Ryan Reynolds has pulled another prank on his pal Hugh Jackman, perfectly timed for the Australian actor’s opening night on Broadway in a revival of The Music Man.
Friday morning, Jackman tweeted a photo of his dressing room at New York City’s Winter Garden Theatre, where he said he’d been greeted with “Gorgeous flowers, champagne and heartfelt well wishes” from friends.
Those weren’t pictured, however: Instead Jackman showed a pair of framed photos that had been stashed in his room: a black and white snap of Reynolds clicking his heels together in mid-air, and a sepia-toned sketch of the Free Guy star.
“I am blessed,” Jackman continued, “And then, there’s him.”
Although we don’t know when Rihanna will give birth to her first child, we may know a bit about what she will name her little one.
According to Us Weekly, the “Umbrella” singer will chose a name that honors both her and father A$AP Rocky’s heritage. “Rihanna wants her Barbados heritage honored when she names her child, [as well as] A$AP’s roots,” a source dished to the outlet. “They want both of their cultures included. It is very important to them to keep where they are from passed down to their child.”
The insider adds Rihanna has her work cut out for her because she “has admiration for so many strong women and men in her family” and that means she has “a lot of names to pick from for a starting point.”
This will be the first child for Rihanna and A$AP Rocky, both 33, who confirmed in a series of intimate photos last month that they were expecting. The two have yet to reveal a due date, or if they’re painting the nursery blue or pink.
But, going off a previous report from Us Weekly, we might get an answer this spring because — according to another one of their alleged insiders — that’s when the baby is due.
This Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of the release of The Allman Brothers Band‘s classic fourth album, Eat a Peach.
The record, a two-disc set that includes a mix of studio tracks and live performances, is the band’s last album to feature founding slide guitarist Duane Allman, who died in a motorcycle crash at age 24 on October 29, 1971, not long after the sessions began.
Although Eat a Peach had no hit singles, it features what became many of The Allman Brothers Band’s most popular songs, including “Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More” and “Melissa,” both written by lead singer/keyboardist Gregg Allman; “Blue Sky,” penned by singer/guitarist Dickey Betts; and a memorable cover of blues great Elmore James‘ “One Way Out.”
The live tracks — “One Way Out,” “Trouble No More” and the epic “Mountain Jam” — were recorded at the same run of 1971 New York City shows that yielded the band’s At Fillmore East album.
“Mountain Jam” is a 34-minute-plus improvised instrumental based on British folk-rocker Donovan‘s 1967 hit “There Is a Mountain.” To fit the jam onto the album, it was split into two parts and took up two full sides of the double LP.
Eat a Peach peaked at #4 on the Billboard 200, The Allman Brothers’ highest-charting album up to that time, and has been certified Platinum by the RIAA for 1 million units sold in the U.S.
“Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More”
“Les Brers in A Minor”
“Melissa”
“Mountain Jam” (live)
“One Way Out” (live)
“Trouble No More” (live)
“Stand Back”
“Blue Sky”
“Little Martha”
(PHOENIX) — Five Phoenix police officers were shot and injured, and a woman was shot and killed during an early morning barricade situation, the department said.
All of the police officers’ injuries were non-life-threatening, police said.
The incident began when officers were called to a home where a woman was reported shot, Phoenix police said.
When an officer approached to help, the suspect, an adult man, invited the officer inside, said Phoenix police spokesman Andy Williams.
As the officer approached the door, “the suspect ambushed him with a gun and shot him several times,” Williams said. “That officer was able to get back and get away to safety.”
“Other backup officers arrived on scene and they surrounded the home and began calling out the occupants,” Williams said.
Then another man — not the suspect — came out of the house holding a baby girl, police said. The man put the baby on the ground and walked to police where he was detained.
When officers went to bring the baby to safety, the suspect again opened fire from inside the house, shooting four more officers,
Four other officers were indirectly injured when they were struck by shrapnel, police said.
The suspect then barricaded himself in the home, police said.
Extremely active scene near 51st and W Elwood in Phoenix. We heard several gunshots and saw a chopper over head with its spotlight on when we arrived. @PhoenixPolice on scene and asking public to avoid area. Our photographer saw at least one officer shot @abc15pic.twitter.com/uV10rLNig5
Once the scene was secured, police said they found the suspect dead inside.
The woman who was the first reported to be shot was found in extremely critical condition inside the home, police said. Hours later, police said she died from her injuries. The woman appeared to be the suspect’s former girlfriend, police said.
The baby appeared to be OK, police added.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey tweeted, “Please continue to pray for the five @PhoenixPolice officers injured this morning. Our men and women in blue work day and night—no matter the circumstances—to protect our state from danger.”
He added, “My office is working closely with the Phoenix Police Department to get updates on the situation and the officers’ conditions.”
Other police departments are also speaking out.
Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown tweeted that his department “stands with our brothers and sisters of the Phoenix Police.”
ABC News’ Nicholas Kerr and Alyssa Pone contributed to this report.
Just days before he’s set to take the Super Bowl halftime show stage, Snoop Dogg is being sued for sexual assault and battery by a former backup dancer.
Page Six reports that the lawsuit was filed Thursday in California by a woman identified only as Jane Doe. The woman alleges the rapper forced her to perform a sex act after one of his performances in late May 2013. She also names Snoop’s friend, hip hop personality Bishop Don Juan, in the suit.
A spokesperson for Snoop, birth name Calvin Broadus, told Page Six on Friday that the allegations are “simply meritless” and “appear to be part of self-enrichment shakedown…to extort Snoop Dogg right before he performs during this Sunday’s Super Bowl halftime show.”
“To be clear, Mr. Broadus has never has had any sexual encounter whatsoever with [the plaintiff],” the rep continued.
Snoop has not yet personally commented on the situation, but earlier this week he posted a cryptic message on Instagram, writing, “Gold digger season is here…keep ya guards up.”
While William Petersen‘s Gil Grissom and Jorja Fox‘s Sara Sidle won’t be returning for the second season of CBS’ hit C.S.I. reboot, another familiar face will be.
Marg Helgenberger, currently co-starring on the OWN legal drama All Rise, will return as crime scene investigator Catherine Willows when C.S.I. Vegas returns this fall, ABC Audio has confirmed.
Helgenberger will appear on the third season of All Rise, which recently moved to OWN from CBS, starting in June, as she gets back on the beat with the Sin City C.S.I. production team for the forthcoming new season. And it looks like she was in the shows creator’s sights for some time.
Anthony Zuikerhad hinted to Entertainment Tonight last yearthat he’d be “personally lobbying” for a particular co-star from the original series to return if C.S.I. Vegas was picked up for a sophomore frame. He also mentioned cast members from the show’s spin-offs C.S.I.: Miami, C.S.I.: New York and C.S.I.: Cyber could also follow.
“[A]ll four of those shows are wide open for possibilities,” Zuiker teased.
Adam Lambert is thankful mental health is “becoming less taboo for people” and, in a candid new interview, opened up about his own struggles.
Responding to the question, “What’s one question you’ve always wanted to be asked, but no one’s ever asked you?”, Adam told Hunger magazine, “Over the past five years… My journey with mental health has been really interesting” and that he’s “definitely dealt with my share of anxiety.”
Adam admitted he hasn’t “gone into a lot of detail” about his mental health. As for why he’s now ready to speak up about his anxiety, he explained, “I think that’s something that’s becoming less taboo for people, but it’s not something that’s at the forefront of the line of questioning.”
“The more we all talk about it, the more we realize it’s pretty common, especially in this day and age,” Adam continued. “Anxiety’s real. It’s a beast.”
The iGrammy winner alum added these conversations also help encourage those suffering in silence to “ask for help” because “I think it’s really important not to feel like there’s something wrong with you.”
Noting that anxiety is “more common than we all realize,” Adam said, “I feel some people think that if they don’t ask for help then it’s not real. So, people avoid admitting themselves and getting the help they need because they’re in denial. You’ve got to be real with yourself and honest with yourself.”
Adam added the pandemic exacerbated his anxiety “in its own way,” and that’s even more reason to hold such vulnerable but necessary conversations. “I’m sure there were lots of people who had never dealt with anxiety before that all of a sudden started dealing with it,” he offered.
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. issued a stark new warning Friday that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could begin during the Olympics.
“We can’t pinpoint the day, at this point, and we can’t pinpoint the hour, but what we can say is that there is a credible prospect that a Russian military action would take place even before the end of the Olympics,” U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at the White House. The Winter Olympics, which are ongoing in Beijing, are scheduled to end on Feb. 20.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking in Melbourne, Australia, earlier Friday, shared the same message: “As we said before, we’re in a window when an invasion could begin at any time. To be clear, that includes during the Olympics.”
Sullivan said the United States still could not say whether Russian President Vladimir Putin had actually made a decision to invade.
But he said the situation had grown so dire that Americans in Ukraine should leave “immediately” — or at least “in the next 24 to 48 hours.”
“We don’t know exactly what is going to happen,” Sullivan said. “But the risk is now high enough, and the threat is now immediate enough that this is what prudence demands.”
Sullivan told ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Mary Bruce that he expected President Joe Biden to “engage by telephone with President Putin.” The last time the leaders spoke was Dec. 30.
A White House official later said the two would speak Saturday morning.
Sullivan said Biden did not plan to put American troops’ lives at risk to rescue Americans who remained there.
“If you stay,” he said, echoing what said in an NBC News interview Thursday, “you are assuming risk with no guarantee that there will be any other opportunity to leave, and there is no prospect of a U.S. military evacuation in the event of a Russian invasion.”
Sullivan said the U.S. is reducing the size of its “embassy footprint” in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
BREAKING: White House updates on Ukraine:
– Further signs of Russian escalation
– “We are in the window when an invasion could begin at any time”
– Invasion could begin during Olympics, “despite a lot of speculation that it would only happen after”
– “We are ready either way.” pic.twitter.com/4ANN9fdc19
Sullivan went on to describe in vivid detail what could happen, including a “rapid assault on the city of Kyiv.”
“If a Russian attack on Ukraine proceeds, it is likely to begin with aerial bombing and missile attacks that could obviously kill civilians without regard to their nationality,” Sullivan said. “A subsequent ground invasion would involve the onslaught of a massive force with virtually no notice, communications to arrange a departure could be severed and commercial transit halted.”
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley spoke Friday with Chief of Russian General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov by telephone, a Joint Chiefs spokesperson said in a statement.
“The military leaders discussed several security-related issues of concern,” the statement said. “In accordance with past practice, both have agreed to keep the specific details of their conversation private.”
Earlier Friday, Biden held a call with transatlantic leaders to chart next moves as talks over Russia’s military build-up near Ukraine showed no sign of defusing the crisis.
Biden spoke about “coordination on both diplomacy and deterrence” with the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, the United Kingdom, NATO, the European Commission, and the European Council, according to the White House.
The president has remained largely silent on Ukraine over the past few days, instead holding public events focused on the U.S. economy.
The transatlantic call came as NATO warned Europe was facing a “dangerous moment.”
“This is a dangerous moment for European security,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday in Brussels.
European leaders have engaged in intense diplomacy with Russia and Ukraine over the past several weeks to avoid war in eastern Europe. But the talks have so far failed to yield much apparent progress.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron traveled to Moscow to meet with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, before meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, the next day.
Russia and Ukraine held talks Thursday in Berlin, moderated by Germany and France, but after nine hours of discussion failed to even agree on issuing a joint statement.
Western officials had hoped that the latest round of the so-called “Normandy Format Talks” would push forward the diplomacy by Macron and other officials who have been shuttling between capitals over the past couple weeks.
The sides remained at an impasse, though, over Russia’s insistence that the Ukrainian government speak directly with Russian-backed separatist leaders in eastern Ukraine.
Biden said Monday that Americans currently in Ukraine should leave, and on Thursday, he repeated that message with more urgency.
“American citizens should leave now,” Biden Thursday said in an interview with NBC News. “It’s not like we’re dealing with a terrorist organization. We’re dealing with one of the largest armies in the world. It’s a very different situation and things could go crazy quickly.”
Senior U.S. officials say they do not believe Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has made a decision whether to invade Ukraine, even as he has amassed over 100,000 troops on Russia’s border with Ukraine.
The U.S. and other Western nations have warned of severe economic consequences to Russia if it does invade. Russia denies it plans to do so.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, Russia and Belarus kicked off 10 days of joint exercises in Belarus, north of Ukraine.
ABC News’ Patrick Reevell and Matt Seyler contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The Food and Drug Administration on Friday postponed its review of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for kids under 5.
“We realized now, in data that came in very rapidly because of the large number of cases of Omicron, that at this time, it makes sense for us to wait until we have the data from the evaluation of a third dose before taking action,” Dr. Peter Marks, the FDA’s vaccine chief, told reporters.
Marks acknowledged the change was “late breaking” — the FDA’s committee of independent advisors was scheduled to review and vote on authorizing the vaccine next Tuesday — but said the job of the FDA was to “adjust” to new data amid an unpredictable virus.
Pfizer applied for an emergency use authorization for its vaccine for kids ages 6 months to 4 years nearly two weeks ago. Studies on a three-shot regimen continue, which Pfizer ultimately expects will be the most effective dosage for the youngest age group.
The shot for kids under 5 is about one-tenth the dose for adults.
Submitting the data on a rolling basis was intended to get young children started on their vaccinations sooner in the face of the omicron variant and any potential new variants that arise.
But Pfizer said omicron advanced the study “at a rapid pace” and it was now going to wait for the three-dose data that “may provide a higher level of protection in this age group.”
“This is also supported by recent observations of three dose booster data in several other age groups that seems to meaningfully augment neutralizing antibody levels and real world vaccine protection for omicron compared to the two-dose regimen,” Pfizer said in a press release, referring to the heightened protection booster shots have shown to give.
Marks said the FDA needed to see the full data on three doses before it could proceed and he couldn’t comment on the specifics.
“The data that we saw made us realize that we needed to see data from a third dose … to make the determination that we could proceed with doing an authorization,” Marks said.
Pfizer predicts it will be able to submit data on the third dose by early April. Marks, in the briefing, also said it would be about two months before there is more movement from the FDA.
“For the next two months, while the additional data are gathered, parents will have to rely on what they’ve come to do well, which is they’re using masking procedures, and they are making sure that they’re vaccinated and taking those types of precautions with their youngest children,” Marks said.
He went on, “We will do our part obviously, to move as fast as we can when we have the data, but for now we’ll have to ask parents to help to continue to do what they’ve been doing.”
He also sought to reassure parents and their children that this postponement was a sign that the scientific process was working.
Pfizer may have only recently informed the FDA of this new data because it takes time to review clinical studies run by an independent monitoring board.
The latest omicron surge hit children harder than previous variants largely because of their unvaccinated status.
The Backstreet Boys helped define the boy band craze of the late ’90s and aughts, but member Nick Carter recalls how awkward it was for him and his band mates before they hit the big time.
Speaking to USA Today, the singer recalled, “In my late teens, I’d go and try to play basketball on the basketball court with friends, and there’d be kids mocking you and singing your songs like, ‘Backstreet’s back,’ ‘I want it that way’…At that time, I remember it was like, ‘Oh, this pop, boy band music.'”
Nick also gave a shout-out to those who fell in love with their music before they became a global phenomenon, saying he attributes that early attention to “the most incredible fans in the world, who are resilient, who don’t care about what anybody else out there says, and love what they love.”
He added, “Sometimes it was like you were an outsider. We recognize that our fans are the most incredible people in the world.”
Those early fans have certainly been vindicated. The Backstreet Boys have sold over 100 million albums globally and are now considered not just the best-selling boy band of all time — they are one of the best-selling artists in the world.
Backstreet is still going all these years later. Nick and his fellow band mates are getting ready to start their pandemic-delayed world tour, which starts June 4 in California.
In the meantime, Nick has released a new solo single “Easy,” which features country star Jimmie Allen. “I’d been just doing normal, everyday husband and fatherhood duties at home and got inspired to write a song that was about my life,” he explained, noting the song has “too literal” lyrics about waking up in a house full of young kids.
