One of the characters from The Book of Boba Fett that has had fans buzzing just got the blessing of Angie Mayhew, the widow of Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca in the original Star Wars trilogy and its prequels.
Black Krrsantan, a dark-furred Wookiee who first appeared in the pages of Star Wars comics, made his live-action debut in the show, and in a message from the Peter Mayhew Foundation charity, the actor portraying him got some love.
“Warmest Wookiee welcome to Carey Jones who is playing fierce Black Krrsantan in the Book of Boba Fett,” the message passed on from Mayhew’s widow began. “You have some giant shoes to fill, welcome to the Wookiee family! Peter would have loved seeing a Wookiee truly unleashed!”
Jones is the first person of color to play a Wookiee in a Star Wars property.
Mayhew died in 2019 from a heart attack, just shy of his 75th birthday, but his charity lives on, “devoted to the alleviation of disease, pain, suffering, and the financial toll brought on by life’s traumatic events.”
In his later years, when Mayhew’s health prevented him from reprising the role of Chewbacca onscreen, he mentored 7’3″ Joonas Suotamo in filling his shoes in the Star Wars sequels, and in 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story.
The fifth chapter of The Book of Boba Fett is now streaming on Disney+.
Dashboard Confessional and Underoath are playing the 2022 Emo’s Not Dead concert cruise.
The seafaring festival sets sail from Los Angeles November 8, and will head to Ensenada, Mexico, before returning November 12.
Other artists on the bill include New Found Glory, Thursday, Plain White T’s, Silverstein, Hawthorne Heights and Yellowcard frontman William Ryan Key.
For the full lineup and all ticket info, visit EmosNotDead.com.
Dashboard will also be celebrating emo on land at the much-hyped When We Were Young festival alongside headliners My Chemical Romance and Paramore. The three-day event takes place October 22, 23 and 29 in Las Vegas.
Move over, Blake Shelton, Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean and Dierks Bentley: There’s a new country star-owned bar coming to downtown Nashville.
Eric Church is planning to open a new hot spot called Chief’s. Occupying the spot formerly owned by John Rich-owned Cotton Eyed Joe — which Rich and his partners sold for $24.5 million late last year, per the Tennessean — Chief’s is due to open in 2023.
The country superstar says opening his own bar is the “culmination of catching” a dream that he’s been chasing ever since he first moved to town.
“Like everything else we do in our career, I wouldn’t even attempt a project like this if I didn’t think it would be the best, so that’s what Chief’s will be: The best,” he explains.
Named for Eric’s 2011 Chief album, and the nickname that fans have given him, the singer’s new spot is personal on every level. Drawing on his Carolina roots, Eric’s enlisting James Beard Award winner and Charleston native Rodney Scott to bring his Whole Hog BBQ to a rooftop restaurant at the top of Chief’s six-story building.
Plus, the bar and restaurant will have a designated seated music venue, ready to host ticketed shows. That’s a big difference from many of the other spots on Nashville’s neon-splattered Lower Broadway, known for its boisterous, packed, standing-room-only honky tonks.
Chief’s is the latest in a fast-growing trend of country stars opening up their own bars. Florida Georgia Line and Miranda Lambert are two more who’ve gotten into the bar and restaurant game in recent years.
Family of four coming through — Julia Stiles and husband Preston Cook have welcomed baby number two!
Sharing a photo of their newborn’s feet, the 40-year-old actress shared that she’d given birth in an Instagram post on Wednesday.
“Welcome to the world, Baby Arlo! The newest addition to our family, reminding me how infinite love can be,” the Save the Last Dance alum captioned the pic. “Scroll Forward to see how my 4 year old is taking it.”
Those who scrolled were treated to a snapshot of a toilet, which her four-year-old son, Strummer, had drawn on with red marker.
Stiles and Cook, who met on set in 2015, tied the knot in 2017 while pregnant with their first child.
(NEW YORK) — Prices have continued to climb from the grocery store to the gas station amid the pandemic. According to a new report, the prices of some foods and household staples are heading higher.
Kraft Heinz alerted customers that its prices will go up in March on dozens of popular products including certain SKUs of Velveeta cheese by 6.6%, hot dogs and cold cuts by 10% and Oscar Mayer turkey bacon by 30%.
Even coffee is affected — Kraft Heinz’s Maxwell House coffee price would go up by 5%, the company said.
Prices have risen steadily across the food industry, with unprecedented ingredient, labor and transportation shortages coupled with surging demand driving prices higher.
Kraft Heinz said the price increases are not a sweeping action across all its products and instead applies specifically to products experiencing the greatest cost pressures.
Officials at the Federal Reserve on Wednesday signaled they are on the verge of addressing this issue of soaring prices by potentially hiking interest rates very “soon.”
“With inflation well above 2 percent and a strong labor market, the Committee expects it will soon be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate,” the Fed said in a statement Wednesday.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said that “inflation remains well above our longer run goal of 2%,” which it notably has for some time now. He attributed this largely to supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic and the reopening of the economy.
ABC News’ Catherine Thorbecke contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A snow storm is bearing down on the East Coast, with snow even expected to reach as far south as coastal North Carolina.
The brunt of the storm will hit from eastern Long Island to coastal Massachusetts, with moderate to major impacts for the Interstate 95 corridor from Philadelphia to New York City to Boston.
The storm will begin in the overnight hours early Saturday for Philadelphia and New York City. Snow will continue into Saturday afternoon in New England.
Boston could see more than 1 foot of snow. New York City is forecast to get 4 to 8 inches of snow while Philadelphia could see about 3 to 5 inches.
The New Jersey coast and the mid-Atlantic could get over 6 inches of snow and North Carolina could get up to 4 inches.
Ahead of the storm is a deep freeze. Bitter cold is hitting the East Coast Thursday morning with a wind chill — what temperature it feels like — at about 8 degrees in New York, 2 degrees in Boston, 15 in Raleigh and 24 in Atlanta.
And behind the snow storm will be the coldest temperatures in years for Florida. Sunday morning the wind chill could plunge to 23 degrees in Orlando and 29 degrees in Miami.
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.6 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 876,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
About 63.5% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jan 27, 8:01 am
New Hampshire to sell rapid COVID-19 tests at liquor stores
Rapid at-home COVID-19 testing kits will soon be on sale at liquor stores across New Hampshire, according to Gov. Chris Sununu.
Sununu announced Wednesday that the New Hampshire Executive Council unanimously approved a request by the state’s Department of Health and Human Services to use federal funds from the American Rescue Plan to secure 1 million over-the-counter antigen test kits for liquor store customers. The tests are expected to hit shelves within the next two weeks.
“In addition to tax-free liquor and lottery tickets, you’ll be able to grab a tax-free test,” the governor wrote on Twitter Wednesday.
Sununu said the test kits will be sold “at cost” for about $13, which can be reimbursed through health insurance, though that will vary from company to company.
Jan 26, 6:36 pm
1st participant dosed in Moderna’s omicron-specific vaccine
Moderna announced Wednesday that the first participant has been dosed in the phase 2 study of its omicron-specific booster candidate, in case it becomes necessary.
Moderna’s trials will include people who received two doses of the original Moderna vaccine and people who received two doses of the original Moderna vaccine and a Moderna booster shot.
Pfizer announced Tuesday that it’s initiated clinical studies to evaluate an omicron-based vaccine for adults.
Jan 26, 5:00 pm
NIH trial finds mixing and matching boosters is safe and effective
A study from the National Institutes of Health published in the New England Journal of Medicine found mixing and matching boosters are safe and create a similar immune response to sticking with your initial vaccine.
An earlier version of this study, with more preliminary findings, helped guide the CDC’s decision to allow mix-and-match.
The study authors make no claims about specific combinations being more or less effective. The study did find that people who got an mRNA vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna) and then received the Johnson & Johnson booster had a significant increase in T-cell response, a part of immunity.
The trial looked at 458 participants who received a vaccine with no prior COVID-19 infection. This data is only for the first 29 days after receiving the booster; researchers plan to follow the participants for one year, allowing for more data.
-ABC News’ Vanya Jain, Sony Salzman, Eric Strauss, Dr. Alexis Carrington
Jan 26, 4:47 pm
Unvaccinated child dies in Mississippi
An unvaccinated child has died in Mississippi from COVID-19, according to the state’s health department.
The department confirmed to ABC News that the child was between the ages of 11 and 17, an age bracket that is eligible to receive Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
This marked the 10th child — including an infant — to die in Mississippi from COVID-19. None of the 10 children were vaccinated, according to the health department.
The Directors Guild revealed its TV nominations Wednesday, and Succession is sure to pick up one of those awards — all five nominees for Dramatic Series are episodes of the HBO drama. In the Comedy Series category, Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso is a triple nominee, alongside HBO Max’s Hacks and HBO’s The White Lotus. The Movies for Television and Limited Series category includes Barry Jenkins for Amazon’s The Underground Railroad, Barry Levinson and Danny Strong for separate episodes of Hulu’s Dopesick, Hiro Murai for HBO Max’s Station Eleven and Craig Zobel for HBO’s Mare of Easttown. The full list of nominees can be found here. The guild will reveal its film nominations on Thursday. 2022 DGA Awards will be handed out March 12…
The U.S. premiere date for the anticipated Downton Abbey film sequel, Downton Abbey: A New Era, has been moved from March 18 to May 20, according to Variety. The sequel, from Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes, reunites the original principal cast — including Hugh Bonneville, Maggie Smith, Michelle Dockery, Joanne Froggatt and Penelope Wilton, who return alongside newcomers Hugh Dancy, Laura Haddock, Nathalie Baye and Dominic West — as they journey to the South of France to uncover the mystery of the Dowager Countess’ newly inherited villa…
Kathryn Kates, the veteran character actress whose credits include Orange Is the New Black, Seinfeld and Law & Order: SVU, died Saturday “after a hard fought battle with lung cancer,” her reps tell People. She was 73. Kates’ other TV credits include Matlock, Seinfeld, Judging Amy, Lizzie McGuire and Caroline in the City and Shades of Blue. Most recently, Kates appeared in last year’s short film Welcome to Sarajevo, and portrayed Angie DeCarlo in The Sopranos prequel movie The Many Saints of Newark…
(VENANGO COUNTY, Pa.) — The family of a Jamaican immigrant is calling his death a “modern-day lynching” after he was found shot to death on the front lawn of a rural Pennsylvania cabin.
Peter Bernardo Spencer, 29, was invited by a co-worker to join him at a cabin in Rockland Township, Pennsylvania, on Dec. 11, according to his family.
On Dec. 12, just a few hours later, Spencer was found with nine bullet wounds: one to the mouth, two in his buttocks and six in his abdomen or chest, according to the Venango County Coroner.
“They are trying to sweep this under the rug,” Spencer’s sister, Tehilah, wrote on a GoFundMe page. “We will not let them … He was slaughtered and killed in what I consider an act of modern-day lynching!”
Paul Jubas, the family’s lawyer, released autopsy photos of Spencer on his social media accounts at the family’s request. Jubas said the coroner’s assertion that he was shot in the chest and abdomen is a “misrepresentation” and that the photos indicate at least four of the shots were to Spencer’s back.
Pennsylvania State Police were called to the home around 2:30 a.m. and found Spencer dead on the front lawn with multiple gunshot wounds. Police say they found multiple firearms, “ballistic evidence” and controlled substances at the home.
Four suspects at the home were detained and questioned but were released after consultation with the Venango County District Attorney’s Office, according to officials. Pennsylvania State Police officials said they are investigating this as a homicide and the investigation involving the district attorney’s office is ongoing.
Spencer is Black. The former co-worker, as well as the other people at the cabin, were all white, according to the family. The people at the cabin during Spencer’s time of death have not been identified by police.
The district attorney’s office told ABC News that it will not comment on the ongoing investigation “out of concern for the impact that may have on a case and any potential charges.”
“Further disclosure of information may hinder or interfere with the investigation moving forward,” the district attorney’s office said in a statement to ABC News. “This office takes seriously any possibility that a crime may be fueled by hatred toward a person because of their race, color, religion or national origin. Rest assured, the Venango County District Attorney’s office will take every measure to ensure that justice is sought wherever it may be found.”
“The Franklin state troopers office will not give Peter’s family nor myself any information regarding this incident,” Carmela King, Spencer’s pregnant fiancee, wrote in a GoFundMe post. “We have been turned away several times while trying to reach out for information regarding what happened.”
The Pennsylvania State Police did not respond to ABC News’ requests for comment.
No one has been charged with a crime, and Spencer’s family is demanding answers, according to a statement from Jubas.
The family is demanding that the Venango County coroner must immediately turn over all photos and other pertinent information; the FBI or Department of Justice gets involved in this investigation and provides transparency for Spencer’s family; and the Venango County district attorney refers the case to Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro.
Spencer loved the outdoors and hunting, according to his family. Several groups, including Hunters of Color, Brown Girl Outdoor World and Outdoor Alliance, have joined forces to demand justice in the murder of Spencer.
A petition from more than 30 groups is urging the county district attorney, state officials and the U.S. attorney general to take action in setting “a precedent so that all future hunters, outdoor recreationists, and people of color know that justice is on their side, and that the outdoors are truly for everyone.”
The petition has gotten more than 15,000 signatures online.
Amy Schneider‘s 40-game Jeopardy! winning streak, which began November 17, came to an end Wednesday when she lost to Rhone Talsma, a librarian from Chicago, in a competitive game. Schneider remains in second for all-time consecutive wins, only behind Ken Jennings, whose 74-game record has held since 2004.
During her run, Schneider amassed $1,382,800 in prize winnings, making her the winningest woman in Jeopardy! history and fourth in all-time winnings during regular-season play behind Matt Amodio, James Holzhauer and Jennings, who amassed $1,518,601, $2,462,216 and $2,520,700, respectively.
The “Final Jeopardy!” which proved to be Schneider’s downfall was from the “Countries of the World” category. The clue read: “The only nation in the world whose name in English ends in an ‘H,’ it’s also one of the 10 most populous.” The answer: “What is Bangladesh?”
“It’s really been an honor,” Schneider said in a press release. “To know that I’m one of the most successful people at a game I’ve loved since I was a kid and to know that I’m a part of its history now, I just don’t know how to process it.”
Schneider, an engineering manager from Oakland, California, is also the show’s most successful trans champion thus far.
Schneider recently told Good Morning America that her favorite part of her Jeopardy! experience was “being on TV, you know, as my true self, expressing myself and representing the entire community of trans people.”
She’ll return to compete in the next Tournament of Champions, set to take place this fall. “It’s going to be really challenging; a lot of strong players there, but it should be a lot of fun,” Schneider told GMA on returning to face fellow Jeopardy! champions.
