Whenever they decide to make a Måneskin biopic years from now, the band members are going to have to agree on the story of how they learned about their first Grammy nomination.
Speaking with ABC Audio, frontman Damiano David maintains he was the first to hear that the Italian rockers had scored a Best New Artist nod for the 2023 Grammys, since he was the “only one awake” when the nominations were announced earlier this month.
“These three beautiful guys were still sleeping,” David says of bassist Victoria De Angelis, guitarist Thomas Raggi and Ethan Torchio. De Angelis, however, claims that’s not true, protesting, “We didn’t know the exact timing.”
“They were still in their rooms, OK, let’s say that,” David concedes.
Whoever may or may not have been sleeping certainly woke up when David learned the news and began “swearing in Italian” and “banging on [their] walls.”
“I remember that Damiano was literally, like, screaming …’Oh, yes, yes, yes!'” Raggi laughs. “I said, ‘What the f*** has happened?'”
The Best New Artist nod comes after Måneskin broke out by winning the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest. Prior to that, they’d released two albums; their viral cover of The Four Seasons‘ “Beggin'” dates back to 2017.
As for whether they feel like “new” artists, David replies, “For this part of the world, yeah.”
“Globally, yes, we’re new,” Torchio adds.
The 2023 Grammy Awards will take place February 5 in Los Angeles.
Most fans of Dua Lipa know that she’s of Albanian descent, but was born in the U.K. Now, though, she can officially say she’s an Albanian: The country has granted her citizenship.
The Albanian Daily Newsreports that Albanian president Bajram Begaj granted Dua citizenship in honor of the fact that she’s made the country famous worldwide through her celebrity and her music. She took her oath of citizenship at city hall in Albania’s capital, Tirana. She posted photos and video of the event on social media.
“Thank you President Bajram Begaj and Mayor @erionveliaj for this honour,” she wrote on Instagram.
The honor came ahead of Albania’s 110th anniversary of independence from the Ottoman Empire, which is being celebrated on Monday. Dua plans to mark the occasion by performing in the main square of Tirana tonight: It’ll be the final concert of her Future Nostalgia tour.
Dua was born in London to Kosovo Albanian parents. After she became famous, she and her father, who’s also a musician, co-founded the Sunny Hill Foundation, which stages annual concerts in her native Kosovo to raise funds for those in need.
Jon Bon Jovi and his son Jesse have made a success of their rosé brand Hampton Water without using Jon’s music to promote the wine, something they don’t ever plan on doing.
During a Q&A with Daily Mail Australia, Jon was asked why they didn’t go with a name like “’bed of rosé,” a nod to his song “Bed of Roses,” and he had a strong opinion about it.
“[We thought] if we were going to do this, we were going to make sure we did it right,” Jon explained. “There’s no family name on the label, there’s nothing to do with any song titles on the label because we needed to respect the profession, if we were going to do this we had to take it seriously.”
He added, “We worked very hard every day to garner the respect of the industry and to learn and that’s all we’re doing. So the last thing we are going to do is be a celebrity brand. It’s a family business.”
As for how they come up with the name, Jesse shares that one night when he was hanging out with his dad, he offered him “one last glass of ‘pink juice’,” to which Jesse responded, “no one calls it ‘pink juice’ anymore, you’re out in the Hamptons, it’s Hampton Water.” His dad instantly loved the name, with Jesse noting, “Right then and there Hampton Water was born and we’ve been working hard at it ever since.”
(MIAMI) — Star NFL wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr was “removed” from an American Airlines flight in Miami after the flight’s crew expressed concern over the football player’s health, according to police.
Officers from the Miami-Dade Police Department were dispatched to a medical emergency on an American Airlines flight Sunday at around 9:30 a.m., the department said in a statement.
As members of the flight crew tried to wake Beckham to fasten his seat belt prior to departure, “he appeared to be coming in and out of consciousness,” according to the statement.
The flight attendants then called 911 due to concerns that Beckham was “seriously ill” and that his condition could worsen during the five-hour flight to Los Angeles, police said.
When officers arrived, Beckham allegedly refused several requests to exit the plane, police said. After the aircraft was deplaned, Beckham followed requests by officers to exit the plane “without incident,” according to authorities.
“Mr. Beckham was escorted to the non-secure area of the terminal by the officers where he made other arrangements,” police said.
According to a statement by American Airlines, Flight 1228 returned to the gate before takeoff “due to a customer failing to follow crew member instructions and refusing to fasten their seatbelt.”
The flight departed at 10:54 a.m. after “the customer was removed,” according to American Airlines.
Beckham, posting on Twitter later in the morning, appeared to express disbelief over the incident.
“Never in my life have I experienced what just happened to me,” he tweeted. “I’ve seen it all.”
A representative for Beckham did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Beckham, who is recovering from an ACL injury, is currently a free agent and is not on an NFL roster. The wide receiver was the New York Giants’ first-round draft pick in 2014 and has also played with the Cleveland Browns and Los Angeles Rams.
(BENSALEM, Penn.) — A Pennsylvania teen has been charged with murder after he allegedly confessed over Instagram to fatally shooting another child, according to police.
The Bensalem Police Department received a 911 call Friday afternoon about a possible homicide, with the caller detailing an Instagram video chat she received from a friend, according to a police press release.
In the chat, the teen stated that he “had just killed someone” before flipping the camera around and showing the legs and feet of someone covered in blood, police said. He then asked for assistance with disposing the body, according to police.
The caller told police that the teen who sent the message lived at the Top of the Ridge trailer park in Bensalem, the release states. When officers arrived, the teen ran out of the back of a trailer, and he was later arrested about a mile away on Newport Mews Drive and Groton Drive, police said.
Officers who entered the trailer observed a girl on the floor of the bathroom dead from an apparent gunshot wound, according to authorities. There were also “substantial steps” taken to clean up the crime scene, investigators said.
The victim’s identity and age have not been released, other than that she is a juvenile.
The suspect, 16-year-old Joshua Cooper, is being charged as an adult for criminal homicide, possessing instruments of crime and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, police said.
He attended a preliminary arraignment Friday night where he was denied bail, online court records show. It is unclear whether he entered a plea.
Cooper is being held at the Edison Juvenile Detention Center, police said. His arraignment has been scheduled for Dec. 7, according to online records.
An attorney for the teen was not listed on online court records. Instagram did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Investigators are asking anyone with more information on the case to call the Bensalem Police Department.
(COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.) — One of the two men credited as heroes for stopping the Colorado Springs gunman as he searched for more victims, has spoken from his hospital bed.
U.S. Navy Petty Officer, Second Class, Thomas James helped U.S. Army veteran Richard Fierro subdue the alleged gunman, 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, after Aldrich stormed LGBTQ nightclub Club Q in Colorado Springs on Nov. 19. The mass shooting claimed the lives of five people and injured more than a dozen, according to law enforcement.
After Fierro confronted Aldrich, yanking him from behind and causing him to fall, James aided in fighting with Aldrich to make sure he could not reach the firearms he had dropped, Fierro told ABC News last week.
“At that moment, me, Thomas, … we’re all trying to keep everybody alive,” Fierro said. “… everybody was a hero that day.”
As of Sunday, James was still recovering from his injures at the Centura Penrose Hospital in stable condition.
In a statement released from the hospital, James said during the chaos of the shooting he “simply wanted to save the family I found.”
“If I had my way, I would shield everyone I could from the nonsensical acts of hate in the world, but I am only one person,” he said.
James continued, saying that he and his community have come “a long way from Stonewall,” the New York City bar that was the site of the 1969 riots that launched the Gay Rights Movement.
“Bullies aren’t invincible,” James said.
James said his thoughts are with those who were killed and injured at Club Q, adding that “pain and loss have been all too common these past few years.”
“To the youth I say be brave,” he said. “Your family is out there. You are loved and valued. So when you come out of the closet, come out swinging.”
One of the club’s regulars who was injured in the shooting, Ed Sanders, told ABC News from his hospital bed last week that he looks forward to returning to the club after he recovers, describing it as a place he called home for a long time.
Another club regular who was near the DJ booth when he heard the gunshots and subsequent screams, told ABC News that Club Q is a “safe space” for the LGBTQ community.
“Coming here, this is one of the first places that I felt accepted to be who I am,” he said. “…It’s supposed to be a safe space and the community shouldn’t have to go through something like this.”
(DENVER) — Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said Sunday that he is considering reforms to his state’s “red flag” law after this month’s mass shooting in Colorado Springs at Club Q, an LGBTQ venue.
The alleged shooter’s access to an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle has been thrust into the spotlight after it was revealed that the suspect, who is 22, was arrested last year and accused of threatening their mother with explosives.
Still, the state’s red flag law, which allows for family or law enforcement to petition a judge to revoke an individual’s access to firearms, was not used, Polis said.
“We’re certainly going to take a hard look at why [the] red flag law wasn’t used … what can be used to better publicize, make available, add different parties to make sure that it’s used when it should be used,” Polis said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The governor, a Democrat, defended the legislation, which some conservatives have criticized as ineffective and vulnerable to abuse by the government.
“That law was successfully used several 100 times. And I know that it’s prevented self-harm and violence in our state. And we need to make sure more people are aware of what it can do,” Polis added on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Among the changes being considered is expanding who can petition a judge under the law, Polis said.
“What I think we’re going to look at in Colorado is potentially expanding that, for instance, so [district attorneys] can also seek extreme risk protection orders,” Polis said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
He said that in last year’s case, involving the suspect’s mother, neither she nor the local sheriff pursued an order under the red flag law.
The suspect in the Nov. 19 shooting, which killed 5 people at the LGBTQ club and injured many others, legally purchased the rifle before the attack, authorities have said.
Patrons of the club tackled the suspected shooter before law enforcement arrived.
Appearing on “Face the Nation,” Polis said there had been some media reports that one of the suspect’s firearms was a so-called “ghost gun,” referring to privately made weapons that aren’t tracked by a serial number.
“All of these facts will emerge in the coming days and weeks. Obviously, right now our heart is with the victims, five people who lost their lives, their families, dozens of others injured and, of course, many traumatized,” Polis said.
The suspect is facing five counts of murder and five counts of bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury, which is Colorado’s hate crime law. The suspect has not yet entered a plea.
The mass shooting has reignited calls for stricter gun laws, including President Joe Biden’s push for what he called an assault weapons ban, which faces an uphill climb in gaining the necessary support to pass through Congress.
Polis said Sunday that the response to the shooting needs to be “national,” noting fewer laws in neighboring states, and indicated he’s open to measures beyond gun legislation.
“Of course it’s about mental health. Of course it’s about gun policy. Of course it’s about anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. It’s about all these things,” he said on “Meet the Press.”
Asked directly on “Face the Nation” if he would back Biden’s latest call for a ban, Polis said there needed to be a wide-ranging discussion — on mental health, discrimination, red flag and ghost gun laws and more.
(HONG KONG) — Chinese President Xi Jinping is facing the greatest challenge to his signature zero-COVID strategy as unprecedented anti-lockdown protests have spread across the country over the weekend, popping up in major cities like Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan and even the capital Beijing.
Anger stemming from a deadly apartment fire Thursday night in the far western city of Urumqi in China’s Xinjiang region that killed 10, including a 3-year-old child, have brought Chinese citizens out to the streets calling for an end to lockdowns. Some are even crying for the Communist Party and Xi himself to step down.
According to local officials, the deadly fire was caused by a faulty power strip that caught fire on the 15th floor of a high-rise apartment, but it took the fire department over three hours to put out the flames.
Videos of the blaze went viral on Chinese social media, showing firetrucks unable to get close to the flames. Many across the city questioned whether COVID restrictions had gotten in the way of first responders and left people trapped inside unable to flee.
The authorities denied this, but anger was already brewing as much of Xinjiang, including its regional capital Urumqi, had been under lockdown for over 100 days, since August.
On Friday night, videos emerged of hundreds Urumqi citizens pushing through the lockdowns around their residential compounds and marching towards the local government, demanding them to lift the lockdown. Social media videos showed crowds, wrapping themselves in patriotism as protection, marching through the frigid night alternatively singing the Chinese national anthem, “March of the Volunteers,” and the socialist hymn “The Internationale.”
Hours after the crowds confronted the city officials, the Urumqi city government suddenly announced they would finally lift lockdowns in “low-risk” neighborhoods and restart public transportation Monday.
While Urumqi residents may have gotten some of their demands met, the deadly fire set something off across China, becoming a focal point of public anger towards the harsh COVID restrictions.
The late-Chinese leader Mao Zedong famously said, “a single spark can start a prairie fire.” The “spark” of the Urumqi fire spread beyond the Chinese internet faster than censors could catch up, and by Saturday night, spontaneous protests and vigils popped up across the countries in college campuses and major cities.
This was prominent in Shanghai, where many residents still harbor fresh memories of their messy two-month lockdown earlier this year.
Hundreds of angry Shanghai residents gathered on consecutive nights over the weekend symbolically on Middle Urumqi Road in the tony former French Concession neighborhood, lighting candles and cursing zero-tolerance COVID measures with some openly daring to chant, “Communist Party step down” and “Step down, Xi Jinping, step down.”
Police officers mostly let the crowd disperse Saturday night but made arrests in early morning hours of some of the remaining protesters.
On Sunday, the protests spread to more cities including Beijing, which was entering a de-facto lockdown dealing with a fresh outbreak.
Hundreds of students gathered outside the main dining hall of Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University, which happens to be Xi’s alma mater, raising blank sheets of paper to decry the growing censorship and calling for “freedom of speech.” It was scene unseen on college campuses in China since the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989.
The blank-sheet protests were seen again near the Liangmaqiao diplomatic district, close to the U.S. and South Korean embassies in Beijing Sunday night, accompanied with cries of “no PCR tests, only freedom.”
The scenes were repeated across the country from the first COVID epicenter of Wuhan to the tech center of Hangzhou to the far-flung and usually laidback backpacker hub of Dali in southwestern China.
Adding to the national frustration, many across the country have been glued to the Qatar World Cup games on China’s state broadcaster, complete with cutaways of the raucous maskless crowds, leading to sarcastic discussions online whether China was “not the same planet” as Qatar.
By Sunday’s game between Japan and Costa Rica, CCTV Sports stayed on close-up shots of the players, referees and coaches when the ball was not in play instead of showing the maskless fans in the stands.
On Nov. 11, Beijing had issued new guidelines to improve COVID measures, promising to lessen the impact of their restrictions. It was initially taken to be a signal that Beijing was laying the groundwork to open up.
Record outbreaks across the country, however, have snapped many cities shut again. Most local jurisdictions are in charge of their own COVID enforcement and the officials’ jobs are on the line if they mismanage an outbreak, leading them to err on the side of harsher measures no matter the effect on residents.
For nearly three full years, China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” strategy meant one infection is too much.
By Sunday night, some city governments were tweaking their restrictions in real time. As the protesters gathered in Liangmaqiao, Beijing officials said they lifted lockdowns on 75 neighborhoods and announced new guidelines for enforcement that included no snap-lockdown lasting more than 24 hours.
While China’s record daily case numbers are not high by international standards, running 39,906 cases Sunday with no new deaths, the Japanese investment bank Nomura estimates that more than 21.1% of China’s total GDP is under lockdown, on par with the economic impact of Shanghai’s lockdown in the spring.
China, in a way, is a victim of its own success. The zero-COVID policy undoubtedly saved lives during the pandemic, with only 5,232 official COVID deaths over nearly three years, but has also isolated much of the Chinese population from any type of natural immunity.
For Xi Jinping and the Chinese government, it remains a question of which would cause more instability: loosening up and letting a COVID “exit wave” quickly cause up to hundreds of thousands of deaths and overwhelm the national health system in the very best-case scenario presented by some health officials, or tolerate the whack-a-mole of still-sporadic and unorganized protests across the country.
For a country that spends more on public domestic security than on their military, the answer is still on the side of zero-COVID. But as the anger spreads, many believe time may not be on zero-COVID’s side.
(WASHINGTON) — A spokesman for President Joe Biden is sharply criticizing former President Donald Trump for having dinner with white nationalist Nick Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago club last week.
“Bigotry, hate, and antisemitism have absolutely no place in America – including at Mar-A-Lago. Holocaust denial is repugnant and dangerous, and it must be forcefully condemned,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement.
Trump met with Fuentes while hosting rapper and designer Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, at his resort last Tuesday, ABC News previously reported.
Fuentes has a history of racist, sexist and antisemitic comments, including apparent skepticism about the Holocaust, and has been banned on all major social media platforms.
Tuesday’s dinner lasted about two hours and was attended by Fuentes, Ye — who recently lost major business deals over his own antisemitic remarks — and Florida Republican political operative Karen Giorno.
The White House’s denunciation of the Mar-a-Lago dinner adds to a growing chorus of critics, including some Republicans.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, an erstwhile Trump ally, told The New York Times it was “another example of an awful lack of judgment from Donald Trump, which, combined with his past poor judgments, make him an untenable general election candidate for the Republican Party in 2024.”
Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seemingly distanced himself from figures like Fuentes when he tweeted on Saturday that “anti-Semitism is a cancer. … We stand with the Jewish people in the fight against the world’s oldest bigotry.” (He didn’t reference Trump by name.)
And in a statement to The Washington Post, the Republican Jewish Coalition called on “all political leaders to reject their messages of hate and refuse to meet with” Ye and Fuentes.
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, spoke even more bluntly.
“For Donald Trump to dine with notorious white supremacists and unrepentant bigots, I think at a minimum it’s clarifying. He is trying to make America hate again and running arguably the most unapologetic white nationalist presidential campaign we’ve ever seen,” Greenblatt said on CNN.
In a series of statements, Trump played down Fuentes’ involvement, insisting he didn’t know who Fuentes was before they met and that he was unaware Fuentes would be joining the meal.
“This past week, Kanye West called me to have dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Shortly thereafter, he unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about,” Trump said in one statement on Friday.
In a subsequent statement, he said that Ye had asked for the meeting for “very much needed ‘advice'” and brought “3 people, two of which I didn’t know.”
Trump recently announced he is running for president in 2024. Ye, who launched a longshot third-party bid of his own in the 2020 race, has also claimed he is running in 2024.
A source at the dinner previously told ABC News that during the meeting, Ye asked Trump to be his vice president. The rapper has often voiced support for Trump and met with him in the Oval Office while Trump was president.
In a video released on Twitter, Ye said their dinner became heated when he and Trump discussed politics. He contended that Trump was “really impressed with Nick Fuentes.”
In his social media statements, Trump said he and Ye “got along great” and that Ye “expressed no anti-Semitism.”
Biden has refrained from commenting on the dinner but suggested he had strong feelings. He was asked about it while out shopping in Nantucket off the coast of Massachusetts on Saturday afternoon.
“You don’t want to hear what I think,” he replied.
ABC News’ Ahmad Hemingway, Olivia Rubin and Will Steakin contributed to this report.
(ATLANTA) — One person is dead and five others are injured after a shooting that took place near Atlantic Station on Saturday evening in Atlanta, the Atlanta Police Department said.
One male was pronounced deceased on the scene and five other victims were shot and later transported to nearby hospitals, Atlanta Police Lt. Germain Dearlove said in a press conference Saturday night. The extent of their conditions was not specified.
A group of people were escorted off of Atlantic Station property by off-duty Atlanta police officers and station personnel at about 8 p.m., police said. They were juveniles, said Dearlove, and were removed for “unruly behavior” along with curfew violations. Police believe that the victims were between the ages of 15 and 21.
Once the group was escorted off the property, a dispute occurred near Atlantic Station, which led to the shooting, said Dearlove. The reason for the dispute is currently under investigation.
Atlantic Station is a major retail and recreation area in midtown Atlanta and includes a sprawling mixed-use development. The neighborhood has seen periodic incidents of gun violence.
Police are looking to identify the parties involved, as preliminary information suggests this dispute was between two groups, with two possible shooters, said Dearlove.
Authorities are not sure how many shots were fired at this time.
