Jimi Hendrix‘s estate has filed a lawsuit against the heirs of the two other original members of The Jimi Hendrix Experience — bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell — after those parties threatened to sue Jimi’s estate for millions of pounds in alleged unpaid royalties, Billboard reports.
The Hendrix estate, along with the Sony Music label, filed a suit in a New York City court on Tuesday asking that the court rule they owe no money to Redding’s and Mitchell’s estates.
In documents obtained by Billboard, the Hendrix estate and Sony explain they launched their action after the Redding and Mitchell estates sent them a cease-and-desist letter in December in which they threatened to file a lawsuit in a British court demanding millions of pounds in unpaid royalties dating back to 1973.
Hendrix’s estate and Sony maintain that Redding and Mitchell had signed away rights to Hendrix’s royalties in exchange for a monetary settlement during legal proceedings that followed the guitar legend’s death in 1970.
However, in the December letter, reps for the Redding and Mitchell estates claimed that the agreements Noel and Mitch signed weren’t enforceable.
“For almost half a century, there has never been any claim by defendants or their successors…concerning the copyright ownership, exploitation of these recordings by plaintiffs, or payments of royalties,” the Hendrix estate and Sony wrote in their suit.
The plaintiffs aren’t seeking any monetary damages in the lawsuit; rather, they want the court to declare that they haven’t done anything wrong.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience formed in 1966. Redding left the group in 1969, while Mitchell continued to play with the band until Jimi’s death in September 1970 at age 27. Noel passed away in 2003 at the age of 52, while Mitchell died in 2008 at age 62.
(WASHINGTON) — One day after President Joe Biden appeared to cast doubt on whether the midterm election results will be legitimate without the passage of a new voting rights law, his vice president and press secretary worked to dispel any mistrust in the integrity of the vote.
“Speaking of voting rights legislation, if this isn’t passed, do you still believe the upcoming election will be fairly conducted and its results will be legitimate?” a reporter asked Biden Wednesday at a lengthy press conference marking the end of his first year in office.
“Well, it all depends on whether or not we’re able to make the case to the American people that some of this is being set up to try to alter the outcome of the election,” Biden said.
“I’m not saying it’s not going to be legit, it’s the increase in the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these, these reforms passed,” Biden told another reporter who followed up on his assertion that the integrity of the results “depends” on passing voting rights legislation.
Early Thursday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted, refuting the notion Biden believes there’s a possibility the election results will be questionable.
“Lets be clear: @potus was not casting doubt on the legitimacy of the 2022 election. He was making the opposite point: In 2020, a record number of voters turned out in the face of a pandemic, and election officials made sure they could vote and have those votes counted,” she said.
“He was explaining that the results would be illegitimate if states do what the former president asked them to do after the 2020 election: toss out ballots and overturn results after the fact. The Big Lie is putting our democracy at risk. We’re fighting to protect it.”
Lets be clear: @potus was not casting doubt on the legitimacy of the 2022 election. He was making the opposite point: In 2020, a record number of voters turned out in the face of a pandemic, and election officials made sure they could vote and have those votes counted.
Psaki also appeared on Fox News, saying directly that Biden “was not making a prediction” about the legitimacy of the results.
“I talked to the president a lot about this and he is not predicting that the 2022 elections would be illegitimate,” Psaki said on “America’s Newsroom.” “… The point he was making the former president asked seven or more states to overturn the outcome of the election. Now obviously if there is an effort to do that we have to fight against it. That’s what our commitment is to doing, but he was not making a prediction. He has confidence in the American people and do everything we can to protect people’s rights.”
But a major Biden ally, Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., whose support for Biden in the critical primary state of South Carolina changed the trajectory of the 2020 primary, expressed agreement on the idea that the 2022 results could be questionable in a CNN interview Thursday.
“Are you concerned that without these voting rights bills the election results won’t be legitimate?” CNN’s Kasie Hunt asked Clyburn.
“I’m absolutely concerned about that,” Clyburn said.
Vice President Kamala Harris, appearing on all three broadcast network morning shows Thursday to dispel confusion over several comments from the press conference, argued the attention should remain on protecting the right to vote, dismissing questions surrounding election integrity.
“Let’s not conflate issues. What we are looking, and the topic of so much debate last night, was that we as America cannot afford to allow this blatant erosion of our democracy, and in particular, the right of all Americans who are eligible to vote to have access to the ballot unfettered. That is the topic of the conversation. Let’s not be distracted by the political gamesmanship,” Harris said on NBC’s “Today” program.
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.”
