The fifth studio effort from the Swedish metallers will arrive March 11. It includes the previously released single “Hunter’s Moon,” as well as the just-dropped new track “Call Me Little Sunshine,” which is available now for digital download.
“Over the course of Impera‘s 12-song cycle, empires rise and fall, would-be messiahs ply their hype (financial and spiritual alike), prophecies are foretold as the skies fill with celestial bodies divine and man-made,” a press release declares, adding that the record covers “the most current and topical Ghost subject matter to date.”
Impera is the follow-up to 2018’s Grammy-nominated Prequelle, which spawned the singles “Rats,” “Dance Macabre” and “Faith.”
Ghost will celebrate the new album announcement with a performance on Thursday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, airing at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC.
Here’s the Impera track list:
“Imperium”
“Kaisarion”
“Spillways”
“Call Me Little Sunshine”
“Hunter’s Moon”
“Watcher in the Sky”
“Dominion”
“Twenties”
“Darkness at the Heart of My Love”
“Grift Wood”
“Bite of Passage”
“Respite on the Spital Fields”
L-R – Campbell, Raimi — Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images for STARZ
While celebrity online scams are nothing new, one has gone viral, thanks to its famous subject, original Spider-Man trilogy director Sam Raimi.
While most online scams don’t pass the smell test, this one takes the cake.
People have noted getting DMs from somebody claiming to be the filmmaker, making the following pitch, which surfaced in the wake of the success of Spider-Man: No Way Home.
“Hi there it’s Sam Raimi the director here. I’m trying to make spiderman 4 with the doctor strange budget but Kevin Fiegey [sic] has caught on and pulled the funding. Can you send me 1500 in iTunes gift card codes so I can hire Tony [sic] Maguire thanks.”
While the scammer gets credit for knowing Raimi is directing the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, he probably should have researched how to spell the name of Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige.
Oh, and it’s Tobey, not TonyMaguire who played Spidey for Raimi.
Bruce Campbell — who worked frequently with Raimi since 1981’s The Evil Dead and appeared in the director’s Spider-Man films — had a bit of fun with the scam. “Boy, that Sam,” Campbell tweeted with a picture of the phony DM. “Always hitting people up for money.”
Campbell added, “I will chip in, because I love Tony Maguire.”
(NEW YORK) — About 4.6 million Black people in the U.S. — roughly 1 in 10 — are immigrants, and that figure could more than double to 9.5 million by 2060, according to a study by Pew Research Center.
Pew based its calculations in the study, released Thursday, on Census data collected from from 2006 to 2019 through community surveys.
“The nation’s immigrant population has been, to some extent, largely driven by trends from Latin America and Asia,” said Mark Lopez, director of race and ethnicity research for Pew and a coauthor of the study. “But African and particularly Black immigrant trends have become a growing part of the story of the nation’s immigrant population overall.”
Lopez noted that in addition to the roughly 10% of Blacks who came from anther country, another 9% were born in the U.S. from an immigrant parent, meaning “the immigrant experience is not far from the daily life experiences of about 1 in 5 Black Americans today.”
In 2019, New York (about 900,000) and Florida (about 800,000) had the most Black immigrants, according to the study.
“Our report is part of a broader research agenda to understand the diversity of the country, including the diversity of the nation’s Black population,” Lopez added.
Abraham Paulos, deputy director of Black Alliance for Just Immigration, which is based in Brooklyn, said Black immigrants and those who’ve lived in the U.S. longer face many of the same challenges.
“I think whatever is happening in Black America is also happening to Black immigrants,” said Paulos, noting America’s historically discriminatory criminal justice system, police brutality and housing inequality. Many of those represented by BAJI also struggle to unionize and to advocate for better working conditions.
Most Black immigrants, the study showed, came from Jamaica (about 760,000) and Haiti (about 700,000) from 2009 to 2019, and many of them, Paulos noted, also faced comparatively more difficult acclimation periods, including more discrimination, than some from other nations.
In September, thousands of Haitian asylum seekers camped under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas. The Biden administration came under fire when images were released showing Customs and Border Patrol officers using horses to push back migrants crossing the Rio Grande into the U.S. And in December, a group of Haitian migrants sued the Biden administration, alleging mistreatment in that incident.
“Haiti is a great example,” Paulos said. “I think with the Haitian immigrant, I think it is probably the best analogy to sort of get a window into how Black Americans are treated by the immigration apparatus.”
(NEW YORK) — An 11-month-old girl has been shot in the face in the Bronx, prompting a search for the gunman and outcry from New York City’s new mayor.
The baby is in the hospital in critical but stable condition, the New York City Police Department said.
The shooting took place at about 6:45 p.m. Wednesday while the baby was in a parked car with her mother outside a grocery store, waiting for the father who was inside the store, police said.
A man chasing another man fired two shots, hitting the baby in the face, police said.
“An 11-month-old baby shot in the Bronx. If that’s not a wake up call, I don’t know what is,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams tweeted. “It should be unimaginable that this would happen in our city. But it did.”
“Leaders at every level have abandoned city streets. I won’t,” he said. “I refuse to surrender New York City to violence.”
Police have released surveillance video of the suspect, who they said fled the scene in a gray four-door sedan. The suspect is described as a man in a dark-colored hooded sweatshirt with a white Nike logo on the front, gray sweatpants, and black and white sneakers.
Anyone with information is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477).
NICOLAS MAETERLINCK/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images
(LONDON) — From flying over an active volcano to surviving in minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit, British-Belgium teen Zara Rutherford has experienced a lot in her five-month journey flying over 40 countries and five continents.
When the 19-year-old landed in Belgium on Thursday, she made history by breaking the record of the youngest woman to ever fly solo around the world. The pilot who previously held the record, Shaesta Waiz, was 30 years old when she completed the journey.
“It’s been … challenging, but so amazing at the same time,” Rutherford told ABC News. “I think there’re some experiences that I’ll just never forget and others that I would wish to forget.”
Rutherford embarked on her epic journey with her Shark Aero, a high-performance, two-seat ultralight aircraft manufactured in Europe. The small plane is especially made to withstand long journeys at the cruising speed of 186.4 mph.
Since both of her parents are certified pilots, Rutherford learned her way behind the airplane controls when she was very young.
“Zara’s first flight in a very small airplane, was when she was three or four months old. … And frequently, she’d be given the opportunity to sit in the front, to start with, of course, on about six cushions to be able to manipulate the controls and move the aircraft around,” Sam Rutherford, Zara’s father and a former army helicopter pilot, told ABC News.
But it was not until about five years ago that Rutherford truly realized her passion for flying.
“It only really crystallized into something she actually wanted to do more formally when she was 14, and at 14, she started actually taking flying lessons,” Rutherford’s father said.
Then teen ran into maintenance problems, COVID-19 complications and visa issues along her journey. She said once she reached Russia, she fully realized the risks of her mission.
“There was no humans. It’s too cold. It’s like nothing. There’s no roads, there’s no power like electricity cables. There’s nothing, there’s no animals, there’s no trees. I didn’t see a tree for over a month,” Rutherford said.
“When you’re flying alone and suddenly this challenge comes up, I can’t say, ‘I’m done. I’m out. I give up.’ You have to still land the plane. You have to make sure that you get down on the ground safely,” she said.
Still, she was often amazed by the things she saw along the way.
“That is still like the hands down the most amazing thing flying straight over Central Park … because of air space [regulations] you have to fly quite low. And it’s quite strange when… some of the buildings still are higher than you like. Wow, this is incredible,” the young solo pilot said.
Someone to look up to
Before starting her journey, Rutherford messaged Waiz — the American-Afghan pilot who previously held the flying record — on LinkedIn and asked if she would mind if she attempted to break her record.
“‘Of course, that’s OK. Records are meant to be broken,’ I told her,” Waiz, who finished her journey in 2017, told ABC News.
“‘Not only are you going to fly around the world, but I’m going to do everything I can to help you, because it is an incredible experience and I want [you] to have that,'” she said to Rutherford.
Waiz got on her first plane as an infant, when her family left Afghanistan as refugees during the Soviet–Afghan War and settled in California. She didn’t fly again until she was 17.
“I was terrified. But as soon as that plane lifted off, something ignited in me and I just thought to myself, ‘This is what I want to do for the rest of my life,'” she recalled.
Changing perspectives
Flying solo around the world, for Rutherford and Waiz, was not just about crossing geographical borders and breaking records, but also about getting to see life from a different perspective.
To Waiz, the unique thing about aviation is the way it takes away all discriminations and differences among people.
“When you’re in the airplane and you’re flying, it’s such an unbiased environment that that aircraft doesn’t care where you come from or what you look like,” she said.
Rutherford said flying has taught her that life is “fragile,” and there is “so much more to life than just getting a good career and making and having a good salary.”
She hopes her history-making journey inspires other girls and women to chase their dreams.
“Her aim is actually not to fly around the world. Her aim is to encourage young women and girls to consider and hopefully take up careers in aviation, science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” Rutherford’s father said. “There’s very little point to her flying around the world if nobody gets to hear about it. We all have our own worlds to fly around.”
(NEW YORK) — As Shaun White gears up to go for his fourth and final gold in Beijing, the Olympic halfpipe snowboarder said his training has become “more calculated” and that he’s got “some new moves” to debut in February.
“I’m so honored to make the team; it is just incredible and I get to be an Olympian again. Get to run out of the tunnel with Team USA, it’s just so exciting,” White told Good Morning America on Thursday. “To be atop a sport like this for this long, I feel so honored to be doing that. And it’s so wild because when I look around, everybody in the area are all people I used to compete with, you know, they’re coaches now.”
Ahead of the February opening ceremonies, White recently announced this will be his final Olympics, which he confirmed on GMA, saying, “I’ve got this last dance sort of glow to it.”
“You know, you look for those little signs and I was having a little knee injury here, a little ankle injury there, just these little things. And I remember my back hurting one day and my buddies were like, ‘what happened? And I was like, ‘Nothing, it just hurts,” he laughed.
The winter Games will look different for all the athletes this year as the International Olympic Committee takes precautions to safely allow competition, without fans.
“I’ll never forget winning and sliding down and seeing my whole family and they’re just crying and tears of joy — the whole crowd and that feeling you get, so it’s going to be different. But honestly, I salute them for putting this on in such a challenging time,” White said. “We’ve been trying to keep in our little bubble, so select friends and family, a physical therapist I have with me … Everybody’s testing and doing the best they can and I think that’s all you can really do.”
Since notching his first Olympic gold in 2006 when he was 19, White said he prepares at a different pace now.
“I had longer hair back then, so it’s a little easier routine these days,” he joked. “I think every single time I go to the Olympics, it’s just a different process.”
“I always think, ‘What got me to this point in my career won’t necessarily take me the rest of the way.’ So not only have I been focusing a lot on my physical health, but just like the mental health of it all,” White, 35, said. “Staying positive and staying motivated.”
The training has become “more calculated practice sessions,” and he explained that “it’s more like a power window than I used to be up there all day long — I don’t have that much energy as I used to. I’m not an old guy by any means — but at the last competition, one of my competitors was like 15, I was like, ‘Oh my goodness.’ So I’m definitely like pacing it out a bit more and take a lot more time to recover.”
At his last appearance in PyeongChang, White stunned fans and judges with back-to-back 1440s and ended the run with a frontside double cork 1260 to grab gold.
“There’s talk of triple corks now, these triple flips that are happening. A lot of the Japanese riders have been attempting those. There’s talks of doing a 16, which is 180 [degrees] past the 1440. But it’s gonna be incredible. I don’t want to give anything away, but working on some new moves and I’m hoping that everything really peaks once I get to the competition.”
Outside of the Olympics, White started a snowboarding and activewear company with his brother called Whitespace.
“It’s so much fun. You know, all my experience over the course of my career — I get to put that into a new product and a new brand and all my focus and attention and it’s been such a rewarding thing to work on with family,” he said. “I was 7 when I first got a snowboard from Jake Burton, who unfortunately passed away recently, but, you know, he gave me that start and I keep thinking — ‘Wow, if I could be that for the next generation,’ some young boy or girl or whoever is starting up and has that spark and excitement for the sport and I could be there to support it with my wisdom and experiences.”
Elton John‘s much-delayed Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour resumed Wednesday night in New Orleans, with a fresh new addition to his set list.
Not only did Elton play pretty much every hit you’d want to hear, from “Bennie and the Jets” and “Tiny Dancer” to “I’m Still Standing” and “Your Song,” but he also played his current top 10 hit “Cold Heart” live for the first time. His duet partner Dua Lipa didn’t join him for the song, but her vocals were heard during the performance.
“Cold Heart,” from Elton’s The Lockdown Sessions, is his first U.S. top 10 hit since 1998.
Elton’s North American tour dates run through April, and then he’ll head to Europe. This summer, he’ll return to North America to play stadiums starting July 15 in Philadelphia; he’ll wrap up those dates with two shows at Dodger Stadium in L.A. on November 19 and 20.
Following last week’s announcement that the 94th Annual Academy Awards telecast will have a host for the first time since 2018, a number of names have been floated as hypothetical candidates and, recently, Amy Poehler was asked if she had any interest in accepting the gig.
Poehler, a four-time Golden Globes co-host along with her friend and fellow Saturday Night Live alum Tina Fey, told Variety how she’d feel putting all that experience to use on the Oscars.
“Oh, I think that’s a different deal,” she said. “It’s an interesting time. So again, who knows what any of that stuff will…Everything feels like it’s truly in flux in every way.”
“I’m open to all things,” she continued. “I try to keep an open mind to all things.”
The 50-year-old Parks and Recreation vet and Making It star is currently directing the documentary Lucy and Desi, which explores the unlikely rise to fame and enduring legacy of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, whose groundbreaking sitcom I Love Lucy revolutionized the genre.
Poehler says the goal of the doc was to tell a love story.
“So much is made of their work and comedy, and it should be,” she says. “But I also think it is also an equal triumph to have a relationship that was the kind that they had. It is hard to maintain a working relationship, as well as a relationship with someone you love and is your partner in raising kids.”
Poehler has two children with ex-husband Will Arnett; the couple divorced in 2016, but amicably co-parent sons Archie Arnett, 13, and Abel Arnett, 11.
Lucy and Desi will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday.
(LONDON) — Two men were arrested in England on Thursday morning as part of an ongoing investigation into a hostage-taking incident at a synagogue in the United States, British authorities said.
Counterterrorism officers detained one of the men in Birmingham and the other in Manchester, about 85 miles north of Birmingham. The pair “remain in custody for questioning,” according to a statement from the Greater Manchester Police.
Assistant Chief Constable Dominic Scally of the Greater Manchester Police has said that counterterrorism officers are assisting their U.S. counterparts in the probe of Saturday’s hourslong standoff between American authorities and a hostage-taker at the Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, about 27 miles northwest of Dallas.
An armed man claiming to have planted bombs in the synagogue interrupted Shabbat services on Saturday just before 11 a.m. local time, taking a rabbi and three other people hostage, according to Colleyville Police Chief Michael Miller.
One hostage was released uninjured at around 5 p.m. CT on Saturday, Miller told a press conference later that night. An elite hostage rescue team from the Federal Bureau of Investigation then breached the synagogue at about 9 p.m. CT, after hearing the hostage-taker say he had guns and bombs and was “not afraid to pull the strings,” according to a joint intelligence bulletin issued Wednesday and obtained by ABC News.
“As a tactical team approached to make entry to the synagogue, the hostages escaped and were secured by tactical elements,” the bulletin said. “The assault team quickly breached the facility at a separate point of entry, and the subject was killed.”
No hostages were injured during the incident, according to Miller.
The slain suspect, identified by the FBI as 44-year-old British citizen Malik Faisal Akram, was from the Blackburn area of England’s Lancashire county, about 20 miles northwest of Manchester, according to Scally.
A motive for the siege is under investigation. The FBI said in a statement Sunday that the incident “is a terrorism-related matter, in which the Jewish community was targeted, and is being investigated by the Joint Terrorism Task Force.”
During the negotiations with authorities, Akram “spoke repeatedly about a convicted terrorist who is serving an 86-year prison sentence in the United States on terrorisms charges,” according to the FBI.
Multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News that the hostage-taker was demanding the release of Aafia Siddiqui, who is incarcerated at Carswell Air Force Base near Fort Worth, about 16 miles southwest of Colleyville. Siddiqui, who has alleged ties to al-Qaida, was sentenced to 86 years in prison after being convicted of assault as well as attempted murder of an American soldier in 2010.
Two teenagers were arrested in southern Manchester on Sunday evening in connection with the synagogue attack. They were questioned and later released without being charged, Greater Manchester Police said in a statement Tuesday. Multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News that the teens are Akram’s children.
Akram has ancestral ties to Jandeela, a village in Pakistan’s Punjab province, the local police chief told ABC News. He visited Pakistan in 2020 and stayed for five months, the police chief said, a duration that may have been necessitated by COVID-19 restrictions.
Akram has been separated from his wife for two years and has five children, according to the police chief.
After arriving in the U.S. last month via a flight from London to New York City, Akram stayed at homeless shelters at various points and may have portrayed himself as experiencing homelessness in order to gain access to the Texas synagogue during Shabbat services, multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News.
U.S. President Joe Biden, who called the hostage-taking incident “an act of terror,” told reporters Sunday that investigators suspect Akram purchased a gun on the street. While Akram is alleged to have claimed he had bombs, investigators have found no evidence that he was in possession of explosives, according to Biden.
ABC News’ Luke Barr, Aaron Katersky, Habibullah Khan, Josh Margolin and Joseph Simonetti contributed to this report.
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has chosen Jon Stewart as the recipient of its 23rd Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. The prize, which recognizes individuals who have had an impact on American society in ways similar to the distinguished 19th-century novelist and essayist whose name it bears, on April 24 in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. “I am truly honored to receive this award, Stewart commented in a statement on Wednesday, before joking, “I have long admired and been influenced by the work of Mark Twain, or, as he was known by his given name, Samuel Leibowitz.” Past recipients include Richard Pryor, Carl Reiner, Whoopi Goldberg, Lily Tomlin, Steve Martin, Billy Crystal and Carol Burnett…
Bravo has renewed Watch What Happens Live, the late night talk show hosted and executive produced by Andy Cohen, through 2023. The two-year pickup will take Watch What Happens Live into its 15th year on Bravo. “My WWHL team rose to every challenge of the pandemic, and getting to do WWHL for two more years is the ultimate reward,” Cohen said in a statement on Wednesday. “We’re still having a ball making our show — whether our guests are virtual or in studio.” Watch What Happens Live saw its ratings among adults 18-49 and adults 25-54 improve in 2021, and it was the highest-rated late night talk show on ad-supported cable in the 18-49 demographic for the first time ever…
Gina Rodriguez is set to star in a series adaptation of Pedro Almodovar’s 1988 black comedy Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown in development at Apple TV+, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The Jane the Virgin alum will play Pepa, portrayed by Carmen Maura in the original feature about the romantic mishaps of voice actors who dub foreign films. The series project will feature a mixture of English and Spanish, sources tell THR…
NBC has pushed the premiere of American Song Contest, its U.S. take on the Eurovision Song Contest, back a month to March 21, according to the network. The delay is due to COVID-19 concerns when it comes to having a live audience. In its place, NBC will air America’s Got Talent: Extreme, which completed production despite an accident involving daredevil Jonathan Goodwin. Production paused in October due to the incident and resumed in January…
Hawkeye actor Fra Fee has landed a role in Disney+’s upcoming Beauty and the Beast prequel, according to Variety. He joins Luke Evans and Josh Gad, who’ll reprise their respective roles as Gaston and LeFou from the 2017 live-action hit film adaptation of the Disney classic. Newcomer Briana Middleton will play Tilly, Louie’s stepsister. Set years before the Beast and Belle’s romance, the series will follow Gaston and LeFou as they set off on an unexpected journey with Tilly after a surprising revelation from her past comes to light. Fee will star as Prince Benoit Berlioz, a childhood friend of Tilly’s who has grown into a handsome, charismatic, confident prince. Disney is the parent company of ABC News…
