(NOTE LANGUAGE) Nicki Minaj recently sat down with rapper and podcast host Joe Budden in an open and transparent interview where she touched on many topics including her and rapper Lil Kim‘s cultural influence.
“The same way I feel I should have already been on the cover of American Vogue, so should Lil Kim, if we being all the way a thousand,” the “Moment 4 Life” rapper said.
“If this is what your magazine represents — influence… Because when myself or Lil Kim goes on the internet, every day we see our influence. We will see our influence,” she said.
In the highly-anticipated interview, the rapper also dished on plans to start her own management company.
Snoop Dogg also spoke candidly in a recent interview. The rapper spoke with Tidal’s Elliot Wilson about his new role as Death Row Records CEO and the 2022 Super Bowl halftime performance, saying he thought the show was the “greatest s*** ever.”
Snoop also mentioned Jay-Z’s role as not only an NFL partner but also a brother in hip-hop who wanted the best for Snoop, Dre and everyone else on stage.
“Jay was the first one that came to the dressing room when I got offstage,” Snoop said. “We love each other. Like, not secretly, like publicly, we love each other. It is what it is, so it’s like for him to go to bat for us and tell the NFL, ‘F*** that. They perform or I quit…'”
Snoop said after the show the two hugged one another and embraced the unforgettable hip-hop moment that had just taken place.
Speaking of unforgettable, the BET show College Hill is set to reboot, according to the Houston Chronicle. Stacey Dash, Lamar Odom and NeNe Leakes are among the cast to star in the reality series.
For $6.25 million, you can be Taylor Swift‘s new neighbor in New York City, the New York Postreports. The apartment next to hers is on the market and, according to the the listing, it offers three bedrooms, and two-and-a-half baths. “At nearly 2,500 square feet, this expansive loft embraces its historical origins with bold steel columns, hardwood floors, dramatic beamed ceilings, exposed brick and 11 massive windows,” the listing teases.
Kelly Clarkson put her contemptuous divorce from ex-husband Brandon Blackstock in the rear-view mirror on Tuesday, and is now thinking about dating again. A source tells Us Weekly, “She’s being set up with friends and is open to dating again.” The Grammy winner filed for divorce in June 2020 after seven years of marriage, sparking a years-long and sometimes nasty court battle.
Ariana Grande has slammed Florida’s Parents Rights in Education bill, which critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Taking to her Instagram story Tuesday, she shared a post by Equality Florida that confirmed the bill’s passage in the state senate, commenting, “Really disgusting.” Demi Lovato also spoke out against the bill in their respective IG story.
Justin Bieber had an unexpected guest at his concert Tuesday night — Hilary Duff. The How I Met Your Father star shared video clips of her singing along with her young son to Justin’s “Sorry” and other hits. She captioned the highlight reel, “The. Best. Time. @justinbieber I think this is the last year Luca will put up with this out of me so I sang reaaaaaal loud.”
Shania Twain shared a rare throwback clip of her belting out “Man! I Feel Like a Woman” at London’s Party in the Park concert in 1998. You can catch the entire performance on YouTube. “From 1998 to 2022 — Let’s go girls!!!” she captioned it.
(NOTE LANGUAGE) Making the new Netflix movie Against the Ice was not a posh, fancy experience, says star, producer, and co-writer Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.
In fact, Coster-Waldau tells ABC Audio they shot most of the early 1900s explorer film in Iceland and Greenland, in temperatures of -22 below Fahrenheit, with raging storms that put lives in danger.
“We were in a storm on a glacier in Iceland, where suddenly, they were like, we got to go…the video assist guy was sitting in a van, and suddenly literally rocks were flying through the windows.”
He adds, “The van got smashed up, and that’s when they said, ‘OK, time to get out.'”
Coster-Waldau reveals that he also ended up with a concussion while trying to work out a scene where his character gets into a fight with a polar bear.
“The director…kept asking if it wasn’t possible to do it with a real trained polar bear. And I was like, are you f****** crazy?” he recalls. “So instead, we’ve got this Olympian, this judo heavyweight champion of Iceland, to stand in for the bear. And he was a strong lad. So he was throwing me around and after six, seven takes I had a concussion. I had to leave for the day.”
All the craziness aside, Coster-Waldau says making Against the Ice “was so much fun.”
“It was everything I hoped for. It was as tough as I thought it was going to be and more,” he shares. “From the beginning we were very clear, we wanted to shoot it in the Arctic, we wanted to be on location, we wanted everything to be in camera and we got to do that.”
(NEW YORK) — For the past 24 years, the U.S. and Russia have worked together to construct and maintain the International Space Station, where research has led to some of the most important discoveries of the 21st century.
Now, 227 miles below the unrivaled laboratory, Russia has waged a war in Ukraine that’s pitted the country against the U.S. and its allies — leaving the future of the ISS in question.
“When you’re in space and you’re flying around the Earth at 17,500 miles an hour and in a very hazardous environment, cooperation is the most important thing,” said former astronaut Scott Kelly.
The ISS is divided into two sections: the Russian Orbital Segment operated by Russia and the United States Orbital Segment run by the U.S. American and Russian astronauts were the first to step inside the ISS in 1998.
Watch the full story on “ABCNL Prime” TONIGHT at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.
From there, the partnership has continued. When the U.S. shuttle program ended in 2011, U.S. astronauts like Cady Coleman relied exclusively on Russian rockets to get her on board the station.
Coleman said once on board the craft, where you came from didn’t matter, and it was all about how to work and live with one another.
“Space is hard and space is dangerous. And in my experience … with our Russian partners it means sitting down, having a meal together,” said Coleman. “It means talking about what’s hard for you, what’s hard for them and how together we can get this accomplished. [We] look each other in the eye and realize that we’re all about the same thing.”
Coleman said that American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts would cooperate on everything from life-or-death missions to the mundane.
“I was up there with the three Russian cosmonauts,” said Coleman.”[We] share a goal of exploring space … and that goal doesn’t change whether we’re on the Earth or living up on the space station.”
NASA’s reliance on Russian rockets ended in 2020 when SpaceX debuted its Crew Dragon Capsule, but talks are underway to allow Russians on future SpaceX flights.
Russian cosmonauts continue to train at NASA’s facility in Houston.
Astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who holds the ongoing record for longest space flight, is set to end his 355 days in space in just three weeks. The plan is for him to land in Kazakhstan with two Russian cosmonauts on a Russian spacecraft.
But unprecedented sanctions against Russia could put Vande Hei’s return on hold. After Russia invaded Ukraine nearly two weeks ago, President Joe Biden announced new sanctions, including cutting more than half of Russia’s high-tech imports.
“It’ll degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program,” Biden said during a White House address Feb. 24.
Shortly after the remarks, NASA released a statement on U.S.-Russian civil space cooperation, saying that “no changes are planned” and that the agency will continue to support “ongoing in orbit and ground station operations.”
Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s Space Agency and a close ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin, responded to Biden in a series of hostile tweets. On Feb. 26, he posted a video in Russian that threatened to leave Vande Hei behind in space and detach Russia’s segment of the space station altogether.
Kelly said he felt compelled to speak up and engaged with Rogozin on Twitter.
“I was just enraged that he, the [cosmonauts], said that they were going to leave an American crew member behind. I never thought I would ever hear anything so outrageous,” said Kelly.
NASA has remained silent on Rogozin’s threats to abandon Vande Hei in space. Prior to the conflict in Ukraine, Russia had announced plans to pull out of the space station as early as 2025.
Although war continues to wage on Earth, Kelly said he hopes that the U.S.-Russian partnership in space can be mended.
“I’ve known [people at the Russian Space Agency], many of them for well over two decades, I trust them. I’ve literally trusted them with my life before,” said Kelly, who added that the U.S. should still “prepare for the worst” and “hope for the best.”
Kelly said the ISS is an example of where peace is possible because all astronauts share a common goal: to explore and learn.
“I just hope people realize and want to keep this partnership together because it is one of the few things that unites all of humanity together,” said Kelly. “I think one of the biggest successes of the International Space Station is the international aspect of giving us something to work on together, that makes us friends.”
A first look at the new live-action adaptation of Pinocchio is finally here.
Disney+ released an image from the new movie — set to premiere on the streaming platform in September — featuring Tom Hanks as Geppetto and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth voicing Pinocchio.
You can check out the photo, showing Hanks as the puppet maker and his creation looking at each other, at the streaming channel’s socialmediasites.
The film, from Hanks’ Oscar-winning Forrest Gump director Robert Zemeckis, is described as a “retelling of the beloved tale of a wooden puppet who embarks on a thrilling adventure to become a real boy.”
Other cast members include Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Jiminy Cricket, Cynthia Erivo as the Blue Fairy, Keegan-Michael Key as “Honest” John, Lorraine Bracco as a new character named Sofia the Seagull, and Luke Evans as The Coachman.
The story of Pinocchio is based on the 1883 Italian children’s novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi.
The most famous version is Disney’s 1940 animated classic, although there have been numerous versions over the decades, including one from another Academy Award-winning director, Guillermo del Toro, that will debut this December on Netflix.
(NEW YORK) — When one Ukrainian woman woke up and answered a frantic call from her mother on the morning of Feb. 24 — before the sun had even risen — she heard screams and tears on the other side of the line, telling her what she feared the most.
“My mom called me crying and screaming: ‘Run away right now to the bomb shelter, because the war has been started,'” she said.
The woman looked through her kitchen window and saw half the sky had already been overtaken by dust from explosions in the region. Since that day, when her life shifted drastically, she and other four women have been documenting video diaries of their journeys to safety as they escape the war.
“My country is at war right now,” one woman said. “We forgot what is sleep. We forgot what is food. We forgot what is normal life. We forgot what is work. We forgot what is not to shake with any noise outside. We now know what is death.”
In less than two weeks since the invasion started, more than 2 million Ukrainians have been forced to leave their homes, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, with their lives packed in a few bags on the way to neighboring countries.
Out of the 2 million refugees, approximately 1 million are children — including 8-year-old Eva.
“On Feb. 24, I woke up to the sounds of sirens,” she said. “For five days, I haven’t slept in my bed. My dad does everything to keep me safe. None of this would have happened if the Russian president did not start the war.”
Poland has welcomed the highest number of refugees since Feb. 24, with over 1.2 million Ukrainians having crossed the border, according to the UNHCR. Others have fled to the nearby countries of Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Moldova.
The agency also reported that almost 100,000 Ukrainian refugees have fled to Russia since the invasion began.
Some, though, have no other choice except to seek shelter as their cities are bombarded with Russian missiles. The sound of explosions, buildings falling and screams of fear have been a constant, they said.
A 19-year-old woman was forced to leave her flat in Kyiv to seek safer shelter amid the Russian shelling.
“Rockets, tanks, gunfire. It’s no longer nightmare. It’s my reality. The reality of all Ukrainians now,” she said. “We are strong nation and we will not give up. I would like to convey to the world we are at war now, and tomorrow, it can be with you. Let’s stop it together.”
Others have decided to join the fight to defend their country.
On the front lines of the war, some women are taking up arms and making Molotov cocktails.
When Russia began its invasion, the Ukraine State Border Guard Service announced that all men between the ages of 18-60 were banned from leaving the country and must instead join the troops.
Women make up close to 15% of Ukraine’s military personnel — over 30,000 soldiers — according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.
In one video diary, another woman said she has friends who have taken on the responsibility to defend their country against Russian troops. She said she is afraid of whether she will ever see her friends again.
“We just can’t close eyes and let the authoritative regime do anything they like,” she said.
“I have friends who are 90 years old, 20 years old, and they are now defending Kyiv. No one knows whether they will be alive and that’s horrible,” she said. “I can’t imagine how it can happen in the civilized world when everyone should obey international law.”
As of March 9, the U.N. has verified more than 1,400 civilian casualties in Ukraine, including 516 deaths and 908 injuries, but says the real toll is much higher.
Fear continues to rage as the conflict escalates. The unity among the citizens of Ukraine, however, has been a source of motivation for many, according to one woman.
“We are scared. We’re really scared. But more than we are scared, we are motivated. We are motivated to defend our lands, to defend our country and to defend the ones who we love,” she said. “It is horrible [and] I would never wish for anyone to experience.”
Turns out there will be quite a few ringers on NBC’s new competition show American Song Contest, hosted by Kelly Clarkson and Snoop Dogg.
The concept features 56 different artists, each representing either a U.S. state, territory or district, performing an original song. In three rounds over eight weeks, one of the artists — a solo singer, band, group or DJ — will win the title of Best Original Song. Except some of the artists participating are already famous, chart-topping, platinum-selling stars, which you might think would give them an unfair advantage.
For example, representing the state of Connecticut, it’s Michael Bolton, who’s written or co-written a string of hits over the years. Representing Alaska is Jewel, whose 1995 debut album Pieces of You has sold some 12 million copies. Representing Maryland is Mr. “Thong Song” himself, Sisqó.
Meanwhile, pioneering electronic act The Crystal Method is representing Nevada, Grammy-winner Macy Gray is representing Ohio, and soul/R&B singer Allen Stone, who’s well-known enough to have been tapped to duet with contestants on American Idol in 2018, is repping for Washington State. Jordan Smith, who won season nine of The Voice, is representing Kentucky.
Imagine how awkward it will be if a Grammy-winning artist ends up losing to some unknown singer. Tune in when American Song Contest premieres Monday, March 21 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.
After nearly two years since he was arrested on federal drug and firearms charges, Louisiana rapper YoungBoy Never Broke Again finally has a trial date.
According to Rolling Stone, the Louisiana Middle District court announced on Monday that the 22-year-old rapper is set to face a jury on May 16.
The news comes after U.S. District Court Chief Judge Shelly Dick threw out video and photo evidence that was found on an SD memory card, which was ruled to be the result of an improper search by Baton Rouge police.
Defense lawyer Drew Findling told Rolling Stone, “The unconstitutionality of law enforcement was clearly evident to the court and resulted in a slew of evidence of being thrown out. We’re looking forward to going to court.” He also stated that, “We’re 100 percent convinced of his innocence, and now we have to continue to evaluate our strategy.”
NBA YoungBoy, born Kentrell Gaulden, was among 16 people arrested in September 2020 on multiple drug and gun charges.
In the judges decision to suppress the video and photo evidence, she wrote that the video warrant had “misleading information,” including a statement from a “reliable witness” who informed the police about the alleged firearm use. The statement actually came from an anonymous 911 call, according to Rolling Stone‘s report.
(SEOUL, South Korea) — Yoon Suk-yeol, of the conservative People Power Party, won the presidential race in South Korea after a bitter nail-biting vote count overnight. Results show a deeply divided country with 48.56% of ballots going to Yoon, and his rival Lee Jae-myung of the ruling Democratic Party garnering 47.83%.
The race had been marred by negative campaigning plagued by a series of scandals involving corruption, malfeasance and even rumors about wives and a child.
Yoon, set to serve a five-year term, will lead Asia’s fourth-largest economy which has been hit hard by the pandemic, surging home prices and still faces threats from North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. His biggest foreign policy challenge will be to navigate his country stuck in between growing rivalry among two of its biggest trading partners, the U.S. and China.
As president he is likely to revive conservative foreign policies by taking a tougher stance against North Korea centered around a stronger U.S. alliance.
“Peace can only be maintained when there is strong deterrence. A war can only be prevented by securing a preemptive strike capability and showing the will to pursue it. As we have seen in Ukraine, a country’s national security and peace cannot be protected by paper and ink,” he said during a presidential debate last month.
A newcomer into politics, Yoon spent 27 years of his entire career as a prosecutor rising to prominence by prosecuting big political players.
His team of conservative policy specialists will likely advocate a militarily stronger South Korea with heavy investments in national defense. “A sense of national security crisis have heightened in South Korea as North Korea’s nuclear threat intensifies and also especially after Russia invaded Ukraine. Yoon will make a rational decision,” Bong Youngshik of Yonsei Institute for North Korean Studies told ABC News.
Yoon was also open to seeking additional deployment of the U.S. THAAD anti-missile system into his country as deterrence from North Korea’s nuclear threats.
“He will demand North Korea to denuclearize before any negotiations. Instead of pursuing dialogue, Yoon intends to deploy additional units of the U.S. THAAD anti-missile system and strengthen joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises in proportion to North Korea’s missile threats.” Cheong Seong-Chang, researcher at the Seoul-based Sejong Institute, told ABC News.
“Yoon’s government will take a different stance from the Moon administration in dealing with North Korea. He won’t be offering sanctions relief unless North Korea makes significant steps to denuclearize, if there happens to be any.” Shin Beom Chul, director of the Center for Diplomacy and Security at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy, told ABC News.
ABC News’ Hakyung Kate Lee, Eunseo Nam and Hyerim Lee contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Twin Ukrainian boys who were born shortly after Russia began its attack in the country have been safely evacuated to Poland.
The twins’ father, Alexander Spektor, who lives in Chicago with the boys’ mother, Irma Nuñez, was able to meet his sons for the first time after their rescue Monday. The boys were born 10 days premature on Feb. 25.
“My sister told me that she never saw me spring that fast toward anything,” Spector said of his rush to see his twin sons, Lenny and Moishe. “We saw the pictures and the videos before but just to see the little tiny human bodies in front of us was just out of this world.”
The past two weeks have been agonizing for Nuñez and Spector, who was born in Kyiv and came with this family to the U.S. as a refugee.
Nuñez and Spektor, who is now an American citizen, worked with a surrogacy agency to have a surrogate in Ukraine carry their sons.
When the surrogate went into early labor on Feb. 25, she got stuck in military traffic for three hours trying to make it to a hospital in Kyiv that was equipped to handle the delivery, according to Spektor.
The boys were born safely, weighing around 4 pounds each, but had to remain in the hospital due to their medically sensitive status as premature babies.
Nuñez and Spektor, an associate professor of Russian at the University of Georgia, spent the days and nights following their sons’ birth trying to evacuate them to safety.
“We haven’t slept in about 14 days,” Spektor said of himself and Nuñez. “We were taking shifts, and we were constantly making phone calls.”
He continued, “The hospital where the babies were before they were transferred to a different hospital didn’t have food for premature babies so we had to organize a food delivery for them. They didn’t have a shelter, so the agency we were doing the surrogacy with helped to transfer the babies to another hospital that had a shelter. It was just harrowing and horrible.”
Spektor and Nuñez had been unsuccessful in getting their twins out of Ukraine until Vecina, a Texas-based immigration rights organization, connected them with Project Dynamo, a volunteer-run organization in Florida that works independently to rescue people in war zones.
Bryan Stern, the founder of Project Dynamo, agreed to go into Kyiv with a team of doctors, neonatal specialists and a nurse to rescue Lenny and Moishe, as well as another premature baby not related to the family but also in need.
Stern and his team partnered with a Ukrainian ambulance crew to drive a three-vehicle convoy through Kyiv to the hospital and back across the border into Poland, dodging traffic and checkpoints along the way, according to Stern.
The vehicles were equipped with not just medical equipment but also extra gasoline, hot water bottles and hand warmers to protect the babies if anything happened.
“We were moving as expeditiously as we could,” Stern said of the 14-hour journey. “We were driving on the wrong side of the road. We were bypassing all the checkpoints and all the traffic with the checkpoints.”
Stern and his team successfully evacuated the three babies and the boys’ surrogate, who was not named. The surrogate was reunited with her biological son in Ukraine and they are now working to safely evacuate her out of the country, according to Spektor and Stern.
Stern said this was his first time rescuing premature babies from a war zone, adding, “I really can’t articulate in words the anxiety that I had for for about three, four days culminating with pulling into the hospital of Poland.”
“It was pretty amazing,” he said of the rescue.
Spektor met his sons for the first time near the border in Poland, and then traveled with them to a hospital in Rzeszow, Poland, where they are now being cared for by hospital staff.
“We visit them in the hospital every day now and just touch them,” he said, adding that the babies are doing well medically. “I changed my first diaper yesterday and that was tough. I almost passed out.”
“It was almost as scary as waiting for them,” Spektor added with a laugh.
Describing his and his partner’s joy, Spektor said, “We had two happiest days of our lives — when they were born and two days ago, when they were brought into the hospital.”
The twins will remain in Poland for a few more weeks, until they gain more weight and are able to bottle feed, according to Spektor.
Then they will return to Chicago where “a lot of people are waiting for them,” according to Spektor, who said family and friends are preparing the boys’ nursery at home.
“You never expect a war to break out when when you’re preparing for the baby, so a lot of our stuff is in storage now,” he said. “But there’s so many people who are willing to help, and they’re painting the babies’ room as we speak right now.”
Though he is overjoyed to have his sons with him, Spektor said he cannot forget about the children who remain in Ukraine.
More than 4,300 babies have been born in the country since the conflict with Russia began, according to a Facebook post from Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice.
“Our babies are [in Poland] now, they’re safe, but there’s so many other children in Ukraine,” said Spektor. “It’s heartbreaking.”
