At 81, Martha Stewart is gracing one of the new covers of this year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, becoming the first octogenarian to do so.
The photos were shot by famed photographer Ruven Afanador in the Dominican Republic.
The homemaking icon also participated in a “making of” video, in which the former model explained, “This time I was motivated by showing people my age can still look good, feel good, be good.”
It is, to quote her catchphrase, “a good thing.”
She also said, “When I heard that I was going to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, I thought, ‘Oh, well, that’s pretty good!’ I’m gonna be the oldest person I think ever on the cover. And I don’t think about age very much but I thought that this is kind of historic and I better look really good.”
This year’s issue also includes cover stars Megan Fox, Kim Petras and Brooks Nader, among its other pin-ups.
SI Swimsuit editor-in-chief MJ Day said in a statement, “Martha Stewart is a legend. The definition of a great female entrepreneur who built a dynasty against insurmountable odds.”
Day continued, adding of the celebrity cover stars, “These women, alongside our other models, refuse to allow themselves to be limited by existing societal norms and are incredible examples on how to harness talent, passion, persistence, perseverance, fortitude, curiosity and unabashed desire to evolve.”
(WASHINGTON) — Biden administration officials said Monday that the numbers of migrants making unauthorized border crossings over the weekend continued to be significantly lower than expected but they were not ready to declare their plan a success just yet.
“I think it’s — it’s still too early to draw firm conclusions,” Assistant Secretary for Border and Immigration Policy Blas Nuñez-Neto said in response to questions about the decline seen since last Thursday when the pandemic-era policy that allowed migrants to be quickly expelled ended.
“We are closely watching what’s happening. We are confident that, you know, the plan that we have developed across the U.S. government to address these flows will work over time,” he told reporters on Monday.
U.S. Border Patrol agents made 14,752 migrant apprehensions in the past 72 hours, Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said in a tweet Monday.
Unauthorized crossings had reached more than 10,000 per day last week — and President Joe Biden said then he expected the border to be “chaotic for a while,” despite measures by border authorities to contain a surge in migration.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl on Sunday the decline was about 50% from levels seen just before the Title 42 policy lifted last week.
As ABC News has reported, some data suggests the Title 42 expulsion order may have caused more border crossings, not fewer. The data showed significantly higher repeat crossing attempts under Title 42, compared to standard immigration processing under Title 8 of the U.S. Code.
Since Friday, Title 8 now dictates the way all migrants at the border are processed.
“And it is important to note, that while Title 42 has ended, the conditions that are causing hemispheric migration at unprecedented levels have not changed,” Nuñez-Neto said. “We continue to see more displaced people in the hemisphere than we have in decades.”
There are many factors that cause migrants to make the dangerous journey north, including high levels of violence and economic instability across Latin America. More than 100 million people are displaced globally, including 20 million in the Western Hemisphere, according to the State Department.
“Migration impacts every single country in the region, and no one country can provide solutions for millions of displaced people on their own,” State Department Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Marta Youth said Monday.
Mexico and Guatemala have surged their own law enforcement and military personnel in recent days while administration officials continue to tout the effectiveness of the parole pathways that allow migrants to temporarily enter the country and claim asylum.
Homeland Security over the weekend returned “hundreds” of migrants to Mexico, including Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans. Thousands more were repatriated to other countries, Nuñez-Neto said, adding that Title 8 deportations are occurring “much more quickly” than before.
Administration officials have pointed to new options for legal immigration including proposals for foreign migrant processing centers.
However, a spokesperson for Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said the government had not received any official requests from the U.S. government to create special processing centers for migrants trying to cross borders and eventually cross into the U.S.
“The government of Guatemala has not received any official requests for creating any kind of reception center yet,” Guatemalan government spokesman Kevin Lopez Oliva told ABC News in an interview Friday.
“We just made a proposal to Secretary Mayorkas in a call, in a just unique call that just recently happened last week” between the Guatemalan President and the US Secretary of Homeland Security, “in which we were proposing an approach, an integral approach between the two countries,” he added.
The approach proposed by the Guatemalan government includes “logistics support” from the U.S., Oliva said.
ABC News’ Haroldo Martinez contributed to this report.
We’re about to learn a whole lot more about The Mamas & the Papas. The legendary ’60s group is the subject of a new biography, All The Leaves Are Brown: How the Mamas & the Papas Came Together and Broke Apart, dropping June 1.
Written by Scott G. Shea, the book delves into how the group — John Phillips, Denny Doherty, MichellePhillips and Mama Cass Elliot — became “the standard-bearers for California counterculture.”
The book tells the band’s story through new interviews with former bandmates, as well as session musicians, family members and more. That includes an interview with Jill Gibson, who briefly replaced Michelle after she was fired by husband John for having an affair with The Byrds’ Gene Clark.
All The Leaves Are Brown: How the Mamas & the Papas Came Together and Broke Apart is available for preorder now.
This isn’t the first book to tell the story of the group, known for such hits songs as “California Dreaming,” “Monday Monday” and more. Members John and Michelle have both written books about their time in the band.
Will Poulter was the new kid on the block inGuardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, both figuratively and nearly literally. His genetically engineered character, baddie Adam Warlock, is incredibly powerful, but also described as being a “child,” because he was taken out of his birthing pod too soon.
The English actor admits he was scared to join writer-director James Gunn‘s final Guardians movie, seeing how he was such a fan of the first two Marvel Studios films — and how Gunn’s band of misfits became like a family on screen and off. However, he explains, “I couldn’t have been … made to feel more welcome.”
He continues, “I was nervous from the outside looking in, I think because I was a really big fan of the Guardians movies and within the Marvel Universe, this was the trilogy, as it now is, of films that I was kind of the biggest admirer of. And so you look at something as a fan, and you think that’s cool to be able to appreciate that as a fan … You don’t imagine yourself being a part of it.”
Poulter continues, “Something that I thought was gonna be really, really scary, actually, has just been really good fun. You know, I think because of what James said, you know, he makes a point of making a really fun environment, you know, surrounds himself with really great people … And it just made the experience so, so fun, which is, like, really important because it’s this pressure. And, you know, as a new kid, I was pretty scared. So that made it easy.”
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 had a stand-up #1 second weekend in theaters both here and overseas, Rocket-ing to a $529 million take worldwide.
Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.
(WASHINGTON) — In a long-awaited report, special counsel John Durham is slamming the FBI for actions agents took during the 2016 probe scrutinizing then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.
Durham’s final report examining the origins of the investigation into former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and its ties to Russia brings to a close a four-year probe that failed to produce any major convictions despite the expectations pushed by Trump and his allies.
The Justice Department and FBI “failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law,” Durham concluded in his report, according to an executive summary reviewed by ABC News.
Durham was tasked in late 2020 by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate the origins of the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” probe of the Trump campaign that was launched in July 2016.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Given that their latest album is a three-part rock opera, it would be hard not to call The Smashing Pumpkins ambitious. During an interview with Apple Music, frontman Billy Corgan shares that his ultimate ambition for the Pumpkins is to be “standing on the top of the heap of our generation.”
In achieving that goal, Corgan feels that Kurt Cobain was his “greatest opponent.”
“I will go down always as saying Kurt was the most talented guy of our generation,” Corgan says of the late Nirvana icon. “Kurt had so much talent, it’s, like, frightening. It was like a John Lennon level of talent … or Prince.”
“But Kurt’s not here, sadly,” Corgan continues. “So I looked around, I was, like, ‘Alright, well, I could beat the rest of them for sure.'”
Later in the interview, Corgan says, “When Kurt died I cried, because I lost my greatest opponent.”
The Smashing Pumpkins’ three-act rock opera, ATUM, is out now.
David Lee Roth continues to baffle fans. The former Van Halen frontman has posted another bizarre dancing video, this time to Annie Lennox’s “Little Bird.”
The clip shows an always smiling Roth in a bright yellow suit prancing around with a flag, a cane, a sword, a trombone, bullhorns and cymbals.
This is far from the first strange video Roth has shared. He previously posted videos of him dancing to his cover of Wilson Pickett‘s “She’s Looking Good” and another featuring Daddy Yankee’s “Con Calma.” There was also another strange clip soundtracked to Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places” that featured him, a mannequin, a statue of a dog and what appears to be a fast-food burger.
(FARMINGTON, N.M.) — At least three civilians were killed and two officers were hospitalized after a suspect opened fire in Farmington, New Mexico, before officers shot and killed the alleged gunman, police said Monday.
The Farmington Police Department, New Mexico State Police and U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives responded to the scene.
The Farmington Municipal School District issued an alert on its Facebook page stating that Apache and McKinley elementary schools, Central Kitchen and the CATE Center were under lockdown until further notice. Officials said all of the children and staff were safe.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(OAHU, Hawaii) — Hawaiian kayak fisherman Scott Haraguchi found himself in a miniaturized scene from “Jaws” when a tiger shark attacked his kayak about a mile off the coast of Oahu.
Haraguchi captured dramatic video of the incident on his GoPro camera, which he had been running to record his fishing trip.
“I heard a whooshing sound that sounded like a boat heading towards me without the motor, and I looked up and I saw this big wide brown thing which my brain thought was a turtle, but then I got slammed by it and realized that it was a tiger shark,” Haraguchi told ABC affiliate KITV.
The video shows a large tiger shark stealthily approaching the bow of Haraguchi’s kayak before opening its mouth to bite the kayak’s left side.
Haraguchi told KITV that he suspects the attack occurred after the shark mistook his bright yellow kayak for an injured seal, which Haraguchi said he noticed the same day.
“I am thinking that the shark actually disabled and wounded the seal, let it die or was waiting for it to die, came back and thought I was the seal, and attacked me instead,” he said.
Despite the terrifying encounter, Haraguchi continued fishing after the incident. The shark left minor bite marks on his fishing-rigged kayak, which was otherwise unscathed.
“I realize that life is short, time is short on earth, make the most of it, be nice to people, all that stuff,” Haraguchi said, reflecting on the incident.
Shark attacks remain uncommon in the United States, despite a recent resurgence of great white sharks off the coast of New England. The likelihood of a fatal shark attack is 1 in 4,332,817, compared to more common fatal incidents stemming from drowning (1 in 1,134) or airline/space-related incidents (1 in 5,051), according to a database maintained by the University of Florida.
Hawaii’s Division of Aquatic Resources has recorded four shark attacks on the islands since the start of 2023, including two involving tiger sharks.
The Hawaii incident closely follows a Florida incident on May 11 where a 13-year-old girl fought off a shark that bit her several times.
SZA‘s “Kill Bill” is spending another week on Billboard charts, holding its #2 spot on the Hot 100. It’s also keeping the #1 spot on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Hot R&B Songs lists, where its been for 21 and 22 weeks, respectively.
The feat on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart leads to another history-making moment for SZA’s single: Billboard reports “Kill Bill” now has the longest command as the #1 song in the chart’s history, tying with Lil Nas X‘s “Old Town Road” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus.
Toosii also had a highlight on a Billboard chart, earning his first top 10 hit with “Favorite Song.” With 28.5 million in airplay audience, 20.7 million streams and 3,000 sold, the single went from #11 to #8 on the Hot 100 and dominates all Hot Rap Songs for a second week. The accomplishment comes days after Toosii dropped the remix featuring Khalid.
SZA’s “Kill Bill” appears on her sophomore effort, SOS, released back in December. Toosii’s song will likely be on his forthcoming album, Naujour, due out June 2.
