The 1975 will be offering another preview of the band’s upcoming album, Being Funny in a Foreign Language, next week.
The latest cut is titled “All I Need to Hear,” and will premiere Wednesday, September 21.
“All I Need to Hear” will be the fourth track to be released from Being Funny in a Foreign Language, following “Part of the Band,” “Happiness” and “I’m in Love with You.”
Being Funny in a Foreign Language is the follow-up to 2020’s Notes on a Conditional Form. It’s due out October 14.
To optimize protection ahead of another pandemic winter, White House COVID coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said Friday people should consider getting the newly-updated COVID-19 booster before Halloween.
The sooner the better, Jha said, urging people to get a booster between mid-September and mid-October, “but no later than the end of October for maximum protection” ahead of the holidays, he said in an interview with ABC News following his own vaccination.
For people who have recently had COVID, Jha suggested following the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and waiting at least 90 days, or three months, before getting the updated vaccine. Other experts have suggested that waiting four to six months will allow people to mount a stronger immune response to the vaccine.
Waiting longer, Jha said, increases the chance of getting reinfected — and ultimately, “it’s very hard to time the market,” he said.
Jha, who got his updated shot on Friday morning at a clinic in Washington, D.C., alongside second gentleman Doug Emhoff, described the new vaccine as a vital lever in the forecast for this winter’s COVID spread.
While some modeling shows a potential for a large surge this winter, Jha said, others show only a “modest bump” — and the difference could be determined by how many people get an updated vaccine ahead of the colder winter months, a time when the virus has ticked up the past two years.
“If you go get these vaccines, you actually can influence what happens,” Jha said.
“There is nothing fated about what’s going to happen. If a large proportion of Americans go out and get these vaccines, it will have a significant beneficial effect on keeping infections low.”
So far, the government has made 30 million vaccines available to states for distribution, out of an overall order of around 170 million vaccines between both companies Pfizer and Moderna.
Twenty-five million vaccines have shipped out as of Friday, according to the White House, and Jha said he’s been pleased to see that states are already submitting reorders.
But the latest numbers on just how many people have actually rolled up their sleeves for a shot aren’t expected until next week, Jha said. And while the booster campaign is expected to ramp up over the coming weeks, past metrics show Americans are booster fatigued: slightly less than half of vaccinated people have gotten a first booster shot, while one-third of people over 50 have gotten a second booster shot after becoming eligible this past spring.
The newest shot, which targets both the most dominant variant, BA.4/BA.5, and the original COVID strain, carries the potential of being the only shot Americans need this year, similar to an annual flu shot, and offering greater protection against COVID because it matches the virus that’s circulating now.
While experts caution that another new variant could always buck the plan, introducing new factors like heightened spread or evasion of immune protection, Jha said the country is already in a position of giving young, healthy people one shot a year and doesn’t think even a new variant would change that.
For people under the age of 50, they last became eligible for boosters in the fall of 2021, just as omicron was gaining steam. Those people have only just become eligible for another booster shot with the introduction of the updated bivalent booster this fall — one year later.
“I feel very confident based on everything we have that for the average-risk person, even an Omicron-like variant is unlikely to lead us to suggest that [young, healthy] people are going to benefit from a second shot within a year,” Jha said. “I think that is both unrealistic and not necessary.”
That said, older people may see a faster waning of protection from their vaccines, as has been the case throughout the pandemic, warranting another shot to re-up protection sometime in the spring, Jha said.
Though there isn’t evidence from a large-scale clinical trial yet to demonstrate just how much better protection will be from the bivalent boosters, Jha said he believed there was “strong consensus” that they would be better.
He pointed to evidence on safety and efficacy about the millions of vaccines that have already been distributed, as well as a clinical trial on bivalent vaccines that targeted BA.1, an earlier omicron subvariant, which vaccine companies later forgoed in favor of the newer strains, BA.4 and BA.5.
“If you look at the totality of the evidence, everything we know about the initial shots, if you look at the way the BA.1 bivalent clinical trials, what they showed us about how it generates immune response, everything suggests that BA.5 bivalents should provide a much higher degree of protection,” Jha said.
The CDC signed off on bivalent booster shots at the beginning of September and the rollout began in earnest after Labor Day weekend. Pfizer bivalent booster are available to everyone over 12, while the Moderna bivalent booster is available to everyone over 18.
Shots for people under 12 are expected this fall, though vaccine companies must first submit data on the younger age groups to the Food and Drug Administration, which will then review the data for authorization and eventual recommendation from the CDC.
(CHARLESTON, WV) — West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice on Friday signed a bill that bans nearly all abortions in the state, days after legislators approved the ban. This makes West Virginia the second state to pass an abortion ban after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.
“I said from the beginning that if WV legislators brought me a bill that protected life and included reasonable and logical exceptions I would sign it, and that’s what I did today,” Justice said in a tweet.
Known as HB 302, the bill approved by state legislators on Tuesday prohibits the procedure at virtually every stage of pregnancy.
There are exceptions to the ban; one is an ectopic pregnancy, which is when a fertilized egg implants and grows outside of the uterus.
Physicians who perform unlawful abortions could lose their license to practice medicine and face criminal charges.
Additionally, the bill states that miscarriages and stillbirths are not considered abortions.
The Women’s Health Center of West Virginia had already halted abortion services after the bill was passed by the state legislature.
The bill passed both chambers last week, but returned to the House for a vote after an amendment by the Senate stripped a section of the bill that would see doctors imprisoned for up to 10 years if they perform abortions outside of the exceptions.
The Senate also changed the bill’s exceptions for rape and incest. In the House-backed version, rape and incest were excluded from the ban until about 14 weeks’ gestation and as long as a report is filed with a “qualified law enforcement officer.” In the Senate, the exceptions are until eight weeks’ gestation.
The bill passed by legislators requires physicians to report any abortions they perform to the commissioner of the state’s Bureau for Public Health within 15 days, including a justification for why the care was provided.
On July 25, the state legislature was initially called into a special session to consider Justice’s proposal to reduce personal income tax rates.
But that morning, as lawmakers were gaveling in, Justice amended the call and said he would also be asking lawmakers “to clarify and modernize the abortion-related laws currently existing as part of the West Virginia Code.”
“From the moment the Supreme Court announced their decision in Dobbs, I said that I would not hesitate to call a Special Session once I heard from our Legislative leaders that they had done their due diligence and were ready to act,” Justice said in a statement. “As I have said many times, I very proudly stand for life, and I believe that every human life is a miracle worth protecting.”
Guitar legend Carlos Santana and his wife, drummer Cindy Blackman Santana, have lent their talents to a new song called “It’s My Body” by the duo 2TSpark!
The song, which was written as a rallying cry for women’s reproductive rights, will be released as a digital single on Saturday, September 17. You can check out a companion video now on 2TSpark!’s official YouTube channel. The tune was co-written and sung by the duo of singer/songwriter/musicians Tracy Blackman and Tina “Bean” Blaine.
“We all hope that this video and song will help raise awareness around the globe and raise funds for organizations that are dedicated to supporting women’s rights and their reproductive freedom,” says Tracy. “After Bean and I recorded the song … my sister Cindy heard it and said she’d put down drum parts. Then my brother-in-law Carlos heard the song. He loved it, couldn’t stop playing it. Then he said he wanted to play on it, and the project took off from there.”
Adds Bean, “We wrote ‘It’s My Body’ during a marimba jam in response to the Texas abortion ban that passed in September 2021. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, we felt an urgency to share this message.”
Proceeds from the track will be donated to several organizations that support reproductive rights, including Planned Parenthood and National Organization of Women.
The video features a montage of photos and footage from pro-choice protests through the years, as well as images of women of various ages and ethnicities.
Sean Kanan has finally made it back to the Valley. The actor, known for playing the villainous Mike Barnes in The Karate Kid III, reprised the role in season 5 of Netflix’s hit series Cobra Kai. He told ABC Audio that when he got the call to return, he wasn’t surprised at all.
“I was relieved,” Kanan said. “I was thinking to myself, ‘Alright, this is season 5 here, it’s getting a little late in the game. Come on, guys, we’re in the fourth quarter here, how about putting me in!’”
While he was eager to play the character again, Kanan said he made sure he wasn’t giving a repeat performance.
“I just wanted to be sure that we brought some different colors and some different dimensions to the character, because Mike Barnes was very much a one-dimensional bad guy in the film,” Kanan said. “I wanted to make sure that I was going to come up with something that was going to be interesting on different levels.”
This thought process aligns closely with Kanan’s view of the show as a whole. He says that the Cobra Kai cast and crew “have done their level-best to make sure that what they’re doing is in no way derivative or redundant of the original films.”
All that being said, Kanan acknowledges the role nostalgia has played in the show’s success.
“You’ve got the guys my age who like it for the nostalgic factor, and then you’ve got the younger kids who like it for what’s going on with the younger kids, and, effectively, the show has become a magnet,” Kanan said. “It attracts both generations and it’s something that they can do together.”
For the cast of Black Panther, shooting the sequel without the star, the late Chadwick Boseman, was very painful.
“Every day, someone else would manifest their grief, and we’d have to come together to help soothe them and take care of them,” Winston Duke tells E! News.
Duke portrays M’Baku, leader of the Jabari tribe. In the original film, he saved the life of King T’Challa, played by Boseman, after a near fatal battle for the throne with Michael B. Jordan’s character, N’Jadaka.
“We had to overcome this grief and create something really beautiful and special, and we did,” Duke adds. “I think we accomplished that.”
The sequel picks up after the death of T’Challa, as the country of Wakanda looks to crown a new leader and new Black Panther. Most of the stars of Black Panther return for Wakanda Forever, including Angela Bassett, Lupita Nyong’o, Letitia Wright and Dania Gurira.
As previously reported, last weekend, Boseman, who died in 2020 from cancer, was named a Disney Legend.
The Disney Legends Award is given to an individual who has made an extraordinary contribution to the Disney legacy.
If you ever wondered what advice one Hollywood heartthrob would have for another, wonder no more, because Timothée Chalamet just dished on the career advice given to him by Leonardo DiCaprio.
In the cover story of the October 2022 issue of British Vogue, Chalamet, 26, shared that what DiCaprio told him was simple: “No hard drugs and no superhero movies.”
The advice came during the actors’ first meeting in 2018.
The Dune star, who makes history as the first solo man to be on the cover of British Vogue, also discussed his rise to fame, stating, “I had a delusional dream in my early teenage years to have, in my late teenage years, an acting career.”
“And in my late teenage years, working on Homeland and starting to do theatre in New York, I felt like I reduced my goal to something more realistic, which was to work in theatre and hopefully make enough money doing either a TV show or something I could sustain myself [with],” Chalamet continued. “And then it felt like every dream came true, exponentially. And then life is moving at six million miles per hour.”
The October issue of British Vogue hits newsstands September 20.
Christina Aguilera sweetly marked the 22nd anniversary of her first all-Spanish album, Mi Reflejo, and explained why the moment is so important to her.
Saluting the effort on Twitter, the Grammy winner said she was “Reflecting on this special milestone just in time for the start of #HispanicHeritageMonth.”
“22 years ago I released my Latin Debut, Mi Reflejo,” she continued. “Being able to celebrate my heritage and revisit singing in a beautiful language so close to my heart has meant so much to me.”
Christina also released a 30-second clip about the studio work, calling it “a beautiful experience and time in my life.” Flashback moments include her creating the album’s artwork and performing the record’s tracks over time.
The “Beautiful” singer reflected on the full circle moment of releasing her new all-Spanish record, which has been broken up into four EPs. “Now I’m coming back to Spanish music, which has always been a priority for me. Coming back as a mother, a grown woman and being able to share that with my kids,” she expressed, adding this will allow her to share “the stories that I have and the growth that I’ve had.”
Christina is set to release her third all-Spanish EP, La Luz, sometime this year. It will follow the previously released EPs La Fuerza and La Tormenta, which will be combined with an upcoming fourth EP to make the comprehensive project Aguilera.
Aguilera will become her second all-Spanish album followingher 2000 album Mi Reflejo.
While promoting the latest installment of ABC’s Celebrity Wheel of Fortune to Entertainment Tonight, longtime host Pat Sajak seemed to say he was ready to hang it up after 40 seasons.
“Years go by fast,” Sajak said, adding of himself and co-host Vanna White. “We’re getting near the end. It’s been a long [time]. We’re not gonna do this for another 40 years.”
“Happy and proud” of the reception he gets from the studio audience at every show, Sajak said, “It’s an honor to have been in people’s living rooms for that long.”
He continued of his 40-year run, “In most television shows by this time, you would have said, ‘That’s probably enough,’ but this show will not die.'”
The 75-year-old host added with a laugh, “it appears I may go before the show.”
That said, Sajak is still having fun with the celebrity installments of the show, which began in 1975.
He admits to having one bucket list star in mind to spin the wheel. “I’m still pulling for Meryl Streep ’cause I wanna see her say, ‘Come on, big money!'” he said.
He added with a laugh, “That’s all I want, but she won’t come on because she found out you can’t win an Oscar for this.”
Celebrity Wheel of Fortune returns Sept. 25 on ABC.
Fozzy has postponed the remainder of their 2022 U.S. tour dates as frontman Chris Jericho continues to recover from a bruised larynx.
As previously reported, Jericho suffered the injury doing his other job, wrestling, during an AEW event in August, forcing Fozzy to postpone the beginning of the tour. In a new update, Jericho says that, while the condition is “not permanent” and is “healing,” he still “need[s] more time to heal, in order to be able to sing at 100%.”
“Nobody likes to move shows, least of all me, but if Fozzy and I can’t give you 100% during each and every show we do, we won’t do them,” Jericho says.
The affected shows have been moved to the spring of 2023. Previously purchased tickets will be honored at the rescheduled dates.
