Tiffany Haddish is sharing an update on her plans to become a mom.
While chatting with E!’s Daily Pop, the comedian, 42, who has previously been open about her plans to adopt, shared an update about the adoption process.
“I just went to Africa. I was just in Eritrea, and people were trying to give me their kids,” Haddish shared in the interview published Wednesday. “I was like, ‘Hold up now, I gotta get the paperwork right now. I can’t just be taking kids with me.”
So when is she planning to start that paperwork? “Not right now, but maybe at the end of the year, beginning of next year.”
Legendary Louis Vuitton designer Virgil Abloh passed away in November at 41 years old after a private battle with cancer, but his legacy lives on in a new charity auction.
Bound to get sneakerheads everywhere green with envy, Louis Vuitton and Nike announced they’re teaming up with Sotheby’s for a limited-edition sale of the designer’s take on Nike’s iconic “Air Force 1” kicks.
The auction of just 200 pairs of the sneakers kicks off January 26 and runs through February 8.
Proceeds from the auction of the shoes will benefit The Virgil Abloh “Post-Modern” Scholarship Fund, an organization, “that aims to foster equity and inclusion within the fashion industry by providing scholarships to academically promising students of Black, African American, or African descent.”
As one might expect, these aren’t your ordinary kicks. According to Sotheby’s, “the sneakers were made with materials employed in Abloh’s Louis Vuitton men’s collections, and were styled with his signature quotation marks, echoing the written graphics Abloh used to adorn the shoes. The individual style designed for the show were made by Louis Vuitton in its shoe manufacture in Fiesso d’Artico.”
What’s more, “Each pair will be sold with a Louis Vuitton pilot case in orange Taurillon Monogram Leather (exclusive to this auction).”
The designer was instrumental in the creation of the auction prior to his death; his family is overseeing the event in his stead.
And in case you doubt these bespoke kicks will fetch a pretty penny from collectors, consider Sotheby’s description: “A cultural symbol in its own right, today the Nike Air Force 1 serves as an objet d’art emblematic of self-generated subcultural provenance.”
This year’s Super Bowl won’t happen until February 13, but you can get ready for the star-studded halftime show right now, thanks to a cinematic trailer that Pepsi just dropped on Thursday.
Directed by Straight Outta Compton and Friday director F. Gary Gray, the trailer is titled The Call, and it features four of this year’s halftime headliners — Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige and Kendrick Lamar — all receiving a mysterious call that makes them rush off by plane, car and bicycle to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, the site of the big game.
As each performer appears in the trailer, we hear one of their hits: “Rap God,” “The Next Episode,” “Family Affair” and “HUMBLE.”
The call comes from the fifth headliner, Dr. Dre, introduced by his hit “Still D.R.E.” He meets up with the other four outside the stadium. As they walk towards it, “California Love” begins to play.
“Each time I collaborate with Dre, it seems to mark an important moment in entertainment history, from projects like Friday, Set It Off, Straight Outta Compton, to now the Pepsi Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show,” Gray said in a statement. “As a super fan, I consider it an honor and privilege to authentically build and create this moment with five of the most legendary artists in music history. It’s been a blast!”
In the coming days, look for information on giveaways, including limited-edition Super Bowl LVI footballs signed by Dr. Dre, plus news on how you can win some of the props from the trailer shoot.
The fifth studio effort from the Swedish metallers will arrive March 11. It includes the previously released single “Hunter’s Moon,” as well as the just-dropped new track “Call Me Little Sunshine,” which is available now for digital download.
“Over the course of Impera‘s 12-song cycle, empires rise and fall, would-be messiahs ply their hype (financial and spiritual alike), prophecies are foretold as the skies fill with celestial bodies divine and man-made,” a press release declares, adding that the record covers “the most current and topical Ghost subject matter to date.”
Impera is the follow-up to 2018’s Grammy-nominated Prequelle, which spawned the singles “Rats,” “Dance Macabre” and “Faith.”
Ghost will celebrate the new album announcement with a performance on Thursday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, airing at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC.
Here’s the Impera track list:
“Imperium”
“Kaisarion”
“Spillways”
“Call Me Little Sunshine”
“Hunter’s Moon”
“Watcher in the Sky”
“Dominion”
“Twenties”
“Darkness at the Heart of My Love”
“Grift Wood”
“Bite of Passage”
“Respite on the Spital Fields”
L-R – Campbell, Raimi — Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images for STARZ
While celebrity online scams are nothing new, one has gone viral, thanks to its famous subject, original Spider-Man trilogy director Sam Raimi.
While most online scams don’t pass the smell test, this one takes the cake.
People have noted getting DMs from somebody claiming to be the filmmaker, making the following pitch, which surfaced in the wake of the success of Spider-Man: No Way Home.
“Hi there it’s Sam Raimi the director here. I’m trying to make spiderman 4 with the doctor strange budget but Kevin Fiegey [sic] has caught on and pulled the funding. Can you send me 1500 in iTunes gift card codes so I can hire Tony [sic] Maguire thanks.”
While the scammer gets credit for knowing Raimi is directing the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, he probably should have researched how to spell the name of Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige.
Oh, and it’s Tobey, not TonyMaguire who played Spidey for Raimi.
Bruce Campbell — who worked frequently with Raimi since 1981’s The Evil Dead and appeared in the director’s Spider-Man films — had a bit of fun with the scam. “Boy, that Sam,” Campbell tweeted with a picture of the phony DM. “Always hitting people up for money.”
Campbell added, “I will chip in, because I love Tony Maguire.”
(NEW YORK) — About 4.6 million Black people in the U.S. — roughly 1 in 10 — are immigrants, and that figure could more than double to 9.5 million by 2060, according to a study by Pew Research Center.
Pew based its calculations in the study, released Thursday, on Census data collected from from 2006 to 2019 through community surveys.
“The nation’s immigrant population has been, to some extent, largely driven by trends from Latin America and Asia,” said Mark Lopez, director of race and ethnicity research for Pew and a coauthor of the study. “But African and particularly Black immigrant trends have become a growing part of the story of the nation’s immigrant population overall.”
Lopez noted that in addition to the roughly 10% of Blacks who came from anther country, another 9% were born in the U.S. from an immigrant parent, meaning “the immigrant experience is not far from the daily life experiences of about 1 in 5 Black Americans today.”
In 2019, New York (about 900,000) and Florida (about 800,000) had the most Black immigrants, according to the study.
“Our report is part of a broader research agenda to understand the diversity of the country, including the diversity of the nation’s Black population,” Lopez added.
Abraham Paulos, deputy director of Black Alliance for Just Immigration, which is based in Brooklyn, said Black immigrants and those who’ve lived in the U.S. longer face many of the same challenges.
“I think whatever is happening in Black America is also happening to Black immigrants,” said Paulos, noting America’s historically discriminatory criminal justice system, police brutality and housing inequality. Many of those represented by BAJI also struggle to unionize and to advocate for better working conditions.
Most Black immigrants, the study showed, came from Jamaica (about 760,000) and Haiti (about 700,000) from 2009 to 2019, and many of them, Paulos noted, also faced comparatively more difficult acclimation periods, including more discrimination, than some from other nations.
In September, thousands of Haitian asylum seekers camped under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas. The Biden administration came under fire when images were released showing Customs and Border Patrol officers using horses to push back migrants crossing the Rio Grande into the U.S. And in December, a group of Haitian migrants sued the Biden administration, alleging mistreatment in that incident.
“Haiti is a great example,” Paulos said. “I think with the Haitian immigrant, I think it is probably the best analogy to sort of get a window into how Black Americans are treated by the immigration apparatus.”
(NEW YORK) — An 11-month-old girl has been shot in the face in the Bronx, prompting a search for the gunman and outcry from New York City’s new mayor.
The baby is in the hospital in critical but stable condition, the New York City Police Department said.
The shooting took place at about 6:45 p.m. Wednesday while the baby was in a parked car with her mother outside a grocery store, waiting for the father who was inside the store, police said.
A man chasing another man fired two shots, hitting the baby in the face, police said.
“An 11-month-old baby shot in the Bronx. If that’s not a wake up call, I don’t know what is,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams tweeted. “It should be unimaginable that this would happen in our city. But it did.”
“Leaders at every level have abandoned city streets. I won’t,” he said. “I refuse to surrender New York City to violence.”
Police have released surveillance video of the suspect, who they said fled the scene in a gray four-door sedan. The suspect is described as a man in a dark-colored hooded sweatshirt with a white Nike logo on the front, gray sweatpants, and black and white sneakers.
Anyone with information is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477).
NICOLAS MAETERLINCK/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images
(LONDON) — From flying over an active volcano to surviving in minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit, British-Belgium teen Zara Rutherford has experienced a lot in her five-month journey flying over 40 countries and five continents.
When the 19-year-old landed in Belgium on Thursday, she made history by breaking the record of the youngest woman to ever fly solo around the world. The pilot who previously held the record, Shaesta Waiz, was 30 years old when she completed the journey.
“It’s been … challenging, but so amazing at the same time,” Rutherford told ABC News. “I think there’re some experiences that I’ll just never forget and others that I would wish to forget.”
Rutherford embarked on her epic journey with her Shark Aero, a high-performance, two-seat ultralight aircraft manufactured in Europe. The small plane is especially made to withstand long journeys at the cruising speed of 186.4 mph.
Since both of her parents are certified pilots, Rutherford learned her way behind the airplane controls when she was very young.
“Zara’s first flight in a very small airplane, was when she was three or four months old. … And frequently, she’d be given the opportunity to sit in the front, to start with, of course, on about six cushions to be able to manipulate the controls and move the aircraft around,” Sam Rutherford, Zara’s father and a former army helicopter pilot, told ABC News.
But it was not until about five years ago that Rutherford truly realized her passion for flying.
“It only really crystallized into something she actually wanted to do more formally when she was 14, and at 14, she started actually taking flying lessons,” Rutherford’s father said.
Then teen ran into maintenance problems, COVID-19 complications and visa issues along her journey. She said once she reached Russia, she fully realized the risks of her mission.
“There was no humans. It’s too cold. It’s like nothing. There’s no roads, there’s no power like electricity cables. There’s nothing, there’s no animals, there’s no trees. I didn’t see a tree for over a month,” Rutherford said.
“When you’re flying alone and suddenly this challenge comes up, I can’t say, ‘I’m done. I’m out. I give up.’ You have to still land the plane. You have to make sure that you get down on the ground safely,” she said.
Still, she was often amazed by the things she saw along the way.
“That is still like the hands down the most amazing thing flying straight over Central Park … because of air space [regulations] you have to fly quite low. And it’s quite strange when… some of the buildings still are higher than you like. Wow, this is incredible,” the young solo pilot said.
Someone to look up to
Before starting her journey, Rutherford messaged Waiz — the American-Afghan pilot who previously held the flying record — on LinkedIn and asked if she would mind if she attempted to break her record.
“‘Of course, that’s OK. Records are meant to be broken,’ I told her,” Waiz, who finished her journey in 2017, told ABC News.
“‘Not only are you going to fly around the world, but I’m going to do everything I can to help you, because it is an incredible experience and I want [you] to have that,'” she said to Rutherford.
Waiz got on her first plane as an infant, when her family left Afghanistan as refugees during the Soviet–Afghan War and settled in California. She didn’t fly again until she was 17.
“I was terrified. But as soon as that plane lifted off, something ignited in me and I just thought to myself, ‘This is what I want to do for the rest of my life,'” she recalled.
Changing perspectives
Flying solo around the world, for Rutherford and Waiz, was not just about crossing geographical borders and breaking records, but also about getting to see life from a different perspective.
To Waiz, the unique thing about aviation is the way it takes away all discriminations and differences among people.
“When you’re in the airplane and you’re flying, it’s such an unbiased environment that that aircraft doesn’t care where you come from or what you look like,” she said.
Rutherford said flying has taught her that life is “fragile,” and there is “so much more to life than just getting a good career and making and having a good salary.”
She hopes her history-making journey inspires other girls and women to chase their dreams.
“Her aim is actually not to fly around the world. Her aim is to encourage young women and girls to consider and hopefully take up careers in aviation, science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” Rutherford’s father said. “There’s very little point to her flying around the world if nobody gets to hear about it. We all have our own worlds to fly around.”
(NEW YORK) — As Shaun White gears up to go for his fourth and final gold in Beijing, the Olympic halfpipe snowboarder said his training has become “more calculated” and that he’s got “some new moves” to debut in February.
“I’m so honored to make the team; it is just incredible and I get to be an Olympian again. Get to run out of the tunnel with Team USA, it’s just so exciting,” White told Good Morning America on Thursday. “To be atop a sport like this for this long, I feel so honored to be doing that. And it’s so wild because when I look around, everybody in the area are all people I used to compete with, you know, they’re coaches now.”
Ahead of the February opening ceremonies, White recently announced this will be his final Olympics, which he confirmed on GMA, saying, “I’ve got this last dance sort of glow to it.”
“You know, you look for those little signs and I was having a little knee injury here, a little ankle injury there, just these little things. And I remember my back hurting one day and my buddies were like, ‘what happened? And I was like, ‘Nothing, it just hurts,” he laughed.
The winter Games will look different for all the athletes this year as the International Olympic Committee takes precautions to safely allow competition, without fans.
“I’ll never forget winning and sliding down and seeing my whole family and they’re just crying and tears of joy — the whole crowd and that feeling you get, so it’s going to be different. But honestly, I salute them for putting this on in such a challenging time,” White said. “We’ve been trying to keep in our little bubble, so select friends and family, a physical therapist I have with me … Everybody’s testing and doing the best they can and I think that’s all you can really do.”
Since notching his first Olympic gold in 2006 when he was 19, White said he prepares at a different pace now.
“I had longer hair back then, so it’s a little easier routine these days,” he joked. “I think every single time I go to the Olympics, it’s just a different process.”
“I always think, ‘What got me to this point in my career won’t necessarily take me the rest of the way.’ So not only have I been focusing a lot on my physical health, but just like the mental health of it all,” White, 35, said. “Staying positive and staying motivated.”
The training has become “more calculated practice sessions,” and he explained that “it’s more like a power window than I used to be up there all day long — I don’t have that much energy as I used to. I’m not an old guy by any means — but at the last competition, one of my competitors was like 15, I was like, ‘Oh my goodness.’ So I’m definitely like pacing it out a bit more and take a lot more time to recover.”
At his last appearance in PyeongChang, White stunned fans and judges with back-to-back 1440s and ended the run with a frontside double cork 1260 to grab gold.
“There’s talk of triple corks now, these triple flips that are happening. A lot of the Japanese riders have been attempting those. There’s talks of doing a 16, which is 180 [degrees] past the 1440. But it’s gonna be incredible. I don’t want to give anything away, but working on some new moves and I’m hoping that everything really peaks once I get to the competition.”
Outside of the Olympics, White started a snowboarding and activewear company with his brother called Whitespace.
“It’s so much fun. You know, all my experience over the course of my career — I get to put that into a new product and a new brand and all my focus and attention and it’s been such a rewarding thing to work on with family,” he said. “I was 7 when I first got a snowboard from Jake Burton, who unfortunately passed away recently, but, you know, he gave me that start and I keep thinking — ‘Wow, if I could be that for the next generation,’ some young boy or girl or whoever is starting up and has that spark and excitement for the sport and I could be there to support it with my wisdom and experiences.”
Elton John‘s much-delayed Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour resumed Wednesday night in New Orleans, with a fresh new addition to his set list.
Not only did Elton play pretty much every hit you’d want to hear, from “Bennie and the Jets” and “Tiny Dancer” to “I’m Still Standing” and “Your Song,” but he also played his current top 10 hit “Cold Heart” live for the first time. His duet partner Dua Lipa didn’t join him for the song, but her vocals were heard during the performance.
“Cold Heart,” from Elton’s The Lockdown Sessions, is his first U.S. top 10 hit since 1998.
Elton’s North American tour dates run through April, and then he’ll head to Europe. This summer, he’ll return to North America to play stadiums starting July 15 in Philadelphia; he’ll wrap up those dates with two shows at Dodger Stadium in L.A. on November 19 and 20.
