Tiffany Haddishappeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Monday night, and while other celebrities might have, she didn’t shy away from her recent DUI arrest.
Haddish was arrested on suspicion of DUI early in the morning of January 14, after cops investigated a report of a driver asleep behind the wheel of her car on a Georgia highway.
Haddish told Fallon in the Zoom interview, “I’ve been praying to God to send me a new man. A good man. And God went ahead and sent me four…in uniform.”
Haddish added, “And now I got a really great lawyer, and we’re going to work it out. I’ve got to get my asking of things to God a little better!”
Tiffany explained the last few months have been rough for her, what with her break up from boyfriend Common, and the deaths of both her friend and “mentor” Bob Saget and her grandmother.
“[Saget] was like a big mentor to me, a big brother, a father figure,” she explained.
“He meant a lot to me. Funny man. He was the first white man to ever tell me, ‘Just be yourself, just be who you are, Tiffany. Don’t worry about nothing. Just be you.’ That was huge for me.”
The Girls Trip star added solemnly, “And then, my grandma passed away, and she saved my life. That’s my heart. She was like my soulmate. So that’s been… really hard to process, all this…grief.”
“My next special is going to be about grief. And it’s going to be hilarious,” she added, explaining that would help her, “figure out how to process it all.”
“Kids get to cry whenever they want to, wherever they want to. As an adult you can’t do that,” Haddish joked.
A lawyer for Marilyn Manson has denied the allegations made by Evan Rachel Wood against the disgraced shock rocker in her new documentary, Phoenix Rising.
In the film, Wood accuses Manson, born Brian Warner, of physical, sexual and psychological abuse, and details how he allegedly drugged and sexually assaulted her while filming the video for “Heart-Shaped Glasses.”
“I was essentially raped on-camera,” Wood says in the doc, according to People.
In a statement obtained by E! News and Pitchfork, Warner’s lawyer Howard King calls Wood’s allegations “false” and an “imaginative retelling.”
“Evan was not only fully coherent and engaged during the three-day shoot but also heavily involved in weeks of pre-production planning and days of post-production editing of the final cut,” the statement reads. “The simulated sex scene took several hours to shoot with multiple takes using different angles and several long breaks in between camera setups. Brian did not have sex with Evan on that set, and she knows that is the truth.”
Wood, who previously spoke for several years about her experience with domestic violence, publicly named Warner as her abuser in a February 2021 social media post. At the time, Warner denied allegations as “horrible distortions of reality.”
Following Wood’s post, more women came forward with allegations of sexual, physical and emotional abuse against Warner, including actor Esmé Bianco, model Ashley Morgan Smithline, and Warner’s former assistant, Ashley Walters, all of whom filed lawsuits against him. Through lawyers, Warner has denied the allegations.
The first installment of the two-part Phoenix Rising premiered over the weekend at the Sundance Film Festival. The whole doc is set to debut on HBO in March.
For anyone affected by abuse and needing support, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or if you’re unable to speak safely, you can log onto thehotline.org or text LOVEIS to 1-866-331-9474.
Glass Animals, Black Pumas and Clairo are among the artists playing the 2022 Governors Ball festival, taking place June 10-12 at New York City’s Citi Field.
The bill also includes beabadoobee, Peach Tree Rascals, Almost Monday, Japanese Breakfast, Coin and Surf Curse. Kid Cudi, Halsey and J. Cole will headline.
Tickets go on sale this Thursday, January 27, at noon ET. Citi cardmembers can access a pre-sale now.
For the full lineup and all ticket info, visit GovBall.com.
The lineup for the 2022 edition of Governors Ball has been announced, and Halsey is headlining one of the three days.
The event takes place from June 10-12 at New York’s Citi Field; Halsey will headline the June 11 lineup. Other artists performing include Jack Harlow, Glass Animals, Benee, Roddy Ricch and Tove Lo. The other two days are being headlined by J. Cole and Kid Cudi.
A pre-sale for three-day and one-day general admission and VIP tickets runs from today through Thursday for Citi® Cardmembers. Tickets go on sale to the general public on Thursday at noon EST via GovBall.com.
Halsey’s also booked for the Hangout, Beach Music & Arts Fest in May in Gulf Shores, Alabama, as well as the U.K.’s Reading and Leeds Festivals in August. And next month, she’ll be part of the 2022 Bud Light Super Bowl Music Fest at L.A’s Crypto.com Arena, along with Miley Cyrus, Machine Gun Kelly, Gwen Stefani and Green Day.
(NEW YORK) — A new study adds to the growing evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are safe for both pregnant people and people hoping to become pregnant.
The study, which looked at more than 2,000 couples in the United States and Canada, found “no adverse association” between getting vaccinated against COVID-19 and fertility, for both men and women.
On the other hand, men who contract COVID-19 may experience a temporary reduction in fertility. Couples who had a male partner test positive for COVID-19 within 60 days of their partner’s menstrual cycle were 18% less likely to conceive in that cycle, according to the study, published on Jan. 20 in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
“The findings provide reassurance that vaccination for couples seeking pregnancy does not appear to impair fertility,” Dr. Diana Bianchi, director of the National Institute of Health’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which funded the study, said in a statement. “They also provide information for physicians who counsel patients hoping to conceive.”
The myth that COVID-19 vaccines may negatively impact fertility was one that was spread largely on social media.
More and more research has now shown that not only do the vaccines not affect fertility, they also do not impact pregnancy.
A study released Jan. 4 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found no increased risk of preterm or low-weight birth among babies born to pregnant people who got a COVID-19 vaccine shot, compared to babies born to unvaccinated pregnant people.
The study’s researchers at Yale University looked at the health data of more than 40,000 pregnant women and did not identify any safety issues with getting vaccinated while pregnant, no matter which trimester a woman was in when vaccinated, or how many vaccine doses she got during her pregnancy. Researchers noted most of the women included in the analysis were vaccinated in the second or third trimester, and the study didn’t include booster doses.
In a health warning issued in September urging pregnant people to get vaccinated, the CDC said data shows there is also no increased risk for miscarriage linked to receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.
“Miscarriage rates after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine were similar to the expected rate of miscarriage,” the CDC said at the time. “Additionally, previous findings from three safety monitoring systems did not find any safety concerns for pregnant people who were vaccinated late in pregnancy or for their babies.”
In addition, two studies released last summer found Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines appear to be safe and effective for pregnant people, and were also found to likely offer protection to infants born to a vaccinated person.
In August, the CDC strengthened its recommendation for COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy, citing new evidence of safety with the vaccines.
The nation’s two leading health organizations focused on the care of pregnant people — American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) — also issued new guidelines calling on all pregnant people to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
The World Health Organization (WHO) also says pregnant people can be vaccinated against COVID-19.
“Limited data are currently available to assess the safety of COVID-19 vaccines in pregnancy. However, based on what we know about the kinds of vaccines being used, there is no specific reason for concern,” the WHO says on its website. “None of the COVID-19 vaccines authorized to date use live viruses, which are more likely to pose risks during pregnancy.”
Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use mRNA technology, which does not enter the nucleus of the cells and doesn’t alter the human DNA; instead, it sends a genetic instruction manual that prompts cells to create proteins that look like part of the virus as a way for the body to learn and develop defenses against future infection.
They are the first mRNA vaccines, which are theoretically safe during pregnancy, because they do not contain a live virus.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses an inactivated adenovirus vector, Ad26, that cannot replicate. The Ad26 vector carries a piece of DNA with instructions to make the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that triggers an immune response.
This same type of vaccine has been authorized for Ebola, and has been studied extensively for other illnesses — and for how it affects women who are pregnant or breastfeeding.
The CDC has concluded that pregnant people can receive the Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine after reviewing more than 200 pages of data provided by the company and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Vaccine experts interviewed by ABC News said although pregnant women are advised against getting live-attenuated virus vaccines, such as the one for measles, mumps and rubella, because they can pose a theoretical risk of infection to the fetus, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine doesn’t contain live virus and should be safe.
The COVID-19 virus has also proven to be more dangerous for pregnant people, especially if they are not vaccinated.
According to the CDC, COVID-19 causes a two-fold risk of admission into intensive care and a 70% increased risk of death for pregnant people.
A study led by researchers in Scotland, and published this month in Nature Medicine, found that unvaccinated pregnant people who contracted COVID-19 not only were at risk of more severe illness themselves, but also were more likely to experience pregnancy loss or preterm birth compared to other women.
(SEOUL, South Korea) — North Korea fired a pair of projectiles on Tuesday morning believed to be cruise missiles, a South Korean official told ABC News.
An official with the South Korean Ministry of National Defense said the projectiles were detected by South Korean and U.S. intelligence agencies, which are analyzing the launch. Further details were not immediately available.
North Korea has test-fired missiles at least five times this year. North Korean state media boasted the successful launches of hypersonic missiles on Jan. 5 and Jan. 11, followed by a short-range ballistic missile from a train car on Jan. 14 and another short-range ballistic missile from the Sunan airport in the capital, Pyongyang, on Jan. 17.
The latest launch came just five days after North Korea implied it would withdraw from a self-imposed moratorium on testing nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, blaming the U.S. for the failed trust between the two countries.
“The hostile policy and military threat by the U.S. have reached a danger line that cannot be overlooked anymore despite our sincere efforts for maintaining the general tide for relaxation of tension in the Korean peninsula since the DPRK-U.S. summit in Singapore,” North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency reported last Thursday.
Testing cruise missiles does not violate the resolutions the United Nations Security Council imposed on North Korea to curb its nuclear and missile activities, but Seoul-based analysts presumed that Pyongyang’s latest launch was aimed at South Korea and the U.S.
Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in South Korea’s capital, said the reclusive regime wants “to prove to the outside world that they are capable of bolstering its defense.”
“North Korea aims to enhance its presence in the international community ahead of their most revered anniversaries of the late leader and founder of the country,” Yang told ABC News on Tuesday.
Cha Du-hyeogn, a visiting research fellow at the Asan Institute of Policy Studies in Seoul, said North Korea is purposely launching missiles that will be detected by South Korean and U.S. radars in order to be noticed.
“The continued missile testing is nothing new in North Korea’s viewpoint because Kim Jong Un forewarned during last year multiple times that the regime will keep developing missiles and nuclear weapons for their defense,” Cha told ABC News on Tuesday. “Pyongyang aims to show its citizens that the leader’s words will eventually come true despite the economic difficulties, and also prove to the international community that they are gearing up the military capabilities, enough to become a threat.”
ABC News’ Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.
Jeopardy! champion Amy Schneider is officially in second place for consecutive wins on the iconic quiz show with her 39th victory.
Schneider, whose Jeopardy! run began Nov. 17, overtook Matt Amodio‘s 38-game winning streak with Monday’s victory. She is now about halfway to overtaking Ken Jennings‘ 74-game winning record, which he has held since 2004.
Already the winningest woman in Jeopardy! history, Schneider’s total winnings are now $1,319,800, the fourth-highest ever in terms of regular-season play. This puts her in striking territory of Amodio, who earned $1,518,601 last year.
Schneider, an engineering manager from Oakland, California, has a ways to go if she wants to overtake the top two Jeopardy! earners, as she is still more than $1 million behind James Holzhauer and Jennings, who won $2,462,216 and $2,520,700, respectively, during their original runs.
In an interview Monday, Schneider told Good Morning America that Jennings is “limited” in what advice he can give her so he can “stay neutral” as host. So, he gives all contestants the same tip: “to relax and have fun and enjoy the moment.”
Schneider also said she is looking forward to the next Tournament of Champions, which will see her face off against Amodio. “It’s going to be really challenging; a lot of strong players there, but it should be a lot of fun,” she said.
(LONDON) — At least eight people died in a stampede outside a stadium hosting a game at Africa’s top soccer tournament in Cameroon on Monday, officials said.
The deadly crush occurred at the southern entrance of the Olembe Stadium in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, as fans jostled to watch the host country play Comoros in a round-of-16 knockout match in the Africa Cup of Nations. Another 38 people were injured during the incident, including seven seriously, according to a press release from the Cameroonian Ministry of Communication.
The dead were taken to Yaounde Emergency Center, while the injured were admitted to four different hospitals across the city, the ministry said.
The ministry added that Cameroonian President Paul Biya “sends his deepest condolences to the hard-hit families, as well as his wishes of a speedy recovery to the injured, to whom he sends the profound compassion of the entire nation.”
The Confederation of African Football (CAF), which organizes the Africa Cup of Nations, said in a statement Monday that it “is aware of the incident.”
“CAF is currently investigating the situation and trying to get more details on what transpired,” CAF added. “We are in constant communication with Cameroon government and the Local Organizing Committee.”
The International Federation of Football Association (FIFA), soccer’s world governing body, said in a statement Tuesday that it “sends its deepest condolences to the families and friends of the victims who lost their lives following the tragic incident.”
“The thoughts and prayers of the global football community are with the victims, the ones who have been injured in this incident, and all the staff of both CAF and the Cameroonian Football Association (FECAFOOT) at this difficult moment,” FIFA said.
It’s the first time in 50 years that Cameroon is hosting the much-anticipated Africa Cup of Nations. The Central African country was supposed to host the monthlong competition in 2019 but was stripped of that right due to serious delays with its preparations. That year’s event was ultimately hosted by Egypt.
Alberto Rodriguez/E! Entertainment/NBCUniversal/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
Cardi B has won a $1 million defamation lawsuit against YouTuber Tasha K.
The ruling came on Monday, with a jury siding with the “WAP” rapper, who accused Tasha K, full name Latasha Kebe, of making false claims that the rapper was a prostitute, contracted herpes, and used drugs, among other things, according to Billboard.
Cardi was awarded $1.25 million in damages, however, that number could potentially grow when proceedings on Tuesday decide whether Tasha K owes punitive damages and whether she will have to pay Cardi’s legal expenses.
Following the verdict, Tasha tweeted that she and her legal team “fought really hard” and thanked them for their “long hours and sleepless nights.” In a following tweet, she also thanked her viewers for their “support.”
“In this business, this is part of the protocol. Everyone in my seat has been through this, & this ain’t the last. This comes with the territory,” she wrote. “See y’all Friday! It’s long overdue!”
Cardi, who filed the libel lawsuit against Tasha in 2019, hasn’t directly commented on the verdict, but she did share a cryptic tweet Monday evening, asking, “Why am I happy but sad at the same time?”
Whether the tweet is in relation to the lawsuit remains unclear.
(PITTSBURGH) — A once-dormant power plant is humming with activity outside Pittsburgh as thousands of miners work 24 hours a day.
The miners at this site aren’t people, but supercomputers running complex math equations. The first to solve the equation is rewarded with the digital financial token known as bitcoin.
But the large amount of power needed to run these computers has re-ignited a debate in Pennsylvania and around the country about the potential climate consequences of cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin is a type of digital money not regulated by any company or government. It can be exchanged online between people anywhere in the world without going through a bank. While coins like quarters or pennies are physically minted — bitcoin is minted as a virtual token by computers, through a process called “mining.”
Some investors see bitcoin as the currency of the future. The value of one bitcoin has skyrocketed from around $10,000 two years ago to more than $33,000 as of this publishing.
Jeff Campbell, who oversees the bitcoin mining operation at the Scrubgrass Power Plant in Kennerdell, Pennsylvania, said each of their computers generates an average of $30 a day mining bitcoin.
“These are computers that are just designed to do one thing. They’re designed to run as fast as possible 24 hours a day,” he told ABC News Live.
The computers in a bitcoin mining operation need a lot of power both to run and to operate fans that stop them from overheating. By one estimate from the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance, annual global bitcoin mining uses more electricity than the entire nation of The Netherlands.
Climate activists question whether the growth of cryptocurrency mining operations could generate more carbon emissions and create a new market for fossil fuels at a time when the world is trying to reduce energy use and cut carbon emissions as fast as possible.
Under fire for their emissions and reliance on fuels like coal and natural gas, some bitcoin mining companies in the U.S. are transitioning to more renewable types of power like solar or wind.
Stronghold Digital Mining, which owns the Scrubgrass plant, has found its power source in the form of coal waste, which is abundant at this 221-acre pit just outside of Pittsburgh. Coal waste is a combination of rock, coal, and other materials that were deemed unsuitable for burning and left abandoned since the 1970s when coal mines in the area were closed.
There are 220 million cubic yards of waste coal pits like the one in Russellton across 9,000 acres in Pennsylvania, according to testimony from Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Director Patrick McDonnell. The agency says the pits cause environmental problems like leaching acid into nearby rivers and streams. There are also 40 continual fires in waste coal pits across the state that can release carbon dioxide and other pollutants as they burn, according to a document from a waste coal industry group.
The entrepreneur behind Stronghold, Bill Spence, said that while burning waste coal isn’t the cheapest form of energy, the bitcoin operation keeps the plant viable through its constant demand for power. This helps achieve his goal of reducing the toxic waste piles across the state, Spence said.
“What cryptocurrency and bitcoin has done for us is, it’s enabled us to sustain the work that this power plant does as an environmental plant cleaning up the waste coal, the remnants of the mining industry here in the state of Pennsylvania,” he told ABC.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection says the state has benefited from waste coal power plants because the state has limited funding to clean up the piles and address the environmental problems.
“Waste coal-fired units burn waste coal to generate electricity thereby reducing the size, number and impacts of these piles otherwise abandoned and allowed to mobilize and negatively impact air and water quality in Pennsylvania,” Press Secretary Jamar Thrasher said in an emailed statement.
Pennsylvania provides up to $20 million a year in subsidies to waste coal power plants and Thrasher said the state includes their CO2 emissions in the state’s carbon budget in an effort to help them compete with cheaper forms of energy like natural gas.
Waste coal is burned using a different process than traditional coal but still releases carbon dioxide that contributes to warming the atmosphere. The EPA says the type of waste coal found in Pennsylvania also releases more acid gas and sulfur dioxide than other types of coal.
Stronghold says they have put technology in place to capture pollutants like sulfur dioxide or methane emissions from their plant, but according to publicly available data they still released about 365,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2019 — the equivalent of about 80,000 cars on the road for a year, according to an EPA emissions calculator. The facility also released more than 1,000 metric tons of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and nitrogen oxides, or NOx, that contribute to air pollution
Rob Altenburg, director of the environmental nonprofit Penn Future, said bitcoin is “wasteful by design” and that there are better alternatives for generating that power than burning waste coal.
“They’re not removing pollution. They’re moving pollution. They’re moving pollution from the land and they’re moving it to the air,” Altenburg told ABC News.
And because waste coal contains less coal than what would typically be used to generate energy, more of it needs to be burned to create the same amount of power which could generate more CO2 emissions and air pollution.
“The dirtiest source of power we have in the state should be your last choice for you for generating that electricity,” he said.
Altenburg said that instead of burning waste coal, the state and federal government should provide more funding to move the material to lined landfills where it can no longer contaminate the soil or water.
The federal infrastructure bill has allocated $11 billion toward abandoned mine cleanups, some of which could be used to clean up waste coal in Pennsylvania.
Spence acknowledges that Stronghold’s operation generates carbon dioxide and that their operation isn’t perfect, but they’re trying to improve further by testing technology to capture the carbon they emit. And he said the bitcoin operation is helping fund his efforts to use up the waste coal which otherwise won’t go anywhere on its own.
“I don’t think we should stop what we’re doing in order to get the perfect,” Spence told ABC.
“Let’s evolve into perfect.”
ABC News’ Seiji Yamashita contributed to this report.
