Sam Asghari is no doubt excited to become a first-time dad with fiancée Britney Spears.
“This should have happened three years ago, to be honest with you,” Asghari told BBC Persian prior to Britney’s pregnancy announcement. “When you’re in a relationship with someone that you’re truly in love with, you want to recreate.”
Being a father, he added, is “something that I want to do.”
Sam and Britney have been together since 2016, when they met on the set of her “Slumber Party” music video. The 28-year-old actor proposed to Britney, 40, in September.
Britney previously spoke out about wanting to start a family, and told the court during a hearing last June that her conservatorship prevented her from doing so. She claimed her father and then-conservator, Jamie Spears, barred her from having more children, and that she was given an IUD against her will. The conservatorship was terminated in November.
Sam said he was heartened by how the world reacted to the news Britney was free to make her own decisions again. “It was phenomenal to see how everybody was so supportive and the whole world was engaged in it, in a sense,” he told the BBC.
Britney announced her pregnancy on Monday and, shortly after the big reveal, Sam took to Instagram to speak about fatherhood. Sharing a photos of two lions and a cub — a likely reference to the “lioness” nickname he’s given Britney — he captioned it, “Marriage and kids are a natural part of a strong relationship filled with love and respect.”
“Fatherhood is something i have always looked forward to and i don’t take lightly. It is the most important job i will ever do,” he closed.
Gilbert Gottfried, actor and stand-up comedian, has died after a “long illness,” his family confirmed on his social media accounts. He was 67.
“We are heartbroken to announce the passing of our beloved Gilbert Gottfried after a long illness,” the statement began. “In addition to being the most iconic voice in comedy, Gilbert was a wonderful husband, brother, friend and father to his two young children. Although today is a sad day for all of us, please keep laughing as loud as possible in Gilbert’s honor.”
A statement provided to ABC News by his longtime friend and publicist, Glenn Schwartz, says Gottfried “passed away at 2:35pm ET on April 12, 2022 from Recurrent Ventricular Tachycardia due to Myotonic Dystrophy type II.“
Known for his gravelly-voiced, near shouting on-stage delivery — as well as for his unflinching ability to “go there,” tackling material that few other comedians would — Gottfried began his stand-up career in the late 1970s in New York City. He also stole scenes in movies like Beverly Hills Cop 2, and later, he found fame with a younger generation as the voice of Iago the parrot in the Disney 1992 animated film Aladdin.
Gottfried was also known for voicing the duck in the long-running Aflac commercials, until he was fired for making a joke at the expense of the victims of the Japanese tsunami in 2011.
In the statement from Schwartz, Gilbert’s friend and podcast co-host Frank Santopadre said of Gottfried, “Gilbert’s brand of humor was brash, shocking and frequently offensive, but the man behind the jokes was anything but. Those who loved and him were fortunate enough to share his orbit knew a person who was sweet, sensitive, surprisingly shy and filled with a childlike sense of playfulness and wonder.”
Santopadre added, “He’ll be dearly missed by family, friends, fans and comedy lovers the world over. To quote Gilbert himself, ‘Too soon!'”
Social media was quick to start tributes to the comedian, with one of the first to comment being Seinfeld‘s Jason Alexander, who tweeted, “Gilbert Gottfried made me laugh at times when laughter did not come easily. What a gift. I did not know him well but I loved what he shared with me. My best wishes and sympathy to his family.
As a woman who’s busy managing an empire, Dolly wakes up at 3 a.m. each morning to begin her hectic work day. But, it turns out, it’s a family tradition, as her father, Robert Lee Parton, was also up before the crack of dawn as a farmer and sharecropper.
“I don’t need a whole lot of sleep. I go to bed pretty early, but even if I’ve been up late — it’s just kind of like a little clock inside of me that says ‘it’s 3 o’clock!'” Dolly shares with Insider. ”I do some of my best work there, but I get enough sleep. I don’t require as much sleep as a lot of other people do, that’s kind of a Parton family trait. I’m like my daddy. He was always up early, even if he had to go to bed late.”
Dolly recently released a novel, Run, Rose, Run, and an accompanying album of original songs. She’s set to star in a movie based on the book that she and co-author James Patterson will produce with Reese Witherspoon.
(NEW YORK) — A gunman donned a gas mask, detonated a smoke canister and opened fire on a New York City subway train Tuesday morning, shooting 10 people and sparking panic during the rush-hour commute.
Twenty-nine victims went to Brooklyn hospitals with various injuries. Five people are in critical but stable condition.
Police described the gunman, who is still on the run, as an “active shooter.” The bloodshed comes amid a surge in crime on New York City’s transit system.
The shooting, reported just before 8:30 a.m. local time, erupted on a Manhattan-bound N subway car as it approached the 36th Street subway station in Sunset Park in Brooklyn, New York City Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said at a news conference.
According to a police official, the suspect was seen mumbling to himself before he put on the gas mask, released a smoke canister commonly bought online and opened fire with a .380 caliber handgun.
There were no working cameras in the 36th Street station, according to a police official. But police were able to get an image of the suspect from a bystander’s cellphone video, a law enforcement official told ABC News.
In the subway station, police found a handgun with three extended round magazines: one on the shooter’s backpack, one empty on the floor and one in the gun jammed, the law enforcement official said. The gun jamming is believed to have saved lives, the official said.
Yav Montano, 24, was on the train when he said the whole car filled with smoke.
“It was hard to breathe, it was hard to see. It was hard to hear or pay attention to what was going on with the chaos that was happening,” he said.
“I didn’t see anything because the smoke in the train was so thick. I couldn’t even see halfway down the length of the train car,” he added.
“After the smoke went on there was a bunch of popping, which I thought at first was firecrackers,” he went on. “I ducked behind a chair to protect myself.”
From a crouching position on the floor, Montano said, “I saw a lot of blood on the floor. Too much blood.”
Montano said the doors opened at 36th Street about three to four minutes later. “As soon as the doors opened, everyone started to pour out and run,” he recalled.
Multiple smoke devices and a bag of commercial-grade fireworks have been recovered, according to a law enforcement official.
Sewell said there are no known explosives on subways and a motive in still unknown.
After initially saying the shooting was not being investigated as an act of terrorism, Sewell later said police are “not ruling anything out.”
Sewell described the suspect as a man wearing a green construction-type vest and a gray-hooded sweatshirt. The suspect has a “heavy build” and is believed to be about 5 feet 5 inches tall, Sewell said.
The NYPD has put out a citywide alert for a U-Haul vehicle with license plate AL31408 that may be associated with the suspect, according to police sources.
A man who works in a bodega outside the subway told ABC New York station WABC about 10 to 15 people ran to his store for safety.
“It was horrifying,” he said.
“I saw three or four people with gunshot wounds to their legs. They just fell to floor before the cops came. … They just stayed here for a couple of minutes before the coast was clear,” he said. “Everyone was terrified, I was terrified.”
Victims range in age from 17 to 50, according to a police official.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams told NY1, “We are going to remain vigilant and catch the person responsible.”
A senior federal law enforcement source told ABC News authorities are concerned this shooting showed a level of planning and commitment to kill scores of commuters during rush hour. The source said it is too early to know if the suspect acted alone.
President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have been briefed on the situation.
Anyone with information, video or photos is urged to call 800-577-TIPS.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
ABC News’ Pierre Thomas, Mark Crudele, Ivan Pereira, Miles Cohen and Luke Barr contributed to this report.
Following the wildly popular RIAA-certified Platinum hit “HRS and HRS,” superstar musician Muni Long released what could become the singer’s next smash single, “Another.”
She’s spent most of her music career behind the scenes as a songwriter on popular hits like Rihanna‘s “California King Bed,” Ariana Grande‘s “Imagine,” Chris Brown’s “Beg for It” and many more. Now, 33-year-old Florida native is taking full advantage of her newfound fame as a singer.
Following the romance & soul trend of her previous single, “Another” displays Long’s versatility as both a creator and originator of music.
“I really do consider myself as a storyteller and I’m multi-dimensional, so I don’t think that just because I wrote this really successful love song that the song is necessarily true for everyone,” Muni said of the new track in an interview with ELLE magazine. “Hopefully, people hear it and really feel connected,” she said.
“Another” is available for download or streaming today.
Bobby Whitlock, 2nd from left, with Derek and the Dominos circa 1970; Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Bobby Whitlock is best known as a member of Eric Clapton‘s 1970s band Derek and the Dominos, but in recent years, the singer, keyboardist and songwriter also has become a prolific painter.
On April 1, Whitlock’s first-ever art exhibition opened at the Crockett County Museum in Bobby’s current hometown of Ozona, Texas, and the 74-year-old musician will be at the museum this Wednesday, April 13, for a special meet-and-greet event that runs from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. CT.
The exhibit features almost 200 of his paintings displayed throughout the museum’s three floors, and Whitlock tells ABC Audio that he feels like he’s making art history with such an auspicious debut exhibition.
“No other artist has ever had this happen, where their first exhibition [features] nearly 200 works of art, and in a museum on top of that,” he enthuses. “Generally, an artist gets maybe a showing at a gallery [with] couple of pieces, that’s it.”
Whitlock says the exhibit came about when he was approached by one of the museum’s curators at the local post office.
She said, ‘I’ve been on your [websites] and I love your art, and would you like to do an exhibition?'” he recalls. “And I said, ‘Yeah, that’d be great,’ you know, ’cause I didn’t know what I was gonna do with all of my paintings.”
Bobby says he happily surprised when he was informed that so much of his artwork would be displayed, and that the exhibit was to run for six months.
As for how he felt getting to view his paintings hung on the walls of a museum, Whitlock notes, “[I]t took my breath away…It was pretty astounding to see something like that.”
The ongoing legal battle between exes Johnny Depp and Amber Heard managed to get even uglier in a Virginia courtroom today.
During their defamation trail, Heard made a never-before-revealed accusation of sexual assault, claiming it happened while the star was “black-out drunk” and when the pair was married.
According to Rolling Stone, one of Depp’s attorneys, Camille Vasquez, told the jury, “Ms. Heard had never made that accusation against Mr. Depp — it was never part of her allegations of abuse in 2016,” with his lawyers calling the accusations “convenient.”
The crux of the case is a Washington Post op-ed written by Heard, in which she claimed that she suffered domestic abuse during her marriage — without naming the Pirates of the Caribbean series star.
Vasquez continued about Aquaman star Heard, “When she realized the seriousness of what she alleged…she panicked and alleged sexual assault. In Mr. Depp’s fifty-eight years, not a single woman has ever accused him of violence, and nobody in Hollywood or the world had any reason to believe he was an abuser — until Ms. Heard publicly accused him.”
Vasquez added, “The only medical report of an injury during their relationship was a severe one sustained by Mr. Depp…She threw a vodka bottle at him that hit his hand and exploded, severing the end of one of his fingers.”
Depp’s attorneys also brought receipts proving Heard apparently reneged on a promise to donate her $7 million divorce settlement to both the ACLU and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
Heard’s attorney Ben Rottenborn told the jury, “It’s not about which party can sling more mud…that’s what Mr. Depp wants to turn this case into.”
The project was released on April 12, 2005, and after only a week of radio airtime, it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart. After spending 14 weeks in the number-one spot, “We Belong Together” was hailed as the “song of the decade” by Billboard.
The album has garnered numerous accolades, including scoring eight nominations at the 48th Grammy Awards, and winning three trophies, among them the Best Contemporary R&B Album honor. It also was the biggest-selling album of the year worldwide, after amassing an impressive 10 million copies sold, according to U.K. newspaper The Telegraph.
Although it’s considered Carey’s “comeback album,” The Emancipation of Mimi is one that has cemented the superstar as an R&B great.
Tom Hanks and his Playtone production company partner Gary Goetzman are reuniting with Apple TV+ for a new series called Masters of the Air following their World War II naval film Greyhound.
While that Emmy-nominated movie is getting a sequel, Masters of the Air will instead look at the heroes of World War II through the eyes of those who took to the skies during the global conflict: American bomber crews.
Austin Butler, who worked opposite two-time Oscar winner Hanks in the biopic Elvis, is part of the cast, as is Barry Keoghan, recently seen as the Joker in The Batman. Fantastic Beasts series cast member Callum Turner will also appear in the series, as will Shadow and Bone‘s Freddy Carter.
The project is based on Donald L. Miller‘s book Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany.
Hanks was also the producer on the Emmy-winning World War II show Band of Brothers and its follow-up The Pacific, along with his Oscar-winning Saving Private Ryan director Steven Spielberg.
It was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, but Maren Morris and her husband, Ryan Hurd, shared a sweet exchange onstage during the CMT Awards.
During the debut performance of their duet, “I Can’t Love You Any More,” Maren sang the line “and you like me even when I’ve been a bi***.” Though her husband’s response wasn’t audible on air, Maren is now sharing it.
“For the record, @ryanhurd said ‘you’re not a bi***, baby’ which made me laugh and almost miss my next lyric,” the hit singer revealed with a crying laughing and heart emojis. “I truly can’t love you anymore than I do now.”
“I Can’t Love You Any More” is featured on Maren’s new album, Humble Quest. It serves as the couple’s second duet, following the chart-topping “Chasing After You.”
