A mural was unveiled Tuesday morning in Yonkers, New York commemorating hometown hero and late rapper DMX.
According to the City of Yonkers on Twitter, the mural was commissioned by the Yonkers Art coalition to restore an existing mural after local fans specifically asked for a DMX memorial. It was designed and completed by New York artist FloydSimmons and features lyrics from X’s songs “School Street” and “Look Thru My Eyes.”
Ruff Ryders CEO Darrin Dee Dean and X’s fiancée, Desiree Lindstrom, were both in attendance at the mural’s unveiling near the Calcagno Homes housing complex on South Street, where X once lived. Lindstrom is also the mother of X’s five-year-old son, Exodus.
“Extended blessings to the family of @DMX. Got Exodus and Dez with us,” Dean wrote on Instagram.
DMX, born Earl Simmons, died on April 9 at age 50 from a cocaine-induced heart attack, which decreased blood circulation to his brain. The Grammy-nominated rapper spent days on life support and never recovered. X’s posthumous album, Exodus, was released in May by his longtime friend, collaborator, and executive producer Swizz Beatz.
(NEW YORK) — Michael Collins, the former chief of staff to the late-Rep. John Lewis, joined ABC’s “Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts to reflect on the life and legacy of the civil rights icon, chronicled in his new book “Carry On.”
Collins, who worked with Lewis for 21 years, said the inspiration for the book came in the final months of Lewis’ life.
“It was the last months of his life, and we had an opportunity to really think about his legacy, and what he was going to leave. And this was one of the opportunities he wanted to take, and this was to tell a story of just who he was, the simpleness of the man,” Collins said.
“It was difficult because it was during the time that he was sick and he didn’t have a lot of energy. But he made effort to really tell the story. And that’s what’s important. He wanted to always tell the story,” he added.
Collins said “Carry On” will give readers an opportunity to learn more about Lewis’ optimistic spirit.
“He woke up as if it was a brand new day, literally, and he welcomed everybody, he welcomed his thoughts for the day. And he would say, ‘Let’s get ready. Got a new day. Let’s go.’ And it was just an experience that you never forget. And for him, it just allowed him to just keep going on with optimism and fire every day,” Collins said.
Pointing to Lewis’ legacy of advocating for equal rights, Roberts asked Collins how he believed Lewis would respond to the country’s current racial climate.
“He would be disappointed in a lot of ways. The hatred, the racism — it would be very difficult, it will be difficult for him, but he would be optimistic. He would face it head on and he would look at it as it is, but he would be optimistic that there would be a better day,” Collins replied.
He added that, though Lewis was dismayed by the tense racial climate, he found inspiration through the young people at the forefront of the protests.
“He was very sad, but he was inspired by all the young people, all the young people across the country. He didn’t condone the violence, but he’d love to watch the people protest, peacefully, non-violently, because again it reminded him of a time not so long ago when he was young,” Collins explained.
Shifting to the current debate over voting rights, Roberts asked how Lewis would react to the recent DOJ lawsuit brought against Georgia — Lewis’ home state — due to the state legislature’s passing of restrictive voting laws.
“He would champion it. Most definitely. You know, the vote was precious, sacred. And that’s what he would always talk about, and he felt like everybody should have the right to vote. And that was what he fought for his entire life,” Collins said.
Roberts concluded the interview by asking Collins how he was carrying out his own legacy.
“I’m trying to live out his legacy. It’s been a journey, it’s been a journey,” he said. “I’m fortunate enough to now be working for the vice president of the United States. Her leadership is something that I’m looking forward to just embarking on in the world. And this is an extension of the work that I did with him, and I look forward to that tremendously.”
(NEW YORK) — Montreal has named Dominique Ducharme as the 31st head coach in franchise history, the team announced Tuesday.
The team promoted Ducharme to interim head coach on February 24 after spending two seasons as an assistant under Claude Julien.
“Dominique has managed to set his system in place and establish himself as a head coach in a very unusual season with challenging circumstances,” said Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin. “While our team has gone through its fair share of adversity, he has shown a lot of control over the situation as well as showing calm and great leadership. These are important qualities that we look for in a head coach and he fully deserves the chance to lead our team and take it to the next level.”
He led the Canadiens to the Stanley Cup Final, becoming the first head coach where they lost to Tampa Bay 4-1.
“You always think back to your past and your family. July 13th is an important date in our family,” Ducharme told reporters. “It’s the date our parents got married. It’s also five years ago to the day that my father was buried. It’s almost like destiny that this is happening on this particular date. It could’ve happened on the 12th or the 14th, but it all transpired on the 13th.”
Before he joined the Canadiens, the 48-year old was a head coach in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey league and served as Canada’s World Junior Championship head coach in 2017 and 2018.
Deadpool and the stone creature Korg — better known, perhaps, as Ryan Reynolds and Taika Waititi — have teamed up to review the trailer to the actors’ new movie Free Guy.
Apart from the fact that both actors do the video review in character, complete with Korg’s CG-body that Waititi voiced and motion-performed in Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Endgame, the snippet is especially clever, as Reynolds-as-‘Pool doesn’t hold back snarking on both Disney+ and the Marvel Cinematic Universe — and why Deadpool isn’t in the MCU yet.
They also poke fun at the plethora of trailer-review YouTubers, and review their alter-egos’ performances, with Deadpool noting that Reynolds has a “punchable” face, and Korg sweetly assessing Waititi’s villain character in Free Guy: “I like him!”
Deadpool even references criticism of his own sequel when he describes “fridging” — or killing off a female character just to make the male hero suffer. “[It’s] also known as Deadpool 2,” he quips.
Free Guy was a 20th Century Fox film before Disney acquired the studio, hence Deadpool’s review that the trailer looked “fun in a ‘last days of Fox fire sale’ kind of way.”
When the trailer ends, Deadpool asks Marvel movie vet Korg if he “has any tips on joining the MCU.”
Korg gives a rambling answer before recommending to check for an email from your agent.
“Yeah, I prefer Dark World,” Deadpool replies, referring to what’s generally thought as one of the weaker MCU entries — or perhaps because it contained a creature that looks exactly like Korg but who couldn’t speak, and quickly was obliterated by Thor’s hammer.
Free Guy, which also stars Jodie Comer and Lil’ Rel Howery, opens August 13.
Melissa Joan Hart is doing her part to ensure every child is able to eat the most important meal of the day — breakfast.
To celebrate World Emoji Day, which is July 17, the actress is teaming up with Eggo to launch a waffle with a cause: the Eggoji waffle.
While kids may enjoy waffles shaped like well-known emojis such as the heart eyes or laughing faces, the Sabrina the Teenage Witch alum explained to ABC Audio how buying a box can benefit the national charity No Kid Hungry.
“If you go on your social [media] and you hashtag #EggojiNoKidHungry, Eggo will donate up to 100 breakfasts for each hashtag… up to a half a million breakfasts,” said Hart, noting that parents can make it fun for kids by challenging them to take pictures to accompany their social media posts. “Hashtag them, spread the word and… let’s get kids fed!”
Hart stresses that outreach efforts like this are crucial at this moment in time because of “the pandemic and everything that’s going on.”
No Kid Hungry recently stated that one in six children may go hungry as a result of the pandemic, adding that schools sometimes provide children from food insecure households their only meal of the day.
Hart, who is a mother of three, says the #EggojiNoKidHungry hashtag is up and running and invites everyone to take part, calling it “a great, all-around win.”
As for why it was important for her to get involved, says Hart, “To be able to give back to children around the world [and] put a smile on their face and some food in their bellies…. Why would I not?”
Michelle and Barack Obama are teaming up with Netflix’s Fatherhood producers for a new film and TV event called Blackout.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Blackout is “being adapted from six different love stories, each penned by a different writer.” This means the project is being developed concurrently as a TV series and film adaptation and some of the six stories could wind up in the film, while others are in the TV show. Blackout centers on twelve teens perspective during a New York city power outage during the summer. A premiere date for the project has yet to be announced.
In other news, a limited series is being developed about Effa Manley, the first and, to date, only woman to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Deadline has learned. Based on baseball historian James Overmyer’s non-fiction novel Queen of the Negro Leagues: Effa Manley and the Newark Eagles, the limited series will chronicle the “dramatic efforts by tenacious civil rights activist Effa Manley and her husband Abe as they embark upon a risky business venture [of] starting their own ball club” in the Negro Baseball Leagues. No casting details have been announced.
Finally, Emmy nominations were announced on Tuesday, with some groundbreaking nods. Jonathan Majors and Jurnee Smollett, of the recently-canceled Lovecraft Country, made history as the first two Black leads to be nominated from the same series. Meanwhile, Pose‘s Mj Rodriguez made history as the first trans actress to be nominated in any major Emmy category. And for the first time, the lead drama actor category, which included This Is Us‘ Sterling K. Brown, Lovecraft Country‘s Jonathan Majors, Bridgerton‘s Regé-Jean Page, and Pose’s Billy Porter, was led by people of color.
(NOTE LANGUAGE)While Amazon’s skewed-view superhero show The Boys may have been a natural fit for Emmys’ visual effects categories, its nominations Tuesday morning in the Best Drama category turned some heads.
Based on Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson‘s very graphic graphic novel series, the show centers on an Avengers-like group of superheroes known as The Seven — and unlike their Marvel counterparts, most of them are anything but heroic. Opposing them are The Boys: Karl Urban as Billy Butcher and Jack Quaid as Hughie, and their pals — who all have various scores to settle with the not-so-super super people.
For Antony Starr, who plays the megalomaniacal Homelander, the positive reaction from fans and critics to the second season is gratifying. “I got to be honest, it was like pulling teeth through the season,” he tells ABC Audio.
“It was because it was all really new stuff, you know: Homelander parenting and doing all these bizarre things — and also having that character on the back foot was really very weird. And then also any sort of romantic involvement that he gets up to was all really new. And I was like, ‘How do we do that?!'”
Starr allows, “But the end result…has been looked at favorably, which is really nice.”
“We work our a**es off, so it’s great to have some positivity around,” he noted. (AUDIO IS ABC 1-ON-1)
(LOS ANGELES) — Health officials in Los Angeles County are warning that the delta variant’s spread among unvaccinated people is driving a spike in new COVID-19 infections in the county.
On Monday, the health department reported 1,059 new COVID-19 cases, a significant increase since June, when the department was consistently reporting a few hundred new infections each day. Officials are currently investigating 55 ongoing outbreaks, up 25% from the 44 outbreaks they were investigating last month.
Nearly all new cases are among people who haven’t gotten a COVID-19 vaccine, according to officials.
“Over 99% of the COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths we are seeing are among unvaccinated individuals,” Barbara Ferrer, Los Angeles County’s director of public health, said in a statement Monday.
Young people are also contributing to the infection spike, according to Ferrer. “Of the cases reported today, nearly 87% were under 50 years old,” she said.
“The COVID-19 vaccines are the most effective and important tool to reduce COVID-19 transmission and the spread of variants like the highly transmissible delta variant,” she said. “Getting fully vaccinated is the way we protect you, your family and our community from COVID-19 and the delta variant.”
As a state, California’s vaccination rate is better than the national average. As of Monday, 63% of residents had received at least one dose, and 51% were fully vaccinated, compared with 56% of all Americans who’ve gotten at least one shot and 48% who are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Los Angeles County, 70% of residents 16 and older have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the health department. Nationally, 68% of Americans 18 and older have gotten at least one dose.
The delta variant, which was first detected in India and now has made up 51.7% of infections in the United States for the two weeks ending July 3, according to the CDC, is more transmissible than the original version of the virus and is especially dangerous for people who are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated, experts say.
In part because of fears over the variant, Los Angeles officials made waves when they reversed their guidance on masks less than a month after Gov. Gavin Newsom lifted COVID-19 restrictions in the state.
According to a statement issued by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health on June 28, the department “strongly recommends everyone, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks indoors in public places as a precautionary measure.” The department acknowledged that “fully vaccinated people appear to be well protected from infections with delta variants.”
Disney+ has released the trailer to Behind the Attraction, a 10-part peek behind the scenes at Disney Parks that features Jungle Cruise star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
Johnson serves as your tour guide as the series takes you from “It’s a Small World” to “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge” and everywhere in between, with never-before-seen archival footage and photos, and interviews with the Imagineers who bring the attractions to life.
Brian Volk-Weiss co-produced the project. He explains, “I don’t know if you remember the scene in The Matrix, where they’re in The Matrix and they’re on the roof and Trinity is like, ‘Yo, I need to fly a helicopter,’ then the guy’s like, ‘boop, boop, boop’ and then she can fly a helicopter? That’s what we try to do for people that have been to the park a billion times and people that have never been to the park.”
He continues, “They can be like, ‘Oh, my God, now I know how Jungle Cruise is related to the castles and how it’s related to Haunted Mansion’…So that’s what we tried to do, but in a fun way.”
Volk-Weiss first met The Rock after the superstar posted to Instagram that he’d been watching Brian’s Toys That Made Us series.
“He is so awesome,” the producer says sincerely. “I’ve worked with a lot of famous people over my career. There’s usually like an inch of daylight to 50,000 miles of daylight between their public persona and who they really are. There is zero daylight with Dwayne. I mean, what you see is what you get. He is the hard-working guy he claims to be. He is the nice guy he claims to be.”
Behind the Attraction drops on July 21 on Disney+.
(NEW YORK) — With his sentencing hearing just days away, the man convicted of murdering Mollie Tibbetts is asking for a new trial, claiming he was unwittingly framed by the real killer who he claims confessed to the crime.
Attorneys for Cristhian Bahena Rivera, a Mexican national, filed a motion asking that the jury verdict in the case be set aside based on the new evidence they received from prosecutors following the trial.
The 26-year-old Bahena Rivera is scheduled to be sentenced on Thursday and is expected to receive a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole.
But he claims the real killer confessed to at least two people that he and a sex trafficker fatally stabbed the 20-year-old University of Iowa student.
Bahena Rivera’s attorneys, husband-and-wife team Chad and Jennifer Frese, wrote in a motion filed on Friday that two people, unbeknownst to each other, came forward on May 26 — the day Bahena Rivera testified in his own defense — and identified by name a man they claim confessed to them on separate occasions that he participated in Tibbetts’ 2018 slaying.
“That Mexican shouldn’t be in jail for killing Mollie Tibbett, because I raped her and killed her,” the man, whose name has not been released, allegedly told one of the two witnesses, according to documents filed in the Poweshiek County, Iowa, district court.
Prosecutors from the Iowa Attorney General’s Office, according to the defense motion, informed Bahena Rivera’s attorneys about the alleged confessions after prosecturors received word from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation that an inmate had come to a chaplain and later an assistant warden claiming that another inmate, whose name has not been released, told him he and a 50-year-old sex trafficker killed Tibbetts after her disappearance garnered national attention.
The inmate purportedly claimed he first saw Tibbetts bound and gagged at a sex-trafficking “trap house” owned by his alleged accomplice. He claimed, according to the defense motion, his alleged accomplice grew worried after federal authorities searching for Tibbetts showed up at a house next door to his.
The inmate allegedly claimed his accomplice devised a plan for them to stab Tibbetts and “dump her body near a Hispanic male in order to make it appear that the Hispanic male committed the crime.”
“It was reported that this Department of Corrections inmate was coming forward at this time because he had heard the testimony of Cristhian Bahena Rivera on television, and it was at that point, he realized that the information given him by this other individual was likely true,” the defense’s motion for a new trial reads.
A second individual contacted the Mahaska County, Iowa, Sheriff’s Office with a similar story involving the same inmate who reportedly confessed, but deputies said the witness appeared to be under the influence and dismissed the story as not being credible.
In his testimony during the trial, Bahena Rivera claimed he was kidnapped at his home near Brooklyn, Iowa, by two armed masked men, who ordered him to drive to where Tibbetts was expected to be jogging. He claimed that when they found Tibbetts, one of the men stabbed her to death, put her body in the trunk of Bahena Rivera’s car and made him drive to a cornfield, where the young woman’s badly decomposed remains were discovered a month after she went missing.
Bahena Rivera said that while he placed Tibbetts’ body in the cornfield, he did not kill her.
His stint on the witness stand came after homicide investigators testified that Bahena Rivera confessed to killing Tibbetts after he spotted her jogging and she rebuffed his advances. Prosecutors also presented surveillance video evidence showing Bahena Rivera’s black Chevrolet Malibu circling the area Tibbetts was jogging in around the time she went missing on July 18, 2018.
In his closing argument, prosecutor Scott Brown dismissed Bahena Rivera’s testimony as a “figment of his imagination.”
Bahena Rivera claimed during his testimony that he didn’t tell investigators about the masked men because they threatened to harm his former girlfriend, the mother of his daughter, if he did
The jury in the case deliberated for seven hours over two days before unanimously finding Bahena Rivera guilty of first-degree murder.
A spokesperson for the Iowa Attorney General’s Office declined to comment Tuesday but told ABC News that prosecutors plan to file a response to the defense’s motion for a new trial either Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday.
Bahena Rivera’s defense attorneys also filed court papers asking that an inmate at Iowa’s Mount Pleasant Correctional Facility be brought to the Poweshiek County courthouse on the day of Bahena Rivera’s sentencing hearing. The document does not say if the inmate is one of the people who came forward with the new claims.
