Battle of the buyers
In a seller’s market, real estate buyers are having to get creative to snag that dream home. ABC's Will Ganss reports on the unprecedented market.
In a seller’s market, real estate buyers are having to get creative to snag that dream home. ABC's Will Ganss reports on the unprecedented market.
The Senate voted 94-1 in favor of an amended bill aimed at combatting the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. Sponsored by Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, the legislation takes relatively modest steps to equip law enforcement and communities to better deal with the rise in attacks against Asian American and Pacific Islanders. "This long overdue bill sends two messages: to our Asian American friends, we will not tolerate bigotry against you, and to those perpetrating anti-Asian bigotry, we will pursue you to the fullest extent of the law," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in floor remarks shortly before the vote Thursday.
A bill for D.C. statehood passed the House on a vote 216-208 and heads to the Senate, where it has 45 co-sponsors but an uphill battle for passage. This is the second time the bill has passed -- the first time was in 2019 -- but this time the measure has the public support of the White House. H.R. 51 would change the name of the city from the District of Columbia to "Washington, Douglass Commonwealth," in honor of Fredrick Douglass.
President Joe Biden said last year the nation was facing four “historic crises all at the same time" -- the pandemic, the related economic crisis, the need for racial justice and the “undeniable realities and accelerating threats of climate change.” At the time, given the unprecedented year, his inclusion of climate change in that list made headlines and surprised even some Democrats. While the White House lately has faced criticism for coming up short on other campaign promises around police reform and gun control, when it comes to climate change, it has largely been a different story.
"Felicity," the late '90s drama, could be heading back to television in the form of a reboot -- hints series star Scott Foley. Speaking with Entertainment Tonight, the 48-year-old-actor -- who played the hunky Noel Crane on the show -- teased the possibility of a revival. While he was originally opposed to bringing back the teen drama, Foley admitted that he has had a change of heart.
Comedian Eric Andre took to Twitter on Wednesday to share an alleged racial profiling incident that unfolded while he was waiting for his flight. The "Bad Trip" star said two officers stopped him for a "random" drug search while he was boarding a plane that was set to depart from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
John Travolta is opening up more about losing his late wife, Kelly Preston. Preston, who Travolta was married to for 28 yeras, lost her battle with breast cancer in July 2020. "I learned that crying and mourning over someone is something personal," said Travolta.
Another result of the pandemic has been a temporary reduction in emissions, such as carbon dioxide, which is "the primary greenhouse gas that is emitted from human activity," according to the Environmental Protection Agency. "Preliminary estimates," according to a recent World Meteorological Organization bulletin, "indicate a reduction in the annual global emission between 4.2% and 7.5%." Greenhouse gases trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere, which increases the average temperature.
NASA said it had successfully made oxygen on Mars, a major development that could aid future human missions to the red planet. The space agency confirmed Wednesday evening that a tool sent with its Perseverance rover was succesful in converting some of Mars' thin, carbon-dioxide rich atmosphere into oxygen. The experimental instrument developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE for short.
Elizabeth Olsen revealed she had an identity crisis when she was just starting in Hollywood. The "WandaVision" star admitted she even once considered dropping her last name entirely to stop being compared to her sisters, twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Speaking with Glamour UK, the 32-year-old said the thought to ditch her surname first crossed her mind in 1999 -- at the height of her big sisters' fame.
Paris Hilton recently spoke about the leak of her infamous sex tape with ex Rick Salomon and revealed the moment in her life gave her PTSD. "It was even more hurtful to me to have these people think that I [released it] on purpose -- that killed me," Hilton said during a conversation in Vanity Fair's pre-Oscar special, "Vanity Fair Cocktail Hour, Live!" "It still gives me post-traumatic stress disorder to talk about it." Hilton, who's back in the headlines recently thanks to the Oscar-nominated film "Promising Young Woman" resurrecting her 2006 single "Stars Are Blind" in a key scene, spoke of feeling betrayed after the taped was released in 2004.
The last two years has seen an explosion in the sales of digital artworks, which have been embraced by major auction houses and have fetched prices ranges from a few dollars to the tens of millions. Unlike traditional artworks, these can be duplicated exactly with a couple of clicks of a mouse, which raises a divisive question: Can a digital artwork ever really be as valuable as a piece that was physically created by an artist? Behind the explosion in the digital art marketplace are nonfungible tokens, known as NFTs.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has agreed to allow both Democrats and Republicans equal subpoena power and has conceded to an even partisan split on the 9/11 style commission that would investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, backtracking from an earlier proposal that would have allowed Democrats to appoint a majority of members, sources familiar with the matter said. The talks had stalled after Republicans and Democrats were unable to agree on the makeup of the committee and its investigative scope. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell addressed the commission during a news conference on Tuesday, saying the commission “needs to be balanced” and its scope “broader than just January the 6th.”
A late season cold blast is moving through the country this morning with record lows and snow. On Thursday, nearly four dozen record lows could be tied or broken from Little Rock, Arkansas, to New York City’s JFK airport. Up to 8 inches of snow fell near Cleveland yesterday making roads a mess in northern Ohio.
Dozens of inmates at an Iowa prison were given overdoses of a COVID-19 vaccine, officials said. Two medical staff members from the Iowa Department of Corrections incorrectly administered the vaccine -- developed by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech -- to 77 inmates at the Iowa State Penitentiary, a maximum-security prison for men located in Fort Madison, about 90 miles southeast of Iowa City. Upon learning of the error, the Iowa Department of Corrections immediately contacted Pfizer and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for guidance.
Women all over the world are playing integral roles in the fight against warming temperatures. For Earth Day 2021, ABC News is highlight three scientists and one activist who are leading the charge against climate change. Allison Fong, 39, is a trained biological oceanographer and sea ice ecologist for the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, has spent more than 300 days in the Arctic since 2015.
Climate change may be the focus of the environmental movement, but restoring the Earth, the theme of this year's Earth Day, will play a crucial role in keeping global temperatures down. The theme "focuses on natural processes, emerging green technologies, and innovative thinking that can restore the world’s ecosystems," according to the Earth Day Network. Re-planting the forests of the planet, which have been cleared in vast amounts to make room for homes, transportation and agriculture, chopped down for timber and scorched by wildfires, will aid in getting Earth back to its equilibrium in more ways than mitigating climate change, experts told ABC News.
With more than half of U.S. adults now having received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, the country is on the precipice of a new vaccination challenge: hesitancy. According to new estimates from a U.S. Census Bureau survey conducted from October to March, we know more about which Americans are most likely to say they're "definitely not" or "probably not" going to get a vaccine once it's available to them. Wyoming has emerged as the most vaccine-hesitant state in the country -- an estimated 33% of adults said they were are reluctant to get a COVID-19 vaccine, compared with an estimated 16% of nationwide.
Starting Oct. 1, any flyer over 18 will need to have a REAL ID-issued driver’s license or another federally approved identification card if they are going to fly domestically. The regulation was put in place in 2005 to ensure that travelers’ identity in light of the 9/11 attacks, according to the Department of Homeland Security, but only recently did all 50 states come into compliance. Tori Emerson Barnes, the executive vice president of public affairs and policy at the U.S. Travel Association, a non-profit that represents the travel industry, said there are millions of Americans who either aren’t aware of the new rules or are stuck in a backlog at their local department of motor vehicles (DMV) that have been hindered by the pandemic.
Devastating hurricanes, wildfires, droughts and other environmental disasters have been linked to climate change by researchers. The increased intensity and frequency of these disasters have caused mass death and destruction, shattering communities across the world. The climate crisis was in full swing in 2020, and there's no sign of an end to the upward trend in global temperature extremes, according to a new report from the UN World Meteorological Organization.
On April 13, the CDC and FDA recommended temporarily pausing use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after six women experienced a rare blood clot out of nearly 7 million shots given. While some vaccination clinics were able to quickly pivot to using vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, the impact was felt acutely at more than 7,000 sites that were only using the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at the time. According to the CDC's website, approximately 10 million Johnson & Johnson shots are now sitting at pharmacies, waiting for the pause to be lifted.