Diana Ross‘ first album of new, original songs in over 20 years, Thank You, got its release today.
Coinciding with the album’s arrival, the Motown legend debuted her first music video in more than a decade, for her new song “All Is Well.” The clip, which you can watch on her official YouTube channel, was directed by Amanda Demme in collaboration with Ross’ two sons, producer Evan Ross and photographer Ross Naess.
As previously reported, Thank You was recorded in Diana’s home studio during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, and features producers and songwriters who’ve created hits for Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Usher, Justin Bieber, Sam Smith, Ariana Grande, Beyoncé and Rihanna.
Ross says of the 13-track collection, “I spent the past year recording new music and this music is a reflection of the joy and the love and the gratitude that I feel every day. It’s an album of great appreciation for life, and for all of you.”
Look out Kelly Clarkson, there’s another former American Idol alumna looking to conquer daytime talk TV.
Jennifer Hudson is pitching a new daytime talk show to be produced by the team from The Ellen DeGeneres Show, according to Variety.
The concept, while attempting to fill the void left by Ellen’s departure, is being shopped as an entirely new series and not a continuation of the long-running chat show.
Ellen executive producers Andy Lassner and Mary Connelly also served as show runners on Hudson’s test show, which was recently shot on the Ellen stage and is now being used as part of the pitch to station groups, sources tell Variety.
The Respect actress also brings an “authentic and natural” take to her hosting duties, according to the insiders.
DeGeneres announced in May that she would end her long-running, Emmy-winning talk show after 19 seasons when her contract expires in 2022.
(WASHINGTON) — The State Department is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information that could lead to the identification or location of those in leadership positions within the DarkSide ransomware group.
Authorities also announced that they’re offering a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction in any country of anyone conspiring to participate in or attempting to participate in a DarkSide variant ransomware incident.
“In offering this reward, the United States demonstrates its commitment to protecting ransomware victims around the world from exploitation by cyber criminals,” Ned Price, a State Department spokesperson, said in a statement Thursday.
Federal authorities have previously said they believe DarkSide operates out of Eastern Europe.
The Colonial Pipeline incident was seen as a display of how much power cyber criminals have seized in recent years, as they took aim at critical infrastructure. The company’s CEO admitted shortly after the incident that he had authorized a payment of some $4.3 million to DarkSide only hours after learning of the attacks, due to the uncertainty surrounding how long it would take to get the critical pipeline back online.
The Department of Justice later said it seized back approximately $2.3 million in Bitcoin from the alleged cyber criminals.
The reward is being offered through the State Department’s Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program, which has dished out more than $135 million in rewards to date and brought more than 75 transnational criminals and major narcotics traffickers to justice, according to Price’s statement.
Our first taste of Post Malone‘s next album is his collaboration with The Weeknd, “One Right Now.”
The two superstars have teamed up on the new single, with a video debuting “soon,” according to their record label. The song, which is closer to the ’80s-inspired sound that The Weeknd’s been doing lately than Post’s past work, is about finding out your partner’s been unfaithful and showing her that infidelity is a two-way street.
“Don’t call me ‘baby’ when you did me so wrong/But I got over what you did already/Body for a body, so petty,” sings Post. “I got one comin’ over and one right now.”
The Weeknd makes reference to his 2013 song “You Belong to the World,” as he sings, “You’re a stain on my legacy/We can’t be friends, can’t be family…I can’t let you next to me/Oh, you belong to the world now/So just me leave me alone now.”
“new track for my brother @postmalone out everywhere !” The Weeknd announced on Instagram.
“One Right Now” is from Post’s fourth album, which we’re told is “coming soon.” It’ll be the follow-up to his 2019 triple-platinum release Hollywood’s Bleeding.
(WASHINGTON) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday detailed new efforts to investigate “Havana syndrome,” the mysterious health affliction affecting dozens of U.S. personnel first identified in Cuba and now including several countries.
In his most extensive remarks yet on the issue, Blinken said the incidents have inflicted “profound” physical and physiological harm on those impacted.
“All of us in the U.S. government, and especially with the State Department, are intently focused on getting to the bottom of what and who is causing these incidents, caring for those who have been affected and protecting our people,” Blinken said.
Symptoms include headaches, dizziness, cognitive difficulties, tinnitus, vertigo and trouble with seeing, hearing or balancing. Many officials have suffered symptoms years after reporting an incident, while some have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries.
Blinken has tapped two career diplomats to oversee the agency’s response to “Havana syndrome.”
For almost five years now, the issue — which the Biden administration has labeled “anomalous health incidents” — has vexed U.S. officials, who don’t know who or what is behind it.
In an effort to learn more, Blinken confirmed Friday that the State Department has deployed new technology to U.S. missions around the world to help understand the cause.
“The details I can provide on this are limited as well, but I can say that new technology is helping us more quickly and thoroughly evaluate a variety of potential causes of these incidents, and we’ve distributed across posts so that we can respond rapidly to new reports,” he said.
He encouraged employees with any knowledge of an incident to come forward.
“There is absolutely no stigma in reporting these incidents. And there will of course be no negative consequences of any kind,” Blinken said. “On the contrary, reporting means that we can get people the help they need. And by reporting, you can help keep others safe, and help us get to the bottom of who and what is responsible.”
American diplomats, spies, and other officials have reported symptoms in nearly a dozen counties, starting in Cuba and expanding to China, Russia, Uzbekistan, and more. Most recently, cases were reported among staff and families at the U.S. embassy in Colombia, weeks before Blinken arrived for a visit.
But it’s unclear how many reported incidents are confirmed to be episodes of what many victims insist are attacks.
Both the Trump and Biden administrations have been accused by victims and other officials of not doing enough to provide medical care to affected personnel or not sharing enough information about reported incidents as they happen.
Blinken acknowledged the administration could do better and committed to more transparency. He met a group of affected personnel in Bogotá last month, telling them “their case is an absolute priority for him,” a senior State Department official told ABC News.
President Joe Biden signed the HAVANA Act last month, which authorizes the CIA director and the secretary of state to provide affected employees with financial support for brain injuries under detailed criteria. It also requires both agencies to report to Congress on how those payments are being made and whether additional action is needed to aid victims.
Stabbing Westward is set to release a new album for the first time in over 20 years.
Chasing Ghosts, the fifth studio effort from the industrial rock outfit and the follow-up to 2001’s self-titled release, will arrive March 18, 2022.
Our first preview of Chasing Ghosts is a song called “I Am Nothing,” which is available now for digital download, along with a trio of remixes.
Original Stabbing Westward members Christopher Hall and Walter Flakus reunited in 2016, 14 years after the band had broken up in 2002. Last year, they released a new EP called Dead and Gone. Newly recorded versions of Dead and Gone songs will appear on Chasing Ghosts.
Here’s the Chasing Ghosts track list:
“I Am Nothing”
“Damaged Goods”
“Cold”
“Push”
“Wasteland”
“Ctrl Z”
“Crawl”
“Dead & Gone”
“Ghost”
“The End”
The new book, Woke Up This Morning: The Definitive Oral History of The Sopranos, is an immersive dive into all things Sopranos, the hit television series created by David Chase that ran on HBO from 1999 to 2007.
The book is co-authored by Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa who respectively played fan-favorites Christopher Moltisanti and Robert “Bobby Bacala” Baccalieri Jr. on the show. The series is enjoying a newfound popularity thanks to streaming, and the prequel film The Many Saints of Newark.
Imperioli tells ABC Audio that, for Chase, it was important to get things right from the start and that meant not dumbing anything down.
“[David] said…people actually talk the way they do in life, you know because people never say what they mean,” he notes. “David wanted to make something where people relate to each other the way they do in life which was not done much on television up until then.”
“There’s also magic you like, you can out together the best cast with a great script, and a great director and it just doesn’t pop…But sometimes, you just get the ingredients…and that’s what happened with The Sopranos.
Schirripa offers this little tidbit about casting one of the show’s more popular characters.
“Jerry Stiller got the role of Hesh… I love Jerry Stiller, But I couldn’t imagine anyone doing ‘Hesh’ but Jerry Adler,” he admits.
Additionally, Frank Vincent read for the role of “Uncle Junior” and Steven Van Zandt almost became “Tony Soprano.”
Of course, the role of Tony went to James Gandolfini, who Schirripa says became a powerful presence on the set by “[setting] an example on set so no one got out of line.”
(NEW YORK) — Donations have poured in from thousands of “World News Tonight” viewers in the wake of our report on Southern Madagascar, a country on the verge of the world’s first climate change-induced near-famine in modern history.
Unlike other countries, where extreme hunger and near-famine conditions are caused by war, conflict, or isolated weather events, southern Madagascar is facing these conditions because of a years-long drought caused by climate change.
The conditions there make the land here too arid to farm and leading to crop failure. The severe lack of rain has led to depleted food sources and dried-up rivers. Climate change has also led to sandstorms affecting these lands, covering formerly arable land and rendering it infertile.
“World News Tonight” anchor David Muir and his team traveled to Madagascar to report on the worsening situation, as aid organizations and the Malagasy government rush to fill in the gaps of food and water in this region.
Since our report aired Monday, the World Food Programme said they received support from more than 22,000 donors, raising $2.7 million, which will go towards helping the people of southern Madagascar.
Arduino Mangoni, the deputy country director of the World Food Programme in Madagascar, told ABC News he had “never seen people, especially children, in this situation that we’re seeing here.”
“As they cannot plant, it’s affecting their food security,” Patrick Vercammen, the World Food Programme’s emergency coordinator here, told Muir during a visit to Akanka Fokotany, an affected village. “Having sandstorms in this kind of landscape is not something usual and having the effects of sandstorms shows that nature is changing, the environment is changing, and the climate change is affecting this area more than the rest of Madagascar.”
The situation has led to widespread malnutrition affecting more than 1 million people, and pockets of what the United Nations classifies “catastrophic” food insecurity signaling deepening hunger.
Madagascar has produced 0.01 percent of the world’s annual carbon emissions in the last eight decades, but it is suffering some of the worst effects.
“It is not fair…these people have not contributed to climate change because they do not have electricity, they do not have cars etc., and they’re paying probably the highest price in terms of the consequences of climate change,” Mangoni said.
The children are the most affected, with at least half a million kids under the age of five expected to be acutely malnourished, according to the World Food Programme and UNICEF.
In fact, the agencies say about 110,000 children are already in severe condition, suffering irreversible damage to their growth.
As the country enters the lean season – that dangerous time during which people wait for the next successful harvest — the need to provide food to those at risk of starvation has become more urgent. Aid workers warning that, without action, they could run out of food resources by the end of the year.
The World Food Programme is working together with the Malagasy government to alleviate some of the most acute needs in this region; prevent and treat children experiencing malnutrition; and build infrastructure and knowledge to make the population of southern Madagascar more resilient in the face of drought. They’re supporting more than 700,000 people in dire need, and the need is expected to grow.
Thomas Rhett returns with the first taste of a fresh batch of music this week, releasing his nostalgic new single, “Slow Down Summer.” The song’s lyrics follow a couple who are soaking up every minute of their summer love together, knowing that when the weather cools, so will their relationship.
“I wrote this song from the point of view of two people who are in love during senior year of high school. I envisioned them headed off to different schools and they’re starting to understand that the moment the weather starts to change, they’ve got a 99-percent chance this relationship is not going to work,” the singer explains.
The song is off his newly-announced album, Where We Started, which will arrive in early 2022.
On his social media, Thomas shared an update about that project — or rather, projects. “So, last year and this year on the road, me and my team have been writing so many songs, and what we have decided to do is to put out two albums next year,” he reveals.
Where We Started will be out first, he goes on to say. Then, in the fall, he’ll release Country Again: Side B, the follow up to Side A of that project, which came out in April.
“I’m so pumped. I cannot wait for y’all to hear these songs, and I cannot wait to play them for you live on the road next year,” Thomas continues. “But until then, y’all get excited. Tell your friends, tell your parents, tell your dogs…tell anybody!”
Next up, Thomas is headed to the 2021 CMA Awards, where he’s a performer as well as a nominee.
While some people choose to have an Elvis Presley impersonator to officiate their wedding, others — like Kal Penn — let their dreams tell them who should have the honor. And, apparently, he had a vision that Cardi B would marry him and Josh, his partner of 11 years.
The Designated Survivor actor took to Twitter to share his wild dream, saying Cardi was on his flight and that, when he fell asleep, he “had a dream that she officiated our wedding on the plane and the three of us walked out of LAX holding hands.”
The “WAP” rapper pounced on Penn’s tweet, telling him he should have said hello and then nonchalantly slid in, “I’m licensed to do that sooo……..let me know.”
“You’re the best. Was gonna say hi but didn’t want to be disrespectful,” Kal, 44, gushed in response, adding that he saw her do not disturb light was on before jumping to the matter at hand, “Let’s do it! We’re down if you’re down!”
Cardi confirmed that she was indeed “down” to officiate their nuptials and remarked, “I’ll get my suit.”
Penn broke the news about his relationship and his upcoming wedding in his new book, You Can’t Be Serious, which he published on Tuesday.
