Zendaya squashed rumors that she’s pregnant with boyfriend Tom Holland’s baby following a recent TikTok prank that managed to fool many of her fans.
“See now, this is why I stay off Twitter,” the Spider-Man: No Way Home actress wrote on her Instagram Story Wednesday after her name trended online due to the prank.
“Just making stuff up for no reason…weekly,” she added.
The fan-created TIkTok clips, that have gone viral, feature a fake ultrasound edited to look like it was posted by Zendaya, which then cuts to a video of Kris Jenner dancing to “Lady Marmalade.”
The trend is known as getting “Krissed,” in which viewers are tricked into believing a fake story.
(NEW YORK) — For over a decade, Deborah Marion has been fighting for answers in the murder of her son, former NBA player Lorenzen Wright, who was found shot in 2010.
“With Lorenzen, I’d be talking to his picture and sometimes his picture could look at me a certain way like it’s really him… He was a momma’s boy. Simple as that,” she said. “He would still be a momma’s boy if he was here now.”
At the time of his death, Wright had retired from the league in 2009 where he had earned an estimated $55 million over the course of 13 seasons in the NBA.
Watch the full story on 20/20 Friday at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.
Wright was missing for nine days before his remains were found in a wooded area off a desolate road in southeast Memphis, Tennessee that he used to take as a shortcut to his mother’s house. His body had gunshot wounds.
Marion said she knew something was wrong when Wright didn’t show up to his sister’s baby shower.
“He was supposed to have been coming to the baby shower. I kept calling him all day and he didn’t answer the phone,” said Marion.
At the time, Sherra Wright Robinson claimed to investigators that Wright was connected to drugs. She claimed that she had last seen Wright drive off with an unknown man carrying a box of drugs.
Investigators looked into Wright Robinson’s claims, but Wright was never implicated in any criminal activity. The criminal case turned cold for the next seven years.
Marion remained a driving force behind the investigation and said she would call the police station everyday to ask if they had found any new information.
“I knew God was on my side,” Marion said. “I wasn’t gonna never get tired until I die ’cause somebody had to pay for killing my child.”
Five years after the murder, Wright Robinson published a novel in 2015 titled Mr. Tell Me Anything. The supposedly fictitious story centered around the life of a woman who marries an abusive and unfaithful basketball player. She later claimed in an interview that the book was based on her real life.
Wright’s supporters allege the book is fiction.
“I just don’t believe it. I think that is purely fiction,” said Bill Adkins, a close friend of Wright.
In 2017, a huge break came in the investigation. One of the guns used to kill Wright was found in a lake about 45 minutes away from Wright’s former home.
In court, prosecutors said Wright Robinson’s cousin, Jimmie Martin, started talking to investigators about Wright’s murder while awaiting sentencing in an unrelated murder case that had occurred three years prior to Wright’s death.
Martin had told prosecutors that he had participated in a failed plan to kill Wright with Wright Robinson and another man named Billy Ray Turner, who was a landscaper and attended the same church as Wright Robinson.
According to prosecutors, Martin claimed that after Wright was murdered, Wright Robinson and Turner confessed to him that they did it and needed his help in disposing the evidence, which is how he knew the location of the murder weapon.
Martin has not been charged in connection with Wright’s death.
Investigators began monitoring Wright Robinson’s and Turner’s cell phones and alleged that they had learned incriminating information. Both Wright Robinson and Turner were arrested and charged in December 2017.
Turner pleaded not guilty on first-degree murder charges.
Wright Robinson initially pleaded not guilty but later agreed to a plea deal on July 25, 2019, and pleaded guilty to the facilitation of first-degree murder. In exchange, prosecutors lessened her sentence to 30 years in prison. She will be eligible for parole as early as May 2027.
“She knows she was fittin’ to go down, down, down. Way down. She wasn’t gonna get no few years. She was gonna get some lifetime [if the case went to trial],” said Marion.
Wright Robinson’s plea deal was announced in court and the judge gave Marion the chance to address her son’s ex-wife. Instead of expressing outrage, Marion focused on moving forward with her six grandchildren who are said to be standing by their mother.
“Ms. Sherra, I want to thank you for giving me my grandchildren, that’s what I want to thank you for,” she said in court. “But I want you to call them, [and say], ‘No it’s OK to talk to grandma, grandma still loves you.’ That’s all I want is my grandkids.”
Turner, whose trial was delayed two years, in part because of the global pandemic, finally faced his day in court in March of 2022.
Turner chose not to testify.
After one week of testimony, the jury deliberated for a little over two hours, finding Turner guilty on all three counts: first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
Under Tennessee Law, the judge immediately sentenced Turner to life in prison. Marion, who was in the courtroom that day, said that after 12 years, she felt like “she can sleep now. All night now.”
“Lorenzen’s spirit been with me the whole time,” she said. “He can lay down like everybody else and just rest. I say ‘Get you some rest baby. We got this. They gone.’”
Queen Bey will release her seventh solo album, which is titled either RENAISSANCE: act i, or act i: RENAISSANCE — it’s hard to tell for certain from the meager information on her official website. According to the ordering information for various bundles of merch and music on the site, the album will be released on July 29.
This will be Beyoncé’s first conventional solo album since 2016’s Lemonade, though since then, she’s released the collaborative album Everything Is Love as The Carters with husband JAY-Z, the live album Homecoming, and The Lion King soundtrack album, which she curated. She was also nominated for an Oscar for her song “Be Alive,” from King Richard.
Fans became convinced new music was coming when Bey wiped her socials clean about two weeks ago. According to Variety, the Beyhive also determined that a tweet from the star’s BeyGOOD Foundation contained a secret reference to her upcoming album.
Bey also covers British Vogue, which got an early listen to the album. While there are no quotes from the star in the article posted online, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Edward Enniful, writes of Beyoncé, “The creation [of the album] has been a long process, she explains, with the pandemic giving her far longer to spend thinking and rethinking every decision. Just the way she likes it.”
The July issue of British Vogue is available on newsstands and via digital download on June 21.
(STURGIS, Mich.) — Less than two weeks after restarting production at its Sturgis, Michigan plant, Abbott said it has once again been forced to halt baby formula production after thunderstorms flooded part of the facility.
“These torrential storms produced significant rainfall in a short period of time, overwhelming the city’s stormwater system in Sturgis, Michigan, and resulting in flooding in parts of the city, including areas of our plant,” an Abbott spokesperson told ABC News. “As a result, Abbott has stopped production of its EleCare specialty formula that was underway to assess damage caused by the storm and clean and re-sanitize the plant. We have informed FDA and will conduct comprehensive testing in conjunction with the independent third party to ensure the plant is safe to resume production.”
Abbott’s plant was offline for roughly four months after serious quality control and contamination concerns. Its massive recall and plant shutdown in February exacerbated the nationwide formula crisis American families are still experiencing.
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf said he has personally spoken with Abbott’s CEO, Robert Ford, saying they discussed their “shared desire to get the facility up and running again as quickly as possible.”
Califf added that the storms are a “reminder that natural weather events can also cause unforeseen supply chain disruptions.”
“I want to reassure consumers the all-of-government work to increase supply means we’ll have more than enough product to meet current demand,” Califf said in a series of tweets.
Abbott had promised to start putting out its hypoallergenic formula EleCare to consumers around June 20. Infants with particular nutritional needs will have to wait longer for an infusion of formula from Abbott, the largest domestic manufacturer of infant formula prior to its recall.
“Once the plant is re-sanitized and production resumes, we will again begin EleCare production, followed by specialty and metabolic formulas,” the spokesperson told ABC News. “In parallel, we will work to restart Similac production at the plant as soon as possible.”
Meanwhile, Abbott said it still has “ample existing supply of EleCare and most of its specialty and metabolic formulas to meet needs for these products until new product is available.”
It said these products “are being released to consumers in need in coordination with healthcare professionals.”
“Abbott will have produced 8.7 million pounds of infant formula in June for the U.S., or the equivalent of 168.2 million 6-ounce feedings. This is 95% of what we produced in January, prior to the recall and does not include production from Sturgis,” the company spokesperson said.
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Kevin Spacey appeared in a London court on Thursday morning and was granted unconditional bail just days after The Metropolitan Police formally charged the actor with several alleged sexual assault crimes.
Spacey did not enter pleas to these charges during his appearance at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
The Oscar winner arrived at the courthouse around 10 a.m. Thursday and was greeted by throngs of photographers and members of the media as he made his way into the building.
Spacey made no comment to the media on his way to court and the proceedings were not open to the public.
The Metropolitan Police formally charged Spacey, 62, on Monday with four charges of sexual assaults against three men and one charge of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.
He’s scheduled to next appear in court on July 14.
Billy Crystal will reunite with his Analyze That producer Barry Levinson in the upcoming Apple TV+ limited series Before, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Crystal will play a child psychiatrist who recently lost his wife, when he encounters a troubled young boy. Additional details are being finalized, including the number of episodes, sources tell the outlet. Before marks a rare TV series regular role for Crystal, whose previous roles include ABC’s Soap and FX’s The Comedians…
Netflix on Wednesday released the first trailer for the upcoming Raold Dahl‘s Matilda the Musical, a screen adaptation of the Tony-winning musical. Alisha Weir plays the titular character Matilda Wormwood, an avid reader who discovers she is able to move objects without touching them. Emma Thompson stars as Miss Trunchbull, Crunchem Hall’s abusive headmistress. Lashana Lynch plays Matilda’s teacher, Miss Honey. Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough will play Matilda’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood, and Sindhu Vee is librarian Mrs. Phelps. Raold Dahl’s Matilda the Musical debuts on Netflix The film will premiere this holiday season…
Nearly two decades after starring together in Man on Fire, Dakota Fanning and Oscar winner Denzel Washington are reuniting for Antoine Fuqua’s The Equalizer 3, according to Deadline. Plot details are being kept under wraps. Fanning can currently be seen in Showtime’s The First Lady, opposite Michelle Pfeiffer…
Emilee McGovern/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(UVALDE, Texas) — Several Texas school districts are requiring students to use clear backpacks in the wake of last month’s deadly shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde.
Ingleside Independent School District, near Corpus Christi, became one of the latest to announce the new policy this week, after its board of trustees unanimously approved updating the district’s dress code policy to require clear backpacks starting in the 2022-2023 school year.
“Safety is a top priority for Ingleside ISD and is on the forefront of concern for school districts across Texas and our nation,” the district said in a statement Tuesday.
The policy is also expected to aid in processing students through metal detector lines at its secondary campuses, the district said.
Several other school districts have also implemented clear backpack policies in the wake of the May 24 shooting, in which 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School were killed.
Harper ISD, about 90 miles northwest of San Antonio, announced earlier this month that it will implement a clear backpack policy for students starting in the fall “in light of the recent school shooting, and in an effort to do everything we can to increase safety for our students and staff.”
Two local businesses donated a backpack for every student in the district.
Greenville ISD, located about 45 miles northeast of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, also said it will require clear backpacks starting in the fall, among other safety measures. The policy is a “common-sense measure is becoming more common at both school and public events,” the district said.
Additional security measures announced this month include having one front access point for entry and requiring that all classroom doors remain locked at all times, the district said.
The new measures also came a month after a fake pipe bomb was found at the district’s high school. The school was evacuated and a juvenile was taken into custody over the incident, school officials said.
Clear backpacks have become common in the wake of school shootings. Several other Texas school districts already require them among their security measures.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, temporarily required its students to use clear backpacks after a deadly 2018 shooting on campus. Some students questioned the policy’s effectiveness and raised privacy concerns at the time.
Oxford Community Schools in Michigan also required clear backpacks after four students were fatally shot in a mass shooting at Oxford High School last year.
Following the massacre at Uvalde, in which the shooter entered the school through an unlocked door, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott suggested that schools conduct weekly door checks, among other security measures. He also requested that state lawmakers convene special legislative committees to make recommendations on school safety, among other areas.
Lowell Police Department via John Guilfoil Public Relations
(LOWELL, Mass.) — The search for a missing 3-year-old Massachusetts boy who vanished from his babysitter’s backyard ended Wednesday afternoon with the grim discovery of the child’s body in a pond, authorities said.
The body of the toddler, identified by authorities as Harry Kkonde, was found in a pond at a Christmas tree farm 650 feet from the babysitter’s home in Lowell, about 30 miles northwest of Boston, Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan said at news conference.
“I want to be clear that we have no idea how Harry came to reach that pond, where he might have been or how long it might have taken him to reach that pond,” Ryan said.
The child was reported missing at about 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday. Police said a search for the boy was immediately launched.
Lowell Police Acting Superintendent Barry Golner said earlier Wednesday that investigators had found no evidence suggesting foul play in the boy’s disappearance.
About 200 law enforcement officers were involved in the search Wednesday, including K-9 units, divers, drone operators, helicopter crews and officers on horseback and all-terrain vehicles, police said.
“This is obviously every parents’ worst nightmare: a child who disappears for a very short period of time, the excruciating hours of the search and then the recovery of his body,” Ryan said.
The boy was found in roughly 5-feet of water near the edge of the murky pond that divers searched on Tuesday, ABC affiliate station WCVB in Boston reported.
Volunteer searcher Kylie Bouley told WCVB that she was looking for Harry in a cornfield near the pond when the boy’s body was discovered.
“I was looking for him in the cornfield and all I heard is, ‘He’s gone. He’s in the pond. We’re going to take him out. Please get out of the cornfield,'” Bouley said.
Harry was last seen wearing a long-sleeve maroon shirt and gray pants with a white stripe, police said.
“He’s active. He likes going outside. When he’s at home, he goes to the yard and plays. He’s a healthy kid but he can’t speak. He’s trying to learn how to speak, but he can’t talk,” Harry’s father told WCVB in a phone interview prior to his son’s body being discovered.
Upon getting the call of the missing child, officers went to the babysitter’s home in the Pawtucketville section of northwest Lowell and immediately began searching the neighborhood. When they found no sign of the boy, they expanded the search to the nearby Lowell-Dracut-Tyngsboro State Forest and the Merrimack River.
The child’s parents dropped him off at his babysitter’s house at about 7 a.m. Tuesday, police said. At least one neighbor saw the child playing in his babysitter’s backyard around 9:15 a.m., police said.
Lowell police notified the community of the missing boy on Tuesday by using a reverse 911 system to contact residents and asked them to call the police immediately if they believe they had seen the boy or had information about his whereabouts.
(NEW YORK) — Looking at data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would give the impression that COVID-19 is generally under control in Texas.
The federal agency’s map of levels of COVID-19 spread in the community shows most counties in the state are classified as “low” or “medium.”
But public health experts said this doesn’t tell the true story and that case counts are artificially low in Texas due to low levels of testing reported to public health officials.
“There are limitations to this metric by the CDC,” Dr. Luis Ostrosky-Zeichner, an infectious disease specialist at UTHealth Houston and Memorial Hermann Texas Medical Center, told ABC News. “The primary diver for the first part of the metric is the number of cases and then you get into hospitalizations and percentage of occupancy by COVID-19 patients.”
He continued, “Until you see a high number of hospitalizations, you don’t even get to the medium level. And we know that there has to be significant underreporting at this point for the number of cases.”
According to the CDC, as of June 7 — the latest date for which data is available — Texas is currently performing 20,535 new COVID-19 tests per day with a seven-day rolling average of 24,352.
This is half as many as the average of 55,842 tests being performed three months ago.
Doctors told ABC News that testing is very different at this point in the pandemic, with fewer people testing at government-run sites and more people testing at home.
“Many people have access to testing through other means rather than going through one of the government screening centers,” Dr. Robert Atmar, a professor of medicine and infectious diseases at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, told ABC News. “People have access to home kits; they can buy them at the pharmacy.”
This means some Americans are testing positive for COVID-19 on at-home rapid tests and not reporting their results to public health officials either because there is no mechanism to report results, or they just fail to do so.
Additionally, if people need treatments, such as antiviral pills like Paxlovid, they are getting prescriptions from their doctor rather than going to a hospital to receive them, doctors said.
“This is partly good news because people are not getting sick enough to require health care, but the downside is you cannot track the amount of disease in the community,” Atmar said.
This means the CDC data on COVID-19 community levels is somewhat unreliable.
“The current national risk map may provide a false sense of relief,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor. “Many areas with high rates of transmission are deemed to be low risk only because of data reporting gaps and lags.”
He added, “The shift to home testing compounds these issues as that data is unlikely to make it into public health surveillance systems.”
Experts said this is one reason why wastewater data, which shows virus levels in wastewater samples, may be a more accurate representation of levels of COVID-19 in a community.
Although wastewater data is not representative of the entire U.S. — with many areas not even having treatment plants — it does give an idea of hidden waves across the country.
According to data from a Houston wastewater monitoring dashboard — run jointly by the Houston Health Department and Rice University — levels of COVID-19 in wastewater samples in the city, as of June 6, are 502% compared to baseline in July 2020.
This is similar to levels seen during the delta surge, which peaked at 539% compared to levels in July 2020.
Dr. Wesley Long, medical director of microbiology at Houston Methodist Hospital, told ABC News that because transmission levels are high — not low or medium as indicated by the CDC in most Texas counties — it’s important for more people to get tested.
“What I would like to see change is for people to still be mindful,” he said. “Certainly, if they have symptoms, even if they’re mild symptoms, to get tested so that they know they’re negative or so that they can take the proper precautions and don’t continue to spread the virus.”
Dr. James Cutrell, an infectious disease physician at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, told ABC News he recommends people not just look at the CDC transmission map but also data on trends to see if cases are rising or falling and assess their personal risk.
“People who are fully vaccinated and boosted may be able to be more liberal in terms of what they feel comfortable whereas others who may have medical conditions or live with those who are more medically vulnerable need to consider being a bit more cautious,” Cutrell said.
Rasid Necati Aslim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
(LONDON) — Kevin Spacey appeared in a London court on Thursday, days after The Metropolitan Police formally charged the actor with four charges of sexual assaults against three men and one charge of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.
Spacey arrived at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court at around 10 a.m. on Thursday morning and was greeted by throngs of photographers and members of the media as he made his way into the building.
Spacey made no comment to the media on his way to court and the proceedings are not open to the public.
The Metropolitan Police formally charged Spacey, 62, on Monday.
The U.K.’s Crown Prosecution Service in May had authorized the charges against the Academy Award-winning actor, saying they stemmed from alleged incidents in London and Gloucestershire over a period of about eight years.
Prosecutors in May detailed four sexual assault charges linked to two alleged assaults against the same man in March 2005, and two alleged assaults against separate men in August 2008 and in April 2013. The final charge was linked to an alleged incident in August 2008, against the same man Spacey was alleged to have assaulted that same month, prosecutors said.
“The CPS has also authorised one charge of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent,” Rosemary Ainslie, head of the Special Crime Division, said in a statement at the time. “The authority to charge follows a review of the evidence gathered by the Metropolitan Police in its investigation.”
Prosecutors said it was “extremely important” that there be “no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.”
“The Crown Prosecution Service reminds all concerned that criminal proceedings against Mr. Spacey are active and that he has the right to a fair trial,” Ainslie said in a statement.
Spacey, who served as artistic director of London’s Old Vic theater from 2004 until 2015, told ABC News’ Good Morning America in late May that he would “voluntarily” appear in court in London.
“I very much appreciate the Crown Prosecution Service’s statement in which they carefully reminded the media and the public that I am entitled to a fair trial, and innocent until proven otherwise,” Spacey told GMA in May. “While I am disappointed with their decision to move forward, I will voluntarily appear in the U.K. as soon as can be arranged and defend myself against these charges, which I am confident will prove my innocence.”
