(NEW YORK) — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were all down Monday for millions of users across the U.S., according to outage site Down Detector.
Both the mobile and web browser editions of the apps were not working as of 11:42 a.m. ET, the site reported.
“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience,” a Facebook company spokesperson told ABC News.
The Instagram and Facebook outages come shortly after a whistleblower came forward and claimed to CBS News that the company could do more to protect against hate speech and misinformation but it prioritizes profits over its users.
(NEW YORK) — Stanley Tucci is opening up about how his cancer battle three years ago affected his ability to enjoy one of his greatest passions — food.
The 60-year-old actor, who previously revealed he was diagnosed with a tumor at the base of his tongue three years ago, opened up about undergoing chemotherapy and radiation in a new interview with The New York Times.
Noting that he developed ulcers in his mouth in addition to losing his appetite, Tucci said food began to taste like “wet cardboard slathered with someone’s excrement.”
The “Devil Wears Prada star” admitted one of his fears during his fight with cancer was losing his ability to taste, adding, “I mean, if you can’t eat and enjoy food, how are you going to enjoy everything else?”
The actor said he was shooting his show, “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy,” at the time and his ability to swallow was affected.
“It was hard because I could taste everything, but I couldn’t necessarily swallow,” he explained.
In order to eat steak Florentina, “I had to chew it for 10 minutes to get it down my throat,” he added.
To comfort himself, Tucci admitted to binge-watching cooking shows, which he said he found “weird because even the smell of food then would just make me want to throw up.”
But he said he would “live vicariously through them” so he could have the experience of enjoying food again.
Tucci previously said he is now in remission and his cancer is unlikely to return.
Thomas Rhett is counting his blessings in the form of a song.
Since kicking off his Center Point Road Tour in May, Thomas has been soaking in each moment of his fourth headlining trek, especially after being off the road for more than a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It feels so good, it’s just been a blast. When you’re forced out of it, it makes you sit back and you go ‘I was born to do this,'” he tells Entertainment Tonight, adding “every single song that we get to sing is a blessing this year.”
This marks TR’s 11th year out on the road as a touring act. He says the time away from the stage during the pandemic gave him a new appreciation for the impact its had on his life.
“This year, we’ve gotten back out, me and the band just have a different appreciation for each other, a different appreciation for our musicality, the way that we’re singing, the way that we’re performing, really trying to just bring as much energy as we ever have this year,” he says. “And we walk off stage every night with giant smiles on our faces, wishing that it wasn’t over.”
The Center Point Road Tour wraps up on Saturday in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Schumer, Raven Symoné, Alyssa Milano, Rachel Lindsay, Debbie Allen and others participated in the fifth annual Women’s March over the weekend, which took place from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles to support women’s reproductive rights. Many say those rights are threatened not only by the Conservative-leaning Supreme Court scheduled to rule on an anti-abortion case this term, which begins today, but also by the recent Texas law that bans nearly all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
Lawrence, who is pregnant with her first child, and Schumer attended the march in New York City. “I don’t have a uterus and she is pregnant but we out here @womensmarch @plannedparenthood #rallyforabortionjustice,” wrote Schumer, who shared a photo of the signs they brought to the rally. The actress and comic underwent a hysterectomy to treat endometriosis.
Milano shared to Instagram the speech she made at Washington D.C., where she lamented, “I am tired as a woman. I am so tired of having to continually prove that my body is my own.” She also called out the male politicians supporting anti-abortion legislation.
Symoné was photographed at the march in Los Angeles and told Hollywood Life that change only happens when enough people come together to fight for a common cause.
“Gay marriage wasn’t acceptable until everyone came together, and made noise, and made a stink about it and things changed, And now, I can get married. So, I believe that this form of activism can work and that’s why I’m here,” she said.
Depeche Mode frontman Dave Gahan has announced a new album called Imposter, due out November 12.
Recorded in collaboration with the production duo Soulsavers, Imposter includes covers of songs originally recorded by artists including Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Cat Power and Mark Lanegan, among others.
“[Gahan and Soulsavers] didn’t write these songs, but listened to them, studied them, and gave them new life,” reads a description of the album. “It is a reflection of Dave’s life, a story told by others, but in his own distinct voice.”
Imposter is the third collaboration between Gahan and Soulsavers, following 2012’s The Light the Dead See and 2015’s Angels & Ghosts. Depeche Mode’s most recent album is 2017’s Spirit.
Meanwhile, Gahan just released a cover of Metallica‘s “Nothing Else Matters” for the metal legends’ Blacklist tribute album, which dropped last month.
Here’s the Imposter track list:
“The Dark End of the Street”
“Strange Religion”
“Lilac Wine”
“I Held My Baby Last Night”
“A Man Needs a Maid”
“Metal Heart”
“Shut Me Down”
“Where My Love Lies Asleep”
“Smile”
“The Desperate Kingdom of Love”
“Not Dark Yet”
“Always on My Mind”
Who frontman Roger Daltrey will kick off a U.K. solo trek next month, but the singer’s famous band hasn’t announced when it will return to the road after canceling its touring plans because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, in a new Rolling Stone interview, the 77-year-old rock legend reports that The Who will resume touring at “the end of next March and April.”
Daltrey says his solo outing will help keep his voice in shape for the next Who trek.
“If I don’t sing between now and then, I don’t know whether I will be able to do it then,” he maintains.
This past August marked the 50th anniversary of The Who’s classic albums Who’s Next, but Daltrey says the band has no plans to commemorate the milestone by playing the record in its entirety during the next tour.
“I don’t see the point. Who’s Next is a great album, but it’s best left as a great album,” Roger says. “The show we’ve got with the orchestra is fantastic, and the Who’s catalog has so much varied stuff that makes it better than just listening to Who’s Next.”
Meanwhile, the postponement of The Who’s tour has negatively impacted the amount of money the group has been able to raise for the Teen Cancer America charity that Daltrey and band mate Pete Townshend co-founded.
On a positive note, Daltrey is helping to promote a new TCA initiative, The Real Me podcast, which features adolescent and young adult cancer patients presenting songs they’ve written and recorded, and also discussing their experiences with the disease.
The Who have licensed their song “The Real Me” for use as the theme of the podcast, which premieres Tuesday, October 5, via various streaming services. Visit TeenCancerAmerica.org for more information.
Jerry Seinfeld is sharing some of the comedians he’d love to have on his personal all-star comedy team.
When asked to name the top five “dead or alive” comedians that he’d put on his list of greats, Seinfeld begins with four legendary artists from the past.
“I would pick Harpo Marx. I would pick George Carlin, Rodney Dangerfield…and Flip Wilson,” Seinfeld tells ABC Audio, before noting that all those comedians have passed on.
Taking a moment to think about other comedians he’d love to add to his list that are still alive, Seinfeld decides to adjust his top five.
“I would pick Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Sebastian Maniscalco and Jim Gaffigan,” he says.
Noticeably missing from his group of comedic talent is what Seinfeld calls “a funny lady.”
“That’s a great idea,” he says of adding a female comedian to his list. He then chooses Saturday Night Live cast member and comic actress Kate McKinnon. “I love Kate McKinnon,” he declares.
Now, thanks to Netflix, all nine seasons of Seinfeld can be streamed online.
TLC’s long awaited CrazySexyCool Tour had to be put on ice to allow T-Boz time to recover following an unexpected allergic reaction.
Taking to Twitter over the weekend, the Grammy-winning duo, comprised of Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas, announced that they had to reschedule their Saturday evening show in Houston.
“TLC has rescheduled the Saturday, October 2nd show at the Smart Financial Center in Houston, TX to Monday, October 4th,” the announcement declared. “Due to extreme cigarette and recreational smoke being present backstage at a previous show, T-Boz suffered an allergic reaction.”
The statement continued, “The group has always enforced a strict no smoking policy at their shows in an effort to prevent any health related issues for the group and/or crew.”
It was then announced that TLC also had to move their Sunday concert in Irving, Texas, to Tuesday, October 5.
“We are so excited to see all our TLC fans there!” the duo tweeted.
The CrazySexyCool tour, which kicked off September 3 in Alabama, is a celebration of the ladies’ 1994 album CrazySexyCool and will pay homage to the ’90s by featuring themes and fashion from the decade.
To date, CrazySexyCool has sold more than 14 million copies since its November 1994 release, making it the best-selling album by an American girl group. The album features the hits “Red Light Special,” “Creep,” “Diggin’ on You” and the group’s number-one classic, “Waterfalls.”
(WASHINGTON) — As the U.S. sees its first notable decline in COVID-19 metrics in more than three months, with coronavirus-related hospital admissions and average daily new cases dropping by more than 30% over the last month, Dr. Anthony Fauci says the country is making progress against the current surge, but warned we’re not out of the woods yet during an interview on ABC’s This Week.
“We certainly are turning the corner on this particular surge, Jon,” the nation’s top infectious disease expert told This Week co-anchor Jonathan Karl on Sunday. “But we have experienced over now close to 20 months surges that go up and then come down, and then go back up again. The way to keep it down, to make that turnaround continue to go down, is to do what we mentioned: Get people vaccinated.”
“When you have 70 million people in the country who are eligible to be vaccinated, who are not yet vaccinated, that’s the danger zone right there,” he added. “So it’s within our capability to make sure that that turnaround that we’re seeing — that very favorable and optimistic turnaround — continues to go down and doesn’t do what we’ve seen multiple times before, where it goes down and then it comes back up.”
Despite the positive signs, the U.S. also marked a grim milestone this week in the pandemic, surpassing 700,000 deaths from COVID-19 on Friday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
“This is the most formidable virus,” Fauci said, reflecting on the staggering death toll.
“There are certain elements about this that were just unavoidable, in the sense that there were going to be deaths, there were going to be a lot of infections globally, no matter what anyone did. But there were situations where we could have done better, and we can do better, and I think we’re living through that right now,” Fauci said, again pointing to eligible Americans who have not gotten vaccinated.
“When you say ‘Are some of those deaths avoidable?’ They certainly are. In fact, looking forward now, most of the deaths could be avoidable if we get people vaccinated,” he said.
One state taking action to increase vaccinations is California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a new requirement for all eligible students in the state to get vaccinated without a testing opt-out.
While some parents have expressed their outrage over the move, Fauci argued that the requirements are really nothing new.
“I have been and I still am in favor of these kinds of mandates. You can make some exceptions to them, but in general, people look at this like this is something novel and new, when in fact, throughout, you know, years and years, decades, we have made it a requirement for children to get into schools to get different types of vaccines — measles, mumps, rubella and others,” he said.
“So when people treat this as something novel and terrible — it isn’t. A requirement for children to come to school, to be vaccinated with certain vaccines, is not something new. It’s been around for a very long time,” Fauci continued.
While increasing vaccinations remain the priority for the Biden administration, Fauci also noted the positive preliminary results of a new antiviral drug from the pharmaceutical company Merck, which showed it could lower the risk for hospitalization or death for someone infected with COVID by 50%.
Fauci stressed the drug would “absolutely not” be a replacement for getting vaccinated but said the future implementation of the drug held a lot of promise.
“It’s a big deal, Jon, I mean you have now a small molecule drug that can be given orally,” he said, “and the results of the trial that we just announced yesterday and the day before, are really quite impressive.”
New Kids on the Block are still hangin’ tough — and not only that, they’re never gonna let you down, they’re gonna free your mind, and they’re gonna push it.
NKOTB just announced the lineup for their MixTape 2022 tour, and joining them for the trek are Rick Astley, En Vogue, and Salt-N-Pepa. The outing kicks off May 10 in Cincinnati and is currently scheduled to wrap July 23 in Washington, D.C. Tickets go on sale Friday, October 8 via Ticketmaster. Visit NKOTB.com for full details.
New Kids will take over The Kelly Clarkson Show today for “Kelly’s New Kids on the Block Party,” where they’ll give fans a preview of what they can expect from the tour.
In a statement, Donnie Wahlberg says, “Just like a mixtape, these shows are going to take audiences through all the emotions. To be able to have Salt-N-Pepa come back and now also have the iconic and legendary Rick Astley & En Vogue join the tour… we could not be more excited. Let’s GO!”
NKOTB’s 2019 MixTape tour, featuring Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, Salt-N-Pepa and Naughty By Nature, grossed more than $53 million.
