Olivia Rodrigo just kicked off her sold out Sour world tour and threw it back to 2002 on opening night by belting out Avril Lavigne‘s “Complicated.”
NME reports the Grammy winner performed at Portland, Oregon’s Theater of the Clouds on Tuesday night and slipped the throwback tune into her 12-song set.
“Complicated” was the fourth song on Olivia’s set list, coming after “drivers license” and before an acoustic cover of “hope ur ok.”
Fans recorded the surprise covers, of course, and snippets of Tuesday night’s concert are already circulating online. According to one fan, Olivia introduced the track by telling the crowd, “This next song is a song I really love by the pop punk princess herself — Avril Lavigne!”
As previously reported, Olivia’s sold-out 40-date North American tour will take her across major cities in the U.S. and Canada — such as New York City, Las Vegas and Toronto — before concluding in Los Angeles on May 25, 2022. Olivia will then head across the pond for a brief European leg, starting with a show on June 11 in Hamburg, Germany.
The Sour tour concludes July 7, 2022 in London, England.
(WASHINGTON) — Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday expressed outrage over the “horrible images” of killed civilians in Ukraine and said the U.S. is working with international partners to identify those responsible.
“This Department has a long history of helping to hold accountable those who perpetrate war crimes,” Garland said. “We have seen the dead bodies of civilians, some with bound hands, scattered in the streets. We have seen the mass graves. We have seen the bombed hospital, theater, and residential apartment buildings. The world sees what is happening in Ukraine. The Justice Department sees what is happening in Ukraine.”
Garland said investigators are in the “collection of evidence” stage of any war crime prosecution and he is not calling for anything similar to the Nuremberg Trials at this point, but he notably said the Justice Department has a “long history” of helping to hold accountable those who perpetrate war crimes.
“One of my predecessors — Attorney General Robert Jackson — later served as the chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials,” he said.
Garland told reporters he personally spoke on Tuesday with the Justice Department’s chief prosecutor in Paris who has been meeting with the French war crimes prosecutor.
On Monday, Garland said prosecutors from the department’s Criminal Division met with prosecutors from Eurojust and EUROPOL to “work out a plan for gathering evidence with respect to Ukraine.”
“At the same time, the United States is at the request of the Ukrainian prosecutor assisting in the collection of information with respect to the atrocities that took place in Ukraine and that are still taking place,” Garland said.
“The world sees what is happening in Ukraine.”
Following images out of Bucha and other Ukrainian cities, AG Merrick Garland says U.S. is “assisting international efforts to identify and hold accountable those responsible for atrocities in Ukraine.” https://t.co/GyjVQ5rYNApic.twitter.com/yItmo9sEkj
His remarks come as the Justice Department on Wednesday announced a myriad of actions against Russian oligarchs and Russian darknet operations.
DOJ charged Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev with sanctions violations, alleging Malofeyev as one of the main sources of financing for Russians promoting separatism in Crimea, and for providing material support for the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic.
These actions are part of the Justice Department’s KleptoCapture Task force, established last month and is aimed at seizing Russian oligarch assets.
“After being sanctioned by the United States, Malofeyev attempted to evade the sanctions by using co-conspirators to surreptitiously acquire and run media outlets across Europe,” Garland told reporters. “We are also announcing the seizure of millions of dollars from an account at a U.S. financial institution, which the indictment alleges constitutes proceeds traceable to Malofeyev’s sanctions violations.”
One of Malofeyev’s co-conspirators, according to DOJ, Jack Hanick a former U.S. television producer, was arrested last month in the United Kingdom where he had been living for violating U.S. sanctions stemming from Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.
The Justice Department also announced the disruption of a global botnet run by the GRU, which DOJ says the Russians have used similar infrastructure to attack the Ukrainians and were able to shut the system down before it was able to be used against thousands of network devices it had reportedly infected.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told reporters the team behind the global botnet was behind some of most infectious cyberattacks in recent memory — including the cyberattacks against the Winter Olympics in 2018, attacks on Ukrainian power grid in 2015 and the attack on the country of Georgia in 2019.
“We’re going to act as soon as we can with whatever partners are best situated to help,” Wray said. “The Russian government has show that it has no qualms about conducting this kind of criminal activity and they continue to pose a threat.”
Garland echoed Wray’s comments, saying, “We were then able to disable the GRU’s control over those devices before the botnet could be weaponized.”
The Justice Department seized a yacht that belongs to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg in Marina Real in the Spanish port of Palma de Mallorca, according to court documents unsealed Monday.
In addition to the seizure of Vekselberg’s yacht, U.S. authorities also obtained seizure warrants unsealed in Washington, D.C., Monday that target roughly $625,000 associated with sanctioned parties that’s being held at nine U.S. financial institutions, the Justice Department said.
“It does not matter how far you sail your yacht. It does not matter how well you conceal your assets. It does not matter how cleverly you write your malware or hide your online activity. The Justice Department will use every available tool to find you, disrupt your plots, and hold you accountable,” Garland said.
Bobby Rydell, the teen idol who scored a series of hits during the late 1950 and early ’60s, died Tuesday, April 5, at age 79.
The singer and actor, who was born Robert Ridarelli, passed away at a Philadelphia area hospital from complications of non-COVID-19-related pneumonia, according to a press release.
Rydell’s singing career was launched when he was discovered on the Philadelphia television talent show TV Teen Club. He scored his first hit single in 1959 with “Kissin’ Time,” which peaked at #11 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Over the next five years, Rydell reached the Hot 100’s top 20 over a dozen times, with hits including “We Got Love,” “Wild One,” “Swingin’ School,” “Volare,” “Good Time Baby,” “The Cha-Cha-Cha” and “Forget Him.”
In 1963, Bobby made his film debut in the hit movie musical Bye Bye Birdie, playing the love interest of Ann-Margret‘s character. He went on appear in many more films and TV shows over the course of his long career.
In 1978, Rydell’s name was immortalized when it was used as the moniker of the high school in the smash hit film Grease.
Beginning in 1985, Rydell teamed up with two other Philly-area singers from the teen idol era — Frankie Avalon and Fabian — as “The Golden Boys,” who frequently toured over the next decades.
Rydell survived a double organ transplant in 2012, and became an advocate for The Gift of Life, a charity that helps the families of people who have undergone organ transplants.
Bobby is survived by his wife, Linda J. Hoffman; his son, Robert Ridarelli; and his daughter, Jennifer Dulin; as well as five grandchildren. His family is encouraging people to become an organ donor in his memory and to donate to The Gift of Life.
Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Already missing their flight to Canada, Zainab Merchant held her then 6-month-old baby inside a cold room in an airport in September of 2016 while she waited for her husband’s screening to be over after her family was detained for a random security check by Transportation Security Administration agents.
Merchant said her family was stopped for one reason; because she’s Muslim.
“At that moment, I honestly feared for us, because when I think the three-hour mark hit, you’re just sitting there waiting,” Merchant told ABC News. “We don’t know what’s going on with us. I just remember being very fearful about what was going on. It’s a few officers and yourself, and nobody is there. No other person was there with us. So just [a] very lonely, cold, dark experience.”
Merchant, an American citizen, is among the many people on America’s terrorist screening watchlist, a database containing information about individuals targeted as known or suspected of being involved in terrorist activities, according to the FBI.
The watchlist was created in response to the Sept. 11 attacks, and since then, has collected over 1.6 million identities, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. There’s no due process for people added to it, nor any official way to find out who has been added, according to human rights lawyers.
The random security checks started happening more frequently after her first detainment, according to Merchant. Hourslong detentions, fear and extensive questioning have become a familiar experience for Merchant and her family when traveling.
“[Since the Canada trip], we had always been detained, we’d always been questioned and it stopped being random when you knew that every time you travel, my entire family, including the children, were asked to step aside, escorted by the TSA officers,” she said. “It just ended up becoming this traumatic thing for us to ever fly again.”
Unlike the “no-fly” list, the watchlist still allows people to fly. They are, however, subject to extra security, extensive questioning and hourslong detentions when flying or crossing the border.
Merchant said she was not aware she was added to the watchlist until the screenings and processes became even more frequent, and she knew that, regardless of where they were headed, the whole family would be pulled aside.
She said that even her three small children were being targeted and taken away from them during the screening process.
“They were being treated as criminals, no matter how little they were. It wasn’t just my husband and I. They were also screening these little children,” she said.
“I remember just guiding them through it and teaching them … ‘this is what’s going to happen. You have to cooperate, smile, just be friendly.’ Imagine teaching a young toddler this way; you don’t even know how toddlers are going to react.”
Such screenings would happen whenever the family traveled, Merchant says, but the situation became even more intense when the FBI allegedly contacted her with a proposal.
A few months after that initial detention, Merchant was allegedly contacted by FBI agents seeking information about her mosque and community. She said they offered a chance to be removed from the list if she agreed to be an informant.
“I said, ‘absolutely not. You know, I’m a mom. I’m not a spy. I don’t care if I’m going to be on this [a long time]. I’m just not going to do this,'” Merchant said.
In response to an ABC News request for comment, the FBI said the Terrorist Screening Center could neither deny nor confirm whether an individual is on the watchlist.
After the conversation, Merchant said the situation got progressively worse.
“There was a time when they took my laptop and they released the whole bomb squad on me at the airport. There was a time when dogs were unleashed on me. They took out a whole team of dogs to search me,” Merchant said.
The most traumatic and humiliating experience for Merchant, however, was at the Boston Logan International Airport — when she said she had her period and the TSA officers forced her to remove her pants during a private screening.
“That day, they were trying to strip me of my dignity when they didn’t believe that I was on my period. Even though I went on through the scan, everything was clear,” she said.
“I said my final prayers as a Muslim … I had nowhere [to go], no one to call and no one to say anything to stop feeling of utter helplessness. I was ready to die. They removed my pants and they saw the blood everywhere. And they quickly just scurried out of the closet.”
Merchant, however, is not the only one. Many others are on the watchlist without knowing the reason behind it.
Abdulkadir Nur, who goes by Eno, is a 69-year-old U.S. citizen from Somalia who said he is also on the watchlist.
Nur travels often due to his humanitarian work with the United Nations, but every time he leaves the country, he said he undergoes extensive questioning and screening.
“You know, when I fly worldwide, I’ve never had any problems,” Nur said. “Actually, I’m being respected and welcomed everywhere. But when I’m coming to my country, the U.S., I feel like I’m [a] criminal.”
While the TSA says a typical enhanced screening process takes 10 to 15 minutes, both Nur and Merchant said they had to miss multiple flights due to secondary questioning at airports.
With all of the challenges faced, Nur has filed a lawsuit against the FBI with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights group, in hopes to have his name removed from the watch list. The process, if successful, could take years, according to his lawyer.
Merchant says she was able to get her name off the list after she confronted TSA and FBI officers during a closed-door meeting she was invited to in Orlando in 2018.
Now, Merchant hopes to use her experience to help others and shine a light on the issue.
“I don’t fear this anymore,” she said. “It built me up to be that voice for people who don’t have any. Even though I might be off the system, I am not really free until every one of them gets justice.”
COVID-19 has made itself an unwelcome guest in Matthew Broderick and wife Sarah Jessica Parker‘s Plaza Suite. The show went on Tuesday evening, minus Broderick, who had tested positive for the virus.
On the play’s Instagram account, it noted the Ferris Bueller star, 60, tested positive “despite strict adherence to COVID safety protocols.”
Parker, who tested negative, soldiered on without Broderick Tuesday night, while her husband’s understudy won rave reviews for some fans in attendance. “I was in the audience tonight and, wow,” one patron enthused. “Michael McGrath gave an outstanding performance with only a few hours notice. Bravo!”
Plaza Suite isn’t the only Broadway play missing its leading man: Macbeth recently canceled performances when star Daniel Craig tested positive for COVID-19, as did others within the company. The show is set to resume Monday, April 11.
(WASHINGTON) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s two adult daughters — Maria and Katerina — are included in the latest round of sanctions on Russia the U.S. announced on Wednesday.
“The sickening brutality in Bucha has made tragically clear the despicable nature of the Putin regime, and today, in alignment with G-7 allies and partners, we’re intensifying the most severe sanctions ever levied on a major economy,” a Biden senior administration official told reporters.
The new round of sanctions includes a ban on all new investments in Russia, increased sanctions on two major financial institutions in Russia — Sberbank and Alfa-Bank — as well as on major Russian state-owned enterprises, and sanctions on Russian government officials and their family members — including Putin’s daughters.
“Today, we’re sanctioning Putin’s adult children, [Russian Foreign] Minister [Sergey] Lavrov’s wife and his daughter and members of Russia’s Security Council,” the official said, including former president and Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, according to the White House.
The official added on a call with reporters that the U.S. has reason to believe that Putin and his cronies hide their wealth with family members, and said, “We believe that many of Putin’s assets are hidden, with family members and that’s why we’re targeting them.”
“These individuals have enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people. Some of them are responsible for providing the support necessary to underpin Putin’s war on Ukraine. This action cuts them off from the U.S. financial system and freezes any assets they hold in the United States,” the White House said in a fact sheet announcing the sanctions.
Since Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in late February, the U.S. has sanctioned more than 140 oligarchs and their family members and more than 400 Russian government officials and has now fully blocked more than two-thirds of the Russian banking sector, which held about $1.4 trillion in assets before the war.
In conjunction with the G-7 and European Union, the U.S. also announced Wednesday it was cutting off Russia’s ability to use its previously frozen central bank funds to make debt payments — forcing it to find other sources of dollars to avoid defaulting.
“At this rate, it will go back to Soviet-style living standards from the 1980s,” the senior administration official warned.
Asked if the U.S. was concerned about any downsides to detaching Russia from the global market to the point where it would become more concerned with disrupting it, rather than getting back in, the official seemingly brushed off the concern, saying that the U.S. was using a “negative feedback loop” to deter Putin, but that can be stopped if Putin also stops.
“None of this is permanent. The only aspect that’s permanent of the lives that he’s taken away, and he can never bring those back. But the sanctions, the sanctions are designed to be able to respond to the conditions on the ground, and to create leverage for the outcome we seek,” he said.
The announcement follows President Joe Biden on Monday saying he was seeking further sanctions in response to apparent war crimes in Bucha — but as national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned this week, the White House acknowledges that further sanctions against Russia will not change Putin’s behavior overnight.
“Sanctions are intended to impose costs so Russia can’t carry on these grotesque acts without paying a severe price for it,” Sullivan said during Monday’s briefing.
“We don’t expect that that shift in behavior will be caused by sanctions overnight or in a week. It will take time to grind down the elements of Russian power within the Russian economy, to hit their industrial base hard, to hit the sources of revenue that have propped up this war and propped up the kleptocracy in Russia,” he added.
Garth Brooks is headed down to Lonestar State for the next show to be announced on his Stadium Tour.
The singer just shared details about a show he’s planning in Arlington. Set to take place in the city’s AT&T Stadium, it’ll mark the first time he’s headlined the venue, as well as the first time in seven years he’s been to North Texas for a concert.
The show will take place July 30, sandwiched in between his recently-announced Alabama show and two sold-out makeup dates in Nashville, Tennessee. Those dates are replacing a 2021 Music City show that was canceled due to inclement weather; however, some of the other dates Garth has on the books this year are in cities that he was supposed to hit last year, until pandemic-related shutdowns forced him to halt his tour plans.
Tickets for the singer’s Arlington show go on sale April 15 at 10 a.m. CT. Home of the Dallas Cowboys, the stadium can seat a whopping 80,000 fans.
Still, fans hoping to grab tickets should hurry: Garth’s Stadium Tour so far has featured some record-breaking sell-outs. When his Fayetteville, Arkansas concert went on sale, fans snapped up 70,000 tickets in just 90 minutes.
Rise Against has premiered the video for “Talking to Ourselves,” a track off the band’s latest album, Nowhere Generation.
The clip finds a group of people in an art gallery featuring canvases of QR codes instead of paintings.
“Talking To Ourselves is about watching yourself and the people around you fall into complacency,” Rise Against says. “Despite your best efforts to get people’s attention, it feels like no one is listening.”
“Sometimes we feel the urge to do something crazy, to disturb the peace, to jostle the world around us awake,” the band adds. “Our actions might be seen as out of the ordinary, but they are acts of desperation when all else failed.”
You can watch the “Talking to Ourselves” video streaming now on YouTube.
Nowhere Generation, the ninth Rise Against album, was released last June. Its title track gave the Chicago punks their first-ever number-one Billboard Mainstream Rock Airplay hit.
Rise Against is currently on tour in support of Nowhere Generation. The outing continues Wednesday in Toronto.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Fenty Beauty by Rihanna
Rihanna says her pregnancy allowed her to see her mother in a new light and appreciate her like never before.
Taking to Instagram, the “Umbrella” singer shared a throwback photo of her and her mother, Monica Braithwaite, dressed in white at what appears to be a church.
“Today is my Queen’s birthday,” Rihanna wrote in the caption. “Being on the verge of motherhood, unlocked new levels of love and respect I have for my mommy in a way that I could never explain!”
“She’s the true MVP and I wanna give her her flowers every second I can! Love you mumzzzz!!!,” Rihanna continued. “Happy Birthday! We gon celebrate on da link up!”
Rihanna is expecting her first child with boyfriend A$AP Rocky and recently revealed she is in her third trimester. She has yet to reveal the due date, or the name or gender of her unborn child.
In other news, the Fenty Beauty mogul was just named on Forbes’ billionaires list for the first time, ranking 1,729 on the list with an estimated personal worth of $1.7 billion, thanks in large part to her cosmetics line.
Demi Lovatounveiled their new arm tattoo last week in honor of the charity “Choose Love,” which assists refugees worldwide.
The “Confident” singer revealed that the new ink was done by Ukrainian tattoo artist Gusak. “It was such an honor learning about your home country,” the singer remarked.
Demi has since partnered with Choose Love in a charitable outreach to assist the more than 10 million Ukrainians who fled their home because of the Russian invasion, which began February 24. Fans can enter on Propeller to hang with Demi in the recording studio and be among the first to hear their new music.
“Propeller will fly the winner to Los Angeles for this once-in-a-lifetime experience, put them up in a 4-star hotel, give them rideshare credit to get around, and more. Every dollar counts and donations will be matched by an anonymous donor up to $50,000,” according to a contest announcement.
Demi said in a statement they wanted to support Choose Love because they are “inspired” by their work to “support displaced people around the world including those fleeing Ukraine.”
This isn’t the first time Demi has teamed with Propeller. The “Cool for the Summer” singer previously launched a campaign in support of Pride, with funds benefiting the Human Rights Campaign, The Trevor Project and The Alliance for Eating Disorders Awareness.
