The two men accused of killing Run-DMC co-founding member Jam Master Jay will not face the death penalty if convicted.
ABC News has confirmed that federal prosecutors will not seek the death penalty for Karl Jordan and Ronald Washington, who have been charged with drug and weapons-related crimes that resulted in the death of Jason Mizell, better known as Jam Master Jay.
Prosecutors notified the judge of their decision in a letter on Monday. “Please be advised that United States Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has authorized and directed the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York not to seek the death penalty against defendants Karl Jordan, Jr. and Ronald Washington,” the letter reads.
Jam Master Jay was shot and killed at his recording studio in Queens on October 30, 2002. Prosecutors believe Washington and Jordan murdered Mizell after they were allegedly cut out of a drug deal. The two were charged with murder last year.
In March, Jordan, who was accused of firing the shot that killed Jay, was additionally charged with a count of conspiracy to distribute illicit drugs and use of firearms in connection with a drug-trafficking crime.
The new charges add the possibility of five extra years in prison.
Travis Scott will issue full refunds for attendees who bought tickets to his Astroworld Festival in Houston, TX, where eight people died in a crowd surge on Friday, sources confirm to ABC News.
The rapper will also not perform at this weekend’s Day N Vegas Festival, where he was previously scheduled as a headliner.
The eight Astroworld victims have now all been identified and range in age from 14 to 27. Hundreds of other concertgoers were injured when the crowd OF 50,000 began to rush the stage at NRG Park in Houston during Scott’s set. A second Astroworld show scheduled for Saturday was cancelled.
In statements on social media following the incident, Scott said he was “absolutely devastated” by what happened and is “working closely with everybody to get to the bottom of this.”
Two concertgoers have already filed lawsuits in the festival’s aftermath as of early Monday.
(NEW YORK) — “Everything bad that you think of was there,” Sarina told ABC News in a video call, wiping away tears. “I was feeling like, ‘I’m gonna die. Why?'”
She said she came to terms with dying during her first attempt to get inside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Aug. 19, surrounded by shouting, gunshots and beatings in a sea of thousands of people desperate to flee — but she said she told herself if she could just get her two-year-old daughter out of the Taliban’s Afghanistan, it would be OK.
“It was not easy that night,” said Sarina, whose name ABC News has changed for the safety of her family still in Afghanistan. “One second I thought I lost my daughter forever. I thought, ‘This is not the life I wanted…I will remain under Taliban, and they will kill me. At least my daughter will be safe.”
After waiting outside the airport for more than 10 hours, where she said they were treated like “animals,” her family returned to their shelter in Kabul, saying her daughter had seen enough.
It’s a day Sarina said is seared in her memory as a “nightmare” and one she hopes her 2-year-old will forget — although bruises on her “tiny face,” as Sarina called it, pointing to her cheeks and explaining their shoulders pushed into their child in the crowd, would serve as a painful reminder of what they had endured.
“My eyes begin, like, filled with tears,” she said, when she’s asked about their journey. “I think it’s not possible to forget those moments that much soon.”
Her husband also came out with bruises, she said, after Taliban fighters whipped him with strands of rubber. Thousands queued outside the airport, and thousands, like Sarina, didn’t make it out of Afghanistan that day.
“The entire night, I cried. I thought ‘Why why? Why did this happen to my daughter?’ She is my everything. She’s a little angel,” she said, through tears. “She was crying. and she told me, ‘Mommy, Mommy, home? Home? Home?'”
Surrounded by chaos, Sarina said she thought to herself, too, “Where is home?”
Fighting for women of Afghanistan — and her life
Sarina spent nine years studying in India, but returned to Afghanistan after completing her Bachelor’s Degree to work in women’s activism.
“There were job opportunities in India for me, but I let them, I let them out. I wanted to be in my country, feel the pain of those poor people, those women, that I really need — I really need to help them,” she said.
She said she worked on USAID projects and in a legal clinic for nearly three years, helping women divorce their husbands after domestic violence, before taking her “dream job” at the relief and development organization, Cordaid.
“Millions of girls, they want education. They want to study in universities. They want jobs. Even if you go to the villages of Afghanistan, you can see that desire in their eyes — how much the Afghan woman wants education,” she said.
But her work — and her life — became at risk when the Taliban seized power, she said. She was called to be evacuated because she was a target.
After the failed first attempt, which she called “traumatic,” Sarina bunkered back down with her family and seven other women in Cordaid — a Dutch development organization she worked for since 2019 which campaigns for women’s rights and independence. When she said she was feeling the lowest, she received a text from a stranger in the U.S. asking how she could help.
“That moment I needed some good words,” she told ABC News, choking up. “Someone telling me that ‘You’re okay, we are with you.’ And that was the moment Cori told me that, ‘Don’t worry Sarina, now I’m with you, many other people are behind you. You’re not alone. We are trying to help you.'”
Cori Shepherd Stern, an Oscar-nominated filmmaker who has an adopted refugee daughter, reached out to Sarina after learning of her situation through a mutual friend. It gave her the motivation she needed for a second attempt two days later.
Shepherd Stern told ABC News it was one of the most “emotionally intense” moments of her life.
“The sheer terror she was feeling, the horrified shock from what she was witnessing was very, very clear and immediate to me,” she said. “I took steps to logistically help her but more than anything, I tried to call out to her from a safe place and stay with her until she and her daughter were safe, too.”
Using Google Maps and communicating with volunteers outside Kabul, Sarina said she and her team were able to find the Dutch army behind the Baron Hotel on Aug. 26, and yelled out, ‘”Holland, Holland!'” The Dutch government had agreed to take the women of Cordaid and their families to safety.
“Finally, that was,” she said, stopping to cry. “That was the moment of victory — but I’m not happy. My family, my mom, my dad, my sisters, I immediately called my dad and told him that I am not happy. I don’t have you in here. I’m not happy. He said ‘don’t worry about that.’ I thought, ‘No.’ Because I know that my dad has done a lot for us.”
Turning to help get her family out
Acknowledging how far she’d come in days alone — from Kabul to Pakistan and from Pakistan to Turkey and from Turkey to Amsterdam — where she’s been at a military base for Afghan refugees for the last 10 weeks — she’s extremely distressed because her family is behind.
“How can I be safe, and they are all miserable?” she said. “They are not safe,” she continued, adding that she’s particularly concerned for her father.
“He is, right now, in depression,” she said, then recalling the version of her father she is used to, bringing a smile to her face. “He is a legend. He is like a hero. He studied at all times of his life,” she said, listing all the places where he has taught and spoken.
Shepherd Stern, who helped Sarina with moral support, and a small team of volunteers are now helping her family with paperwork to get them out. The options they’re looking into include a P-2 visa for her father or individual humanitarian parole for each family member.
But an unprecedented 20,000 Afghan nationals like Sarina’s family have requested parole since August — more than 10 times the number of applications received from around the world in a typical year, USCIS confirmed to ABC News in a statement.
The agency said they are surging resources and training personnel in response — but activists say it isn’t coming soon enough.
“This family needs to get out now,” Shepherd Stern said.
Sarina talks with her dad on the phone every day, multiple times a day, and she said he tells her, “‘My dearest daughter. You should follow your education. You should keep it up.'”
“He was always telling me that you should stand on your feet. ‘I am educating you to be a strong woman,’ and I’m a strong woman, but I am feeling bad that he is not here,” she cried. “He does not deserve to be over there while these people rule over him.”
Because of his devotion to educating women, she said she expects more from the U.S. and international aid agencies to help get her family out.
“It’s a matter of saving the lives of five people,” she said.
Sarina said she refuses to think what she considers unthinkable — that they may not get out.
“Life ends for them — because there is nothing left over here. What should my dad do? What should my sisters do? You tell me — what’s left? It’s mean — it’s life-ending for them,” she said.
“I just don’t want to think about that,” she added, with optimism in her voice. “They will get out soon.”
Sarina’s future
The Netherlands managed to evacuate around 2,000 people like Sarina from Afghanistan.
She has a permit for residency for five years — but it’s unclear when she’ll get settled in a home. To prepare herself, she watches Dutch language lessons on YouTube every day and is now taking classes at a local university offered to refugees. She plans to pursue a Master’s in gender and sexuality studies and become a professor — like her father.
While her time at the camp in the Netherlands has presented new challenges, it has also brought new blessings: Sarina learned on Tuesday that she is approximately eight weeks pregnant.
It’s all the more reason she wants her family out.
“Please help my family. Get them out of Afghanistan, please. That’s a request. That’s a humble request,” she said, with special devotion to her father. “I am everything I am today because of him.”
Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Capital Concerts, Inc.
To help excite and encourage children about getting the COVID-19 vaccine, Sesame Street‘s Big Bird announced that he just got the shot and is feeling great about it.
“I got the COVID-19 vaccine today!,” Big Bird tweeted over the weekend, breaking a months-long hiatus on the social media site. “My wing is feeling a little sore, but it’ll give my body an extra protective boost that keeps me and others healthy.”
The beloved character also revealed something he recently found out, which is “I’ve been getting vaccines since I was a little bird. I had no idea!”
Big Bird’s vaccination announcement received an unexpected shout-out from President Joe Biden, who responded, “Good on ya, @BigBird. Getting vaccinated is the best way to keep your whole neighborhood safe.”
Several happy parents also commended Big Bird, saying his words eased their children’s worries about their upcoming vaccination appointments.
While the character has been entertaining kids for decades, Big Bird is technically six years old, which makes him eligible for the Pfizer vaccine. The vaccine was authorized last week to be given to kids ages five to 11 by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For those who may be puzzled why the Sesame Street character has joined the ongoing conversation about pediatric vaccinations, Big Bird has, historically, been the go-to Muppet on vaccine PSAs. In 1972, he spoke about the importance of getting the measles vaccine, according to a resurfaced video shared by Muppet Wiki.
Ex-UB40 member Terence Wilson, better known as Astro, died Saturday. He was 64.
The vocalist passed away following “a very short illness,” according to a tweet posted on his and founding UB40 lead singer Ali Campbell‘s joint Twitter account on Saturday.
“We are absolutely devastated and completely heartbroken to have to tell you that our beloved Astro has today passed away after a very short illness,” the statement reads. “The world will never be the same without him.”
Astro joined UB40 in 1979, a year after Grammy-nominated band’s formation, and remained with the group until 2013. Aside from contributing spoken-word vocals to the band’s work, he also played percussion and trumpet with the group.
After leaving the band, Astro teamed up with Campbell and longtime UB40 keyboardist Mickey Virtue, both of whom exited the group in 2008, to formUB40 featuring Ali Campbell and Astro in 2014.
As part of UB40, Astro was featured on all of the group’s major hits, including their chart-topping covers of Neil Diamond‘s “Red Red Wine” and Elvis Presley‘s “I Can’t Help Falling in Love,” and their top-10 renditions of Al Green‘s “Here I Am (Come and Take Me)” and The Temptations‘ “The Way You Do the Things You Do.”
Astro’s former band also saluted his life in a tweet on Saturday, writing, “We have heard tonight, the sad news that ex-member of UB40, Terence Wilson, better know as Astro, has passed away after a short illness. Our sincere condolences to his family.”
Wilson’s family is asking for privacy during this time. No additional information regarding Astro’s health has been made available.
(SPOILERS AHEAD) Marvel Studios’ Eternals is now in theaters, and there’sboth a mid-credit scene and an after-credits stinger — but the latter left many fans scratching their heads.
Until now.
While it had previously been spoiled that Harry Styles officially entered the MCU as Eros in the mid-credits scene, exactly who was in the last clip was less clear.
The scene shows Kit Harington‘s Dane Whitman admiring a powerful family heirloom, the Ebony Blade, signaling his MCU future as the Avenger Black Knight. But he’s startled by an off-camera voice that warns, “Sure you’re ready for that, Mr. Whitman?”
The scene is reminiscent of Samuel L. Jackson‘s surprise appearance as Nick Fury at the end of 2008’s Iron Man, but sharp-eared fans knew the voice wasn’t Sam’s.
As it turns out, it belongs to two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali.
Director Chloé Zhao revealed to the website Fandom, “That was the voice of one of my favorite superheroes, Mr. Blade himself. Blade, Blade, Blade, yeah!”
It had been previously been revealed that Ali would be playing the Daywalker in a reboot of the franchise, picking up the stake from Wesley Snipes, who starred in three Blade films in 1998, 2002, and 2004.
According to Fandom, the “really cool” secret was even kept from Harington himself, who was fed the line on set by someone else.
“Chloé texted me about that a couple of weeks ago and it sort of blew my mind,” the Game of Thrones vet admitted. “I didn’t know that that would be the case, so it’s pretty exciting for me.”
Black Knight and Blade had worked together in a 2008-9 team-up in the pages of Marvel Comics.
Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC Audio.
Vin Diesel extended an olive branch to Dwayne Johnson on Sunday, explaining why the latter needs to star in the final Fast and Furious movie.
Taking to Instagram, the actor wrote an impassioned post declaring that the best way to give the beloved franchise a satisfactory conclusion is for Johnson to return as Luke Hobbs. Sharing a photo of the two dressed as their franchise characters, Diesel urged, “My little brother Dwayne… the time has come. The world awaits the finale of Fast 10.”
Noting that his children call the former WWE star ‘Uncle Dwayne,” the actor continued, “The time has come. Legacy awaits. I told you years ago that I was going to fulfill my promise to Pablo. I swore that we would reach and manifest the best Fast in the finale that is 10!”
Diesel affectionately referred to the late Paul Walkeras “Pablo.” Walker played Brian O’Connor before his untimely death in 2013.
“I say this out of love… but you must show up, do not leave the franchise idle you have a very important role to play,” Vin pressed. “Hobbs can’t be played by no other. I hope that you rise to the occasion and fulfill your destiny.”
Johnson starred as Hobbs since 2011’s Fast Five through 2017’s The Fate of the Furious. He also starred in the 2019 cinematic spinoff Hobbs & Shaw.
While The Rock has yet to respond to Diesel’s invitation, he did previously state in a July interview with The Hollywood Reporterthat he has no interest in revisiting the role.
“I wish them well on Fast 9. And I wish them the best of luck on Fast 10 and Fast 11 and the rest of the Fast & Furious movies they do that will be without me,” he said at the time.
Marvel’s Eternals topped the weekend box office, debuting with an estimated $71 million in the U.S., despite tepid reviews.
Director Chloé Zhao‘s film, which boasts a large ensemble cast including Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Harish Patel and Kit Harington, hauled in $161.7 million globally over the weekend — the second-largest worldwide debut of 2021, behind F9: The Fast Saga’s $163 million.
Marvel is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.
Dune dropped to second place after spending two weeks at number one. The futuristic adventure, also available to stream on HBO Max, delivered an estimated $7.6 million, bringing its domestic total gross to $83.9 million. Dune added an estimated $246.5 million overseas, bringing its combined worldwide tally to $330.4 million.
Third place went to No Time to Die, which grabbed an estimated $6.2 million in its fifth week of release. The latest James Bond film has now earned $143.2 million domestically and $524.3 million abroad for a combined worldwide total of $667.5 million.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage pulled up at number four, delivering an estimated $4.5 million in its sixth week of release. Its domestic tally now stands at $197 million and $227.6 million overseas, bringing its global box-office total to $424.6 million.
Rounding out the top five is the animated feature Ron’s Gone Wrong, earning an estimated $3.6 million in its third week in theaters.
(NEW YORK) — Three Ivy League school campuses issued temporary evacuations Sunday afternoon after receiving bomb threats.
The incidents at Cornell, Columbia and Brown universities came two days after a similar threat took place at Yale University Friday.
The New York Police Department was called to Columbia’s campus around 2:30 p.m. and students and visitors were told to avoid the area, the school said on Twitter. About two hours later, the school announced that the threats “were deemed not credible by the NYPD and the campus buildings have been cleared for reoccupancy.”
Brown University’s officials said in a statement that officers were called in after a bomb threat was made over the phone. Then, at around 5:45 p.m., the school announced that investigators found no evidence of a credible threat.
“Buildings that had been evacuated are now reopened, and university operations have resumed as normal,” the school said in a statement.
Cornell University officials said a security perimeter was put into place around 4:10 p.m. as officers investigated the threats. Around 7:34, the school said there was no credible threat and reopened the campus.
“We are relieved to report that this threat appears to have been a hoax. A cruel hoax; but, thankfully, just a hoax,” Cornell representatives said in a statement.
Police closed down Yale’s campus and some local businesses for over four hours before they gave an all clear, ABC affiliate WTNH reported.
Police officers were still investigated the threats at Cornell and Brown Sunday evening.
Later Sunday night, the NYPD tweeted that the ordeal at Columbia was a “swatting incident,” and they will continue to investigate.
No devices have been found at any of the schools and investigators have not made any arrests.
(WASHINGTON) — In an angry conversation on his final day as president, Donald Trump told the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee he was leaving the GOP and creating his own political party — and that he didn’t care if the move would destroy the Republican Party, according to a new book by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl.
Trump only backed down when Republican leaders threatened to take actions that would have cost Trump millions of dollars, Karl writes his upcoming book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.
The book gives a detailed account of Trump’s stated intention to reject the party that elected him president and the aggressive actions taken by party leaders to force him to back down.
The standoff started on Jan. 20, just after Trump boarded Air Force One for his last flight as president.
“[RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel] called to wish him farewell. It was a very un-pleasant conversation,” Karl writes in “Betrayal,” set to be released on Nov. 16.
“Donald Trump was in no mood for small talk or nostalgic goodbyes,” Karl writes. “He got right to the point. He told her he was leaving the Republican Party and would be creating his own political party. The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., was also on the phone. The younger Trump had been relentlessly denigrating the RNC for being insufficiently loyal to Trump. In fact, at the January 6 rally before the Capitol Riot, the younger Trump all but declared that the old Republican Party didn’t exist anymore.”
With just hours left in his presidency, Trump was telling the Republican Party chairwoman that he was leaving the party entirely. The description of this conversation and the discussions that followed come from two sources with direct knowledge of these events.
“I’m done,” Trump told McDaniel. “I’m starting my own party.”
“You cannot do that,” McDaniel told Trump. “If you do, we will lose forever.”
“Exactly. You lose forever without me,” Trump responded. “I don’t care.”
Trump’s attitude was that if he had lost, he wanted everybody around him to lose as well, Karl writes. According to a source who witnessed the conversation, Trump was talking as if he viewed the destruction of the Republican Party as a punishment to those party leaders who had betrayed him — including those few who voted to impeach him and the much larger group he believed didn’t fight hard enough to overturn the election in his favor.
“This is what Republicans deserve for not sticking up for me,” Trump told McDaniel, according to the book.
In response, McDaniel tried to convince Trump that creating his own party wouldn’t just destroy the Republican Party, it would also destroy him.
“This isn’t what the people who depended on you deserve, the people who believed in you,” McDaniel said. “You’ll ruin your legacy. You’ll be done.”
But Trump said he didn’t care, Karl writes.
“[Trump] wasn’t simply floating an idea,” Karl writes in the book. “He was putting the party chairwoman on notice that he had decided to start his own party. It was a done deal. He had made up his mind. ‘He was very adamant that he was going to do it,’ a source who heard the president’s comments later told me.”
Following the tense conversion, McDaniel informed RNC leadership about Trump’s plans, spurring a tense standoff between Trump and his own party over the course of the next four days.
While Trump, “morose in defeat and eager for revenge, plotted the destruction of the Republican Party … the RNC played hardball,” according to the book.
“We told them there were a lot of things they still depended on the RNC for, and that if this were to move forward, all of it would go away,” an RNC official told Karl.
According to the book, “McDaniel and her leadership team made it clear that if Trump left, the party would immediately stop paying legal bills incurred during post-election challenges.”
“But, more significant, the RNC threatened to render Trump’s most valuable political asset worthless,” Karl writes, referring to “the campaign’s list of the email addresses of forty million Trump supporters.”
“It’s a list Trump had used to generate money by renting it to candidates at a steep cost,” says the book. “The list generated so much money that party officials estimated that it was worth about $100 million.”
Five days after revealing plans that could have destroyed his own political party on that last flight aboard Air Force One, Karl writes, Trump backed down, saying he would remain a Republican after all.
Asked this week to respond to Karl’s book, both Trump and McDaniel denied the story.
“This is false, I have never threatened President Trump with anything,” McDaniel told ABC News. “He and I have a great relationship. We have worked tirelessly together to elect Republicans up and down the ballot, and will continue to do so.”
Trump, responding to the story, said, “ABC Non News and 3rd rate reporter Jonathan Karl have been writing fake news about me from the beginning of my political career. Just look at what has now been revealed about the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. It was a made up and totally fabricated scam and the lamestream media knew it. It just never ends!”
Trump has long denounced news reports that he had considered starting his own party as “fake news.” In Karl’s final interview with the former president for his book, Trump claimed to not recall his conversation with McDaniel on Jan. 20, saying, “a lot of people suggested a third party, many people” — but that he himself had never even thought about leaving the GOP.
“You mean I was going to form another party or something?” Trump asked Karl incredulously. “Oh, that is bulls**t. It never happened.”
