(WARSAW, Poland) — President Joe Biden will address the world on Tuesday from Warsaw, Poland, just days ahead of the one-year mark of Russia’s violent invasion of Ukraine.
“His remarks will speak specifically to the conflict in Ukraine, but they will also speak to the larger contest between those aggressors who are trying to destroy fundamental principles and those democracies who are pulling together to try to uphold them,” said national security adviser Jake Sullivan in an earlier call with reporters. “You will hear in this speech vintage Joe Biden. The president has believed passionately in the themes he will discuss tonight for decades.”
Sullivan said there will not be any new proposals to come out of his remarks.
Biden’s speech comes hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed Russia’s parliament, announcing the country would stop participating in the New START nuclear arms treaty with the U.S., the last remaining major arms control agreement between the two countries.
Putin said that Russia is not withdrawing from the treaty for now, but is suspending it, saying the war in Ukraine means it is not possible to allow American inspectors to visit Russian nuclear sites as agreed under the treaty.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, reacting to the announcement in Greece, told reporters the decision was “really unfortunate and very irresponsible, but we’ll be watching closely.”
While Putin didn’t mention Biden by name in is speech, it’s unclear if Biden will do the same.
In Warsaw, Biden met earlier with Polish President Andrzej Duda on Tuesday to discuss cooperation between Washington and Warsaw to aid Kyiv, particularly over Poland’s role as a key staging ground for military and financial aid flowing to Ukraine. Duda publicly thanked Biden for visiting Ukraine.
Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv on Monday, marking the first time an American president entered a warzone with no active U.S. military presence, where he saw first-hand some of the devastation caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
There, Biden told Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the U.S. would support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”
Biden first landed in Poland late Sunday, according to reporters traveling with him, then set off for to Ukraine for his roughly five-hour visit with Zelenskyy.
“One year later, Kyiv stands and Ukraine stands. Democracy stands,” Biden said alongside Ukraine’s leader on Monday. “The Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you.”
The one-year mark of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine falls on Friday.
(PHILADELPHIA) — An 18-year-old “tussled” with Temple University police officer Christopher Fitzgerald before the teenager allegedly gunned down the officer and fled in a stolen car, according to Philadelphia authorities.
The shooting unfolded on Saturday evening, after Fitzgerald saw three men in masks in an area where there have been a series of robberies and carjackings, Philadelphia Police Homicide Unit Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom said. Fitzgerald was alone at the time, according to the university.
When Fitzgerald tried to conduct a “pedestrian investigation,” the three men fled on foot, and Fitzgerald radioed to say he was chasing them, Ransom said at a news conference Tuesday.
Fitzgerald caught up with one of the men, 18-year-old Miles Pfeffer, Ransom said. Fitzgerald told Pfeffer to “go to the ground,” and video showed the two “tussle,” according to Ransom.
Pfeffer allegedly pulled out a gun and shot the officer, Ransom said. After Fitzgerald fell to the ground, the gunman fired several more shots, Ransom said.
The suspect tried to take Fitzgerald’s handgun, Ransom said. After he was unsuccessful, he ran away and allegedly carjacked a driver, telling the victim, “Gimme the car or I will kill you,” Ransom said.
A police corporal who heard Fitzgerald’s radio call and heard the gunshots saw two young men fleeing the area, Ransom said. She ordered those young men, a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old, to stop, and they were detained and interviewed, Ransom said. Interviews from the 16-year-old and 17-year-old — who did not have guns on them — led authorities to Pfeffer, police said.
On Sunday, Pfeffer was arrested on charges including murder and robbery, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said.
Fitzgerald, a father of five, was fatally shot in the face and upper torso.
He is the first Temple officer to be killed in the line of duty.
Fitzgerald joined Temple’s police department in October 2021, according to Jennifer Griffin, Temple University’s director of public safety.
Through tears, Griffin said Tuesday, “His father, a former Philadelphia police commander and current chief, has shared that he was proud to be a police officer, but that he was exceptionally proud and loved being a Temple University police officer.”
“There are no words to express how heartbroken we are,” Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said. “I’m outraged by this and every senseless act of violence.”
(LONDON, U.K) — Some of Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s books will be getting updates to be more inclusive, progressive and more acceptable to today’s readers, according to The Roald Dahl Story Company, which owns the rights to the books.
The celebrated children’s book author was the mastermind behind bestsellers such as “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “James and the Giant Peach,” “Matilda” and “The BFG.”
Phrases like “Mothers and fathers” in Dahl’s “Matilda,” first published in 1988, could be replaced with “parents” while some descriptions of “fat” characters could be edited or removed entirely. Description of women’s jobs are also subject to change.
“It’s not unusual to review the language used alongside updating other details,” a spokesman for The Roald Dahl Story Company, which was purchased by Netflix in 2020, told ABC News, adding, “Our guiding principle throughout has been to maintain the storylines, characters, and the irreverence and sharp-edged spirit of the original text.”
The British newspaper The Telegraph was first to report the changes.
The new development has sparked backlash from the literary community, with author Salman Rushdie writing on Twitter, “Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd censorship. Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed.”
PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel weighed in on the growing controversy, writing in part in a Twitter thread, “The problem with taking license to re-edit classic works is that there is no limiting principle. You start out wanting to replace a word here and a word there, and end up inserting entirely new ideas (as has been done to Dahl’s work).”
Author Matthew Dennison, who wrote the biography “Roald Dahl: Teller of the Unexpected,” added, “If you soften or make bland some of those choices of language then perhaps you undermine the badness of the so-called bad characters, which pulls the rug from under the plot. So I think it is perfectly possible that changes to Dahl’s wording actually somehow shrink the impact of the stories, make the stories less powerful.”
The language within Dahl’s works were reviewed in partnership with publisher Puffin Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, and Inclusive Minds, a collective with a mission to make children’s literature more inclusive, diverse and accessible. Inclusive Minds said the changes were “small and carefully considered,” according to The Associated Press.
Although his works have been revered and loved by young readers, fans have had to reckon with Dahl, who died in 1990, and his works over the years. The author made antisemitic remarks during his lifetime and his family and estate have apologized for them in the past.
Miley Cyrus‘ “Flowers” dominated the BillboardHot 100 for a fifth straight week and extended its record as her longest-running #1 song.
The song debuted on the top of the chart after it was released last month. As of this week, it’s the most-heard song on radio stations across the country. The outlet estimates the song made 85.8 million airplay audience impressions over the past week. It is also the Hot 100’s top Airplay Gainer for a third week in a row.
“Flowers” has snagged the #1 spot on Billboard‘s Radio Songs chart and is now Miley’s first track to ever hit the top spot. The song spent the prior week at #4 and is now the song with the fastest climb to #1 in seven years. The last song to enjoy that quick of a jump was Justin Timberlake‘s 2016 hit “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” — which also took five weeks to get to #1.
Interestingly enough, only three other songs launched to the top of the Radio Songs chart in five weeks or less: Adele‘s “Hello,” “Survivor” by Destiny’s Child and TLC‘s “No Scrubs.” Billboard says “Hello” took the least amount of weeks to get to #1 and topped the chart in 2015 after just four weeks.
Fans streamed “Flowers” 33.7 million times over the past week and also bought 22,000 additional copies. On Spotify, the song remains the #1 leader on its Weekly Top Songs chart and continued its reign on its Daily Top Songs Global ranking.
According to the platform, the song has amassed over 508 million streams since it was released on January 12.
(Afghanistan) — Like many teachers, Salma cares for children that aren’t biologically hers.
As co-director of the Salam Cafe in Kabul, Salma was able to provide a refuge for some of Afghanistan’s poorest children — tens of thousands of whom have been forced onto the streets, according to UNICEF estimates, where they often have to beg for money to help pay for food for their families.
Salam Cafe, a nonprofit that focuses on children in poverty, has been a safe place just for kids, where they can rest during the day, get a hot meal and have access to books.
The organization has also helped educate children as well as give their families tools to farm and provide for themselves.
And then the Taliban tore Salma away from her work. (ABC News agreed not to use Salma’s last name because of safety concerns.)
The Taliban, which took over Afghanistan’s national government after a major offensive in 2021, announced in late December that women can no longer work with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which encompass many key aid groups. Without their support, women and children are left hungry, cut off from employment and education.
Taliban officials cited “serious complaints” that some of the women working with the NGOs weren’t wearing the proper head coverings, according to the Associated Press.
The Taliban has also forbidden formal education for all girls after sixth grade, reversing a previous promise after seizing the national government.
Together, those restrictions effectively keep women and girls away from Salam Cafe. It is now run only by male staff.
“That day, when we closed the cafe for girl kids, all of them cried a lot. All the girls [were] so sad,” Salma said.
NGOs in Afghanistan provide most of the employment opportunities for women, according to Save the Children. Large organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross provide medical care while other organizations like Salam Cafe focus on the needs of specific children and families.
Without women working for NGOs, aid groups can’t help those who may be intimidated by male workers, advocates say.
The president and CEO of Save the Children, Janti Soeripto, said that when she’s visited Afghanistan, she focused on severe malnutrition in children and saw hospitals where Afghan women would only let other women examine them.
“It’s simply not possible to do our work effectively and safely if we can’t do that with women,” Soeripto said. She has said that about 16,000 Afghan women were working for NGOs. While there are some exceptions for the women to keep working, related to health care and education, according to the U.N., other concerns remain.
Soeripto said she recently spoke to Taliban leaders to push for more access to women for NGOs. Salam Cafe’s sponsor, Canadian-American Jasmin Mouflatd, said that this combination of restrictions on women is forcing them into poverty because there are hardly any kinds of jobs the Taliban will approve.
Salma no longer being able to educate girls with the cafe has been difficult, too, Mouflatd said.
“Salma is the glue that holds everything together. She is the one that will send invoices at 2 to 1 a.m. her time,” Mouflatd said, adding, “If she was somewhere like in America … she would be an asset to any company.”
Afghanistan is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, with 28 million people in need of aid out of a population of around 40 million, according to Save the Children. But Soeripto said her organization can now do less than half of all of their work in the country, compared to before Christmas, in light of the Taliban’s ban.
More broadly, Soeripto also pointed to concerning signs that even when exemptions are granted for women, “they don’t always get followed through at a local provincial level.”
The same appears to be true of girls who want to keep pursuing schooling, the U.N. found, with about 200,000 still in secondary classes around the country despite restrictions handed down from the central government.
Salma remembered one incident in which a member of the Taliban harassed her for leaving her house without a man. She said he threatened her, telling her to wear a burqa, which is a full body covering.
“They take all our rights,” Salma said. Afghan women, she said, are being erased — from tinfoil and bags covering female mannequins’ faces to the removal or banning of female teachers and role models.
Still, Salma described the resilience of women who are opening bakeries in their kitchens and hiring other women to help them make money.
“There are some women which fight against the Taliban and their behavior. They will not stop. Never they will. They will not stop their works,” she said.
Mouflatd said that widows or female head of households are struggling to make rent. Her organization, Instant Aid, is helping these women by giving them chickens so they can sell eggs or teaching them crafts like embroidery to sell internationally.
Around a quarter of households in Afghanistan are women-led, according to the U.N.
“Decades of conflict resulted in a significant amount of women being widowed,” Soeripto said.
She believes the Taliban will continue to try to push women out of public life.
“For us to just stand by and just pretend that that doesn’t happen, I think [is] unconscionable,” she said.
In a statement, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it has also been meeting with “relevant authorities, to ensure that we will be able to continue carrying on our life-saving humanitarian operations, to the benefit of the Afghan population.”
“The international community needs sustained and increased engagement with the de facto authorities of Afghanistan, because there has to be a dialogue going as to how we can understand what the challenges are, what the issues are, and then how we can respond to that,” Soeripto said.
“I’m worried that edicts … make it easy for people to say, ‘We cannot work in an environment like this so let’s put it to work somewhere else,’ and that will be incredibly short-sighted,” Soeripto said.
For Salma, her biggest hope is for the return of peaceful stability to Afghanistan’s government while women get their “human being rights, our women rights.” She asked for the international community to “help us.”
“My biggest fear is that if I raise my voice, the Taliban will kill me,” she said. “If I fight against, that the Taliban will kill me. The Taliban will use violence against me. Maybe they use violence against my husband again, my brother? They will always use violence.”
Bebe Rexha just released her new song “Heart Wants What It Wants” and apparently, hers wants to go on tour.
The singer announced Tuesday that she’s hitting up cities across North America on a 20-date summer adventure, which will take her to places like Chicago, Toronto, Philadelphia, Orlando, San Diego and more.
The tour kicks off May 31 at The Van Buren in Phoenix, Arizona, and wraps June 30 at The Wiltern in Los Angeles, California.
Fans can get ready to grab their seats on Wednesday, February 22, when presale tickets and VIP package bundles go live at 10 a.m. local venue time on her website. General tickets will be available on Friday, February 23, at 10 a.m. local venue time.
Bebe has been teasing her next music era, which kicked off with last Friday’s “Heart Wants What It Wants.” The video sees the singer transform into a ’70s bombshell to sing about whether or not her new romance will last.
Bebe’s also has been hinting that she’s been working on her third studio album, which follows 2021’s Better Mistakes. She has yet to announce a title or release date, but her team teased in a press release that it will be her “most ambitious and intoxicating body of work yet.”
At the 32 annual Grammy Awards, Bonnie Raitt took home four awards including Album of the Year for Nick of Time.
She also won for Best Pop Vocal Performance Female and Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female for the album’s title track as well as Best Traditional Blues Recording for her Johnny Lee Hooker collaboration “I’m in the Mood.”
In total, Raitt has now won 13 Grammy Awards from 30 nominations. She was also honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022.
Not much is known about the life of Wuthering Heights author Emily Brontë, but the new romantic drama Emily, out now in select theaters, aims to imagine the life she might have led.
Sex Education‘s Emma Mackey stars as the titular writer, and she tells ABC Audio the film’s central romance, while unlikely, was rooted in curiosity.
“From the offset there’s a mutual fascination,” Mackey says. “There’s an unwanted fascination between the two of them.”
Oliver Jackson-Cohen plays clergyman William Weightman, the other half of the romantic duo. He says curiosity isn’t the only thing that connects the pair.
“What seems to bind them together is this element of creativity. The fact that Weightman is suppressing, to a certain extent, his creativity for what he believes is right,” Cohen said. “Here’s Emily’s creativity kind of coming out of her … I think there’s something incredibly romantic about that.”
Writer/director Frances O’Connor says it was important for Brontë to fall for someone much her opposite, that the challenge of it allowed her to remain true to herself.
“I think it’s really helpful for Emily to fall in love with what really is the patriarchy. Someone who ultimately is never going to accept who she is,” O’Connor says. “Those parts of us that are authentic and different, a lot of the time the patriarchy doesn’t accept it. So, what do you do and how do you still maintain your voice through that?”
While the film explores grief and confinement, Mackey believes it is ultimately a story about hope.
“I think it’s a very sad film. I always feel very heartbroken after … But it is a hopeful film,” Mackey says. “All of the characters show in some way that they’re trying to fight for something and they’re trying to find their voice.”
Following his appearance in a Super Bowl commercial, Ozzy Osbourne‘s now starring in another ad.
The Prince of Darkness shows up in a spot for the new PlayStation VR2 virtual reality system. The clip finds Ozzy putting on the VR2 headset for some virtual reality fun with the game Horizon Call of the Mountain.
As you might expect, there’s a lot of yelling and swearing as the 74-year-old metal legend tries to fight off the game’s enemies, which he refers to as “dino machines.” You can watch the ad streaming now on YouTube.
Ozzy previously entered the virtual reality world during last year’s Metaverse Music Festival.
Paramore‘s new album This Is Why has debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200.
The sixth studio effort from Hayley Williams and company — and their first in six years — moved a total of 64,000 equivalent album units in its first week, 47,000 of which were traditional album sales.
This Is Why is the highest charting Paramore album since their 2013 self-titled album debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200. Billboard also reports that This Is Why is the highest charting alternative album since Red Hot Chili Peppers‘ record Unlimited Love bowed at #1 in 2022.
Along with the Billboard 200, This Is Why brought Paramore to the top of another chart with its title track, which earned the group their first #1 on the Alternative Airplay ranking.
Paramore will launch a U.S. headlining tour in support of This Is Why in May. They’re also opening two dates on Taylor Swift‘s tour in March.
