Cardi B was the one who was sparkling after running into Twilight star Robert Pattinson over the weekend. Apparently, the “Up” rapper is a big fan of Edward Cullen.
“Look who I met the other day ! I felt like a teen!,” Cardi raved when sharing a video of her losing her mind while hanging out with the British actor.
The two were both attending a black-tie event in Los Angeles, which Page Six reports was a celebration thrown in honor of British Vogue‘s editor-in-chief.
“Come, look at my friend, guys,” Cardi announced when firing up the video before Pattinson swoops in and puts an arm around her.
The Grammy-winning rapper than puts a hand against her chest and screams in delight as the star of the upcoming The Batman grins.
The first Twilight movie hit theaters in 2008, meaning Cardi would have been 16 when she first laid eyes on a young RPattz twinkling in the sunlight.
Ahead of Friday’s two-year anniversary of the launch of Disney+, dubbed Disney+ Day, the streaming service from ABC News’ parent company has announced a week-long celebration.
From November 12 through November 14, more than 200 AMC Theatres will celebrate with four daily surprise screenings of fan-favorite movies, for just $5 a ticket, at participating AMC locations.
ShopDisney will provide free shipping in the U.S. and Europe from November 12 to November 14 to subscribers of Disney+, and will offer all-new branded merch, from shows like Star Wars: The Bad Batch, Loki and more.
To boot, Disney and VeVe, have just launched a series of NFTs featuring beloved and iconic characters from some of its fan-favorite properties, including Star Wars, Marvel Studios, The Simpsons and others.
Also just announced are the following titles coming to the streaming service on Disney+ Day, including:
The Making of Happier than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles about Billie Eilish’s recent Disney+ cinematic concert experience
Marvel Assembled: The Making of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Marvel Studios Legends: Hawkeye, an episode that revisits all of Hawkeye’s epic moments from the MCU in preparation for the upcoming Disney+ Original Series
2007’s live-action/animated musical fantasy romantic comedy film Enchanted, starring Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey
As previously reported, Friday will also see the launch of a slew of new titles on Disney+, including Shang-Chi, Jungle Cruise, Home Sweet Home Alone, Olaf Presents, The Simpsons in Plusaversary, Under the Helmet: The Legacy of Boba Fett, and Marvel Studios’ 2021 Disney+ Day Special.
On Friday at 9:00am Eastern time, fans can check out sneak peeks of upcoming Disney+ movies and series from the worlds of Pixar, Disney, Star Wars, Marvel and more.
Ed Sheeran celebrated the success of his number-one album, = (Equals), by transforming a New York City hotel into a traditional English pub this past weekend.
Ed teamed with Spotify to turn The Bowery Hotel into ‘The Butterfly,’ an English pub with English food and decor, as well as beers inspired by his album. Fans and their families who attended also got to have an ‘English Sunday Roast‘ — a traditional meal that includes roasted meat, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, gravy and vegetables.
Ed also entertained the guests by performing songs from = (Equals), including “Overpass Graffiti,” “Tides” and “The Joker & the Queen” — the first time he ever performed the latter for a live, in-person audience. In addition, Ed mingled with fans and took selfies, noting, “This was the first time getting to meet and interact with fans in a while.”
The event took place on Sunday, after Ed performed on Saturday Night Live.
A new eight-CD Steppenwolf box set featuring remastered versions of the band’s first six studio efforts and first two live albums will be released on November 19.
Magic Carpet Ride: The Dunhill/ABC Years (1967-1971) includes the band’s 1968 self-titled debut and its follow-up, The Second, released the same year; 1969’s At Your Birthday Party, Monster and the archival concert album Early Steppenwolf; 1970’s Steppenwolf 7 and Steppenwolf Live; and 1971’s For Ladies Only.
All of the albums in the box set are embellished with bonus tracks with the exception of Early Steppenwolf. That album captures the John Kay-fronted band performing in May 1967 — when it was still known as The Sparrows — at the San Francisco club The Matrix.
The Steppenwolf album features the band’s biggest hit and signature song, “Born to Be Wild,” which peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became an enduring counterculture anthem after its appearance in the classic 1969 film Easy Rider. It also includes the group’s cover of Hoyt Axton‘s “The Pusher,” which was heard in Easy Rider, as well.
The Second includes another huge hit for the group, “Magic Carpet Ride,” which reached #3 on the Hot 100.
At Your Birthday Party features Steppenwolf’s third and final top-10 hit, “Rock Me.”
Steppenwolf, The Second, Monster, Steppenwolf 7 and Steppenwolf Live all were certified gold by the RIAA for sales of over 500,000.
You can pre-order the Magic Carpet Ride box set and check out the full track list at CherryRed.co.uk.
Steppenwolf initially broke up in 1972, but the band re-formed in 1974 with almost the same lineup. Kay continued to lead various incarnations of the group until October 2018, when the band played what he says was their final concert.
Yungblud has announced an upcoming short film called Mars.
Named after a track off the British rocker’s 2020 album, Weird!, the scripted project is based on the life of a teenage Yungblud fan named Charlie Acaster, whom he had met on tour.
“This story is an uncensored, unfiltered portrayal of youth,” Yungblud says. “It revels in the fragile beauty of it, flirts with the pain of it and most importantly the undeniable, glimmering hope of it. It presents a generational shift towards acceptance of one’s self and others, and ever growing confidence in our own insecurities.”
Yungblud is a producer on Mars. The script was written by Chris Bush, and the film will be directed by Abel Rubinstein.
“The team we’ve assembled is incredible, I am so honored to stand with them all behind this beautiful project and to have them help me bring it to life,” Yungblud says. “I can honestly say if you don’t adore this movie, then I can guarantee you’ll f***ing learn something from it.”
Production for Mars is set to begin later this year. It’s currently scheduled to premiere in spring 2022.
It’s hard to believe that Gwen Stefani wouldn’t know that fellow The Voice coach Ariana Grande was in the audience for the final show of her Just a Girl Las Vegas residency this past weekend, but evidently, it was a surprise.
Gwen wrapped the 57-show residency on Saturday night, and on Sunday, she posted videos and pics to her Instagram Story, including footage Ariana shared of Gwen singing “Don’t Speak” onstage.
“Brilliant…congratulations on completing this incredible run, love you so much,” Ariana captioned the video.
Gwen also posted an additional clip from Ariana, showing Gwen and her husband, Blake Shelton, singing their duet “Happy Anywhere” onstage during the final show.
“That’s my grandpa @blakeshelton I’m so f***in proud, I love this song and you both,” Ariana captioned the video. Gwen wrote, “ummmm @arianagrande, u came to my show? Yay love u thank u.”
Gwen also posted a photo of flowers she received from none other than Ava Max, who wrote in the card, “Congratulations on an incredible final show. You are my idol (like #1) and I love you to pieces. Thank you for continuing to inspire me daily, and for the art you’ve put into the world.”
According to E!, fellow The Voice coach John Legend also attended Gwen’s final residency show, along with his wife, Chrissy Teigen.
On Instagram Sunday, Gwen wrote, “sometimes it’s just best to keep it simple and short so all i have to say is THANKYOU to everyone who made this an incredible chapter of my life.”
Gwen’s residency was supposed to wrap up in May of 2020, but the final performances were put on hold due to the pandemic.
The two men accused of killing Run-DMC co-founding member Jam Master Jay will not face the death penalty if convicted.
ABC News has confirmed that federal prosecutors will not seek the death penalty for Karl Jordan and Ronald Washington, who have been charged with drug and weapons-related crimes that resulted in the death of Jason Mizell, better known as Jam Master Jay.
Prosecutors notified the judge of their decision in a letter on Monday. “Please be advised that United States Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has authorized and directed the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York not to seek the death penalty against defendants Karl Jordan, Jr. and Ronald Washington,” the letter reads.
Jam Master Jay was shot and killed at his recording studio in Queens on October 30, 2002. Prosecutors believe Washington and Jordan murdered Mizell after they were allegedly cut out of a drug deal. The two were charged with murder last year.
In March, Jordan, who was accused of firing the shot that killed Jay, was additionally charged with a count of conspiracy to distribute illicit drugs and use of firearms in connection with a drug-trafficking crime.
The new charges add the possibility of five extra years in prison.
Travis Scott will issue full refunds for attendees who bought tickets to his Astroworld Festival in Houston, TX, where eight people died in a crowd surge on Friday, sources confirm to ABC News.
The rapper will also not perform at this weekend’s Day N Vegas Festival, where he was previously scheduled as a headliner.
The eight Astroworld victims have now all been identified and range in age from 14 to 27. Hundreds of other concertgoers were injured when the crowd OF 50,000 began to rush the stage at NRG Park in Houston during Scott’s set. A second Astroworld show scheduled for Saturday was cancelled.
In statements on social media following the incident, Scott said he was “absolutely devastated” by what happened and is “working closely with everybody to get to the bottom of this.”
Two concertgoers have already filed lawsuits in the festival’s aftermath as of early Monday.
(NEW YORK) — “Everything bad that you think of was there,” Sarina told ABC News in a video call, wiping away tears. “I was feeling like, ‘I’m gonna die. Why?'”
She said she came to terms with dying during her first attempt to get inside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Aug. 19, surrounded by shouting, gunshots and beatings in a sea of thousands of people desperate to flee — but she said she told herself if she could just get her two-year-old daughter out of the Taliban’s Afghanistan, it would be OK.
“It was not easy that night,” said Sarina, whose name ABC News has changed for the safety of her family still in Afghanistan. “One second I thought I lost my daughter forever. I thought, ‘This is not the life I wanted…I will remain under Taliban, and they will kill me. At least my daughter will be safe.”
After waiting outside the airport for more than 10 hours, where she said they were treated like “animals,” her family returned to their shelter in Kabul, saying her daughter had seen enough.
It’s a day Sarina said is seared in her memory as a “nightmare” and one she hopes her 2-year-old will forget — although bruises on her “tiny face,” as Sarina called it, pointing to her cheeks and explaining their shoulders pushed into their child in the crowd, would serve as a painful reminder of what they had endured.
“My eyes begin, like, filled with tears,” she said, when she’s asked about their journey. “I think it’s not possible to forget those moments that much soon.”
Her husband also came out with bruises, she said, after Taliban fighters whipped him with strands of rubber. Thousands queued outside the airport, and thousands, like Sarina, didn’t make it out of Afghanistan that day.
“The entire night, I cried. I thought ‘Why why? Why did this happen to my daughter?’ She is my everything. She’s a little angel,” she said, through tears. “She was crying. and she told me, ‘Mommy, Mommy, home? Home? Home?'”
Surrounded by chaos, Sarina said she thought to herself, too, “Where is home?”
Fighting for women of Afghanistan — and her life
Sarina spent nine years studying in India, but returned to Afghanistan after completing her Bachelor’s Degree to work in women’s activism.
“There were job opportunities in India for me, but I let them, I let them out. I wanted to be in my country, feel the pain of those poor people, those women, that I really need — I really need to help them,” she said.
She said she worked on USAID projects and in a legal clinic for nearly three years, helping women divorce their husbands after domestic violence, before taking her “dream job” at the relief and development organization, Cordaid.
“Millions of girls, they want education. They want to study in universities. They want jobs. Even if you go to the villages of Afghanistan, you can see that desire in their eyes — how much the Afghan woman wants education,” she said.
But her work — and her life — became at risk when the Taliban seized power, she said. She was called to be evacuated because she was a target.
After the failed first attempt, which she called “traumatic,” Sarina bunkered back down with her family and seven other women in Cordaid — a Dutch development organization she worked for since 2019 which campaigns for women’s rights and independence. When she said she was feeling the lowest, she received a text from a stranger in the U.S. asking how she could help.
“That moment I needed some good words,” she told ABC News, choking up. “Someone telling me that ‘You’re okay, we are with you.’ And that was the moment Cori told me that, ‘Don’t worry Sarina, now I’m with you, many other people are behind you. You’re not alone. We are trying to help you.'”
Cori Shepherd Stern, an Oscar-nominated filmmaker who has an adopted refugee daughter, reached out to Sarina after learning of her situation through a mutual friend. It gave her the motivation she needed for a second attempt two days later.
Shepherd Stern told ABC News it was one of the most “emotionally intense” moments of her life.
“The sheer terror she was feeling, the horrified shock from what she was witnessing was very, very clear and immediate to me,” she said. “I took steps to logistically help her but more than anything, I tried to call out to her from a safe place and stay with her until she and her daughter were safe, too.”
Using Google Maps and communicating with volunteers outside Kabul, Sarina said she and her team were able to find the Dutch army behind the Baron Hotel on Aug. 26, and yelled out, ‘”Holland, Holland!'” The Dutch government had agreed to take the women of Cordaid and their families to safety.
“Finally, that was,” she said, stopping to cry. “That was the moment of victory — but I’m not happy. My family, my mom, my dad, my sisters, I immediately called my dad and told him that I am not happy. I don’t have you in here. I’m not happy. He said ‘don’t worry about that.’ I thought, ‘No.’ Because I know that my dad has done a lot for us.”
Turning to help get her family out
Acknowledging how far she’d come in days alone — from Kabul to Pakistan and from Pakistan to Turkey and from Turkey to Amsterdam — where she’s been at a military base for Afghan refugees for the last 10 weeks — she’s extremely distressed because her family is behind.
“How can I be safe, and they are all miserable?” she said. “They are not safe,” she continued, adding that she’s particularly concerned for her father.
“He is, right now, in depression,” she said, then recalling the version of her father she is used to, bringing a smile to her face. “He is a legend. He is like a hero. He studied at all times of his life,” she said, listing all the places where he has taught and spoken.
Shepherd Stern, who helped Sarina with moral support, and a small team of volunteers are now helping her family with paperwork to get them out. The options they’re looking into include a P-2 visa for her father or individual humanitarian parole for each family member.
But an unprecedented 20,000 Afghan nationals like Sarina’s family have requested parole since August — more than 10 times the number of applications received from around the world in a typical year, USCIS confirmed to ABC News in a statement.
The agency said they are surging resources and training personnel in response — but activists say it isn’t coming soon enough.
“This family needs to get out now,” Shepherd Stern said.
Sarina talks with her dad on the phone every day, multiple times a day, and she said he tells her, “‘My dearest daughter. You should follow your education. You should keep it up.'”
“He was always telling me that you should stand on your feet. ‘I am educating you to be a strong woman,’ and I’m a strong woman, but I am feeling bad that he is not here,” she cried. “He does not deserve to be over there while these people rule over him.”
Because of his devotion to educating women, she said she expects more from the U.S. and international aid agencies to help get her family out.
“It’s a matter of saving the lives of five people,” she said.
Sarina said she refuses to think what she considers unthinkable — that they may not get out.
“Life ends for them — because there is nothing left over here. What should my dad do? What should my sisters do? You tell me — what’s left? It’s mean — it’s life-ending for them,” she said.
“I just don’t want to think about that,” she added, with optimism in her voice. “They will get out soon.”
Sarina’s future
The Netherlands managed to evacuate around 2,000 people like Sarina from Afghanistan.
She has a permit for residency for five years — but it’s unclear when she’ll get settled in a home. To prepare herself, she watches Dutch language lessons on YouTube every day and is now taking classes at a local university offered to refugees. She plans to pursue a Master’s in gender and sexuality studies and become a professor — like her father.
While her time at the camp in the Netherlands has presented new challenges, it has also brought new blessings: Sarina learned on Tuesday that she is approximately eight weeks pregnant.
It’s all the more reason she wants her family out.
“Please help my family. Get them out of Afghanistan, please. That’s a request. That’s a humble request,” she said, with special devotion to her father. “I am everything I am today because of him.”
Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Capital Concerts, Inc.
To help excite and encourage children about getting the COVID-19 vaccine, Sesame Street‘s Big Bird announced that he just got the shot and is feeling great about it.
“I got the COVID-19 vaccine today!,” Big Bird tweeted over the weekend, breaking a months-long hiatus on the social media site. “My wing is feeling a little sore, but it’ll give my body an extra protective boost that keeps me and others healthy.”
The beloved character also revealed something he recently found out, which is “I’ve been getting vaccines since I was a little bird. I had no idea!”
Big Bird’s vaccination announcement received an unexpected shout-out from President Joe Biden, who responded, “Good on ya, @BigBird. Getting vaccinated is the best way to keep your whole neighborhood safe.”
Several happy parents also commended Big Bird, saying his words eased their children’s worries about their upcoming vaccination appointments.
While the character has been entertaining kids for decades, Big Bird is technically six years old, which makes him eligible for the Pfizer vaccine. The vaccine was authorized last week to be given to kids ages five to 11 by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For those who may be puzzled why the Sesame Street character has joined the ongoing conversation about pediatric vaccinations, Big Bird has, historically, been the go-to Muppet on vaccine PSAs. In 1972, he spoke about the importance of getting the measles vaccine, according to a resurfaced video shared by Muppet Wiki.
