Rapper Lil Baby and gospel artist Kirk Franklin have dropped the music video for their #1 collaboration, “We Win,” from the Space Jam: A New Legacy soundtrack.
The visual opens with Franklin playing a white piano before the spotlight hits Baby on the basketball court.
“Long as I keep puttin’ my faith and trust in God /I know that everything will be fine,” Baby raps on the gospel-laden track from producer Just Blaze. A choir and a group of kids showing off their skills later join Lil Baby and Kirk Franklin on the court.
Weeks after “We Win” topped Billboard’s Hot Gospel Songs chart in June, Lil Baby and Franklin performed their uplifting single at the 2021 BET Awards. It marks Baby’s first entry on the Gospel chart, while Franklin has been a regular since 2005.
The Space Jam: A New Legacy soundtrack also features appearances from Saweetie, Cordae, Salt-N-Pepa, Kash Doll, Joyner Lucas, John Legend, G-Eazy and more, including SZA and SAiNt JHN on “Just for Me.”
More than 80 authentic props from the landmark Discovery Channel science series Mythbusters are hitting the auction block, to benefit the Grant Imahara STEAM Foundation.
The non-profit was established after the engineer, robotics genius and former cast member after his untimely death in 2020, and “provides mentorships, grants and scholarships to underserved youth in the areas of science, technology, engineering, art and math.”
PropStore is handling the auction, which will let fans get their hands on items like the mechanical shark built by Imahara for 2008’s “Shark Week Special,” as well as Grant’s “Robo-cat” for the “Dog Myths” show, and spent rockets from various episodes, pieces of the poor crash test dummy/mascot Buster, and much more.
Many of the items were autographed by Grant’s friend and fellow Mythbuster Adam Savage, to boot.
The auction begins Friday, August 20 at noon Eastern time, and runs through Wednesday, September 1, 2021. To check out previews and register to bid at Propstore.com.
Imahara died one year ago this month of a previously undiagnosed intracranial aneurysm. He was 49.
Courtesy of Rex Foundation and The Jerry Garcia Family
A second annual edition of Daze Between, a series of events celebrating the life and legacy of Jerry Garcia that’s scheduled on and around the late Grateful Dead frontman’s August 1 birthday, recently kicked off and is slated to run through August 10.
While last year’s inaugural Daze Between was a virtual celebration because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 edition is a hybrid of live and streaming events and activities.
In conjunction with Daze Between, a variety of Garcia tribute concerts by Melvin Seals & JGB, The Garcia Project, Dark Star Orchestra and others will be held at various venues between Thursday, July 29, and Monday, August 9. Among these is a special Daze Between show on August 8 in New Haven, Connecticut, featuring Warren Haynes, Grace Potter and more.
In addition, Major League Baseball will host a series of special “Jerry Day” games featuring special Garcia merch giveaways and taking place July 29 at Boston’s Fenway Park, August 2 at Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park, and August 10 at San Francisco’s Oracle Park.
Other events include livestreamed concert, an exhibition of Garcia’s digital art hosted by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, and an online auction featuring a selection of Grateful Dead collectibles.
Daze Between was launched in partnership between Garcia’s family and the Grateful Dead’s Rex Foundation charity. Proceeds raised will benefit the foundation, which supports people involved with creative endeavors in the arts, sciences and education.
(WASHINGTON) — Negotiators say they have a deal on bipartisan infrastructure.
A redo of last week’s failed test vote is expected Wednesday evening. Republican negotiators, all of whom blocked the procedural motion last week, said they’re ready to vote tonight, though a Democratic leadership aide said a time has not yet been set for the vote.
Negotiators also said they expect enough Republicans to support beginning debate.
Democrats called a special lunch to talk about the proposal behind closed doors this afternoon. Many say their support will hinge upon what is discussed during the meeting.
Details about the agreement are still emerging, but an aide close to the talks confirmed to ABC News that the topline value for new spending has decreased from $579 billion to $550 billion.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., the chief Democratic negotiator, told reporters that she expects some of the bill text to be available Wednesday, with further updates released as remaining details are worked out.
A “small tiny thing” related to transit and a “small thing” related to broadband must still be addressed, Sinema said.
Sinema said she spoke with President Joe Biden and said he is “very excited” about and “committed to” the plan.
Sen. Rob Portman, who has been the chief negotiator for Republicans on the bill, announced the agreement flanked by the four other Republicans in the core negotiating group.
“As of late last night and really early this morning we now have an agreement on the major issues we are prepared to move forward,” Portman said. “We look forward to moving ahead and having the opportunity to have a healthy debate here in the chamber regarding an incredibly important project to the American people.”
Democrats who are part of the negotiations confirmed that a deal had been struck.
Sen. Joe Manchin, asked if it was his understanding that a bipartisan deal had been reached, replied “That sure is.”
It’s still not clear if all Democrats are going to support the bipartisan deal. Democratic Whip Dick Durbin Wednesday morning said it was an “unanswered question” whether all Democrats back the deal.
“I don’t believe we certainly don’t have a whip or people signing on the dotted line,” Durbin said. “We need some assurances that we are all in this together.”
(NEW YORK) — As coronavirus cases in the U.S. begin a concerning climb upward and virus variants threaten a return to normalcy, a handful of businesses have announced COVID-19 vaccination mandates as they prepare to welcome workers back to the office.
The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission said employers can legally require COVID-19 vaccinations to re-enter a physical workplace, as long as they follow requirements to find alternative arrangements for employees unable to get vaccinated for medical reasons or because they have religious objections.
Still, the requirements have proven a hot button issue as business leaders mull over office reopening plans, in some cases sparking legal challenges and immense pushback from workers who refuse the shot. President Joe Biden said Tuesday that a mandate to require all federal employees to be vaccinated is now “under consideration.”
Tech giant Google announced a vaccine requirement Wednesday for those returning to its offices. The company has some 135,301 employees, according to SEC filings.
“Even as the virus continues to surge in many parts of the world,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in an email Wednesday, “it’s encouraging to see very high vaccination rates for our Google community in areas where vaccines are widely available.” He cites that high vaccination rate as being a key to the company re-opening some of its offices to employees who chose to return to work already.
“Getting vaccinated is one of the most important ways to keep ourselves and our communities healthy in the months ahead,” he continued.
The requirement will be rolled out “in the coming weeks,” in the United States, and is intended to expand to other regions in the next few months. Pichai notes that implementation of the requirement “will vary according to local conditions and regulations, and will not apply until vaccines are widely available in your area.”
The CEO also saying in his email that while the company has begun to reopen campuses, Google employees who choose to work from home will be allowed to do so through at least October 18.
“We recognize that many Googlers are seeing spikes in their communities cause by the Delta variant and are concerned about returning to the office,” Pichai said.
He also noted that the company is working to develop “expanded temporary work options” for employees with “special circumstances,” which would allow those employees to work from home through the end of 2021.
(NEW YORK) — Google plans to require any employee in its offices to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to an email sent by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai on Wednesday.
“Even as the virus continues to surge in many parts of the world,” Pichai wrote, “it’s encouraging to see very high vaccination rates for our Google community in areas where vaccines are widely available.” He cites that high vaccination rate as being a key to the company re-opening some of its offices to employees who chose to return to work already.
“Getting vaccinated is one of the most important ways to keep ourselves and our communities healthy in the months ahead,” he continued.
The requirement will be rolled out “in the coming weeks,” in the United States, and is intended to expand to other regions in the next few months. Pichai notes that implementation of the requirement “will vary according to local conditions and regulations, and will not apply until vaccines are widely available in your area.”
The CEO also saying in his email that while the company has begun to reopen campuses, Google employees who choose to work from home will be allowed to do so through at least October 18.
“We recognize that many Googlers are seeing spikes in their communities cause by the Delta variant and are concerned about returning to the office,” Pichai said.
He also noted that the company is working to develop “expanded temporary work options” for employees with “special circumstances,” which would allow those employees to work from home through the end of 2021.
(LONDON, HONG KONG and JAKARTA) — A perfect storm with the coronavirus appears to be brewing across the Asia-Pacific region: surges in the highly contagious delta variant combined with slow vaccination uptake.
Tight vaccine supplies are a major factor and experts caution that unless most of the global population is vaccinated, and richer countries share more of their vaccines, the world will face a far longer bout with the coronavirus than anticipated.
The issue extends from countries at the center of the current surge, like Indonesia, to those that fared relatively well with the disease early on in the pandemic, like South Korea.
Even as countries like the U.S. and U.K. face rising cases despite their largely vaccinated populations, hospitalizations and deaths have not yet risen to the same levels as 2020 due to the success of vaccination efforts, public health experts say. Yet the vast majority of the global population remains unvaccinated (just 3.7 billion out of 10-12 billion recommended doses have been distributed).
More people have died of COVID-19 since Jan. 4, 2021 than the whole of last year, according to an ABC analysis of WHO data.
The pandemic is not just far from over — it is in a “critical moment where we are all under threat,” due to rising new variants and vaccine inequality, according to WHO spokesperson Dr. Margaret Harris. The course of the virus, she said, is that it is likely to become “endemic” — meaning it will not disappear, but eventually could become manageable like the other coronaviruses in circulation.
But a true end to the pandemic will likely only happen with the artificial immunity conferred by mass vaccination, according to Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“You have countries that are making good progress toward building an immunity shield,” he told ABC News. “When you look at the rest of the world, a very small percentage of the population [is] being vaccinated.”
The stark vaccine disparity is far from lost on people in Indonesia, who in the last few months have seen the delta variant rip through their communities, overrunning hospitals, filling graveyards and leaving family and friends who’ve lost loved ones in anguish.
In scenes reminiscent of when India was at its devastating peak earlier this year, there is a clamor for oxygen canisters in Indonesia — now the coronavirus epicenter of the region. Afflicted families, turned away from hospital wards, are taking treatment into their own hands. For two weeks, Defitio Pratama, 27, a marketing salesman based just outside Jakarta, took care of his sick mother at home.
“We had no idea what to do at that time since we did not have oxygen tank at hand,” he told ABC News in Jakarta, where there are long lines for scarce oxygen cylinders. “I started contacting friends and families for oxygen tank, I even went all the way to other city when I found my mother’s friend offering to lend theirs. We could not take my mother to hospital because they kept rejecting us, we had no choice but to treat her at home.”
While Pratama has received one dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, his mother, who is asthmatic, remains unvaccinated. In the week ending July 19, 9,696 deaths were recorded, an increase of 36% from the week before, according to the WHO. Just under 16% of the population has received at least one dose of vaccine.
In Indonesia, a combination of a lack of supply, vaccine hesitancy and concerns over the Chinese manufactured Sinovac have contributed to the slow rollout, but the country is by no means alone in the region.
Thailand, Australia, Vietnam and South Korea — all countries that were praised last year for their swift containment strategies — have reintroduced restrictions to deal with outbreaks of the Delta variant, which is estimated to be 60% more transmissible than the alpha variant, in recent months. According to Harris, the world’s richest countries are “basically holding the rest of the world hostage by not insisting that their manufacturers share.”
“This is why you’ve got massive outbreaks going on around the world,” she told ABC News. “But people don’t seem to hear it. What they’re hearing is possibly what they want to hear is ‘I’m vaccinated, now, I can go back to normal.’ You can’t. Not until you sort it out in the rest of the world.”
The Biden administration has pledged to donate more than 80 million doses to countries in need, with 23 million going to Asia. Some 3 million doses of Moderna arrived in Indonesia from the U.S. on July 11 — but the rollout needs to significantly increase in order to meet the WHO’s target to vaccinate at least 10% of every country in the world by the end of September.
For the pandemic to end and the virus to become manageable on a global level and COVID-19 to become manageable as with other coronaviruses, between 10 and 12 billion doses need to be administered around the world, Huang said, ideally with high effectiveness. That number currently stands at around 3.7 billion, according to the WHO.
“The best case scenario is that through these vaccination efforts that by the end of next year we have produced enough vaccines that can vaccinate a majority of the population worldwide, and that vaccination is effective in terms of preventing severe cases of death,” Huang said. “Previously I was more optimistic about how and when the pandemic is going to end. “But now, with that divide in terms of vaccine access, in terms of the strategies adopted by countries, in terms of the continued emergence of the new variants, I’m not that optimistic anymore.”
(NOTE LANGUAGE) As everyone knows, Twitter isn’t always the place to go to see any semblance of human unity, but it appears news that Bob Odenkirk collapsed on the Albuquerque set of Better Call Saul on Tuesday has managed to do the impossible.
There were the usual well-wishes from present and former fellow cast members, like his Better Call Saul co-star Michael McKean — who tweeted in part “You got this, brother!” — as well as an Instagram post from Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston, who asked for “positive thoughts and prayers” for the actor.
However, so many messages came from regular folks supporting the star that his name is trending on the social media service.
“I do not pray but I will do it for Bob Odenkirk to please be ok,” tweeted one fan.
“If anything bad happens to Bob Odenkirk, I will fight God,” noted USA Today‘s Barbara VanDenburgh.
“if anything happens to bob odenkirk we blow up the f***ing moon,” offered another.
Yet another added, “hopefully he was just dehydrated or something i cannot deal w a world in which bob odenkirk is experiencing suffering.”
One Twitter user summed it up: “One small positive observation from this troubling news: can you imagine anyone being more universally loved/respected than Bob Odenkirk? Never seen the entire timeline unite and rally behind someone so quickly.”
(LONDON) — Beginning next month, the United Kingdom will allow fully vaccinated U.S. citizens to enter the country without quarantining.
In a statement, the U.K. Department for Transport says the policy will apply to travelers from countries on their “green” and “amber” lists, but not for those from several dozen nations on the “red list.” It will go into effect on August 2, and will cover vaccines that have been approved by the European Medicines Agency, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or the Swiss vaccination program.
Those arriving in the U.K. will still be required to complete a pre-departure test before landing in England, as well as a PCR test for COVID-19 within their first two days there. Separate rules apply for those entering the U.K. from France.
The plan is expected to help the British economy, as well as enable fully vaccinated people from other nations to reunite with family and friends.
“We’ve taken great strides on our journey to reopen international travel,” said U.K. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps. “Whether you are a family reuniting for the first time since the start of the pandemic or a business benefiting from increased trade – this is progress we can all enjoy.”
More than 70 percent of adults in the U.K. have received both shots of a COVID-19 vaccine. Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid credited that fact with helping to build “a wall of defence against this virus so we can safely enjoy our freedoms again.”
Simone Biles is considered one of the greatest female gymnasts of all-time, an athlete who competes on a different level, with four signature moves named after her in three different events.
The level of difficulty undertaken by the six-time Olympic medalist is one reason her decision to withdraw from both the team and individual competitions at the Tokyo Olympics is being applauded by gymnastics experts.
“Gymnastics is a sport where if you make a mistake you can get severely, severely injured,” said Valorie Kondos Field, former longtime head coach of the UCLA Women’s Gymnastics team. “The worst possible injury you can think of happening can happen in this sport if you lose your focus.”
During Tuesday’s team competition final, Biles, 24, had planned to do a vault with two-and-a-half twists. Instead, mid-air, Biles lost her way and completed only one-and-a-half twists and stumbled on her landing.
Shortly after that vault, USA Gymnastics announced Biles’ early exit from the team competition.
“I had no idea where I was in the air,” Biles said in a press conference Tuesday. “I could have hurt myself.”
Further explaining her decision, Biles added, “I just felt like it would be a little bit better to take a back seat, work on my mindfulness. I didn’t want to risk the team a medal for, kind of, my screw ups, because they’ve worked way too hard for that.”
Team USA went on to win a silver medal in the team competition, losing the gold medal to gymnasts from Russia.
On Wednesday, it was announced by USA Gymnastics that Biles would also sit out the individual competition to “focus on her mental health.”
“Simone will continue to be evaluated daily to determine whether or not to participate in next week’s individual event finals,” the sport’s national governing body said in a statement. “We wholeheartedly support Simone’s decision and applaud her bravery in prioritizing her well-being. Her courage shows, yet again, why she is a role model for so many.”
Biles had qualified in all six of the women’s gymnastics finals at the Tokyo Olympics — team, individual all-around, vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor. She was on track to win an unprecedented six gold medals during the Games, with the aim of becoming the first woman since 1968 to win back-to-back titles in the all-around — a competition that tests individual gymnasts on each of the four apparatuses.
Dominique Dawes, a four-time Olympic medalist who competed at the 1992, 1996 and 2000 Olympic Games, applauded Biles’ decision to put herself first instead of succumbing to pressure and risking physical injury.
“[She] really got lost in the air and if that does happen there is a mental block there and the concern is not only for your mental health but physical health,” said Dawes. “And she knew if she was not going to be on her ‘A’ game, Team USA would not be on top of the podium or maybe even get on the podium.”
“What I respect most about her is she’s listening to her inner voice and she made a decision that was best for her,” she said, adding of her own experience: “During the 2000 Olympic trials I actually quit after [preliminaries]. It was too much on me emotionally; however, I was not able to make that decision. It was very much a controlled atmosphere.”
Biles’ skill level is so great that the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) gave the double-double dismount on the balance beam, a signature move by Biles, a lower value because it was considered essentially a safety risk for other gymnasts to try.
“There is added risk in landing of double saltos for Beam dismounts (with/without twists), including a potential landing on the neck. Reinforcing, there are many examples in the Code where decisions have been made to protect the gymnasts and preserve the direction of the discipline,” the federation said in a 2019 statement. “The WTC’s task is to ensure the safety of all athletes around the world and decisions are not based purely on one gymnast.”
Another skill achieved by Biles, the Yurchenko double pike on vault, is considered so dangerous that Biles’ coach said the gymnast would have to “beg” her to execute it at the Olympics.
In May, at the 2021 U.S. Classic, Biles became the first woman to ever perform the skill in competition.
“If she really wants to do it, she’s going to have to beg me,” Laurent Landi told “On Her Turf” earlier this month. “People seem to forget that it’s a very, very dangerous skill … just to have glory and being [in] the Code of Points, it’s not enough.”
Jacoby Miles, a Washington woman who says she was paralyzed from the chest down due to a gymnastics accident at age 15, took to Instagram to applaud Biles for prioritizing her mental health.
“I experienced those mental blocks throughout my career as a gymnast, and to be quite blunt, it only took one bad time of getting lost in the air in a big flip to break my neck and leave me paralyzed,” Miles wrote. “So I’m so, so glad she decided to not continue until she’s mentally recovered. Especially at her skill difficulty.”
Jade Carey, a 21-year-old gymnast from Arizona who had the ninth-highest score in qualifications, will compete in Biles’ place in the all-around on Thursday, according to USA Gymnastics.
Biles still has the option to compete later this week in the individual finals for vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor.
ABC News’ Rachel Katz, Morgan Winsor and Alexandra Svokos contributed to this report.
