OWN, BET and TCM are paying tribute to the late Sidney Poitier with a series of special programming.
On Sunday, the Oprah Winfrey Network will feature the Academy Award-winning actor’s 2000 and 2007 appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and his 1967 film To Sir, with Love, according to Deadline. The network will also rerun the 2015 special, Oprah Winfrey Presents: Legends Who Paved the Way, featuring Poitier at a gala honoring some of the legendary men and extraordinary women of the civil rights movement.
TCM will broadcast 12 Poitier movies in a marathon block on Saturday and Sunday, February 19-20. February 20 will mark what would have been Poitier’s 95th birthday.
BET and BET Her plan tributes for February 26 as a lead-in to its live coverage of the NAACP Image Awards. That coverage includes Sidney Poitier: In His Own Words, which will trace his life from his immigrant beginnings in the Bahamas through his iconic Hollywood career.
In other news, as the NFL playoffs begin Saturday, Ciara will narrate a five-part NFL Films docuseries titled Earnin’ It highlighting the careers of some of the most powerful women working in professional football, beginning January 23 on Peacock.
“I am honored to be a part of something so special that will undoubtedly be meaningful to so many people. I am awe-inspired by their incredible stories and am grateful to be part of sharing them with the world,” the Grammy winner said in a statement. Ciara is married to Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl winning quarterback Russell Wilson.
Finally, FX dropped an unusual teaser for the new season of Atlanta as the series shifts abroad. The clip shows cast members starring in commercials for a variety of products in Europe. Atlanta’s third season begins March 24 on FX.
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(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration will launch a new website on Wednesday that Americans can use to request free at-home rapid COVID tests mailed to their doorsteps, senior White House officials said on Friday.
People will be able to order four tests per household at COVIDTests.gov. They won’t be delivered immediately, though. They will be shipped out 7-12 days after they’re ordered, senior officials said.
That means the first free tests won’t reach Americans until late January or early February, which will be too late to blunt the peak of omicron cases in many parts of the country. Still, the plan will allow Americans to have free tests on-hand in the coming weeks and months.
All that people need to enter on the site to receive a test is a name and an address. The White House will also launch a call line for people who don’t have computer access.
Another 500 million tests will eventually also be available, bringing the total to 1 billion free at-home tests distributed to Americans, but the White House hasn’t announced a timeline for the second batch of tests.
And more immediately, starting Saturday, people will be able to get up to eight tests per month reimbursed through insurance if they go out and purchase them on their own, either online or at stores.
“In the first couple of days, we’re encouraging people to just make sure you keep your receipts as the systems are getting up online,” a senior administration official said on Friday.
The White House is also incentivizing insurers to work with retailers and offer the tests for free up-front for people who show their insurance cards, similar to how prescriptions might be covered at the pharmacy. Those partnerships between insurers and retailers are still in the works.
This is on top of 50 million free at-home tests that have been doled out to community health centers around the country and 20,000 free testing sites.
Taken together, it all signifies a clear effort on behalf of the administration to increase the testing supply after omicron caught the government off guard.
The myriad testing options now in full swing will also likely take the pressure off the website launching on Wednesday, particularly as cases begin to fall in some northeastern areas.
Less demand will give the White House time to finish contracting all 500 million tests.
Currently, the White House only has tens of millions of tests on hand, a senior administration official confirmed Friday.
They’ve secured another 400 million or so that are still being manufactured and delivered.
But senior administration officials said they were confident they would be able to get tests sent out to any American who ordered a test next week within their shipping timeline of 7-12 days.
“We’re confident that with our contracting speed, which is very fast, with the ones we have on hand, and the timeline we’re laying out today, that we can meet all of our timelines and get these to Americans that want them,” a senior administration official said.
The tests will be sent via the U.S. Postal Service as first class mail.
The tests will not necessarily be of use to Americans who were exposed and want to take a test within the first 5 days of exposure, or come down with symptoms and want to test immediately, since they’ll take more than 7-12 days to arrive.
But senior administration officials ran through the host of other testing options Americans can use in those scenarios and defended this program as one “designed to ensure that Americans have at-home rapid tests on hand in the weeks and months ahead, as they have a need.”
The officials also said they were “ready” to meet demand on Wednesday and prevent any website crashes, as seen during former President Barack Obama’s launch of Healthcare.gov, which was overseen at the time by the current White House COVID Coordinator Jeff Zients.
“Of course, every website launch poses some risks, we are quite cognizant of that. But we have the best tech teams” across the administration, an official said. “So we’re ready for this and we’re ready for Americans to start ordering their tests on January 19.”
(WASHINGTON) — After a week of high-stakes diplomacy, the U.S. on Friday accused Russia of “fabricating a pretext” to invade its neighbor Ukraine.
It’s another sign that the “drumbeats of war” are getting louder, in the words of one U.S. ambassador, after three key meetings this week to defuse tensions raised by Russia massing approximately 100,000 troops on its borders with Ukraine.
But whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will act on a long-held desire to consume Ukraine, or whether his posturing is a bluff to strengthen Moscow’s hand and therefore its influence, is still an open question, according to senior U.S. officials.
A “massive” cyberattack against Ukrainian government sites on Friday sparked new fears that the very kind of sabotage plot that U.S. officials have described could already be underway.
“Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating a pretext for invasion, including through sabotage activities and information operations, by accusing Ukraine of preparing an imminent attack against Russian forces in eastern Ukraine,” a U.S. official said Friday.
U.S. intelligence has “information that indicates Russia has already prepositioned a group of operatives to conduct a false-flag operation in eastern Ukraine,” the official added, saying the group was trained in urban warfare and the use of explosives.
The alleged plot would begin several weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which he attacked in 2014 by annexing Crimea and fomenting a war in its eastern provinces known as Donbas. That conflict has killed as many as 14,000 people in the last eight years, with artillery and sniper fire still exchanged weekly between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-led separatists.
Not long after, White House press secretary Jen Psaki spelled out the U.S. accusations in public.
“We are concerned that the Russian government is preparing for an invasion in Ukraine that may result in widespread human rights violations and war crimes, should diplomacy fail to meet their objectives,” Psaki told reporters at her daily briefing. “As part of its plans, Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating a pretext for invasion, and we’ve seen this before.
She repeated the U.S. official’s assertion that Russian action could occur sometime between the middle of this month and mid-February.
“We have information that indicates Russia has already pre-positioned a group of operatives to conduct a false flag operation in eastern Ukraine,” Psaki continued. “The operatives are trained in urban warfare and in using explosives to carry out acts of sabotage against Russia’s own proxy forces. Our information also indicates that Russian influence actors are already starting to fabricate Ukrainian provocations in state and social media to justify a Russian intervention and sew divisions in Ukraine.”
The Kremlin dismissed the accusations, saying no proof has been presented.
“All these statements still have just the character of hearsay and haven’t been confirmed by anything,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the state news agency TASS.
The buildup since last fall of nearly 100,000 Russian forces, with potential plans for as many as 175,000, according to U.S. officials, has heightened fears of a full-scale invasion or new attack. In addition to the troops, Russia has stationed artillery systems and electronic warfare systems, according to U.S. ambassador to the OSCE, Michael Carpenter.
“The drumbeat of war is sounding loud, and the rhetoric has gotten rather shrill,” Carpenter said Thursday after the third and last round of talks with Russia. “We have to prepare for the eventuality that there could be an escalation.”
That rhetoric – accusing Ukraine of abusing human rights and increasing belligerence – has dominated on Russia-language social media, according to the U.S. official. In December, it increased roughly 200 percent to nearly 3,500 posts per day, they said, in order “to justify a Russian intervention and sow divisions in Ukraine.”
That appeared to include a “massive” cyberattack against Ukrainian government sites on Friday. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said theirs and other sites were temporarily down, with a message posted on the site by the attackers, address to “Ukrainians!”
“All your information will become public, be afraid and expect the worst. This is for your past, present and future,” it said in part.
Andrei Yermark, a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said later Friday that approximately 90 percent of sites have been restored and that critical infrastructure was not affected.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, and Yermak said the country’s security service was investigating now.
“Of course, we have some thoughts,” he added, saying this kind of attack was “one of the potential parts of the destabilization” that officials have warned about.
With partners like the U.S. and the U.K., “We will be ready to answer to this attack and continue to work with our partners to protect,” he said.
Psaki said President Joe Biden was briefed about the cyberattack against Ukrainian government sites, but held back from naming who might be behind it.
“We don’t have attribution at this time, and I can’t point to any more specifics … I would just note that we will take necessary and proper steps, of course, to defend our allies, support our partners, and support the Ukrainian people, but we’re still assessing that at this point in time,” she said.
ABC News’ Justin Gomez and Patrick Reevell contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — With the midterm elections officially taking center stage in national politics, GOP candidates up and down the ballot are taking advantage of nationwide divides over education issues — homing in on controversies over how much power school boards should have to bolster their campaigns.
Parental involvement, curriculum choices, COVID policies and vaccine mandates dominated conversations relating to Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial race, after Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe said he didn’t think parents should have a say in what their children are taught at school, which, in part, ultimately delivered a win for Republican Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin.
The controversy over whether and how to teach about race also helped bring school boards into the national conversation, further seeping the bodies into partisan politics. School boards are now so contentious that some state legislatures are looking to make their normally nonpartisan elections, partisan.
In 2021, Tennessee passed a bill to attach party affiliation to school board candidates, and Arizona, Missouri, Utah and Indiana are among the states flirting with the idea.
School board elections, as with other down-ballot races, often don’t pull hordes of attention from voters. But already in 2022, 20 school board recall efforts have been launched across the country, according to data tracked by the nonpartisan organization Ballotpedia. In 2021, 91 recall efforts were pursued, on average more than twice as many as had been seen in the past.
Like other battlegrounds, school boards have taken center stage in Arizona. GOP candidates for governor there and those hoping to unseat Sen. Mark Kelly in Washington have even started dropping in on school board meetings to shore up support.
School boards were propelled into the spotlight in the state after a document from a Scottsdale school board member listing personal information about parents who had criticized the district was shared by his son, according to the Arizona Republic. Politicians weighed in on the controversy that ensued and, ultimately, efforts to remove the member were successful.
Kari Lake, a former TV anchor, who is running for Arizona governor with backing from former President Donald Trump, and Jim Lamon, a businessman running to unseat Kelly in the Senate, held a joint rally outside the Scottsdale high school in late November ahead of a school board meeting to discuss the parental “dossier.”
Lamon offered to pay legal expenses for parents who chose to pursue lawsuits against the district related to coronavirus policies or other issues.
“These people in that school board meeting about to kick off here, they work for you,” Lamon said outside the Scottsdale meeting, according to the Arizona Republic.
“They work for the parents and the kids, not for themselves. And we don’t work for them. … We’re a peaceful group, we’re great parents here, and we’ll stand tall. And I got your back,” he added.
Lake cut an ad with mothers from the district announcing she would establish the “Arizona Parent Coalition” as governor, which would “serve as an oversight to unruly school boards and the union bosses.”
“When all of us parents rally together, we win. And when we win, we will root out critical race theory,” she said in a campaign video.
Lake is fundraising on the school board controversy as well, with a page on the Republican donation hosting site WinRed dedicated specifically to to it. She’s singled herself out from the GOP field across the state by calling for cameras in all classrooms, which her competitors and sitting GOP Gov. Doug Ducey have spoken out against.
Former GOP Rep. Matt Salmon, who is running for governor, has called on the Arizona School Board Association to distance itself from the national branch. He told ABC News that while he doesn’t think school board issues will necessarily draw single-issue voters, he does think they will engage previously unengaged ones.
“It looks like we’ve awakened the sleeping giant, and it’s not just this, it’s all kinds of government intrusion,” Salmon said. “I think this is part and parcel of a lot of things that people are seeing: that their way of life is not getting better. It’s getting worse.”
Bastille has shared a new song called “Shut Off the Lights.”
The track, which is available now for digital download, will appear on the “Pompeii” outfit’s upcoming album Give Me the Future, due out February 4. It follows the previously released Future tunes “Distorted Light Beam,” “No Bad Days,” “Thelma + Louise” and the title track.
In more Bastille news, Dan Smith and company have announced a U.S. tour in support of Give Me the Future, set to kick off May 14 in Memphis, Tennessee. The headlining outing will wrap up June 17 in Columbus, Ohio.
Tickets go on sale next Friday, January 21, at 10 a.m. local time. For the full list of dates and all ticket info, visit BastilleBastille.com.
Lil Wayne released his 2011 mixtape, Sorry 4 the Wait, Friday on digital streaming platforms for the first time. In addition to the original 12 tracks, it includes four brand new cuts. The lead single, “Cameras,” features one of the new artists on Weezy’s Young Money Entertainment label, Allan Cubas.
Rick Ross teams with DreamDoll for the video for “Wiggle” from his latest album, Richer Than I Ever Been. Ricky Rozay presents a virtual drive-thru strip club as he rhymes on a red carpet while his friends pull up in their exotic sports cars and make it rain for twerking women pole dancing everywhere they look.
Chris Brown dropped his new single “Iffy” with a spectacular video featuring him as the getaway driver in a big money heist. Breezy displays his dancing skills on the hood of a moving car, and the clip culminates with him dancing with a towering Transformer robot.
Finally, Cordae dropped his second studio album, From a Bird’s Eye View, featuring Stevie Wonder, Lil Wayne, Freddie Gibbs, Eminem, H.E.R., Lil Durk, Gunna, Ant Clemons and Roddy Ricch. On January 18, the two-time Grammy nominee will be featured in AT&T Presents: Cordae Live: From a Birds Eye View, an immersive audio-visual event and live stream from New York City.
Luke Bryan’s Georgia Bulldogs fandom runs deep — so deep, in fact, that he blew out his voice cheering on his team.
Luke, a Georgia native, helped cheer the Bulldogs to victory during the National Championship college football game on Monday night (Jan. 10), and it paid off. His team beat the Alabama Crimson Tide 33-18.
But there were consequences: Within days, the singer was on vocal rest, recuperating in order to be back in singing shape by the time his sold-out Crash My Playa festival kicks off next week.
Luke poked fun at his vocal woes on Twitter, telling fans to check out his new music video for “Up” while also asking them to “pray for my voice.”
The singer’s wife, Caroline Boyer, also got a laugh at her husband’s expense. She posted a photo on her Instagram showing herself smiling and holding tape over Luke’s mouth.
“He’s on vocal rest after his EXCESSIVE screaming at National Championship game…can’t say I’m too unhappy about it!” Caroline wrote. “I plan on talking nonstop and annoying the hell out of him.”
Evidently, Rod Stewart, Snoop Dogg and Heidi Klum is the musical trio we didn’t know we needed.
Heidi, who’s not known as a singer, has teamed up with rap icon Snoop Dogg for a dance track called “Chai Tea with Heidi,” produced by L.A.-based producer duo WeddingCake. In the track, Snoop raps, while Heidi sings the hook — which is lifted from Rod’s 1983 hit “Baby Jane.”
Specifically, Heidi sings the song’s chorus: “When I give my heart again I know/ It’s gonna last forever/ No one tell me where or when I know/ It’s gonna last forever.”
“I’m most honored that these Super Stars have included ‘Baby Jane’ in this memorable song,” says Rod in a statement.
Heidi adds, “I am still pinching myself to make sure this really happened. It was truly an honor to work with Snoop Dogg and WeddingCake to create this fun and upbeat song that will hopefully make you want to get up and dance. This would not have been possible if [the] iconic Sir Rod Stewart didn’t give us approval to use melody and lyrics to his ‘Baby Jane.'”
As for Snoop, he notes, “I know that all of Europe will be hearin this in tha clubs til 6 in tha mornin. Lookn forward to getting back overseas n performing it live ya dig?!?!”
As for why the song is called “Chai Tea with Heidi,” at one point, Snoop raps, “Girl, you’re hot and you’re sweet like chai tea/ After the show we can kick it like tai chi/ Me and you in the mood, that’s likely/ Get your dance on, baby, entice me.”
Wonder what Heidi’s ex-husband — Grammy-winning singer Seal — thinks of his former wife’s foray into music?
While Hollywood wonders who will get the tap to host the 94th Annual Academy Awards, Variety says at least one name that has been bandied about “likely won’t” be behind the podium: Pete Davidson.
The trade does confirm that reps for the Saturday Night Live cast member, and King of Staten Island star have been in touch with the Oscars’ producers, but it’s precisely his link to SNL that would likely leave him out of the running.
Davidson is “too closely linked to NBC,” posits the trade, whereas another interesting choice is already in the Disney/ABC family: Only Murders in the Building stars Selena Gomez, Steve Martin and Martin Short. Disney is the majority owner of Hulu, on which the comedy streams.
“[T]hey are an iconic trio,” Hulu Originals and ABC Entertainment president Craig Erwich previously told Variety.
“They have mass appeal. Everybody loves them. They’d be a dream,” Erwich said, adding the caveat, “That said, there’s a lot of incredible talent we’re considering.”
For the record, at least Short and Martin — who along with Gomez were just nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for their show — are so far not interested.
ABC Audio recently asked Short if he’d be up for the job. “No, not particularly,” he explained, adding of Martin, “That night we are performing in Stamford, Connecticut, actually. We have a show. [Hosting is] not on the table.”
The 94th Annual Academy Awards will air March 27 on ABC.
Britney Spears is not through criticizing Jamie Lynn Spears following her baby sister’s tell-all interview with ABC News’ Juju Chang. The singer sent off a fiery tweet Friday condemning Jamie Lynn’s so called “crazy lies.”
In the interview, Chang mentions an incident Jamie Lynn describes in her book, in which, Chang says, “Britney takes a knife, says she’s scared and locks you and herself into a room.” Chang then asked Jamie Lynn why she decided to share that story.
“It’s important to remember that I was a kid in that moment — I was scared. That was an experience that I had,” Jamie Lynn explained.
In a tweet on Friday, Britney wrote, “Jamie Lynn … congrats babe ! You’ve stooped to a whole new level of LOW. I’ve never been around you ever with a knife or would I ever even think to do such !!!…so please please stop with these crazy lies for the Hollywood books!!!”
Britney went on to imply that Jamie Lynn is a “scum person” and noted, “I’m actually very confused about you making that up because it’s honestly not like you at all!!!” She added, “Congrats on introducing your older sister [to] the concept of getting LOW, LOWER, LOWEST…because you win on that one, babe!!!”
Britney previously referenced Jamie’s tell-all interview on Thursday, but did not reference the alleged knife incident. The following day, Jamie Lynn responded and said her sister’s “accusatory posts” are causing her family to receive death threats.
