Trump sent out a tweet saying he wouldn’t be attending.”
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20,” Trump wrote on Jan. 8.
“Trump apparently wanted people to think it was his decision alone to become the first outgoing president after an election to fail to attend an inauguration since Andrew Johnson skipped the inauguration of Ulysses S. Grant in 1869,” Karl writes.
Following an initial suspension following the Capitol attack, Twitter had briefly reinstated Trump’s account on Jan. 7, during which time Trump reverted back to complaining about the election, writing, “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”
But his tweet about not attending the inauguration would be his last.
Following that tweet, the social media company responded by issuing a “permanent suspension” of Trump’s account, determining that in the context of the Capitol attack, Trump’s tweets violated its glorification of violence policy.
(NEW YORK) — Around 150 former Afghan Air Force pilots and personnel, who were trapped in Tajikistan for months after fleeing Afghanistan, have been airlifted by the United States out of the country to the United Arab Emirates.
The pilots had spent nearly three months in detention in Tajikistan after they used their military aircraft to fly to Afghanistan’s northern neighbor as the Taliban seized Kabul in August. But some of the pilots found themselves in a frightening limbo, detained in a hotel complex by Tajikistan’s authorities, where they said they spent weeks held largely incommunicado and unsure if they might be sent back to the Taliban.
The pilots who spoke with ABC News also said they were poorly fed and were often without electricity in detention. Among them was a female pilot nine months pregnant, they said.
The pilots were taken to the airport in Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe by staff from the U.S. embassy last Tuesday and put on a charter flight to Dubai, according to the pilots and Department of Defense. There, the evacuees were placed in quarantine in a hotel and are now beginning the process of being assessed for resettlement to the U.S. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday that the pilots were evacuated as part of a group of approximately 191 Afghans.
The evacuation occurred as the U.S. continued to wrestle with the colossal task of resettling tens of thousands of Afghans who served the U.S. and Afghanistan’s toppled American-backed government and who are now at risk of mistreatment or execution by the Taliban.
“It’s just a huge relief,” said David Hicks, a former brigadier general and CEO of Sacred Promise, a nongovernmental organization run by current and ex-U.S. military officers that have been working on getting the pilots out. “The team is tremendously relieved and happy to have those individuals out and moving onto their next step to freedom.”
In August, as the Taliban closed in, around 400 pilots and personnel also used their aircraft to fly to Uzbekistan, where they too were detained. But the U.S. was able to negotiate their release in Uzbekistan more quickly, flying the group out in mid-September, officials said.
But negotiations to arrange the evacuation for those in Tajikistan took longer and the pilots said they had been unsure whether they might be sent back. The Taliban had called on the pilots to return and have promised a general amnesty for former Afghan military personnel. But few of the pilots said they did not trust the guarantees.
“It was a rough time over there,” said Ahadi Ab Wajid, a lieutenant who piloted A-29 light reconnaissance aircraft and was evacuated Tuesday.
Speaking by phone from Dubai, he said in Tajikistan, the pilots had lived in poorly heated accommodation and at times had to drink river water.
Ab Wajid said the pilots were still worried about their families, who many had left in Afghanistan.
“It’s hard for them, because they left the place we used to live in. Now they’re living somewhere else and nobody is there to support and help,” he said. “But still thanks God, thanks God that we are out of there,” he said, referring to Tajikistan.
The pilots in Dubai are now being processed to allow them to be resettled in the U.S.
Family of 5 in hiding from Taliban pleads for help getting out of Afghanistan
“All the guys are happy,” said Haseebullah Ibrahimkhail, a helicopter pilot also on Tuesday’s flight. “You can see it in their faces.”
Ibrahimkhail said he was missing his wife and two young daughters who are in Hungary now, having fled Afghanistan. He said he was also preoccupied with thinking about his comrades still in Afghanistan.
Thousands more former Afghan Air Force and other military personnel are still trapped in Afghanistan, with many still appealing for evacuation by the U.S., according to Hicks. Ibrahimkhail said his former comrades fear execution if found, and are barely venturing outside, meaning they are unable to work and are now struggling to feed their families.
The Taliban are reportedly searching for former military personnel and some pilots have told ABC their relatives had been questioned about their whereabouts.
Hick’s NGO, Sacred Promise, is lobbying the U.S. to prioritize the evacuation of the pilots still in Afghanistan, where he said the danger to them was growing.
“We get stories, pretty much daily, either of beatings or having to move,” said Hicks. “And frankly, it’s not going to go away anytime soon — this is going to continue either until we get them out or until the worst case happens.”
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 763,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
Just 68.8% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Nov 15, 7:17 am
Israel approves COVID-19 vaccination for younger children
Israel’s Ministry of Health announced Sunday that children ages 5 to 11 would be eligible for vaccination against COVID-19.
The decision follows an advisory panel’s approval last week of the low-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for 5- to 11-year-olds.
“The majority of experts on the committee were of the opinion that the benefit of vaccinating this age group outweighed any risk,” the health ministry said in a statement Sunday.
A starting date for the inoculation campaign will be announced soon, the health ministry said. COVID-19 vaccination for this age group will not be made mandatory and parents will be given the choice to decide.
More than 62% of Israel’s 9.2 million people have already received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, while nearly 44% have also gotten a booster shot, according to data from the health ministry.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Sunday’s sports events:
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
LA Lakers 114, San Antonio 106
Atlanta 120, Milwaukee 100
Brooklyn 120, Oklahoma City 96
Phoenix 115, Houston 89
Charlotte 106, Golden State 102
Denver 124, Portland 95
Chicago 100, LA Clippers 90
NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE
Calgary 4, Ottawa 0
Washington 6, Pittsburgh 1
Boston 5, Montreal 2
Edmonton 5, St. Louis 4
NY Rangers, 4 New Jersey 3 (SO)
Final Anaheim 5, Vancouver 1
NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE
Buffalo 45, NY Jets 17
Dallas 43, Atlanta 3
Detroit 16, Pittsburgh 16 (OT)
Indianapolis 23, Jacksonville 17
New England 45, Cleveland 7
Tennessee 23, New Orleans 21
Washington 29, Tampa Bay 19
Carolina 34, Arizona 10
Minnesota 27, LA Chargers 20
Green Bay, 17 Seattle 0
Philadelphia 30, Denver 13
Kansas City, 41 Las Vegas 14
TOP-25 COLLEGE BASKETBALL
Tennessee 94, ETSU 62
Florida 71, Florida St. 55
St. Bonaventure 69, Canisius 60
(LONDON) — Queen Elizabeth II canceled a planned public appearance Sunday after spraining her back.
In a statement, Buckingham Palace said the queen “has decided this morning with great regret that she will not be able to attend today’s Remembrance Sunday Service at the Cenotaph.”
It said she was “disappointed that she will miss the service.”
This is the first time the 95-year-old monarch has missed the Cenotaph because of ill health, ABC News royal contributor Victoria Murphy said. She has missed the event, which commemorates the contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women in the two World Wars for other reasons, in the past.
The queen’s son, Charles, the prince of Wales, attended the event in her place Sunday, and placed a wreath at the memorial on her behalf. Charles’ wife, Camilla, the duchess of Cornwall, and Prince William and Kate Middleton, the duke and duchess of Cambridge, also attended.
Others who attended included the earl and countess of Wessex, the princess royal and vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, the duke and duchess of Gloucester, the duke of Kent and Princess Alexandra.
Last month, the queen spent one night in the hospital for “preliminary investigations.” She was released on Oct. 21 and was back at her desk at Windsor Castle that afternoon, according to a palace spokesperson.
The queen had also been scheduled to attend an evening reception on Nov. 1 at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, in Glasgow, but had been advised by doctors to rest. Murphy said the queen’s sprained back is unrelated to that advice.
Since doctors have advised Queen Elizabeth to rest, the royal household has scaled back her diary, keeping engagements light.
“As we start this new chapter as a band, we hope this song will set the tone for what’s to come,” the “Take It All Back” outfit says.
“It’s a song about changing as a person,” the band explains. “It is extremely hard to let go of the old self, and press on to something new. But that surrender comes with a lot of growth and freedom.”
“Find Another Reason Why” is available now for digital download. An alternate version of the song is also featured on the soundtrack for the Netflix film The Starling.
Judah & the Lion’s most recent album is 2019’s Pep Talks. The band is currently in the studio working on a follow-up, which is set to arrive in 2022.
Adele‘s CBS special One Night Only, which aired on Sunday, featured the Grammy-winning artist performing some of her big hits, as well as tunes from her new album 30, and a wide-ranging interview with Oprah Winfrey.
Part of the conversation focused on Adele’s nine-year-old son Angelo — who she shares with her ex-husband Simon Konecki. Adele admitted that she’d “never been so nervous” because the one-night-only concert marked the first time that Angelo had seen her perform live.
When asked if he knows who his mother is, Adele told Oprah that following the countdown to the release of her “Easy on Me” video, Angelo was amazed to see that “there was like a hundred-thousand people waiting [and] you had all these likes, and then he was like, ‘People really like you.'”
Adds the 33-year-old songstress, “he’s starting [to get it]…but not really.”
Adele also told Oprah that the new album was dedicated to Angelo, explaining that the songs reflected the conversation she’d like to have with her son, but can’t quite bring herself to just yet.
“I’m still not over it, of me choosing to dismantle my child’s life for my own. It makes me very uncomfortable,” she said.
Still, Adele believes the split was crucial to showing Angelo “a happy version of herself.”
The performance — which included celebrity guests Lizzo, Selena Gomez, Gabrielle Union, Dwyane Wade, Ellen DeGeneres and Leonardo DiCaprio — was taped at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles shortly after the release of her first new single in six years, “Easy on Me.”
Adele’s new album album, 30, will be released on November 19.
