After prompting discussions about bathing habits, Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis have reentered the chat to poke fun how things have escalated.
Taking to Instagram Wednesday evening, the Two and a Half Men alum shared a clip of himself and Kunis in the bathroom as their children bathe off camera in the background. He captioned it, “This bathing thing is out of hand. #KutcherBathroomTalks.”
“What’s going on?” Kutcher, 43, asks his wife of six years before panning the camera to show a steamy shower door.
“It’s water, it’s water,” Kunis, 37, laughed.
“You’re putting water on the children? Are you trying to melt them?” Kutcher joked. “Are you trying to injure them with water? This is ridiculous! What’s going on?”
Pointing out the obvious, Kunis responded, “We’re bathing our children,” to which her husband cracked, “it’s the fourth time this week!”
“It’s too much,” the Bad Moms star sarcastically added through giggles.
“Their body oils are going to be destroyed,” Kutcher continued. “What are you trying to do?”
The playful exchange comes after the couple appeared on the Armchair Expert podcast last month and admitted to only bathing their two children — Wyatt, 6, and Dimitri, 4, — when they’re visibly dirty.
“When I had children, I also didn’t wash them every day,” Kunis said candidly. “I wasn’t that parent that bathed my newborns — ever.”
“If you can see the dirt on them, clean them. Otherwise, there’s no point,” Kutcher added.
Since their admission, multiple celebrities have come out to share their thoughts on the matter. While Dax Shepard, Kristin Bell, and Jake Gyllenhaal mirrored the same sentiment, Cardi B and Dwayne Johnson were on the other end of the spectrum.
“Wassup with people saying they don’t shower? It’s giving itchy,” the “WAP” rapper tweeted.
(DYERSVILLE, Iowa) — It was built, and on Thursday night the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees are coming to Dyersville, Iowa to play a historic game.
The ballpark, newly constructed for this event, is located on the Lansing Family Farm, the filming site for the movie Field of Dreams. It features a corn maze behind the right field fence, and a manually operated scoreboard and bullpens behind the center-field wall, meant to resemble old Comiskey Park, where the White Sox played.
Originally scheduled for 2020, the game was pushed back due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Tickets to the game were sold via a public lottery. Winners of that lottery were informed earlier this month, and were given the chance to buy up to two tickets and one parking pass.
On ticket resale site StubHub, the cheapest ticket available for the game as of Thursday morning was selling for $1,100.
(BALTIMORE) — Detroit Tigers star Miguel Cabrera moved one step closer to a major milestone on Wednesday night, bashing the 499th home run of his big league career.
Cabrera launched the homer off of Baltimore Orioles starter Matt Harvey, giving the Tigers a 1-0 lead on Wednesday. Detroit would go on to win the game 5-2.
With just 12 home runs this season, Cabrera’s run to 500 had slowed considerably. He hadn’t hit a home run in over a week.
While there was some expectation that Cabrera would sit out Thursday’s game, the team’s last on their current road trip, so that he could attempt to reach the mark at home, the team says it has decided against that.
“He’s playing,” manager A.J. Hinch said Wednesday night before being asked. “I’ve talked to him, and we’re not going to test baseball fate. We really want him to hit it whenever he’s supposed to hit it. Maybe it’s [Thursday], maybe it’s not.”
Cabrera would become the 28th player in major league history to reach 500 home runs, and the first from his native country of Venezuela.
A two-time MVP and 11-time All-Star, Cabrera’s production has dipped in recent years. Still, he continues to chase multiple milestones. In addition to 500 home runs, Cabrera is also just 50 hits away from 3,000 for his career.
(NEW YORK) — Fresh off a run of success in North American competitions, the United States Men’s National Soccer Team earned the number ten spot in FIFA’s latest world rankings.
The U.S. beat Mexico 1-0 in the final of CONCACAF’s Gold Cup earlier this month, leading to a ten-place rise on the official list.
The squad conceded just one goal in six matches in the Gold Cup, winning all six. They also won five of six games in the CONCACAF Nations League.
FIFA’s World Rankings will play a key role in next year’s World Cup. If the U.S. remains in the top 10, it would have a chance of being seeded, getting a more favorable draw, and avoid having to play other nations within the top 10.
The U.S. has not been among the top 10 in FIFA’s rankings since the 2006 World Cup.
Just above the U.S. in the rankings, Mexico placed number nine. They have been the top-ranked team in CONCACAF since February 2017.
Atop the rankings, FIFA identifies Belgium as the best team. Following them, Copa America runners up Brazil rank second, France sits third, and Euro Champs Italy is in fifth. Euro runners up England sit one spot ahead of Italy in fourth.
The next update to the rankings will be published in September.
(NEW YORK) — As the Taliban sweeps across Afghanistan and claims at least nine provincial capitals in just days, a new U.S. military analysis warns that the country’s capital, Kabul, could become isolated in 30 to 60 days and could fall to the militant group in 90 days, a U.S. official confirmed to ABC News.
The warning is even more dire than a previous intelligence assessment — a sign of how quickly the Taliban have gained momentum on the battlefield, surprising the Biden administration, according to two U.S. officials.
President Joe Biden announced in April that he would withdraw all remaining U.S. forces from Afghanistan, saying it was time to end America’s longest war and let the Afghan people, including the Taliban and the U.S.-backed Afghan government, decide the country’s future.
But that future is increasingly grim, with fears of the government’s collapse and all-out civil war. There are growing concerns for the U.S. personnel that will remain at the embassy in Kabul and the 650 U.S. troops who will stay to protect it, with planning underway for some time now about a possible evacuation, according to two other U.S. officials, who spoke to ABC News on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive plans.
“Our posture has not changed. As we do for every diplomatic post in a challenging security environment, we evaluate threats daily and make decisions on how best to keep those serving at our embassy safe,” a State Department spokesperson told ABC News.
The Taliban’s spokesperson in Doha, Qatar, said Wednesday, “Anyone who attacks international embassies and institutions will be punished.” But the group’s fighters have committed atrocities across the country in districts they’ve retaken, according to U.S. and Afghan officials, including extrajudicial killings of police officers, airmen, women’s rights activists, journalists and more.
The U.S. embassy’s Emergency Action Committee is “no doubt … meeting every day to review the current level of threat and whether any additional steps need to be taken to increase security, reduce the number of personnel, or, if deemed necessary, initiate a full evacuation,” said Mick Mulroy, the former top Pentagon official for the Middle East who served in the CIA and U.S. Marines in Afghanistan.
The question is at what point does one become necessary.
“When does the situation make the continuation of the diplomatic mission untenable? When does it not make sense that 99.99% of the personnel in the embassy are for security? When will putting the remaining U.S. personnel at risk for a mission that has essentially ended not be worth it? These are the questions they will be asking, probably every day,” said Mulroy, now an ABC News contributor.
While two U.S. officials said evacuation planning has been reviewed for some time, State Department spokesperson Ned Price declined to comment on any plans. Instead, he told reporters Wednesday, “We have and will continue to make our own decisions based on, first and foremost, the threat assessment, the safety and security of our people.”
In the meantime, the U.S. embassy has continued to quietly draw down some staff since it went on ordered departure on April 27 — leaving only emergency personnel behind and allowing it to shift certain roles out of Afghanistan “whose functions can be performed elsewhere,” according to a State Department spokesperson.
But the Pentagon is pushing back on the “narrative” that the Taliban will seize the capital and other major cities, with its spokesperson John Kirby saying Wednesday, “No potential outcome has to be inevitable, including the fall of Kabul, which everybody seems to be reporting about.”
Kirby declined to comment on the U.S. military analysis, but he told reporters that while the Taliban “keep advancing,” there is still fight left in the Afghan security forces that the U.S. built, trained and equipped.
“The narrative that in every place, in every way, the Afghan forces are simply folding up and walking away is not accurate,” he said.
One U.S. official told ABC News, however, that those Afghan forces have an uphill battle, as momentum swings the Taliban’s way with their capture of nine provincial capitals — winning over heavy weaponry from Afghan troops, freeing their prisoners from government facilities, and building a powerful narrative about the government’s collapse.
The Afghan military strategy to hold onto major population centers meant deploying its best troops — special operations forces — to top cities like Herat, Lashkar Gah and Kandahar, according to this official. But while the Taliban have been held at bay there, the group’s fighters targeted other opportunities, winning critical successes across the country’s northern provinces.
“Right now what we see is an issue of leadership. It’s both political and military leadership. We need to see Afghans’ leaders united,” Price told reporters at the State Department.
Rallying that leadership has been part of U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad’s job in Doha, where he is trying to pressure both the Taliban and Afghan government delegations to resume peace negotiations — and urge the Taliban to accept a reduction in violence and a ceasefire.
Khalilzad held meetings Tuesday and Wednesday with both delegations and fellow envoys from the United Nations and key countries, including Pakistan, Qatar, China and Russia. On Thursday, he’s expected to meet the Taliban and Afghan government teams “separately to encourage them to engage productively in Afghan peace negotiations and not squander this historic opportunity to end 40 years of conflict,” the State Department spokesperson told ABC News.
Afghan Foreign Minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar said Wednesday that it is the U.S. and other powers that need to do more to “accelerate the negotiation process” and pressure the Taliban to participate in good faith, “backed up by real political, economic, maybe even enforcement measures.”
Critics continue to denounce the Biden administration for pursuing these negotiations — saying the Taliban has demonstrated it has no interest in talks. But Price said the U.S. continues to see diplomacy as the only way forward — calling the week’s meetings a “necessary, but insufficient step” and conceding progress “has been painfully slow.”
In the meantime, the humanitarian crisis for Afghan civilians continues to spiral. Over 18 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across the country, around 400,000 have fled their homes to seek refuge and the U.N.’s humanitarian response remains vastly underfunded with a shortfall of almost $800 million, its spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday.
But Biden himself seems un-phased by the violence, telling ABC News Tuesday, “I do not regret my decision.”
Here’s the latest in Kelly Clarkson‘s divorce from Brandon Blackstock: The singer is reportedly asking to have her famous maiden name legally restored.
According to legal docs obtained by The Blast, Kelly is asking for a default judgment in her case, which will officially make her divorced. She is also asking for her name to be restored and legally changed it moving forward.
The Blast reports that Brandon “isn’t putting up a fight in this department, and most of the time the judge signs off on these sorts of requests right away.”
Kelly and Brandon tied the knot in 2013 and split in June 2020; they are now currently trying to hash out their finances, including spousal support and child support.
(NEW YORK) — Over 1 million customers are without power in the Midwest Thursday morning after severe storms slammed the region.
The storms included several reported tornadoes.
Power was knocked out in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana. Michigan has the most outages with 810,202, according to PowerOutage.us.
That same storm system will bring more severe weather on Thursday from Kansas to Illinois and into the Northeast. The biggest threat will be damaging winds, but isolated tornadoes are possible.
Meanwhile, 126 million people in the country are enduring the extreme heat, which spans 30 states from California to Maine. Humidity will make it feel like 105 to 110 degrees from Kansas City to New York City on Thursday.
Tropical Depression Fred is also still on the radar. Fred is expected to pass Cuba Thursday and Friday with some gusty winds and heavy rain.
Fred is forecast to strengthen back to a tropical storm on Friday night as it moves through the straits of Florida.
Fred will move over the Florida Keys by Saturday with heavy rain and gusty winds.
Fred will then turn north and head for Florida’s panhandle by Sunday night into Monday morning. Heavy rain is expected across Florida from Tallahassee to Miami this weekend. Flash flooding is possible in South Florida.
Lil Nas X makes such cinematic videos that it’s not surprising that the “Industry Baby” rapper has set his sights on the silver screen. Asked by Variety about his acting aspirations, he says, “Absolutely, that’s going to happen for sure,” but adds that he turned down a big acting opportunity not long ago.
Noting to Variety that, acting-wise, he’d “like to do some stuff like Euphoria,” Nas adds, “I was actually going to do Euphoria, but I didn’t want to take time from finishing my album. It was going to be great.”
He didn’t reveal which part he was offered on the hit HBO drama, which is currently filming its second season, but declares, “Season 3 it is.”
“I definitely want to get into acting, but I feel I have to give it my all, and I want to focus on music for right now,” he explains. “I want my first movie to be amazing.”
So if we can’t see him in an Emmy-winning HBO series, what kind of parts would Lil Nas X like to play in the future?
“Honestly, I want to dabble around in a lot of things like I do in music,” he tells Variety, and cited several movies of different genres he admires.
“A Star Is Born. Let’s also do a Grown Ups 2. Let’s do an Obsessed with Beyoncé. Maybe we claim the sequel. We do the gay version of Obsessed.”
2009’s Obsessed stars Beyoncé as a woman who learns her husband’s office temp, played by Ali Larter, is obsessed with him. As it turns out, Nas actually met Beyoncé at her and JAY-Z‘s Halloween party in 2019.
“She just said she’s super-proud of me and to keep going; it was a next-level experience,” he reveals.
Robin Williams‘ children have spoken out on the seventh anniversary of the comedian’s death.
Zak Williams, the late actor’s eldest child, shared a heartfelt message directed at his father, while daughter Zelda Williams spoke to others grappling with loss.
“Dad, seven years ago today you passed on. The joy and inspiration you brought to the world carries on in your legacy and in your family, friends, and fans you so loved,” Zak Williams wrote Wednesday. “You lived to bring laughter and to help others. I will be celebrating your memory today. Love you forever.”
“Sending love out there today to all the folks navigating loss. New, old, the connective tissue of that deeply human pain can be hard to bear, but I find it easier sometimes knowing how many others have felt the same sting,” Zelda Williams added. “We’re not alone. X”
Robin Williams was 63 years old when he died by suicide in 2014. His children pay homage to their father every now and then on social media, and through actions in their personal lives. Zak Williams, a mental health advocate, named his son McLaurin, which was Robin’s middle name, while Cody Williams, the comedian’s youngest child, got married on his father’s birthday in 2019.
If you are in crisis or know someone in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741. You can reach Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860 (U.S.) or 877-330-6366 (Canada) and The Trevor Project at 866-488-7386.
(NEW YORK) — The United States is facing a COVID-19 surge this summer as the more contagious delta variant spreads.
More than 618,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and over 4.3 million people have died worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Just 58.8% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing Thursday. All times Eastern:
Aug 12, 7:59 am
Fauci talks booster shots
The Food and Drug Administration is poised to authorize a third COVID shot for the immunocompromised on Thursday, sources told ABC News.
About 3% of the population would qualify, Dr. Anthony Fauci told ABC News’ “Good Morning America.”
He said the boosters would be “for example, people who have transplantation and are on immunosuppressive drugs for that; people on therapy for cancer — cancer chemotherapy; people with advanced HIV disease; and people who are receiving immune suppressive therapy for a variety of diseases.”
When asked if the boosters would be available to everyone, Fauci said, “You have to follow people, which we’re doing in real-time, mainly a non-immune compromised, either an elderly person or a younger person … to determine if their level of protection goes below a critical level.”
He added, “If and when it does, and it’s likely that it will because no vaccine is gonna last forever, we’re gonna be ready and have a plan to give those individuals the additional dose they might need.”
Aug 12, 1:55 am
University of Mississippi Medical Center opening field hospital in garage
The University of Mississippi Medical Center, overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients due to the delta variant, is opening a field hospital in one of the center’s garages.
The unit will have 50 beds and will likely be available to take in patients by Friday, Gov. Tate Reeves wrote on Twitter Wednesday.
The news comes as Mississippi recorded 3,163 positive COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Aug 11, 11:33 pm
4 Georgia school districts pause in-person learning
Four school districts in Georgia recently paused in-person learning as positive cases of the coronavirus among staff and students swelled in the first days of school this month.
The districts — Macon, Taliaferro, Glascock and Talbot — account together for less than 1% of Georgia’s 1.7 million students, but the need to shut down in-person learning so early in the school year worries district officials.
“The difference now in this outbreak that we see than the outbreak that happened last school year is that this seems to be more centered on kids rather than adults, so that scares me to death,” Jack Catrett, the superintendent of schools in Talbot County, told Columbus ABC affiliate WTVM.
Talbot County, which had 11 students test positive on Friday, shut its doors to students for one week, with kids returning Monday. The other three districts have planned for two-week pauses to in-person learning.
