Cher has got a lot going on at the moment, but when she apologized to her fans for being absent from social media on Friday, it was her personal life that she blamed, not her work schedule.
“Sorry I’ve Been MIA. Been having Personal Problems,” the legendary star tweeted on Friday. When a fan inquired, “You okay, gal?” Cher replied, “YA KNOW…NO. WE ALL [CRY], BUT SOMETIMES, WE [CRY] A DIFFERENT KIND OF TEARS. TEARS THAT HURT. WE BECOME OVERWHELMED, REACH A LIMIT…THEN ARE FORCED 2 PUSH THAT LIMIT.”
She continued, “I’VE BEEN ALIVE SINCE THE YEAR DOT, & THESE YRS ARE THE WORST IVE EVER SEEN…ADD FAMILY TO THAT & ITS [A] RECIPE FOR DISASTER CAKE.”
When a fan shared that they, too, are depressed due to personal issues, Cher ran down a litany of things that are making all of us feel uneasy. “MANY PPL R In DEEP DEPRESSION. 2 Yrs of Covid, Fear, Isolation, trump & Capital Insanity,” she wrote. “Ppl Not Going Back 2 Work, Inflation Because Of Supply Chains, Issues & PRICE GOUGING BY…OIL COMPANIES, LANDLORDS, ETC. THESE PPL ARE STARVING [THEIR] OWN PPL. THERE R SOME THINGS U CANT DO 4 [money].”
However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Cher noted, “I’M BETTER 2DAY. SOMETIMES I REACH WHAT I THINK IS MY LIMIT, THEN REALIZE, [I’VE] GOT MILES MORE ‘LIMIT’ IN ME.”
She concluded, “SOMETIMES I GET ON WHAT I ‘THINK’ IS MY LAST NERVE, THEN FIND LOTS MORE ‘LAST NERVES’ TO GET ON. SOMETIMES I NEED 2 REGROUP, REBOOT GIVE ‘ME’ A TIME OUT, THEN SAY FK THIS. I WONT STOP.”
Lately, Cher has starred in a M.A.C. cosmetics campaign, and is working on a new album, as well as a biopic about her amazing life.
Good news, Deadpool fans: The long-anticipated third movie starring Ryan Reynolds‘ red-suited “merc with the mouth” has a director.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Reynolds, who also is a producer of the blockbuster Deadpool series, has tapped his friend and Free Guy and The Adam Project director Shawn Levy to call the shots for the in-development threequel.
Incidentally, the news comes the day The Adam Project debuted on Netflix.
Deadpool and Deadpool 2 writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick are also back in the fold for the third go-round — the first to be co-produced by ABC News’ parent company Disney, following the company’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox.
Levy was also behind the camera for the hit Night at the Museum films, starring Ben Stiller, and is an executive producer and episode director on Netflix’s Stranger Things. Following multiple pandemic-related delays, his Free Guy became one of the highest-grossing movies of 2021, earning $331.5 million worldwide.
(WASHINGTON) — At least two people are dead and eight others hospitalized after a car plowed into a Washington, D.C., restaurant during lunchtime Friday, authorities said.
D.C. Fire and EMS reported a “mass casualty incident” resulting in life-threatening injuries midday Friday in northwest D.C.
Ten victims were transported to a local hospital, where two women succumbed to their injuries, police said. The other eight victims were in stable to serious condition, police said.
All victims are believed to have been sitting in the outdoor dining area of the popular Greek restaurant Parthenon on the sunny D.C. day when the SUV careened off the road, authorities said.
The victims range in age from about 30 to 80, according to D.C. Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly.
“This is rare. … We haven’t had an incident like this in many years,” Donnelly told reporters during a press briefing Friday. “A car hitting a crowd of people is a very serious event. Obviously, which we see, it’s a tragedy that results in a lot of injuries — serious injuries — so that’s what we’re dealing with right now.”
Crash with Mass casualty incident declared 5500 block Conn. Ave NW. Vehicle struck outside seating area of restaurant. #DCsBravest triaging multiple patients. No structural damage. pic.twitter.com/RTQN8hHr8u
The crash is believed to have been an accident, authorities said. The driver, described as an elderly man, was alone in the vehicle when he apparently lost control, D.C. Police Second District Cmdr. Duncan Bedlion said.
“There are no indications this was intentional in any form or fashion,” Bedlion told reporters.
The driver received treatment at the scene and is cooperating with authorities, Bedlion said.
No structural damage to the building has been found.
The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia is investigating.
Sheryl, a new documentary about Sheryl Crow, gets its world premiere tonight at the South by Southewest festival in Austin, Texas, and now comes word that a companion soundtrack album will be released on May 6, coinciding with the date that the movie will debut on Showtime.
Sheryl: Music from the Feature Documentary is a 35-track compilation that features the Grammy winner’s biggest hits, including “If It Makes You Happy,” “Soak Up the Sun,” “All I Wanna Do,” “Strong Enough,” “Everyday Is a Winding Road” and many others.
The album also is packed with deep tracks and three newly recorded songs, as well as collaborations with such famous artists as Stevie Nicks, Eric Clapton, Sting, Keith Richards and the late Johnny Cash.
Sheryl: Music from the Feature Documentary, which can be pre-ordered now, will be available digitally and as a two-CD set.
The Sheryl documentary premieres tonight at SXSW starting at 8 p.m. CT. According to a press release, the doc “[n]avigates Crow’s seminal yet hard-fought musical career battling sexism, depression, perfectionism, cancer, and the price of fame — before harnessing the power of her gift.”
Here’s the full list of songs on the soundtrack:
“If It Makes You Happy”
“Leaving Las Vegas”
“All I Wanna Do”
“What Can I Do for You”
“Run, Baby, Run”
“Hard to Make a Stand”
“Sweet Rosalyn”
“A Change Would Do You Good”
“Home”
“Love Is a Good Thing”
“Strong Enough”
“Can’t Cry Anymore”
“Everyday Is a Winding Road”
“Redemption Day”
“The Difficult Kind” (Live with Sarah McLachlan)
“I Shall Believe”
“Real Gone” (Live)
“My Favorite Mistake”
“Riverwide”
“Crash and Burn”
“Steve McQueen”
“Soak Up the Sun”
“Out of Our Heads”
“Detours”
“Be Myself”
“Prove You Wrong” (featuring Stevie Nicks & Maren Morris)
“Tell Me When It’s Over” (featuring Chris Stapleton)
“Beware of Darkness” (featuring Brandi Carlile, Eric Clapton, and Sting)
“The Worst” (featuring Keith Richards)
“Story of Everything” (featuring Gary Clark Jr., Chuck D, Andra Day)
“Everything Is Broken” (Live with Jason Isbell at The Ryman)
“Redemption Day” (with Johnny Cash)
“Forever”
“Still the Same”
“Live with Me”
Michael Bublé is many things, but above all else, he admits he’s a bit of a “dramatic b****.”
Speaking to iNews, the “I’ll Never Not Love You” singer revealed he and wife Luisana Lopilato are polar opposites. While she’s the calm, cool and collected one — he’s not.
“My wife would tell you that my life is high drama. I would tell you that I’m easy-going, but actually I’m a dramatic b****,” he confessed. “I love the drama. I think you’ve gotta love it to perform. It’s part of what makes me creative.”
Michael said his drama fed into him being a workaholic. “I sometimes feel like a little gerbil going round and round who doesn’t know where it’s going,” he admitted, but says he has a much healthier work/life balance. After his eight-year-old son, Noah, was diagnosed with liver cancer and is now in remission, Michael said he’ll “work hard, but I will never allow it to take over my life again.”
“I’ll never shirk my responsibilities of being a dad. I just know it’ll end in tears,” said Michael. “I would rather look back and think, ‘If I had worked harder, I could have sold more records and had bigger grosses on the tour.’ I can accept that — but I can’t accept thinking, ‘If only I had been with my kids more.'”
Michael also says his kids inherited his flair for the dramatic, acting like they “were being dragged off to a camp of death and would never be seen again” after their maternal grandparents left to go back to Argentina after waiting out the pandemic at their house.
Not 24 hours after a Chicago judge sentenced Jussie Smollett to five months behind bars for staging a racially motivated attack on himself, attorneys for the disgraced former Empire star have filed an appeal.
According to ABC affiliate WLS-TV, Smollett is now in protective custody at Cook County Jail, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office noted in a statement, clarifying that the actor is not being held in solitary confinement, contrary to some reports.
A statement from the Sherriff’s Office explains that confinement like Jussie’s is “routinely used for individuals ordered into protective custody who may potentially be at risk of harm due to the nature of their charges, their profession, or their noteworthy status.”
The message also notes, “Mr. Smollett is being housed in his own cell, which is monitored by security cameras in the cell and by an officer wearing a body worn camera who is stationed at the entrance of the cell to ensure that Mr. Smollett is under direct observation at all times.”
The statement adds regarding Smollett’s confinement, “During such times out of cell, other detainees will not be present in the common areas…The safety and security of all detained individuals, including Mr. Smollett, is the Sheriff’s Office’s highest priority.”
Before sentencing Thursday, Cook County Judge James Linn excoriated Smollett, calling him a “charlatan” who “denigrated” actual hate crime victims.
“You got on the witness stand. You didn’t have to…But you committed hour upon hour upon hour of pure perjury,” Linn said.
Smollett was led off in handcuffs, screaming, “I am not suicidal! I am innocent!”
(NEW YORK) — Health care providers that serve the transgender community in Alabama are struggling to make sense of a new bill moving quickly through the state legislature.
The Vulnerable Child Protection Act would ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth in the state.
Pediatric endocrinologist Hussein Abdullatif, who provides gender-affirming care for trans youth, said the legislation leaves many questions: Will trans youth be able to continue seeing their physicians? Will they be able to receive their medications?
“I worry about my patients,” Abdullatif told ABC News. “They already are showing a great deal of anxiety related to what’s going to happen.”
Abdullatif says it is not only his transgender patients’ physical health but also their mental health that is of concern. He said he has seen firsthand the way discrimination and lack of care can affect his trans patients.
“I do know of a kid who already attempted three times suicide — not because of law, of course, because they haven’t passed it yet — but because of resistance by the mother of the child to the idea of being transgender,” he said.
The bill states that anyone who provides gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy or physical gender-affirming surgeries to anyone under 18, could be convicted of a felony and face up to 10 years in prison and a $15,000 fine.
The bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Shay Shelnutt, called gender-affirming health care, “child abuse.”
“We don’t want parents to be abusing their children. We don’t want to make that an option, because that’s what it is, it’s child abuse. This is just to protect children,” Shelnutt said on Feb. 23 on the state Senate floor.
Yet experts say the notion of gender-affirmation as child abuse as well as language used in the legislation — for instance — the claim that people can experience “permanent sterility, that result from the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical procedures” are forms of misinformation.
Debunking myths about transgender health care and gender-affirmation
The bill refers to “minors” and “surgical procedures” but in Alabama, gender-affirming surgeries aren’t allowed until a patient reaches the age of legal majority for medical decisions, which is 19.
“When lawmakers attempt to practice medicine with a life without a license, they realize quickly that there was a lot more they didn’t understand than what they thought they did,” said Morissa Ladinsky, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Pediatrics.
The bill’s language also makes claims about mental health and gender affirmation which some experts say are false.
“Individuals who undergo cross-sex cosmetic surgical procedures have been found to suffer from elevated mortality rates higher than the general population. They experience significantly higher rates of substance abuse, depression, and psychiatric hospitalizations,” the legislation reads.
However, research from the Centers from Disease Control and Prevention found higher rates of substance abuse, depression and suicidal ideation were linked to stigma, discrimination and victimization experienced by this population.
Research shows that people who have gender-affirming surgery had significantly lower odds of psychological distress, tobacco smoking, and suicidal ideation compared with trans people with no history of gender-affirming surgery.
As for hormone therapy and puberty blockers, physicians say gender-affirming care comes after long discussions between parents and their children, as well as between families and their physicians.
Puberty blockers provide an individual and their family time to determine if a child’s gender identity is long-lasting, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Trans youth may face stress and anxiety from puberty development, including breast or facial hair growth, that does not align with their gender identity. Puberty blockers can help offer relief from that stress, experts say.
If an adolescent child stops taking the treatment, puberty resumes.
“It’s harmless and it’s not something that locks you in a certain decision that you cannot leave,” Abdullatif said.
Hormone therapy, which induces male or female physical changes, also helps address the needs of transgender teens in affirming their identity.
The legislation also makes the claim that puberty blockers can cause infertility or other health risks.
According to Ladinsky, these potential side effects only present real risks after puberty and are not a risk to youth taking puberty blockers.
Gender-affirming youth care is supported by several national medical organizations such as the American Medical Association, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians.
“The worry is that we will have an epidemic of suicide because of a bill that calls itself the [Vulnerable Child Protection Act],” said Abdullatif.
Bills seen by advocates as anti-trans have also been proposed in past Alabama legislatures, as well as in states including Idaho and Arkansas. Arkansas is currently facing lawsuits against its bill that was passed into law last year despite the governor’s veto, and bans gender-confirming treatments for transgender youth.
“This is a government overreach,” Gov. Asa Hutchinson said at the news conference in April 2021.. “You are starting to let lawmakers interfere with health care and set a standard for legislation overriding health care. The state should not presume to jump into every ethical health decision.”
Ladinsky says it keeps her up at night to think about the patients who are just now understanding their gender identities.
She said she worries youth will believe “my state has made the choice to erase me.”
Well, it’s official…Instagram official: Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson are an item.
Kim’s socials sported new pictures of the pair, one with Pete standing in the foreground, selfie-style, and another with the couple on the floor, Kim cradling Pete’s head like a reality-show version of The Pieta.
Another photo is just of Kim, kneeling to show off the silver thigh-high boots she’s sporting in the other pics.
“Who’s car we gonna take?” Kim captioned the photo set, a reference to the Ben Affleck/Jeremy Renner movie The Town. She included a snapshot of stills from the movie to help people make the connection.
The 28-year-old Saturday Night Live cast member and the 41-year-old influencer and entrepreneur have been linked since October of last year, eight months after Kim filed for divorce from Kayne West.
(ASHEBORO, N.C.) — A one-year-old boy who was born with a congenital heart defect and underwent three open-heart surgeries in his first months of life, now has a new heart.
Easton Sinnamon, of Asheboro, North Carolina, underwent a first-of-its kind heart transplant. The baby not only received a new heart, but also, two weeks later in a separate procedure, received thymus tissue from the same donor.
With the transplanted thymus tissue comes the hope that Easton will have to take much smaller doses of the immunosuppressive drugs transplant recipients typically have to take for the rest of their lives, according to Joseph W. Turek, M.D., Ph.D., chief of pediatric cardiac surgery at Duke University Hospital, and the doctor who oversaw Easton’s transplants.
“This is a huge step in the right direction,” Turek told “Good Morning America.” I would hope that we could envision a day in the near future where we wouldn’t need to use such high doses of immunosuppression with this technique.”
Turek had to seek emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for the combined heart and thymus transplant, which took place in August.
They were able to try the procedure first in Easton, because he was born both with a congenital heart defect and a deficiency of T cells, which protect the body from infection and are developed in the thymus, an organ that sits close to the heart, according to Turek.
“It’s not very common that you’re going to find a child that has these two issues, and that’s really given us an opportunity to to look at this in a real clinical environment that that we would never have the opportunity to do otherwise,” he said. “It’s also what allowed the FDA to realize this is probably a very safe plan for Easton.”
Kaitlyn Sinnamon, Easton’s mom, said she and her husband were willing to let doctors try the procedure on their youngest child because they knew their son was in a near-death situation.
Sinnamon, also the mom of a 4-year-old daughter, said she found out at her 20-week ultrasound that Easton had a congenital heart defect, which happens in about 1% of births in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Once Easton was born, doctors discovered he also had a damaged heart valve. As a result, Easton underwent three open heart surgeries in his first five months of life, the first of which happened when he was five days old.
Sinnamon quit her job to care for Easton, who spent nearly all of his first year of life in the PICU at Duke University Hospital, about 75 minutes away from the family’s home.
“That was my job, to be at the hospital with him,” said Sinnamon. “I’d get up in the morning, take our daughter to day care, go to Duke for the day, come home, pick her up, do all the normal household things when we would get home and go to bed and do it again, every day of the week.”
Easton spent 112 days on the waiting list for a heart transplant, at times having to be taken off the list because he was so sick.
About two weeks before his transplant, Sinnamon said she and her husband had to make the call to put Easton on life support so that he could stay alive as they waited for a heart.
“He’d been listed for over 100 days … and we weren’t going to let those days that we’d been waiting and fighting be for nothing,” she said. “It was really hard there towards the end. We were scared that we were going to lose him.”
In early August, doctors told Sinnamon the news she had been waiting over three months to hear — they had found a donor heart for Easton.
In an overnight procedure done just hours later, on Aug. 6, 2021, a team of doctors and nurses led by Turek, who also flew to procure the heart and thymus from the donor, transplanted the heart into Easton.
Around two weeks later, doctors implanted thymus cells from the same donor into about 25 to 40 spots in Easton’s thigh, according to Turek.
Sinnamon said that once a new heart was beating inside Easton, his recovery was fast, adding, “With a functioning heart, he just kind of took off.”
For Turek and the transplant team, they closely watched Easton’s internal reaction to his new heart and thymus cells, and saw success.
Easton’s body, which once had “negligible T cell activity,” now has normal levels of T cells, according to Turek, who said the next step is watching to see if Easton has developed enough of a tolerance to go off some immunosuppressive drugs.
“It’s incredibly rewarding to know that something you worked on in the laboratory was able to be translated, and you can actually see tangible evidence that it’s helping someone,” said Turek, who has researched the use of thymus cells in transplants for the past five years. “Especially a child like Easton, who really wasn’t doing well for a long period of time.”
The Sinnamons’ decision to let Easton be the first to receive a heart and thymus transplant could potentially pave the way to help thousands of organ donor recipients in the future, according to Turek. The next stage of his research will be to see if this process can be replicated more broadly, including in people who have functioning T cells.
In the U.S., more than 106,000 people are currently on the transplant waiting list, and 17 people die each day waiting for an organ transplant, according to government data.
“Easton gives us all a lot of hope about what the future could be,” said Turek. “The fact that he needed a thymus and also needed a heart has really allowed us to figure out if this combination of using these two … could increase the longevity [of a donated organ] and decrease the amount of medications that are needed.”
Sinnamon said she and her family are grateful for Turek and the team at Duke University Hospital, whom she said have become “like family,” and for the family of the organ donor, whom they do not know.
“As much as this is Easton, it’s as much the donor’s child as well,” said Sinnamon. “On your happiest day, it’s another family’s worst day, so it’s kind of bittersweet when you get excited because you have to think about what the other family is going through.”
Easton was able to go home in September, where he was greeted by his big sister, Ivy, whom he met then for the first time.
“Because he was doing so poorly at times, we didn’t think we would have everybody together,” said Sinnamon. “Now that we do, it’s so nice to see him and Ivy playing and them both laughing and giggling together.”
In February, Easton celebrated his first birthday at home. He remains on a gastrostomy tube, or G-tube, for his medications and has a tracheotomy to help him breathe, the latter of which Sinnamon said should be removed soon.
“Even through all he went through, he’s one of the happiest babies I’ve ever seen,” said Sinnamon, who described Easton as “very social” and “extremely active.” “It’s funny seeing his attitude and personality come out once we made it home.”
(NEW YORK) — A video of an Arkansas man giving his grandsons a two-armed hug for the first time has touched the hearts of many and is drawing attention to adaptive equipment that can make a big difference for people with disabilities.
Emily Sisco, an adjunct professor of occupational therapy at Arkansas State University, shared the now-viral video on Facebook on Feb. 2. The clip shows her dad, Kevin Eubanks, tearfully holding his grandsons, Cope, 9, and Rigney, 6. Eubanks’ left arm was injured following a stroke in 2014 but last month, with the help of a soft, stretchy wristband tool, he was able to link his arms into a circle shape and lift them together for a warm embrace with the boys.
Eubanks, 60, said the special moment was “overwhelming” and one he couldn’t have imagined eight years ago. “It caught me off guard and as you can tell, it was very emotional for me because the family I grew up in, we always love to hug each other with both arms and it’s what we call giving a bear hug, and that is just something that I hadn’t been able to do since my stroke,” Eubanks explained to “Good Morning America.”
He went on, “I got to hug my second one, Rigney, which was born after my stroke. The realization really hit me then that this is the first time I’ve got to hug him like that with two arms. And I just could not control it then. I just cried and cried and cried.”
It’s a significant breakthrough for Eubanks, who, at 52, suffered a stroke that temporarily rendered the left side of his body paralyzed. He said doctors told his family at the time that he might not even live. But in the years since, Eubanks has worked hard to make a strong recovery. Watching the therapists who helped her dad even inspired Sisco to pursue occupational therapy as well.
“She saw how much work they were doing with me in the facility that I was in and it just touched her heart to where she wanted to be able to help people,” Eubanks said. “And that’s when she went back to school and got her degree.”
Sisco’s Facebook post has nearly 5 million views in just over five weeks. It has also shined a spotlight on the wristband tool Eubanks used.
Initially named the “Hugger” and now called the “HugAgain,” the tool is a prototype created by Arkansas State University students Erica Dexter, Larissa Garcia, Lisa James and Casey Parsons, all students of Sisco’s in the occupational therapy assistant program. The “HugAgain” is one of several adaptive tools, including an adaptive fishing pole, card holders and a soap holder tool — all made by Sisco’s students.
In January, Sisco gave her technical skills class a case study and two weeks to create a tool that would benefit the client in the case. In the past, Sisco said she gave students a fake scenario to work with. But this time she decided, with Eubanks’ approval, to present her own father’s real-life story and post-stroke experience for the class assignment.
“When we asked what is one thing that you would like to return doing and he said, hug again with two arms, we just knew that we had to help him get there,” Parsons explained to “GMA.” “We were all in agreement that giving him a hug was occupational-based, it was meaningful to our client, and it was something that we could do or at least try to do.”
The team got to work brainstorming ideas, addressing questions and figuring out technical details like the type of material they wanted to use. The “HugAgain” came together quickly – all within two weeks.
“We kind of went through some options of how we could make something to lift his arm up and we just ended up simplifying it because it really is pretty simple. But it’s just something that people don’t think of,” James said.
The team has since received messages from around the world, asking for more information about the “HugAgain,” so they set up a Facebook page and decided to perfect the design and plan to sell it when it goes into production.
“If you make money off of it, then that’s just icing on the cake, but that’s really not our motivation for what we’re doing,” James said. “We really want to see more reactions like Ms. Sisco’s father, and just see how many lives that can be touched through this one small device.”
Added Dexter: “It’s a thing that a lot of people take for granted. But you know, once it’s gone, you do value that and you can value that again.”
James said the project taught her and her classmates not to overlook each person’s unique needs. “Even just the small things can be just as important or more important to an individual than what our plans are for that person,” she said. “So I think it was a good lesson to really listen to what they’re telling us and not what we think they need.”
Eubanks said at the end of the day, the HugAgain and its impact is nothing short of extraordinary.
“I want people to know: Don’t ever underestimate the effect of a touch of some kind, no matter if it’s a handshake, a hug, or just putting your arm around somebody. That personal touch sends a message to that person that you love them and that can do so much to a person’s confidence and mindset.”
