(SPOILERS)Ms. Marvel had its exciting finale last week, and fans are still buzzing about an after-credits scene that finally links Iman Vellani‘s young heroine to the “M” word: mutant.
The final episodes also revealed the true nature of Rish Shah‘s character Kamran, who begins as something of a love interest to Vellani’s Kamala Khan and becomes something else entirely by the series’ end.
Both Shah and his co-star Yasmeen Fletcher had an idea of who they were being cast to play — despite Marvel’s notoriously strict security — so that made the auditioning process all the more nerve-racking.
“It’s difficult when you’re auditioning for something you really care about,” Shah tells ABC Audio. “It’s the most difficult thing sometimes!”
He adds, “And so when you finally get the call, then you’re going to be a part in this project, it is like a huge sigh of relief and also just pure excitement and a lot of tears. So yeah, it was it was probably the best, best night of my life.”
Fletcher agrees. “I knew Nakia and I was a fan of the comics before, so I liked her character already,” she says. “But I remember reading the breakdown for the audition being like, ‘She’s so similar to me, like, this is going to be so fun and so easy!’ And I immediately connected with her as a person.”
She adds of the role, “When I got the call, I had already thought that I didn’t get it. So I had mourned it, had the funeral for it, and then out of the blue got the call that I did get it. So it was all the more of a shock and excitement and all of the emotions all at once!”
Trivium has announced a U.S. headlining tour for this fall.
The outing is dubbed the Deadmen and Dragons tour, named after Trivium’s last two albums: 2020’s What the Dead Men Say and 2021’s In the Court of the Dragon. It’ll run from October 2 in Boise, Idaho to November 10 in Los Angeles.
Between the Buried and Me, Whitechapel and Khemmis will also be on the bill.
Tickets go on sale this Friday, July 22 at 10 a.m. local time. For the full list of dates and all ticket info, visit Trivium.org.
Ahead of the headline dates, Trivium will be opening for Iron Maiden‘s U.S. tour, kicking off in September.
(NEW YORK) — Dangerous heat has tightened its hold on the U.S. with 100 million Americans across 24 states on heat alert Tuesday from Texas to Massachusetts.
While many of these areas will find refuge in overnight drops in temperature, the Southern Plains will not drop below 80 degrees overnight, putting the region in an excessive heat warning.
Experts say such consistent, intense temperatures are dangerous to an individual’s health.
Oklahoma City is expected to reach 111 degrees on Tuesday, with nearby cities staying above 100 degrees throughout the day.
Texas residents are projected to face continuing, stifling temperatures on Tuesday, with Dallas having the potential to break its July heat record of 110 degrees.
The heat continues to spread on Tuesday, tightening its hold on the Northeast.
Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York City and Boston are forecast to have a prolonged heat wave with temperatures in the 90-degree range throughout the week. On Tuesday, the four cities have highs of 90, 93, 91 and 92 degrees, respectively.
Those temperatures are expected to go even higher, as Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia face a high of 97 degrees on Thursday.
The National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory for Philadelphia, New York City and Boston as of Tuesday morning.
For many, Wednesday is expected to feel worse than Tuesday’s heat, as temperatures are expected to rise and humidity is expected to worsen, according to the NWS.
On Wednesday, Syracuse and Albany, New York, are expected to reach 99 degrees and Hartford, Connecticut, is set to reach 100 degrees.
With the heat, severe storms have hit the Northeast.
Flash flooding was reported from Virginia to Connecticut on Monday, with 4 to 6 inches of rain dumped along the Interstate 95 corridor.
Some areas of New York City had several inches of rain during a single hour on Monday, leaving highways, streets and subway stations flooded.
According to the MTA, some New York subway stations faced delays and canceled services due to water damage.
At the Dyckman Street station in the Bronx, the third rail — which provides electrical power to subway trains — was impacted as the roadbed was flooded by up to 14 inches of water on Monday, the MTA reported.
Some train services were canceled for several hours as crews worked to drain the water and clear debris from the tracks.
Storm reports also came in from Montana to the Mid-Atlantic, as residents faced damaging winds over 70 mph and baseball-sized hail.
On Tuesday, the Great Lakes and Upper Midwest will continue to see severe and damaging winds alongside large-scale hail.
Severe storms are expected to return to the Northeast on Thursday, with heavy rains and damaging winds posing the largest threat to the region stretching from Connecticut to Maine.
(NEW YORK) — A Delaware court on Tuesday determined that the trial in a lawsuit brought by Twitter against Elon Musk should take place in October, granting an expedited timeline for the case.
Twitter sued Musk — the chief executive of Tesla and the richest person in the world, according to Forbes’ Billionaires List — in an attempt to force him to complete his purchase of the company, after he declared in early July he was walking away from the deal.
The scheduling decision made Tuesday — to hold the trial over five days in October — appeared to align more closely with a timeline requested by Twitter, which had sought a four-day trial in September. Musk asked the court to set a trial date no earlier than mid-February 2023.
“The reality is that delay risks irreparable harm” to Twitter, said Court Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick.
Attorneys for Musk and Twitter alleged on Tuesday that their opponents held ulterior motives for the timelines they sought.
William Savitt, an attorney from Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, who is representing Twitter, accused Musk of delaying the court proceeding in the hope of increasing his negotiating leverage or scuttling the deal with Twitter altogether.
“The company is faced with substantial increasing risk specifically by the overhanging of the merger agreement — and it’s by design,” Savitt said.
“Mr. Musk has been and remains contractually obligated to use his best efforts to close this deal,” Savitt added. “What he’s doing is the exact opposite of best efforts. It’s attempted sabotage.”
Andrew Rossman, an attorney for Musk and a managing partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, rebuked the claim. Instead, he argued that Twitter has sought to accelerate the case to prevent Musk and his representatives from assessing the company’s estimate in an SEC filing that less than 5% of accounts on the platform are bot or fake accounts.
“There’s no reason to try to do this in two months, except for one. The one reason is what Twitter wants to do is continue to shroud in secrecy the issue regarding their less than 5% spam and false account representation,” he said.
“As long as is necessary to get this deal railroaded through and force Mr. Musk to close,” he added.
“Twitter’s bid for extreme expedition rests on the false premise that the Termination Date in the merger agreement is October 24, glossing over that this date is automatically stayed if either party files litigation. By filing its complaint, Plaintiff has rendered its supposed need for a September trial moot,” Alex Spiro, an attorney for Musk, wrote in a court filing on Friday.
The Delaware Chancery Court will determine whether Musk remains obligated to purchase Twitter.
Musk has claimed Twitter failed to disclose the number of fake accounts on the platform. Twitter has said 5% of active users are bots but Musk has said he believes the figure is higher.
“Post-signing, Defendants promptly sought to understand Twitter’s process for identifying false or spam accounts. In a May 6 meeting with Twitter executives, Musk was flabbergasted to learn just how meager Twitter’s process was,” Musk’s filing said.
The legal battle marks the latest chapter in a monthslong saga that began in January when Musk started investing in Twitter.
Musk reached an acquisition deal with Twitter in April, but in the weeks since, he has raised concerns over spam accounts on the platform, claiming Twitter has not provided him with an accurate estimate of their number. Twitter has rebuked that claim, saying it has provided Musk with information in accordance with conditions set out in the acquisition deal.
Last Tuesday, Twitter sued Musk to force him to complete the deal.
“Musk refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests,” Twitter said in the lawsuit. “Musk apparently believes that he — unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law — is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Secret Service is preparing to notify the House Jan. 6 committee that it has found no new text messages related to the Capitol riot, a source says — the same day the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) sent a letter requesting the agency investigate the deletion of some its records from Jan. 6, 2021, which drew the scrutiny of an internal watchdog.
The Secret Service’s plans were confirmed to ABC News on Tuesday by a source familiar with the matter.
A Secret Service spokesman last week acknowledged that text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, were deleted after being sought by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General.
A letter sent Wednesday by the inspector general to the heads of the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees said the messages were deleted “as part of a device-replacement program” despite the inspector general requesting such communications.
The director of communications for the Secret Service, Anthony Guglielmi, subsequently dismissed any “insinuation” the agents had intentionally deleted the texts.
The Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed the Secret Service on Friday — its first such order to an executive agency.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a member of the Jan. 6 committee, said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that the panel expected more information about the Secret Service texts by Tuesday.
“We need all of the texts from the fifth and sixth of January. I was shocked to hear that they didn’t back up their data before they reset their iPhones. That’s crazy, and I don’t know why that would be,” Lofgren, D-Calif., said then. “But we need to get this information to get the full picture.”
In its letter on Tuesday, the NARA wrote that “if it is determined that any text messages have been improperly deleted” — “regardless of their relevance” to Jan. 6 investigations — “then the Secret Service must send NARA a report within 30 calendar days of the date of this letter with a report documenting the deletion.”
“This report must include a complete description of the records affected, a statement of the exact circumstances surrounding the deletion of messages, a statement of the safeguards established to prevent further loss of documentation, and details of all agency actions taken to salvage, retrieve, or reconstruct the records,” NARA wrote.
The Secret Service — which has faced fresh controversy over its conduct amid the insurrection and then-President Donald Trump’s behavior that day — has repeatedly said it is readily cooperating with both the inspector general and the Jan. 6 committee.
“Over the last 18 months, we have voluntarily provided dozens of hours of formal testimony from special agents and over 790,000 unredacted emails, radio transmissions, operational and planning records,” spokesman Guglielmi said Friday. “We plan to continue that cooperation by responding swiftly to the Committee’s subpoena.”
The Interrupters have teamed up with two pillars of punk for their new song, “As We Live.”
The track, which will appear on the “She’s Kerosene” outfit’s upcoming album In the Wild, features Tim Armstrong of Rancid and Operation Ivy and Rhoda Dakar of the U.K. ska band The Bodysnatchers.
“Love is the fuel for everything beautiful in the world,” Aimee Interrupter says of “As We Live.” “Love should be approached with urgency and that’s what we are trying to capture with this song. It is truly humbling to have musical legends, Tim Armstrong and Rhoda Dakar co-writing and singing this one with us.”
A crew member working on the New York City set of Law & Order: Organized Crime was fatally shot by an unknown assailant in what is being called an “ambush.”
The unidentified crew member was sitting in his car in Greenpoint, Brooklyn early Tuesday morning, awaiting the arrival of the crew — a common practice to prevent people from parking in spots meant for production vehicles — when someone approached him.
WABC-TV reports the suspect opened the car door and shot the victim multiple times in the face and the neck. The victim was taken to Woodhull Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The suspect, a man wearing a black hoodie and black pants, fled the scene.
In a joint statement obtained by ABC Audio, producers NBC and Universal Television noted, “We were terribly saddened and shocked to hear that one of our crew members was the victim of a crime early this morning and has died as a result. We are working with local law enforcement as they continue to investigate. Our hearts go out to his family and friends and we ask that you respect their privacy during this time.”
Miranda Lambert is real “Strange” in her new single.
The track finds the singer admitting that she feels out of place in the modern world where “country don’t twang, rock ‘n’ roll ain’t loud” and everyone is just looking to be famous. To cut through the noise, Miranda encourages us to hop on an airplane to anywhere, dance like no one is watching, “have a smoke and buy a round.” “Do anything to keep you sane/’Cause times like these make me feel strange,” she sings.
“‘Strange’ is permission to just let go for a [second]. We were really wanting the chorus to lift – literally and emotionally – and go into a happy place,” Miranda says of the song she co-wrote with Natalie Hemby and Luke Dick. “It’s such a song for the time that we’re in right now, but it doesn’t feel like it won’t matter in 10 years, either.”
“Strange” is the second single off her latest album, Palomino, which follows the top 15 hit “If I Was a Cowboy.”
Camila Cabello is the latest celebrity to test positive for COVID-19, and she’s letting her fans know she’s doing all right.
The “Bam Bam” singer broke the news on Monday via a spunky TikTok video soundtracked to Black Point‘s “Watagatapitusberry.” She captioned the clip, “I got the rona.”
Despite falling ill, the Grammy nominee ensured fans that COVID won’t stop her from entertaining her millions of followers. To prove she’s in high spirits, Camila films herself goofing off in her bedroom — from rolling around in her bed to pumping up her virus-fighting must-haves, including cough syrup, a bag of cough drops and a box of medicated chest rub.
She later shared the video to her Instagram stories and added further, “If u got the rona and still gonna live it up in isolation make some f***in noise.”
Camila did not go into further detail, but fans are already wishing her a speedy recovery.
It’s reportedly over for Emily Ratajkowski and Sebastian Bear-McClard.
The pair, who were together for four years, “have split,” a source told Entertainment Tonight.
“They had been having issues as a couple for a bit,” the insider added. “Emily is focused on herself and their son. Emily is adjusting to this change and plans to file for divorce soon.”
News of the break-up comes just a few days after the model was spotted out and about without her wedding ring. She also does not appear to be wearing it in recent Instagram photos.
Ratajkowski and Bear-McClard were first romantically linked in early February 2018 and got hitched at New York City’s City Hall later that same month. They welcomed their son, now one-year-old Sylvester Apollo Bear, in March 2021.
