• The producers of Sesame Street want people to know that Bert and Ernie are not, in fact, gay. Sesame Workshop sent out a tweet Tuesday saying that while the characters have many human traits, they "remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation." The workshop did not answer questions about why some puppets have been given girlfriends. In a second tweet, the workshop says, "Sesame Street has always stood for inclusion and acceptance." The tweets came in response to an interview published Sunday by the website Queerty with Mark Saltzman, a Sesame Street writer. He said that when he was writing scenes with Bert and Ernie, he "always felt that without a huge agenda" they were lovers. Frank Oz, who created the Bert character, also weighed in. He tweeted that he and Muppets creator Jim Henson "never created them to be gay."
• Thousands of Prince fans are asking federal authorities to open a grand jury investigation into his death. The petition to the U.S. attorney's office has been signed by more than 6,000 people. One of the petition's organizers, Nicole Welage, said more answers are needed about the rock star's accidental fentanyl overdose in 2016. Welage told the Star Tribune in Minneapolis that the person who supplied the drug must be held accountable. Federal, state and county investigators spent nearly two years looking into Prince's death, but said they were unable to trace the source of the drug that killed him. Prosecutors have said there is no credible evidence that will lead to federal criminal charges. The U.S. attorney's office has declined to comment on the petition.
• A French court of appeals upheld a ruling Wednesday that two directors of French celebrity magazine Closer should be fined $52,500 for breaching the privacy of Kate Middleton by publishing topless photos of the Duchess of Cambridge sunbathing back in 2012. The Versailles appeals court upheld the September 2017 decision in Nanterre to levy the maximum possible fine under French law on Laurence Pieau, an editor of Closer's French edition, and Ernesto Mauri, chief executive of Mondadori, the media group that publishes the weekly. The court also upheld fines of $11,670 each for the two photographers who snapped the duchess. Last September, the office of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge said the two were pleased at the ruling as they "wished to make the point strongly that this kind of unjustified intrusion should not happen."
A Section on 09/20/2018