Can you remember back to 2012? Believe it or not, that was the last time that Matchbox Twenty released an album. Since then, front man Rob Thomas has put out three solo albums — including last year’s Something About Christmas Time — but now, it looks like Rob’s promises of new music are going to come true.
The band tweeted out a video that runs down their five previous albums, including their 2007 compilation Exile on Mainstream, plus the singles taken from each one. It’s captioned “Album #6…Stay Tuned.”
In September 2021, Rob told ABC Audio, “We’re actually working on some new songs right now. Maybe it’s an EP. I’m not going to sure what form that takes. But nowadays, it’s kind of open the way that we can present music. So we’re working on some new stuff right now that we’re really excited about.”
But in November 2021, Rob told ABC Audio that “doing a full album is probably folly” because he didn’t think the band had time in their personal lives to “make the kind of album that we would want to make.” But that was before Matchbox Twenty postponed their 2022 tour to 2023, so perhaps they managed to find the time.
When album #6 does arrive, it’ll be the follow-up to 2012’s North, which included the songs “She’s So Mean” and “Overjoyed.”
Even Justin Timberlake is unimpressed by the not-so-hot dance moves he busted during Washington D.C.’s Something in the Water music festival.
The hitmaker’s attempt at the Beat Ya Feet dance went viral for all the wrong reasons, with critics comparing his moves to that of a combination between Riverdance and “The Hokey Pokey.” Despite the relentless mocking, since the cringeworthy moves were made during his performance of “SexyBack,” it’s now become TikTok’s latest dance challenge.
On Tuesday, Justin broke his silence and shared a humorous mea culpa on his Instagram Stories in which he claims he berated his two left feet. “D.C., I wanna apologize to you for two reasons,” he announces before panning the camera down to his feet, shouting, “Here! And here!”
“I had a long talk with both of them. Individually. And said, ‘Don’t you ever do that to me again,'” the Grammy winner continued. He then offered a sarcastic explanation about why he flopped on the stage, joking, “Maybe it was the khakis. It was a real khaki vibe.”
Justin then promised fans, “I’m gonna make this up to you. I’m gonna focus on these two [feet] right here and get them right.”
The singer then shared some of his favorite versions of the Justin Timberlake dancing challenge that’s taken over TikTok, saying one impersonator “nailed” his moves.
Justin also shared a video of a young girl putting her own spin on his bad moves and agreed that she “did it better” than him.
According to TMZ, rapper Lil Tjay, born Tione Merritt, is out of emergency surgery after he was shot in New Jersey early Wednesday morning.
ABC affiliate WABC said police officers responded to a call at the Promenade in Edgewater at 12:08 a.m., where they found two men with gunshot wounds. At the time of the report, both men had been taken to the hospital to be treated for their wounds.
Authorities told WABC the shooting “does not appear to be [a] random act.”
Lil Tjay teased his new song “Stressed” earlier this month and was expected to go on tour starting June 25.
Brad Pitt got candid in an interview for the August issue of GQ.
The Oscar winner, 58, opened up about where he sees himself in his career, feelings of loneliness, and how he has put his health first by quitting smoking and attending Alcoholics Anonymous.
Pitt revealed he quit smoking during the pandemic, opting to give up cigarettes entirely because trying to cut back wasn’t working for him.
“I don’t have that ability to do just one or two a day,” he told the publication. “It’s not in my makeup. I’m all in. And I’m going to drive into the ground. I’ve lost my privileges.”
Another vice he overcame was giving up alcohol six years ago. He detailed his time attending AA over the course of a year and a half.
“I had a really cool men’s group here that was really private and selective, so it was safe,” he said. “Because I’d seen things of other people who had been recorded while they were spilling their guts, and that’s just atrocious to me.”
Though many might expect him to be a social butterfly, Pitt shared, “I always felt very alone in my life, alone growing up as a kid, alone even out here, and it’s really not till recently that I have had a greater embrace of my friends and family.”
These days, the Hollywood heartthrob is spending more time behind the camera as a producer. That’s purposeful, he said, as he’s planning out what comes next for him in his career.
“I consider myself on my last leg, this last semester or trimester,” he noted. “What is this section gonna be? And how do I wanna design that?”
Philipp von Ditfurth/picture alliance via Getty Images, FILE
(WASHINGTON) — Pfizer’s COVID-19 treatment Paxlovid has been hailed as a breakthrough in the fight against COVID-19. The pills have shown to dramatically reduce the risk of being hospitalized or dying for people who are at high-risk of COVID-19.
But mounting evidence suggests Paxlovid may not benefit everyone equally. The company recently announced the results of a new study that found the drug did not meaningfully benefit people without underlying medical conditions or no previous infection of COVID.
This comes weeks after the Biden administration announced plans to purchase 20 million treatment courses of the drug as it focuses on the Test-to-Treat initiative as part of the National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan.
Some infectious disease experts interviewed by ABC News said the new study could influence the way doctors prescribe the drug, potentially declining to prescribe it to vaccinated, otherwise healthy patients.
But overall, demand for the drug is likely to remain high because 60% of Americans are living with a chronic disease that qualifies them for the drug under its current authorization.
“Paxlovid is something that is targeted towards high-risk individuals, so the fact that it doesn’t have a benefit to low-risk individuals isn’t surprising to me,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, told ABC News.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has provided guidance that the drug is recommended for treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 among people at high risk for severe disease.
“At this stage, the current recommendation under the EUA is for Paxlovid to be given to any high-risk patient who has symptomatic COVID, whether vaccinated or unvaccinated, as long as it is within five days of the onset of symptoms,” Dr. Todd Ellerin, chief of medicine and director of infectious diseases at South Shore Health, told ABC News.
“If you’re older, particularly over age 65, if you have underlying illnesses, if you’re immunocompromised, those groups I think will continue to be targeted for Paxlovid,” Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told ABC News.
While the CDC has published a list of medical conditions that would put someone at high risk for severe illness, some experts argue there may be ambiguity.
“High-risk isn’t necessarily only objective criteria, like age, heart disease, etc. It’s also a situation, like socioeconomic status and some of those disparities that exist. When you add all that up, I think that a large swath of people do qualify for Paxlovid potentially as high-risk,” Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, told ABC News.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said the drug would continue to be an important treatment option.
“With up to 40-50% of people around the world estimated to be high risk, we believe there remains a significant unmet need for treatment options to help combat this disease, and we will continue to prioritize efforts to advance the development of Paxlovid,” Bourla said in a press release.
Experts tried to compare that global context to the United States.
“When you look at the average body mass index (BMI) of men and women in the United States is 26, that puts you at a high-risk category and eligible for Paxlovid. So at least 50% of the country is eligible for Paxlovid that is infected with COVID,” Ellerin said.
The CDC defines overweight people as those with a BMI of 25-30 and obese as those with a BMI over 30.
Doctors said there are serious considerations to weigh before prescribing Paxlovid. Drug-drug interactions may lead to serious or life-threatening drug toxicities, including medications such as cardiovascular agents and anticonvulsants. Meanwhile, Paxlovid carries a low risk of something called “COVID-19 rebound,” where individuals experience a recurrence of symptoms or a new positive viral test after having tested negative, according to the CDC.
“When it comes to Paxlovid, at the individual level, there may not be so much downside, but we don’t want to be inappropriately giving drugs to people where there would be no benefit and potentially some downside,” said Dr. John Brownstein, Chief Innovation Officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News medical contributor.
A recent, small study estimated that less than 1% of patients experience a rebound of symptoms.
Brownstein remains optimistic that further research will clarify guidance on how best to prescribe the drug.
“I think there is a lot that needs to be understood, we have a lot of real-world data and so I think it is reasonable to understand how well it’s working and because it is so widely available, this will not be a hard drug to study like many others. So, we should have a lot of evidence to support a very specific recommendation,” Brownstein said.
Youri Benadjaoud is an MPH candidate at Brown University and a contributor to the ABC Medical Unit.
Alas, dear readers, I regret to inform you that the Duke of Hastings has no intention of returning to Bridgerton.
Regé-Jean Page, who portrayed fan-favorite character Simon Basset in season 1 of the hit Netflix romance series, recently caught up with former co-star Jonathan Bailey.
Their reunion caused speculation that he may return to the series, but Page shut down the rumors in an Instagram post this week.
“No, I’m not going back to the show,” he wrote alongside a photo of him and Bailey walking the streets of Italy.
“Btw – the papers made that one up. But we had the best, and most stylish catch up I’ve had in a while over some truly excellent Italian coffee and sunshine.”
As for Bailey, he will return to his role as Viscount Anthony Bridgerton for the show’s third season, which begins filming this summer.
Actress Nicola Coughlanconfirmed that season 3 will follow the story of author Julia Quinn’s fourth Bridgerton novel, which details the romance between Coughlan’s character, Penelope Featherington, and Luke Newton’s Colin Bridgerton.
(WASHINGTON) — Nicholas Roske, 26, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to one count of attempting to kill a justice of the United States, two weeks after he was arrested outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanugh’s home with a gun.
He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Roske was arrested in the early morning hours of June 8 near Kavanaugh’s Maryland home. He was allegedly armed with a gun and pepper spray, and had zip ties and several pieces of burglary equipment in a backpack, according to an arrest affidavit.
“Roske indicated that he believed the Justice that he intended to kill would side with Second Amendment decisions that would loosen gun control laws,” the affidavit said. “Roske stated that he’d been thinking about how to give his life a purpose and decided he would kill the Supreme Court Justice after finding the Justice’s Montgomery County address on the internet.”
Last week, he was indicted by a federal grand jury on one count of attempting to kill a justice of the United States.
Dressed in a burgundy pants, a shirt and unmasked, Roske rocked back and forth silently in his chair as he awaited court proceedings. After pleading guilty, Roske at times rested his head on the table with his hands folded around the back of his neck.
Roske will face a jury trial before Magistrate Judge Ajmel Ahsen Quereshi on Aug. 23.
ABC News’ Luke Barr and Alexander Mallin contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Dramatic police body-camera video released by the New York Police Department captured two officers teaming up on a rush-hour rescue of a woman this week who collapsed on a subway platform and fell onto the tracks.
The duo sprang into action around 8:30 a.m. Monday at a subway station in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, according to the NYPD.
The officers, whose names have not been released, were on their daily transit inspection when a 25-year-old woman walking ahead of them on a subway platform “suffered a medical episode and fell onto the tracks minutes before a train rolled into the station,” the NYPD said in a statement posted on Twitter.
Officials released body-camera video Tuesday night showing the woman walking on the platform and then suddenly collapsing and falling onto the tracks.
Watch as strategically deployed @nypd68pct officers who were on their daily transit inspection came to the rescue when a passenger suffered a medical episode and fell onto the tracks minutes before a train rolled into the station. pic.twitter.com/qdGwnCFWgM
The footage shows one of the officers jumping onto the tracks and lifting the apparently unconscious woman up to his partner who pulled her out of harm’s way. The officer climbed back onto the platform several minutes before a subway pulled into the station, according to the video.
The officers were not injured in the episode. The woman, whose name was not released, was taken to New York University Langone Hospital, where she was treated for a head injury.
(WASHINGTON) — Included in the anti-gun violence legislation announced Tuesday night by a bipartisan group of senators is a measure that supporters hope will help protect victims of domestic violence.
The legislation includes a change to the so-called “boyfriend loophole,” which refers to a gap in the law on who can purchase guns.
Currently, federal law prohibits people convicted of domestic violence from purchasing a gun, but only if they are living with their partner, married to their partner or have a child with their partner. The law does not apply to dating partners.
Under the newly-introduced legislation, the definition has been expanded so that individuals in “serious” “dating relationships” who are convicted of domestic abuse would also be prevented from purchasing a gun.
Additionally, the bill includes language that allows those convicted of non-spousal misdemeanor domestic abuse to have their gun ownership rights restored after five years if they have a clean record.
“This is an incentive, I think for people who have made a mistake, committed domestic violence and received a misdemeanor conviction, to straighten up their act and not repeat it,” Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, one of the bill’s lead negotiators, said in a floor speech Tuesday.
Advocates for victims of domestic violence had encouraged senators to close the loophole in the new legislation, negotiations for which began after the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting on May 24, which left 19 elementary-age students and two teachers dead.
On average, more than 12 million men and women in the United States are victims of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner each year, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, which offers free, 24/7 support for victims of domestic violence.
According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, a woman is five times more likely to be murdered when her abuser has access to a gun.
Last year, more than 17,000 people who reached out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline said firearms were a part of the abuse they experienced.
Katie Ray-Jones, CEO of the National Domestic Violence Hotline, said in a statement that her organization “applauds the [senators’] work” to address domestic violence in gun legislation.
“We appreciate the senators’ initiative to close this dangerous gap and protect millions more people experiencing relationship abuse in this country,” she said. “We also know while this is a significant step forward, there is even more work to be done to ensure that all survivors are protected.”
Exact timing for a final vote on the legislation in the Senate is not yet known but could happen toward the end of the week, with all involved hoping to approve the legislation before the two-week July 4 recess.
In addition to strengthening the ban on convicted domestic abusers possessing firearms, the bill also includes support for mental health and school security services and provides incentives to expand the federal background check system for prospective buyers under 21.
Both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said they supported the bill, indicating that it could reach a super-majority in the Senate — which is necessary to overcome any filibuster — barring more developments.
ABC News’ Rachel Scott and Trish Turner contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The House Committee on Oversight and Reform held a hearing Wednesday to investigate the National Football League’s handling of what lawmakers are calling the Washington Commanders’ “toxic” workplace culture, including sexual harassment.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell appeared virtually to face a grilling from committee Democrats.
During the roughly two-and-a-half hour hearing, Goodell was questioned about both the team culture in general and allegations about owner Daniel Snyder’s personal conduct.
Snyder did not testify as the committee had requested, although a name card and microphone were placed in front of an empty chair at the witness table. A spokesperson for Snyder cited a “business conflict” in a letter to the committee, according to ESPN.
“His refusal to testify sends a clear message that he is more concerned about protecting himself than coming clean with the American people. If the NFL is unwilling or unable to hold Mr. Snyder accountable than I am prepared to do so,” said committee chair Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who said she intends to subpoena Snyder to to testify at a deposition next week.
“I have not seen a workplace in the NFL that is anywhere near what we saw in the context of that period of time for the Washington Commanders,” said Goodell of the organization until recently known as the Washington Football Team.
Several Republicans on the committee claim Democrats shouldn’t be investigating a private business, instead questioning the commissioner on issues unrelated to the investigation, ranging from the NFL’s social justice program to Deflategate.
“Our hearing today is about protecting women and all workers from sexual harassment intimidation and bullying in the workplace,” Maloney said in her opening statement.
Multiple team employees were fired in 2020 when a Washington Post investigation found allegations of sexual harassment spanning from 2006 to 2019.
Goodell confirmed many of the claims about team culture found in an investigation by attorney Beth Wilkinson. “It is clear to me that the workplace in Washington was unprofessional and unacceptable in numerous respects: bullying, widespread disrespect toward colleagues, use of demeaning language, public embarrassment, and harassment,” he said.
Goodell defended the NFL’s response to the investigation. In 2021, the league fined the team $10 million. Snyder had denied any misconduct but has stepped away from day-to-day operations of the team.
The hearing grew especially tense when Democrats demanded why Goodell didn’t release Wilkinson’s full report, just a summary.
“Commissioner Goodell, yes or no: Will you commit today to providing this committee the full findings of the NFL internal investigation while protecting the identities of the confidential witnesses?” she asked.
Goodell responded that the NFL had committed to protecting the identities of the victims who came forward.
Rep. Jaime Raskin, D-Md, asked Goodell why redacting names and other identifying information — a practice the NFL had used in the release of a sexual harassment report about the Miami Dolphins — was not “sufficient” to protect the anonymity of the women involved.
“Congressman, with all due respect, redaction doesn’t always work in my world,” said Goodell.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich, prodded Goodell on whether he would force a change in leadership in Washington. “Will you remove him?” she asked about Snyder.
“I don’t have the authority to remove him,” Goodell said, although his fellow owners could vote to do so.
