Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton celebrated the one-year anniversary of their engagement on Sunday, and now, Gwen has shared some never-before seen video and pictures from the day that Blake popped the question.
“one year ago today?!” she captioned her Instagram post. “October 17th 2020 we got engaged! @blakeshelton I love you!” The first video shows Gwen showing off her ring as Blake dances up behind her and kisses her cheek. “Look! We just got engaged!” she yells, as the song “Celebration” plays in the background.
Another image shows Gwen on her knees covering her face as Blake kneels in front of her, holding her waist. Next, there’s video of Gwen’s massive diamond engagement ring.
Gwen and Blake didn’t make their engagement public until October 27, 2020. They tied the knot July 3, 2021 at Blake’s Oklahoma ranch.
Colin Powell, the Army general who served as both chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and later as U.S. secretary of state, has died of complications from COVID-19 at age 84.
A statement from the Powell family, posted to Powell’s Facebook page, reads: “Colin L. Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, passed away this morning due to complications from Covid 19. He was fully vaccinated. We want to thank the medical staff at Walter Reed National Medical Center for their caring treatment. We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American.”
Powell served under four presidents — Ronald Reagan, GeorgeBush, BillClinton and George W. Bush — at the very top of the national security establishment, first as deputy national security adviser and then as national security adviser. He was later appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the senior ranking member of the U.S. armed forces and top military adviser to the president.
Powell was the first African-American ever to hold the post of Joint Chiefs chairman, and the first to be secretary of state, a position he held from 2001 to 2005 under President George W. Bush.
Powell helped shape American defense and foreign policy. He was in top posts during the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the downsizing of the military after the end of the Cold War, the 1989 invasion of Panama, the 1991 Gulf War, the 1992-93 engagement in Somalia, and the crisis in Bosnia.
Following his 1993 retirement from the Army at the rank of four-star general, Powell’s supporters urged him to enter politics, touting him as the only candidate with the moral stature needed to unite the country and heal longstanding racial wounds.
Throughout his service in the military, Powell never made his political leanings known. Although he served under both Democratic and Republican administrations, it wasn’t until 1995 that Powell announced that he had registered as a Republican. He publicly supported the candidacy of only two presidential candidates: LyndonJohnson and BarackObama, both Democrats.
Powell was engaged in several notable humanitarian and personal efforts. In 1994, he, former PresidentJimmyCarter and former Sen. SamNunn, D-Ga., embarked on a peacekeeping mission in Haiti, during which they were able to help bring to an end to military rule and establish an elected government for the country.
In 1995, Powell published his autobiography, My American Journey, in which he touched on everything from his military experiences to more personal matters. Powell was also involved in America’s Promise, a non-profit organization geared toward empowering young people, for which he served as chairman from 1997-2000.
Powell spent his entire adult life in service to his country. He leaves behind his wife of 48 years, Alma Powell, and his son, Michael.
(WASHINGTON) — Recipients of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine should not be concerned about the shot’s lower efficacy now that boosters have been recommended, White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci told ABC This Week co-anchor Martha Raddatz.
“I think that they should feel good about it because what the advisers to the FDA felt is that given the data that they saw, very likely this should have been a two-dose vaccine to begin with,” he said Sunday.
The FDA vaccine advisory panel unanimously recommended booster shots for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine Friday. The panel recommended all J&J recipients 18 years and older to get an additional jab as early as two months after the first dose — key differences from their recommendations for the Moderna and Pfizer boosters which were only for Americans 65 and older or in higher risk groups.
The decision came days after early data released from a National Institutes of Health study found that boosting with a different shot than one’s original vaccine appears to be safe and effective. The data, which is not yet peer reviewed, also found that for J&J recipients, antibody levels were higher if they received a Moderna or Pfizer booster rather than a J&J booster.
Raddatz pressed Fauci on whether mixing and matching vaccine boosters for J&J recipients would be a better idea.
“But, Dr. Fauci, the panel was also looking at new data that suggest J&J recipients may be better off getting a booster shot from the more effective Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. Is that a better solution?” Raddatz asked.
“That is true, the data you refer to, that if you boost people who have originally received J&J with either Moderna or Pfizer, the level of antibodies that you induce in them is much higher than if you boost them with the original J&J,” Fauci said.
He went on, “However, you’re talking about laboratory data, which very often are reflective of what you would see clinically. But the data of boosting the J&J first dose with a J&J second dose is based on clinical data. So what’s going to happen is that the FDA is going to look at all those data, look at the comparison and make a determination of what they will authorize.”
Fauci added that the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will give people the flexibility to mix and match vaccine boosters based on their individual health situations.
Now that the FDA has recommended J&J boosters for a wider group of Americans, the question turns to when Moderna and Pfizer boosters will be expanded to the general public.
Fauci said that will depend on the data being collected by the CDC and the findings coming in from Israel, which is about a month ahead of the U.S. in its vaccine rollout.
As for vaccines for children ages 5-11, Fauci said the FDA is on track to approve the Pfizer vaccine in early November.
With kids eager to go trick-or-treating and the holidays right around the corner, Raddatz also asked Fauci about his guidance for celebrating the upcoming holidays.
“I believe strongly that — particularly in the vaccinated people, if you’re vaccinated and your family members are vaccinated, those who are eligible, that is obviously very young children are not yet eligible, that you can enjoy the holidays,” he said. “You can enjoy Halloween, trick-or-treating and certainly Thanksgiving with your family and Christmas with your family.”
L-R: Jim Moore, Pink; Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
Pink has confirmed that her father, Jim Moore, lost his battle with prostate cancer.
Taking to Instagram on Friday — her father’s birthday — the singer shared a photo of his grave, and reflected on the complicated relationship she had with him before expressing, “I don’t even know that I can handle the cold hard truth that I miss you yet. I wanna still act like this is one of those times that I’m busy and not calling. I can’t feel this yet.”
Noting that her father would have turned 76 on Friday, she lamented, “I don’t know where you are. And therefore I don’t know where I am either. Happy Birthday Daddy Sir. Gone but not forgotten. I won’t miss you yet. I’m not ready.”
Pink first hinted of her father’s passing in August when she shared two photos to Instagram of herself dancing with her dad, one at her wedding to husband Carey Hart and the other of a young Pink and Jim at a formal function. She captioned it, “Til forever.”
She’d previously revealed in June 2020 that her father was battling cancer, sharing on Instagram a photo of Jim smiling while undergoing his second round of chemotherapy, noting that he learned he had cancer after he “fell off a ladder and fractured his back.”
Pink, whose parents divorced when she was 10, helped her dad realize his music dreams in the mid-2000s when they recorded “I Have Seen the Rain” — a song Jim wrote while he was serving in the Vietnam War — together. She credited her dad’s song with helping her learn to play the acoustic guitar and how to harmonize, since it was the first song she ever learned.
The song was a hidden track on her 2006 album, I’m Not Dead.
This weekend’s Saturday Night Livecold open took aim at the scandal surrounding former Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden, who was forced to resign last week following the discovery of racist, misogynistic and homophobic comments he made in emails while working as an ESPN commentator.
The sketch featured SNL‘s Colin Jost as NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who defended the league by declaring, “I know our Black coaches would agree. Both of them.”
He then introduced Gruden — new cast member James Austin Johnson — who begged people not to judge him on “the one email I sent 10 years ago, or the 20 emails I sent last Tuesday.”
Gruden then turned the podium over to Raiders owner Mark Davis — played by Alex Moffat — who addressed his unusual bowl haircut by noting, “I’ve heard all the jokes about my hair and how it looks like Donald Trump’s haircut gave me a haircut.”
The sketch went on to feature a series of people accepting, then quickly resigning, the Raiders head coach job over problematic statements in their past.
Chris Redd played former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who was fired for kneeling during the national anthem before the games as a silent protest against systemic racism and police brutality. He followed by noting, “So much stuff coming out about [how] the NFL is maybe racist. Huh, I wonder if anyone tried to warn people about this before.”
Moffat’s Davis then announced a “solution that makes everyone happy. Someone even Twitter can get behind,” and introduced LeVar Burton, played by Kenan Thompson, as the new coach.
The host of the PBS kids’ show Reading Rainbow, seemingly angry over losing the Jeopardy! hosing duties to Mayim Bialik, told the actress to “suck on that” before breaking into a song that reworked the Reading Rainbow theme song.
The reports were true: Adele is indeed promoting her new album with a network TV special.
Adele One Night Only will air Sunday, November 14 on CBS at 8 p.m. ET, and will also be available to stream on Paramount+. The two-hour special, which will be filmed in L.A., will feature the star performing her new material, as well as some of her hits. It’ll also include Adele sitting for an interview with Oprah Winfrey.
CBS describes the chat as Adele’s first “televised wide-ranging conversation,” with topics including her new album, her life after her divorce, raising her son and her weight loss.
Adele’s new album, 30, arrives November 19. Its first single, “Easy on Me,” is out now.
(NEW YORK) — A Haitian gang has been blamed for kidnapping a group at a Haitian airport that included 17 missionaries, five of them children, according to officials.
Nineteen people were abducted by a gang at a checkpoint in Haiti during an airport run on Saturday, a source at the U.S. embassy told ABC News. The kidnapping occurred at the intersection of “Carrefour Boen” and “La Tremblay 17,” a source at the Haitian presidential office told ABC News.
Included in the group are 17 missionaries — 16 Americans and one Canadian — and two Haitian citizens, according to the U.S. Embassy. Two French priests were also kidnapped in a separate attack at the same location earlier in the day, the source said.
The Haitian government suspects the gang known as 400 Mawozo to be responsible for the abductions, the source said.
It is unclear where the victims were taken. The Embassy is working with a special group of Americans in the country who are investigating.
The Ohio-based ministry Christian Aid Ministries confirmed in a statement that a group of 17 people were “abducted” while on a trip to an orphanage on Saturday.
“We request urgent prayer for the group of Christian Aid Ministries workers who were abducted while on a trip to visit an orphanage on Saturday, October 16,” the statement read Sunday. “We are seeking God’s direction for a resolution, and authorities are seeking ways to help.
Five men, seven women and five children are among the group, according to the ministry.
Haitian police inspector Frantz Champagne told The Associated Press that the 400 Mawozo gang kidnapped the group while they were in Ganthier, about 17 miles east of Port Au Prince.
The country is experiencing a rise in gang-related kidnappings, many demanding ransom, that quelled after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse on July 7 and a 7.2-magnitude earthquake on Aug. 14 that killed more than 2,200 people.
The U.S. State Department told ABC News in a statement that it is “in regular contact with senior Haitian authorities and will continue to work with them and interagency partners.”
“The welfare and safety of U.S. citizens abroad is one of the highest priorities of the Department of State,” the statement read.
The FBI is expected to assist in negotiations, ABC News has learned.
Additional information on the kidnapping was not immediately available.
(WASHINGTON) — Former U.S. Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell died Monday morning due to complications from COVID-19, his family said in a statement.
“He was fully vaccinated. We want to thank the medical staff at Walter Reed National Medical Center for their caring treatment,” the family said. “We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American.”
Powell was 84 years old.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Kourtney Kardashian is ready to say “I do” to Blink-182‘s Travis Barker… because she just said “yes” to him asking for her hand in marriage.
The Keeping Up with the Kardashians star shared two ultra-romantic images to Instagram late Sunday, which show them cozying up on the beach while surrounded by a sea of red roses and flickering white candles.
She simply captioned the announcement, “forever” and tagged Barker, who repeated the caption verbatim in the comment section using all capital letters.
Meanwhile, Kim Kardashian gave her Twitter followers a closeup look at her sister’s stunning engagement ring, writing in all caps, “Kravis forever.”
The video, which is set to Bruno Mars‘ “Marry You,” zooms in on Kourtney’s oval-shaped sparkler.
This will be Barker’s third marriage. He was previously married to Melissa Kennedy from 2001 to 2002 and to Shanna Moakler between 2004 and 2008. He shares two children, 17-year-old Landon and 15-year-old Alabama, with Moakler. Both Landon and Alabama celebrated the happy news on their respective Instagram stories and congratulated their future mother-in-law.
As for Kourtney, she shares three children with ex-Scott Disick, whom she never married: 11-year-old Mason, nine-year-old Penelope and six-year-old Reign.
Kourtney, 42, and Barker, 45, were first romantically linked in 2019, but the pair insisted they were just good friends and have been for years. The two went Instagram official in February 2021.
(CHANNAHON, Ill.) — Christine Kump, of Channahon, Illinois, was newly pregnant with her second child late last year when she felt a lump in her breast.
She said it was in the same spot as a lump she had developed when she breastfed her now 3-year-old daughter, so she brushed it off as leftover scar tissue.
“When you Google it, it says it could be breast cancer, but most likely scar tissue,” Kump, 34, told Good Morning America. “I thought there’s no way I have breast cancer.”
Kump underwent IVF to get pregnant with her second child, so she also attributed the soreness she felt in her breast to side effects from the treatment. When the soreness continued and a burning sensation developed though, Kump went to see her primary care doctor.
“The doctor sent me to do an ultrasound but she wasn’t super concerned,” said Kump. “A few weeks later I went for the ultrasound and then they had me do a biopsy, which I did on Christmas Eve.”
A few days after the biopsy, on Dec. 29, 2020, Kump said her doctor called and told her she had Stage 3 invasive ductal carcinoma breast cancer.
“I was worried that I wasn’t going to make it through the pregnancy,” said Kump, who was eight weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed. “I was thinking I was going to have to write letters to my [3-year-old] daughter Susie for all of her milestones because I wasn’t going to be there.”
Because Kump had a history of cancer in her family, she underwent genetic testing and tested positive for the BRCA1 gene mutation, meaning she was at an increased risk for breast and ovarian cancers.
About 1 in every 500 women in the United States has a mutation in either her BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Because of her genetic background and because her cancer was so advanced, Kump began chemotherapy once she entered her second trimester of pregnancy, a time that doctors say is safer because the baby’s organs are more developed.
Kump was in the middle of her chemotherapy treatments in May, when she went into early labor.
She gave birth to her daughter, Vivian, on May 30, 2021, about three months before her August due date.
“She decided to show up super early,” Kump said of her daughter, who weighed 2 pounds, 10 ounces at birth and faced complications that come from premature birth. “She was intubated for six days and then was on oxygen until she could breathe on her own.”
Vivian would go on to spend the next 59 days in the neonatal intensive care unit, which was 10 minutes away from the cancer center where Kump received treatment.
“My husband and I were the only ones who were allowed to see her in the NICU,” said Kump, adding that she would go from receiving chemotherapy in the morning to visiting her daughter in the afternoon. “The NICU was the safest place for me to be because it was so clean.”
Kump continued on with chemotherapy after giving birth, completing 16 rounds in all. She finished her last treatment in August, shortly after bringing Vivian home from the NICU.
In September, Kump underwent a bilateral mastectomy.
She will next have to undergo nearly six weeks of radiation treatment, and then will undergo a hysterectomy in January since the BRCA1 gene mutation puts her at a higher risk of ovarian cancer.
Kump said she is sharing her story publicly to both raise awareness of breast cancer during pregnancy, and to encourage women to listen to their bodies and seek help if something feels off.
Breast cancer is found in about 1 in every 3,000 pregnant people, according to the American Cancer Society.
“I was taken very seriously and was diagnosed on the first time, but a lot of women are told it’s just an infection, or it’s something from breastfeeding,” said Kump, who, at 34, was six years below the recommended age of 40 to start annual mammograms. “If you think something is a little off, call your doctor, and if you don’t like the response you get from one provider, get a second opinion. It’s so important that we advocate for ourselves.”
It’s a message echoed by Dr. Mary Ahn, Kump’s breast cancer surgeon at Northwestern Medicine.
“If you’re pregnant and see changes in the breast, the majority of time it is pregnancy-related, but if there is something that feels unusual, get it evaluated. It’s better to be cautious,” she said. “We have be our own advocates, be aware of our bodies and, if there are any questions, address them with a medical professional.”
