–Sporting a bold, yellow bob-like wig, rising superstar Saweetie landed on the cover of Glamour UK‘s May hair issue.
The “Icy Girl” rapper, who’s of Black and Asian descent, says it took awhile for her to learn to love her natural tresses. “I hated my hair,” she admits. “It’s naturally really kinky and curly. It’s beautiful, but I was a tomboy and was like, ‘I don’t got no time for this.'”
Saweetie says it was her tomboy tendencies that helped teach her to love her hair. “I think just me playing a lot of sports and not having the time to do my hair, and seeing how loud it was, that’s when I really started to appreciate my hair.”
Saweetie believes, like her music, hair is a form of expression. Read the full interview in the Glamour UK May Digital Issue online now.
—Janet Jackson celebrated her 56th birthday on Tuesday, May 16, but the picture she snapped with former flame Jermaine Dupri in Las Vegas over the weekend is still very much a topic of discussion.
Legendary producer Jimmy Jam and his wife, Lisa, attended the star-studded birthday celebration. Taking to IG to share images of a few of the celebs present, Lisa revealed Jackson’s ex Dupri was one of them.
Of course the blogs and fans ate the photo up, with one suggesting Dupri is “tryna sneak back in.”
–Looks like Chloe Bailey might be dropping some new music soon! The Grammy-nominated singer dropped a few song snippets on Instagram earlier this week, soliciting fans’ opinions on which she should drop next.
In the 15-minute IG Live video, she refers to the next track as the “third single,” which could mean her debut solo album will be delivered any day.
John Phillips/Disasters Emergency Committee/Getty Images for Livewire Pictures Ltd
Surprise! Ed Sheeran is now a dad of two.
The 31-year-old singer revealed on Instagram Thursday that he and wife Cherry Seaborn have welcomed their second baby girl.
“Want to let you all know we’ve had another beautiful baby girl,” Ed wrote alongside a photo of a brown knit baby blanket and white baby socks. “We are both so in love with her, and over the moon to be a family of 4 x.”
Their new baby girl joins big sister Lyra Antarctica, who was born in August 2020. They have yet to reveal the baby’s name.
Daredevil, the beloved Netflix series about Marvel Comics’ Man Without Fear, is being rebooted for Disney+, according to Variety.
Officially, Marvel Studios and Disney+ are still mum, but it’s something of a no-brainer that Charlie Cox will return as the titular hero.
Cox played blind lawyer Matt Murdoch, who moonlights as the red-suited vigilante, to such acclaim that he was brought into the Marvel Cinematic Universe fold with a scene in the blockbuster Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Similarly, Vincent D’Onofrio‘s bruising baddie Wilson Fisk/Kingpin in the original Daredevil entered the MCU with the Disney+ series Hawkeye and is expected to appear in that show’s upcoming spinoff Echo.
According to the trade, the new Daredevil series was written and will be executive produced by Matt Corman and Chris Ord, who created the USA Network’s spy series Covert Affairs.
The original Daredevil, along with the other formerly “Netflix Marvel” shows, including Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, ThePunisher, Iron Fist and the team-up series The Defenders, are available on Disney+.
The addition of the “Mature”-rated shows led the family friendly streaming service to install an age restricted viewing option, but it’s not clear whether a Daredevil reboot will follow the comics-accurate bloodiness of the Netflix show.
(NEW YORK) — Ford is urging owners of 2021 Ford Expeditions and Lincoln Navigators to park their vehicles outside and away from any structures due to a fire risk, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Thursday.
According to the recall documents, more than 39,000 Ford Expeditions and Lincoln Navigators have a defect that causes risk of “underhood fire, including while the vehicle is parked and off.”
More than 32,700 of the affected vehicles are Expeditions and over 6,300 are Lincoln Navigators. The vehicles were built between December of 2020 and April of 2021, according to a statement from Ford.
“Until further notice, owners of these affected vehicles should not park them inside – they should only be parked outside and away from homes and other structures,” the NHTSA said in a Thursday press release. “Fires have occurred in vehicles that were parked and turned off.”
Ford said it has confirmed 16 fires related to the defect. Twelve of those happened when the vehicle was off and parked, one happened while the SUV was parked and on and three of the fires happened while the car was in motion, according to Ford’s statement. Fourteen of the fires happened in rental cars. The automaker said it is aware of one injury from the defect.
Ford does not know the cause of the fire risk and at this time has no way to fix the defect. However, Ford said it is treating the issue with a “high sense of urgency” and is working to inform customers who have vehicles that may be affected.
“We are working around-the-clock to determine the root cause of this issue and subsequent remedy so that customers can continue to enjoy using their vehicles” Jeffrey Marentic, the general manager of Ford Passenger Vehicles, said in a statement. “We recognize the importance of staying in touch with our customers until we resolve this matter.”
Drivers can check to see if their vehicle is part of the recall by entering the car’s Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) at NHTSA.gov/recalls.
Back in the ’90s, Alanis Morissette may have been described as “angry,” but these days, she’s pretty chill. So chill, in fact, that she’s recorded her first-ever meditation album.
Called the storm before the calm, the album arrives on June 17. On it, the Grammy-winning star will offer listeners 11 different songs to listen to while meditating. You can listen to the first track, which is called “safety — empath in paradise,” now.
On her website, Alanis writes, “During the the last while within the pandemic i felt very inspired to write and remain connected (didn’t always work. and when it didn’t, it felt like a unique torture). all i knew was that i wanted to write a record that would offer something. and throughout the process of creating it…it became its own multi-layered life raft during a time where i felt like i might disappear and float away.”
She adds, “This album is filled with what i hope might be a safe invitation to and compatriot in your/our dropping in…i offer this first song and the entire record to match and be available for any junctures on your personal journey.”
Alanis suggests that the album can be used for “relaxation or resting or releasing or emboldening or sweaty wildness or embodying or empowering or clarifying,” and hopes that it will “serve as a catalyst, a soothing, a glimpse of awakening. an honoring. an objectivity. a wordless partner in healing. a place to land. inquire. breathe. notice.”
“May this music serve as a friend in the thawing. a permission to feel and explore while feeling connected. and supported,” she adds.
The album is also being released on the mental health app Calm.
Here’s the track listing for the storm before the calm:
“light — the lightworker’s lament”
“heart — power of a soft heart”
“explore — the other side of stillness”
“space — pause on violence”
“purification — the alchemical crunch”
“restore — calling Generation X”
“awakening — in between thoughts”
“ground — I want to live”
“safety — empath in paradise”
“mania — resting in the fire”
“vapor — amplified in stillness”
Jepayona Delita/Future Publishing via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Countries in Europe and North America are continuing to report more cases of monkeypox, but experts say the disease so far does not pose a serious risk to the public.
At least 17 infections of the rare disease have been confirmed in non-endemic areas such as the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Sweden and Italy, and dozens of possible cases are under investigation in those nations as well as in Canada and Spain.
Most cases occur when people encounter infected animals in countries where the virus is endemic — typically central and western Africa as occurred with the outbreak’s first case, reported in England on May 7 among a person who had recently traveled to Nigeria.
However, none of the remaining eight cases in the U.K had travel history and did not have contact with the patient who had visited Nigeria, according to the U.K. Health Security Agency, suggesting there is some level of community transmission.
Similarly, the first infection recorded in the U.S. was in an adult male from Massachusetts who had recently traveled to Canada, and now at least 17 cases are being investigated by Canadian authorities.
Health experts stress the risk to the public remains low and most people don’t need to be immediately fearful of contracting the illness.
“It is a virus in a very different class from COVID-19,” Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, told ABC News. “It predominantly lives in animal reservoirs so it sort of by accident gets to humans and it may cause sporadic illness or relatively small outbreaks.”
Monkeypox is a rare disease caused by the monkeypox virus, which was first identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1958 in monkeys being kept for research.
The first human case was detected in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“It’s important to note this is not a new virus,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor. “This has been around for a long while. It’s mostly endemic in parts of western Africa but you will occasionally see it in other parts of the world.”
People are typically infected by animals through a bite or a scratch or through preparation and consumption of contaminated bush meat.
The disease can also spread from person-to-person via large respiratory droplets in the air, but they cannot travel more than a few feet so two people would need to have prolonged close contact.
“It transmits through large droplets, which don’t travel very far, or through contact with lesions themselves or touching someone with bed linens or clothes or recent contact with lesions,” Doron said. “It’s not something you get without very close intimate contact, which is why it doesn’t tend to cause outbreaks.”
She added this transmission route is different from that of COVID-19, which is spread through small aerosols that can hang in the air for several minutes.
“Aerosols are not subject to gravity but large droplets, they get pulled to the ground,” Doron said. “Also, monkeypox isn’t an illness that is transmitted during the asymptomatic phase, which is what made COVID such a formidable foe.”
Monkeypox generally is a mild illness with the most common symptoms being fever, headache, fatigue and muscle aches.
Patients can develop a rash and lesions that often begin on the face before spreading to the rest of the body.
“It starts out as spots, then small blisters like you’ll see with chickenpox, then pus-filled blisters and then they scab over,” Doron explained. “It’s a long illness. It lasts a few weeks, but you can be contagious for several weeks and contagious until the blisters scab over.”
ABC News confirmed Thursday the CDC is monitoring six Americans who were on the same flight as the British patient who tested positive after traveling to Nigeria.
“They will be followed by health officials for 21 days following their last possible contact with the ill traveler,” the CDC said in a statement. “None of the six have any symptoms of monkeypox and the risk for them is very low.”
Health officials said it is likely that more cases will emerge either in the U.S. or in other countries, but that Americans should not be concerned.
“We will find more cases,” Brownstein said. “There is now heightened public awareness and clearly there will be more clinicians that will be able to recognize the symptoms.”
He continued, “But for now, there’s nothing to suggest this will have anywhere near the same global impact as COVID-19. The risk to the general public is low.”
ABC News’ Sony Salzman contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The House’s Democratic majority overcame some internal opposition to pass legislation on Thursday addressing high gas prices by cracking down on possible price gouging from oil companies.
The bill was approved along party lines in a vote of 217-207. Four Democrats — Texas’ Lizzie Fletcher, Jared Golden of Maine, Stephanie Murphy of Florida and Kathleen Rice of New York — joined all Republicans in the chamber in voting against the legislation.
The Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act, introduced by Reps. Kim Schrier, D-Wash., and Katie Porter, D-Calif., would give the president the authority to issue an energy emergency proclamation that would make it unlawful for companies to increase fuel prices to “unconscionably excessive” levels.
It would also expand the powers of the Federal Trade Commission to investigate alleged price gouging in the industry and would direct any penalties toward funding weatherization and low-income energy assistance.
“The problem is Big Oil is keeping supply artificially low so prices and profits stay high. Now I think that when the market is broken, that’s when Congress has to step in to protect American consumers,” Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a hearing on Monday. “And that’s what this bill does: It empowers the FTC to go after the gougers and empowers the agency to effectively monitor and report on market manipulation.”
Oil executives previously testified before Congress to address concerns about their prices but insisted it was the result of larger forces, including supply and demand.
The price gouging legislation faced stiff opposition from Republicans, who blame the Biden administration’s policies, including spending and pandemic-relief stimulus, for inflation. Republicans also renewed calls for more domestic energy production.
“If anybody is going to be sued for gouging, it should be the Gouger-in-Chief Joe Biden who has created this problem,” House GOP Whip Steve Scalise said on the House floor on Thursday. “Stop relying on foreign countries for our energy when we can make it here cleaner, better than anyone in the world and lower gas prices and address this problem. This bill doesn’t do it. We got to bring up the bills that actually fix the problem.”
Rep. Murphy broke with her party to join conservatives in voting against the measure, expressing concerns it didn’t address the root of the price increases.
“I think vilifying one sector doesn’t actually address the inflation issues that my constituents are facing,” Murphy told ABC News. “The possible net effect of this bill will be to actually strangle production at a time when we are desperate for additional production.”
The internal revolt came as Democrats are hoping to alleviate pain at the pump for consumers ahead of a consequential midterm election season.
“If you don’t support legislation to stop price gouging, you are for price gouging,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi told members during a whip meeting on Wednesday.
Though the legislation passed in the House, it faces a tough climb in the Senate. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., promised to bring the bill to the floor — though it has no pathway to passage without GOP support.
Lawmakers had discussed introducing other legislation to lower gas prices such as measures codifying a federal gas tax holiday. That proposal didn’t gain traction among Democratic leaders, like Pelosi, who argued consumers wouldn’t benefit.
“I think we need to start with something like this bill and see what we can do,” Rep. Porter told ABC News. “I think it is better to invest in those [gas tax holidays] through something like the infrastructure bill, which I supported.”
(NEW YORK) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent advisory committee has given the green light for Pfizer and BioNTech COVID-19 booster shots to be given to children ages 5 to 11 years old, paving the way for parents to get their children boosted as early as Friday morning.
The panel voted 11-1-1 in favor of approval. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky is expected to make the final signoff to recommend the shots shortly.
“We have the tools we need to protect these people from severe disease, and to prevent any more tragic deaths,” Walensky said during brief remarks at the beginning of the meeting. “It’s important for us to anticipate where this pandemic is moving and deploy the tools we have where they will have the greatest impact.”
Earlier this week, the Food and Drug Administration authorized the use of the booster shots among younger children to be used at least five months after completing their first round of shots.
Children over the age of 5 became eligible for vaccination against COVID-19 in November, so the first kids who were in line for their shot have now had about six months of protection.
Pfizer asked the FDA in April to authorize its booster vaccines for younger children, after it submitted data that indicated their shot was safe and generated a strong immune response.
Vaccine effectiveness after two doses against symptomatic infection “quickly declined for children and adolescents during omicron,” Dr. Ruth Link-Gelles, who leads the COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness program for the CDC’s Epidemiology Task Force, said on Thursday. A booster dose in adolescents significantly improved effectiveness — up to 71% — in the weeks and months after receiving the third dose.
Vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization after doses for children ages 5 to 11 years old hovered around 68%, to a median of 37 days after the second dose, while effectiveness stood around 51% in adolescents.
“Some waning” was evident when analyzing declining vaccine effectiveness for hospitalization in adolescents who had received two doses. However, Link-Gelles reported that there was not enough data to assess waning effectiveness in children ages 5 to 11 or the impact of boosters against hospitalization in children ages 12 to 15.
The benefits of the booster dose outweighed any known and potential risks and a booster dose can help provide continued protection against COVID-19, officials said, particularly given concerns over waning immunity.
Many panelists argued that the pandemic is not over, and continues to pose a risk to all Americans, including young children, and thus, vaccination and boosting remains critical in protecting all age groups.
“As a mother, an infectious disease specialist and a member of [the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices], my children are older than this age cohort, however, if they were still in this age cohort, I would give my children this booster,” said Dr. Camille Kotton, clinical director in the Infectious Diseases Division at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Vaccination has provided “measurable, detectable” benefits in preventing “a wide range of health outcomes, and that includes infection, emergency department visits, hospitalization and critical illness” in adults, Dr. Matthew Daley, a senior investigator at Institute for Health Research at Kaiser Permanente Colorado, said, asserting that the same is likely true in young children.
“It just wouldn’t make sense that 5- to 11-year-olds are the only group among the age eligible for whom a third dose isn’t necessary to achieve a more durable and effective immune response,” Daley said.
Panelists added that future boosting plans for children this fall are still unclear, and thus, providing families access to boosters now is a time-sensitive, and important, decision.
Ultimately, the goal of the vaccines is to prevent severe illness and death, asserted Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot, associate professor of medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases and Health Policy at Vanderbilt University, adding that the benefits of vaccinating children, to protect them against severe forms of COVID-19, are clear
“The goal is not to prevent all infections but to prevent severe illness and the data that was shown was quite good convincing that a third dose would decrease hospitalization, it would decrease MIS-C, it decreases post COVID. All of these are serious complications that children are having. And that’s why I really do believe we should be going in this direction,” Keipp Talbot said.
Some panelists expressed concern over the need for boosters in children ages 5 to 11 years old right now, given the fact that a large proportion of children have been recently infected with COVID-19 during the omicron surge.
Dr. Sarah S. Long, professor of pediatrics, Drexel University College of Medicine, asserted that with infection rates on the rise “now is not the time” to be boosting younger children.
“I think this is not the time to be giving boosts to 75% of children — I think the most of whom have had recent infections,” Long argued.
Other experts stressed that physicians and officials should still be focusing on vaccinating more children with their initial primary series, particularly given the nation’s recent increases in pediatric COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations.
To date, just 43% of eligible children, ages 5 to 17 years old, have been fully vaccinated, according to federal data. An even smaller portion — less than 30% — of children ages 5 to 11 years old have been fully vaccinated, and would thus, be eligible for a booster shot.
In January, the FDA authorized the use of a booster dose in adolescents ages 12 through 15, with 3.7 million adolescents receiving a booster dose since then, according to the CDC.
Overall, 25.7 million children over the age of 5 — about half those eligible — remain completely unvaccinated, including 18.2 million children ages 5 to 11.
“Boosters are great once they’ve got everyone their first round and I think that needs to be a priority in this,” Keipp Talbot said.
Last week, more than 93,000 additional child COVID-19 cases were reported, an increase of about 76% from two weeks ago, according to a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
The average number of pediatric hospital admission rates have increased by 70% in the last month, according to CDC data, and on average, nearly 180 virus-positive children are entering hospitals each day.
Prior to receiving the degree, the 63-year-old Rock & Roll Hall of Famer played a version of his band’s classic song “Losing My Religion,” and a video of the performance has been posted on the university’s official YouTube channel.
Mills co-founded R.E.M. while attending the University of Georgia in Athens, although he never graduated college.
Before performing at the commencement, Mike addressed Mercer’s graduating students, saying, “I am truly and deeply humbled to be standing here today … You’re about to accomplish something I never did, which is to graduate from college. So as you continue your journey, I wish you good luck and Godspeed.”
Mills plays an electric guitar while singing the song, and he was accompanied by his friend, acclaimed violinist Robert McDuffie, who founded Mercer University’s Robert McDuffie Center for Strings in the Townsend School of Music.
In presenting Mills with the honorary degree, the university’s president, William D. Underwood, said, “[T]his region has a great history of producing great musical geniuses, from Little Richard to Otis Redding to the Allman Brothers Band to Chuck Leavell and Robert McDuffie. As great as these musical geniuses have been, none of them had more impact with the genius of their work than Mike Mills.”
Mills was born in Orange County, California, and his family moved to Macon while he was still a baby. In high school, he met drummer Bill Berry, and the two began playing music together, eventually forming R.E.M. with singer Michael Stipe and guitarist Peter Buck in 1980. R.E.M. disbanded in 2011.
(NEW YORK) — America’s main nuclear deterrent glides undetected under the oceans as it carries a cargo of ballistic missiles that will hopefully never be used.
Off the coast of Hawaii, ABC News visited the USS Maine, one of 14 Ohio Class U.S. Navy submarines capable of launching nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.
Measuring two football fields in length and weighing 18,000 tons, the massive submarine carries 20 Trident 2 D5 missiles capable of striking targets up to 4,000 miles away.
Each missile is capable of holding up to 12 nuclear warheads — one reason why these submarines are able to carry about 70% of the nation’s active nuclear arsenal allowed by the New START Treaty.
“I’d say it’s the most powerful force in the world right now,” Vice Adm. Bill Houston, the commander of the U.S. Navy’s Submarine Forces, told ABC News.
But in keeping with U.S. policy, Houston could neither confirm nor deny whether there were missiles with nuclear warheads aboard the submarine.
You can see more of Martha’s rare access inside the sub and exclusive reporting on America’s nuclear defense this Sunday on a special edition of “This Week.”
Developed at the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the submarines have continued with their classified missions, serving as a key part of America’s nuclear triad that includes strategic bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) housed in the western plains states.
Recent comments by Russian leaders about their strategic nuclear capabilities following the invasion of Ukraine have shined a spotlight on America’s nuclear deterrence mission.
Houston characterized comments by Russian leaders about Russia’s nuclear weapons capability as “very dangerous,” “irresponsible” and “unprofessional.”
“It gives more meaning to this mission,” said Houston. “But we view our mission as a peace mission, purely defensive is what we do.”
He added, “And so when they saber rattle, this deterrent here is meant to prevent that from occurring.”
A main part of why Ohio Class submarines are a powerful nuclear deterrent is because they are undetectable in vast stretches of ocean, making an adversary susceptible to a retaliatory strike should it carry out a strategic attack against the United States.
To stay hidden, the submarine will surface very rarely — if at all — during what could be a months-long patrol underwater.
“This submarine, once it’s underwater, it will not be detected,” said Houston. “It is the one portion of our deterrent that will always be available if needed.”
And maintaining that deterrent means that not even senior military leaders will know where the submarine is at any given time. That’s a privilege available only to the submarine’s senior leaders.
The crew will regularly train for the unthinkable, like the launch of nuclear-armed missiles in a retaliatory strike against a country that has carried out a strategic attack against the United States.
ABC News was allowed to witness a simulated launch exercise where redundancies are an integral security measure intended to ensure the validity of a presidential order to launch missiles.
“United States policy is not to aim our missiles at any adversary or any country,” said Cmdr. Darren Gerhardt. “If we said they’re targeted, they would be pointing to the spot in the ocean. They don’t go anywhere.”
Living with the Trident missiles is also a regular part of life for the 150 sailors on the submarine.
The sailors have to maneuver their way through hallways lined by 24 missile tubes that house ICBMs. The missiles are also located near the sleeping berths.
Crew members carry out their assignments in shifts with some gathering for breakfast at 3 a.m.
With the submarine operating hundreds of feet below the surface, the crew has little awareness about what is going on in the world. At times the submarine will come up to periscope depth to receive satellite signals for updates on what’s going on in the world. But that maneuver carries risk.
“But when I do come up to periscope depth that makes me vulnerable,” said Gerhardt. “So I have to minimize the amount of times I do that.”
And when the crew returns to their families, “we’re catching up on several months’ worth of information that we missed,” Gerhardt said.
Both Houston and Gerhardt said they’re used to this life under the sea.
“I would say this is where we’re more comfortable,” said Houston. “A pilot likes to be in the air. We like to be under the sea.”
