Category: Worldwide

It looks like new music is on the way from Roddy Ricch, whose breakout track “The Box” dominated charts this summer. But unfortunately for the rapper and his crew, shots rang out on set at a video shoot Sunday. Several hours after the news broke, Ricch has now taken to social media to let fans know he was unharmed.

Per a report from WSB-TV Atlanta, Ricch and his collaborator 42 Dugg were filming at a scrap yard in south Atlanta when shots were fired. 42 Dugg took to his Instagram Stories to clarify that he did not get shot and thanked his followers for their concern. Now, Ricch has similarly marked himself safe in a tweet. “aint nobody shoot at me. we all good,” he wrote following the incident. “im juss tryna feed the streets.”

Two members of the film crew, Antoine Blake, and Vernon Moulder, were hit by the bullets but were able to take themselves to a nearby hospital. Another attendee of the video shoot, Peter Cook, was injured by debris resulting from the chaos. Teresa Lakes, a medic who was on set to assist with COVID screening, described the scene, “Everyone started running, trying to get out or take cover; lot of places to take cover in there,” she said. “Anyone that was injured, I laid hands on ’em to make sure they were OK. Just glad it wasn’t a lot worse than it could have been… could have been worse.”

Roddy Ricch is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Jim Jordan has become a household name thanks to his ride-or-die support of Donald Trump, supporting him through thick and thin, and while being mocked with regularity over social media. On a far more serious note, it’s also been alleged that he had a role in a massive college sex abuse scandal. Now George Clooney is using his clout to produce a documentary series about the investigation into the claims, with which Jordan refused to cooperate.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, Smokehouse Pictures, the production company run by Clooney and Grant Heslov, is turning to a 2020 Sports Illustrated story by Jon Wertheim on Richard Strauss, a physician at Ohio State University who has racked up a long list of allegations by members of the school’s wrestling team. Strauss, who committed suicide in 2015, was also accused of administering steroids to athletes.

The allegations also involve Jordan, who was an assistant wrestling coach at the school from 1987 to 1995, long before he became a state representative. Jordan is accused of knowingly ignoring Strauss’ abuse. Indeed, every time he pipes up on Twitter in defense of the former president, not a few people bring up said accusations.

Wertheim, who will executive produce the series, called the story “the most widespread sexual abuse scandal in the history of American higher education. It is a story about power, abuse, enabling and the hierarchy of college sports that had been concealed for far too long,”

(Via THR)

Virginia is poised to become the 23rd U.S. state—and first state in the South—to ban the death penalty after lawmakers on Monday approved legislation prohibiting the practice.

“We’re dismantling the remnants of Jim Crow here in the New South. Abolishing the death penalty is another step on that journey,” tweeted Democratic Del. Jay Jones, who’s running for state attorney general.

Both chambers of the General Assembly passed earlier versions already this month. On Monday, the Senate passed the House bill in a 22-16 vote; the House then voted 57-43 on the measure to ban capital punishment. Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam has indicated his support for the measure.

As Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.)—a former governor of Virginia and a co-sponsor of bicameral legislation to end the federal death penalty—wrote in a Friday op-ed at the Washington Post, “Virginia is the death penalty capital of the United States.”

Beginning with the first execution under a colonial government in 1608, we have executed 1,390 people, more than any other state. Following the Supreme Court’s decision restoring the death penalty in 1976, Virginia has executed more people than any state except Texas. And the painful history exposes the fundamental racism of capital punishment.

Kaine noted as an example that “even after the Civil War, when crimes such as rape were technically capital offenses for everyone, the ultimate punishment was used only against Black people. Fifty-six people were executed for rape or attempted rape in Virginia between 1908 and 1965—all were Black.”

“Thankfully,” Kaine wrote, “the repeal of the death penalty by its leading practitioner gives hope that work for justice is not in vain. Virginia’s progress shows that it is possible for all.”

Northam has previously indicated his backing of legislation to ban the death penalty, saying in a statement earlier this month that capital punishment is “fundamentally inequitable. It is inhumane. It is ineffective.”

The governor further confirmed his support on Monday with a joint statement also signed by House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax) and Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw (D-Fairfax) and released after both chambers passed the legislation.

“Thanks to the vote of lawmakers in both chambers, Virginia will join 22 other states that have ended use of the death penalty,” the three Democrats said. “This is an important step forward in ensuring that our criminal justice system is fair and equitable to all.”

Once the bill becomes law, the two men with still lingering death sentences, Anthony Juniper and Thomas Porter, will face life in prison without parole.

This article first appeared on Common Dreams. You can read it here.

Just over a month after passing the grim milestone of 400,000 deaths from COVID-19, the United States has surpassed another one. As of today, more than half a million Americans have been lost to the virus that’s held the world in a pandemic holding pattern for almost a year. It’s a number that seemed unfathomable even six months ago, and yet here we are.

Despite increasing vaccine rollouts allowing us to see the light at the end of the tunnel, the loss we’ve experienced is immense. Having a president who not only understands loss on a personal level—having endured the tragic loss of his wife and baby daughter earlier in life and the death of his son just six years ago—but who conveys with compassion the grief of the nation as we mark this milestone is a comforting change.

Tonight, the White House honored the 500,000+ lives lost with a display of 500 candles lining the steps of the building, with each candle representing 1000 Americans. The president and first lady, along with the vice president and second gentleman, held a memorial moment of silence outside the South Portico as a military band played “Amazing Grace.”

Prior to the candle ceremony, President Biden spoke to the nation about the importance of marking this milestone, offered words of empathy and caring to those who’ve lost loved ones, and shared a message of unity and hope.

Biden started by sharing that he receives a card each day that he keeps with this schedule in his pocket that shows how many Americans have been infected with or died from COVID-19.

“Today we mark a truly grim, heartbreaking milestone: 500,071 dead,” he said. “That’s more Americans who have died in one year in this pandemic than in World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined. That’s more lives lost to this virus than any other nation on Earth. But as we acknowledge the scale of this mass death in America we remember each person and the life they lived. They’re people we knew. They’re people we feel like we knew. Read the obituaries and the remembrances. The son who called his mom every night just to check in, the father’s daughter who lit up his world, the friend who was always there, the nurse who made her patients want to live.”

“While we’ve been fighting this pandemic for so long, we have to resist becoming numb to the sorrow,” he said. “We have to resist viewing each life as a statistic or a blur or one the news. We must do so to honor the dead, but equally important, care for the living that are left behind. For the loved ones left behind, I know all too well. I know what it’s like to not be there when it happens. I know what it’s like when you are there, holding their hands as they look in your eye and they slip away. That black hole in your chest, you feel like you’re being sucked into it. The survivor’s remorse, the anger. The questions of faith in your soul…”

Biden spoke directly to those who are grieving lost loved ones, sharing what he’s learned through his own experiences of loss.

“To heal, we must remember,” he said. “It’s important to do that as a nation. For those who’ve lost loved ones, this is what I know: They’re never truly gone. They’ll always be part of your heart. I know this as well—and it seems unbelievable—but I promise you the day will come when the memory of the loved one you lost will bring a smile to your lips before a tear to your eye. It will come, I promise you. My prayer for you is that they will come sooner rather than later. And that’s when you know you’re gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

Biden spoke about finding a purpose worthy of the lives our loved ones lived and asked all Americans to remain diligent about social distancing, masking, and getting vaccinated when it’s your turn.

“We must end the politics and misinformation that’s divided families, communities, and the country, and that’s cost too many lives already,” he said. “It’s not Democrats and Republicans that are dying from the virus. It’s our fellow Americans, it’s our neighbors, our friends, our mothers, our fathers, our sons, our daughters, husbands and wives. We have to fight this together, as one people.”

“Let this not be a story of how far we fell, but how far we climbed back up,” he said. “We can do this. For in this year of profound loss, we’ve seen profound courage from all of you on the front lines. I know the stress, the trauma, and the grief you carry. But you keep us going. You remind us that we do take care of our own, that we leave nobody behind, and that while we’ve been humbled, we’ve never given up. We are America. We can and will do this.”

Biden’s whole speech is worth a watch. You can find it in its entirety along with the memorial candle ceremony here:

Biden Holds Memorial For 500,000 U.S. Covid Deaths | NBC News

youtu.be

Thank you, President Biden, for marking this milestone with such compassion and for offering heartfelt words of wisdom and experience to those who are suffering the loss of loved ones to this virus. That empathy is what we’ve been desperately yearning for, as our shared humanity is the only thing that will get us through the crises we face without doing further damage to our nation.

Last summer, the top brass at The Simpsons that all non-white characters voiced by white performers would be recast. It began with Hank Azaria, who last year stepped away from voicing Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the Kwik-E-Mart proprietor and Indian immigrant, following years of complaints, including a feature length documentary called The Problem with Apu. (Apu has yet to be recast, though honcho Matt Groening has said he will remain on the show.) And on Sunday, viewers heard Harry Shearer do his take on Dr. Hibbert for the last time.

When Dr. Hibbert returns on Sunday, Feb. 28, he’ll bear the voice of one Kevin Michael Richardson, a longtime voice talent with credits on a ton of children’s entertainment, including Adventure Time, Family Guy, The Cleveland Show, and more. He’s not exactly a new voice: He’s been on The Simpsons for years, voicing more minor characters, including, on one episode last year, Dave Chappelle.

Dr. Julius Hibbert, Springfield’s finest medical practitioner, made his first appearance in the Season2 classic “Bart the Daredevil,” from back in 1990. Shearer has voiced him from the start, but it’s been one of his many, many characters, among them Montgomery Burns, Ned Flanders, Principal Skinner, Waylon Smithers, Reverend Lovejoy, Otto Mann, etc., etc. So truly he already has enough on his plate to keep him occupied, lest Don Jr. and whatever conservatives start misusing the term “cancelled” again.

(Via EW)

Jason Terry had a tremendous NBA career, as the 19-year veteran was a terrific shooter and scorer, winning a championship in Dallas with the Mavericks and was on the leading edge of the three-point shooting revolution in the NBA.

Terry won’t likely be a Hall of Famer, but his experiences in the league playing most every role one can, from starter to sixth man and beyond makes him someone who has invaluable advice to pass along to youngsters. So, when Terry goes to camps, he’s always prepared to answer questions and pass that knowledge on to the next generation of hoopers. However, unfortunately for Terry, he, like Brandon Knight and more recently Yuta Watanabe, lives on one of the all-time great poster dunk highlight reels in NBA history, when he found himself standing in the paint as LeBron James caught a lob at the peak of his physical powers with the Heat.

As Terry tells Master Tesfatsion on an upcoming episode of “Untold Stories” for Bleacher Report, which premieres on Wednesday, the only thing kids want to ask him about is that dunk.

Terry played 1,410 games in his NBA career, won a championship, played with all-time greats, and is an all-time great shooter himself, but none of that matters. The power of the highlight means that he is The Guy LeBron Dunked Into Oblivion for the rest of his life, and, in a way, that’s not a terrible fate. Sure, you’d rather be remembered for what you did, but in the same vein as Craig Ehlo, you’ll always be remembered and, if nothing else, some will then go look up what else you did in your career.

Still, if you go to a camp and Jet is there, ask him something else.

Last summer the internet went into a tizzy following the release of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s NSFW song “WAP,” which debuted at No. 1 and welcomed some harsh criticism by conservative thinkers. But unlike other politicians, California congresswoman Maxine Waters actually enjoyed it.

Rep. Waters and Megan sat down for a conversation for Harper’s Bazaar where they talked about education, the importance of standing up for yourself, and, of course, “WAP.” Waters revealed that some of the younger people in her life had played her the song, and she was impressed by Megan’s candor:

“I listen to the young people around me and they may tell me something maybe you ought to pay attention to. But then they told me to look at, was it WAP? Don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t worry. I said, ‘Now that’s audacity. That is audacity.’ And that is the ability for women to take charge of what they want to say. I had paid attention to the young gangster rap time, when men were in charge. They said whatever they wanted to say about women, what have you. But women didn’t say, for a long time, what they could say or wanted to say or dared to say. And so I thought ‘that’s audacity.’”

While this was the first time Waters and Megan had chatted in person, it was not their first correspondence. After Megan penned her powerful New York Times op-ed about the importance of speaking up for Black women, Waters responded with her own open letter. “I write all this to say that I’m so incredibly proud of you and how you have used your voice to uplift Black women,” Waters wrote. “I know that Black women and girls everywhere thank you for the way you so fiercely have their back. I want you to know that I have your back, too.”

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

We’re still a few weeks away from the debut of the much-awaited “Snyder cut” of Justice League, which was supposed to be the DCEU’s splashy, money-gobbling equivalent of Marvel’s The Avengers. It wasn’t. It did okay, but it also dramatically underperformed, and earned middling reviews to boot. But there’s one person who has no opinion on it because he’s never seen it: original director Zack Snyder.

A new, sprawling Vanity Fair piece about the film’s chaotic making has a lot of never-before-revealed nuggets, among them that there was almost a romantic subplot involving Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne and Amy Adams’ Lois Lane. (As if Batman and Superman both having mothers named Martha wasn’t enough.) But one of the juicier bits involves how Warner brass reacted to seeing the version of the film handed to them by Joss Whedon, who took over from Snyder after family issues forced him to prematurely step aside.

“When we got to see what Joss actually did, it was stupefying,” a Warner Bros. executive told VF. “Everyone knew it. It was so awkward because nobody wanted to admit what a piece of s*it it was.”

Another person who saw it was Deborah Snyder, Zack’s producing partner and wife, who watched it alongside executive producer Christopher Nolan. “They came and they just said, ‘You can never see that movie,’” Zack recalled. And so he hasn’t!

Zack Snyder also revealed some of the issues that cropped up before tragedy forced him to leave the production. Among the aforementioned nixing of the Bats-Lois romance, Warner Bros. also told him to keep it relatively short.

“How am I supposed to introduce six characters and an alien with potential for world domination in two hours?” Snyder told VF. “I mean, I can do it, it can be done. Clearly it was done. But I didn’t see it.”

But good things come to those who wait, and so, almost 3 ½ years after Whedon’s Justice League bowed to a profoundly meh reception, HBO Max subscribers will be able to see a cut of the film that’s twice that length. It drops starting March 18.

(Via Vanity Fair)

Drew Barrymore has had her own daytime talk show for almost six months now, and it’s clear that she’s a natural at it. She’s exuberant and funny and boundlessly warm, especially with people with whom she’s close. (One of her first episodes boasted a really moving reunion with her ex-husband Tom Green.) So when she celebrated her birthday on Monday’s show, it was bound to lead to happy tears, on multiple occasions.

There were a number of surprises in store for the host of The Drew Barrymore Show, among them some big name guest friends. One of them was Cameron Diaz, her costar on the two Charlie’s Angels movies and one of her closest friends. Obviously it was difficult for them to reunite in person, but even a virtual hang couldn’t stop them from gushing about each other. They spoke to each other in their own secret language. They revealed they have the same nickname for each other: “Poo-Poo.” They went into some detail about how they use the word “parmesan” to mean just about everything.

They also, perhaps inevitably, even on Barrymore’s birthday, fielded questions about a revival of their iteration of Charlie’s Angels. They kind of danced around it, implying their friendship was more important than some movie franchise. “I’ll be grannies in inner tubes with Poo Poo, so we can do anything and everything as long as we’re together,” Barrymore said. “I have a whole life to live with you.”

“I always say never say never,” Diaz, who has been very happily retired since 2018, said. “I feel the same way.”

They also got emotional. “Truly one of the great joys of my life is our friendship,” Diaz told Barrymore. “When I think about you, literally I will cry, because I just think you’re so special and to celebrate you every year, it’s one of my favorite times of the year.”

“You’ve made me a better person my whole life,” Barrymore replied, fighting back tears. “And you’ve seen me through everything. Ugly, beautiful, loss, life, birth.”

There was another guest, who appeared before Diaz: David Letterman. But the former longtime late night talk show host actually did show up in person, though only after a bit in which he fumbled around with Zoom. Upon seeing him in the flesh, Barrymore totally lost it, breaking down in tears and telling him, “I’m so grateful that you came here.”

So that was cute, too! You can watch their exchange below, and happy birthday, Drew!

(Via EW and People)

Can we get a round of applause for Nikki Fried, the Florida Agriculture Commissioner? On Monday, she stood up and defied an order from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to fly flags at half-staff when Rush Limbaugh’s body is laid to rest.

“Once the date of interment for Rush is announced, we’re going to be lowering the flags to half-staff,” DeSantis said Friday at a news conference, adding the honor is “what we do when there’s things of this magnitude.”

Limbaugh, 70, died of complications from lung cancer last week.

Giving Limbaugh the honor of having flags flown half-staff is controversial given his six-decade career of fanning the flames of intolerance. Limbaugh is believed to be one of the architects of modern conservatism and did so by making targets of people of color, women, and the LGBT community.

Back in the ’80s, Limbaugh celebrated the deaths of gay men from AIDS with a bit on the show called the “AIDS Update.” He aired a parody song called “Barack, the Magic Negro,” after Barack Obama announced he was running for president in 2007.

Limbaugh was also a fierce critic of feminism, saying it was “established so as to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society.” He also popularized the derogatory term “Feminazi.”

Recently, he championed the conspiracy theory that Joe Biden didn’t win the 2020 election.

Democratic Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz called the governor’s decision, “an embarrassment to Florida.”

“Rush Limbaugh weaponized his platform to spread racism, xenophobia and homophobia across the nation,” she said in a tweet. “His constant hateful rhetoric caused untold damage to our political landscape.”

The move was also against the state’s flag protocol which says it should be flown at half-staff “in the event of the death of a present or former official of the Florida State government or the death of a member of the Armed Forces from Florida who dies while serving on active duty.”

Fried’s decision is a harsh, but deserving rebuke of DeSantis and Limbaugh, an opportunist whose life should not be celebrated.

“Lowering to half-staff the flag of the United States of America is a sacred honor that pays respect to fallen heroes and patriots. It is not a partisan political tool. Therefore, I will notify all state offices under my direction to disregard the Governor’s forthcoming order to lower flags for Mr. Limbaugh – because we will not celebrate hate speech, bigotry, and division,” she said in a statement.

“Lowering the flag should always reflect unity, not division, and raising our standards, not lowering them. Our flags will remain flying high to celebrate the American values of diversity, inclusion, and respect for all,” she continued.

Desantis’ decision to commemorate Limbaugh after his death is an attempt to legitimize a man whose divisive politics and intolerance should never be accepted. Fried is brave to step up and condemn the decision at a time when many would be quiet out of respect to the recently deceased.

But why does anyone owe Limbaugh respect in death given how he behaved in life?