Bridgerton’s Adjoa Andoh is stepping behind the camera for her next big project.
According to Deadline, Andoah is set executive-produce a film adaption of Vanessa Riley’s recent novel Island Queen. The book was optioned by acclaimed film and television director Julie Anne Robinson via her U.K.-based production company, Longboat Pictures. Like the book, Island Queen will be based on the true story of Dorothy “Doll” Kirwan Thomas, a woman who was born enslaved but bought her freedom, and became one of the wealthiest and most powerful landowners in the early 1800s Caribbean. Casting details have yet to be announced.
In other news, the premiere dates for ABC’s new series The Wonder Years and Queens have been unveiled. The Wonder Years, featuring Don Cheadle as the narrator, will air Wednesday, September 22 at 8:30 p.m. ET. Unlike the original a reboot of the 1980s-early 1990s ABC family comedy, which followed Fred Savage, the new Wonder Years focuses on a Black middle-class family in Montgomery, Alabama during the 1960s. Meanwhile Queens, which stars Brandy, Eve, Naturi Naughton, and Nadine Velazquez as original members of the popular rap group Nasty [Women], will premiere Tuesday, October 19 at 10:01 p.m. ET.
Finally, OWN will premiere a two-part The Haves and the Have Nots cast reunion special on Tuesday, July 27 and Tuesday, August 3 at 8 p.m. ET. The special comes as the cast says goodbye to the series after eight seasons. Filmed in front of a live audience, the reunion will recap “all of the greatest moments, iconic scenes, and tumultuous relationships of OWN’s beloved number-one drama series.” Hosted by Egypt Sherrod, The Haves and the Have Nots cast reunion includes Tika Sumpter, Angela Robinson, Crystal Fox, Renée Lawless and Tyler Lepley, among others.
(WASHINGTON) — The group of 10 bipartisan infrastructure bill negotiators was already having trouble coming up with ways to pay for nearly $600 billion in planned new spending, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer setting a Wednesday deadline for a key test vote on their bill turned up the heat and pressure significantly.
“That’s pretty aggressive. That means we have a lot of work to do,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, a key GOP negotiator, announcing that she and her colleagues would be working through the weekend to try to finish up the details of their $1.2 trillion plan.
ABC News has learned that one of the key components that negotiators had been relying on to finance the package — a boost in IRS tax enforcement to go after unpaid taxes — is out, leaving negotiators scrambling to come up with a replacement for a proposal that was expected to generate around $100 billion in estimated revenue to help offset the $579 billion in new spending in the legislation.
“I think we’re all trying to think about other ways to get there,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., emerging from a nearly four-hour marathon negotiating session behind closed doors Thursday night. About halfway through that meeting, senior White House officials joined the bipartisan group, including senior counselor Steve Recchetti and Biden’s Legislative Affairs Director Louisa Terrell — a sign of just how important the measure is to the president’s agenda.
According to an aide to a negotiator who requested anonymity to discuss the state of play, wary Republicans wanted to put so many guardrails on the IRS in exchange for getting the money to increase enforcement that “it was untenable.”
Conservative groups have railed against the proposal to empower an agency that they claim once targeted their ranks based on political leanings starting in 2010, as they sought tax-exempt status. The IRS in a 2017 settlement apologized for failing to provide controls and guidance to its employees, though a 2014 House GOP investigation found no connection to or coordination with the Obama administration.
And getting an official amount for that finance option from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which prices out legislation for lawmakers, was also not possible because the government already assumes it will get all of the annual taxes it is owed.
This further exacerbated the problem for negotiators, who admitted that they were only ever going to get an estimate — perhaps in the neighborhood of $70 billion to $100 billion, according to sources close to the matter. That would not be enough for some Republicans, including in leadership, who demanded a hard “score” or price tag to show the spending was fully offset.
Negotiators said they plan to work through weekend, but they are under the gun to publish final legislative text as soon as possible so that they can prevail in the vote on Wednesday.
And some GOP sponsors of the bipartisan plan — including its lead author, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio — made clear Thursday that they will not vote to proceed if it is not yet complete.
Others have tried to argue that the vote on Wednesday, a procedural move to start debate on a shell of the bill which will require the support of 60 senators, is simply the start of a week-long process before final passage. Anyone wanting to support the bill could simply vote “aye” on Wednesday, start debate and substitute in the final text when it is ready.
“My goal this weekend is to make sure that we can all get there, that we’ve got not only the agreement but we’ve got text that people can look at so that we’re not in a situation where we [say], ‘I don’t know what I’m voting on, I just hope that it’s good,'” said Murkowski, referring to Wednesday as “just the beginning.”
The deadine set by Schumer is undoubtedly a high-stakes gamble as he tries to get infrastructure legislation well on its way before the August recess, including a related $3.5 trillion budget resolution that contains the remainder of President Joe Biden’s infrastructure priorities. Schumer also demanded that his caucus reach a final agreement by Wednesday on that product, so that it can move soon after the bipartisan legislation.
Under special, fast-track budget rules, Democrats plan to pass their $3.5 trillion blueprint legislation without a single Republican vote but only if the caucus remains united behind the sweeping outline that includes everything from Medicare coverage expansion to universal child care, climate change and immigration reform.
Still, even though the budget resolution — which Schumer and House Democrats have demanded must be linked to the bipartisan infrastructure deal — is merely a blueprint to be fleshed out later by multiple committees, some Democratic senators are insisting on more details in advance of any vote in the coming weeks.
Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., told Roll Call that he wants to see the details behind his colleagues’ plan to wring revenue out of the pharmaceutical industry to help pay for about $600 billion of their massive plan.
Democrats have for years sought to have Medicare negotiate drug prices to bring them on par with prices paid by other countries. Menendez told Roll Call: “The only industry that gets directly, I’ll call taxed, mostly is the pharmaceutical industry. You have to show me that you’re reducing the cost of prescription drugs to the consumers.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said he would be looking for adequate funding to modernize the dilapidated northeast corridor rail, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said she would be “fighting to make sure universal child care and enough money to attack the climate crisis head on” are in the bill.
“And that we make sure that billionaires and giant corporations pay a fair share,” she said, a reference to key sources of revenue Democrats plan to use to finance the $3.5 trillion in new spending over the next 10 years.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a key moderate negotiating the bipartisan plan who has also signaled that he won’t derail this bigger budget measure, told reporters that he is very concerned about inflation and protecting his coal state from Washington climate mandates.
“I’m concerned about inflation. I want to see more of the details of what’s going on,” Manchin said, noting that he had not had one conversation with the broader budget deal’s lead author, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
“I’m concerned also about maintaining the energy independence the United States of America has. And with that, you cannot be moving towards eliminating the fossil. You should be innovating and using more technology. And we should be leading the rest of the world with the technology that you can use all the above energy sources, and I told (Schumer) that I was concerned about some of the language I’d seen that moves us away from fossil,” Manchin said.
It is that kind of concern from Manchin that also raises eyebrows among progressives in the House where Speaker Nancy Pelosi holds a slim majority and has pledged to hold onto any Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill until the $3.5 trillion budget blueprint — also called a “reconciliation” bill after the procedure used to fast-track it — is approved.
“The bipartisan infrastructure bill is much smaller, and it does not meet the same needs that the overall proposal for what frankly the Biden administration has outlined is necessary,” influential progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in a virtual town hall Thursday night, calling the group of 10 plan “way too small.”
“We do not need a bipartisan deal in order to pass this bill,” she claimed, pushing back on the argument from the White House and Democratic moderates about the importance of trying to working with Republicans. “It’s great that Republicans are wanting to join some Democrats, that’s wonderful. But this country and people across this country elected Democratic majorities … Republicans are not in charge of dictating what policies we pass and what policies we don’t pass.”
“We will tank the bipartisan infrastructure bill unless we also pass the reconciliation bill,” she threatened.
Congrats to DaniLeigh! The R&B singer/songwriter has announced she’s expecting her first child.
“As you grow so does my love, discipline and focus,” she writes on Instagram, sharing photos from her maternity shoot, which were taken in the Dominican Republic.
In the photos, DaniLeigh poses against the backdrop of a waterfall while draped in a white sheer outfit. Rapper DDG, video director X and others flooded DaniLeigh’s comments with “congratulations” remarks and well-wishes for the first-time mother.
News of DaniLeigh’s pregnancy comes months after the singer received backlash on social media over a snippet of her unreleased song, “Yellow Bone.” In a since-deleted Instagram video from January, DaniLeigh is seen dancing to the song, while repeating lyrics such as “Yellow bone that’s what he wants.”
Not long after the controversy, DaniLeigh announced her split from rapper DaBaby in February. Even so, fans believe that DaBaby, who has two daughters from separate relationships, is the father of DaniLeigh’s child.
James Blunt is releasing a greatest hits album featuring his biggest songs from the past 17 years.
The singer announced that The Stars Beneath My Feet (2004-2021) will be coming out November 19, featuring well-known tracks like “You’re Beautiful” and “Goodbye My Lover,” as well as some live recordings and four brand new songs.
“Amazingly, I’m releasing my Greatest Hits. I wanted to call it Greatest Hit (& Songs I Wish You’d Heard), but the good people at Atlantic Records suggested I call it something more sensible, so it’s called The Stars Beneath My Feet,” James says in a statement. “If you’d ever wished that James Blunt had only ever released one album — this is that album.”
In celebration of the release, James also announced a new U.K. arena tour set to kick off in February 2022.
(WASHINGTON) — Gun-inflicted injuries result in more than $1 billion in hospital costs each year and programs like Medicaid end up picking up most of the tab, according to a new report.
The report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office was requested by House and Senate Democrats and sheds a light on the financial devastation gun violence wreaks.
The report found there are about 30,000 hospital stays and 50,000 emergency room visits annually to treat firearm injuries, following an analysis of most recent hospital data available from 2016 and 2017.
Public coverage programs such as Medicaid accounted for more than 60% of the costs of care, the report found.
The report comes as President Joe Biden highlighted skyrocketing gun violence and crime rates and this week touted the ability of cities and states to repurpose COVID-19 relief funding to address the crisis.
Overall, the report found that firearm injuries led to “significant” financial hospital costs.
“While firearm injuries constitute a small proportion of overall hospital costs — less than 1% over the 2-year period we studied — per patient, these injuries are relatively expensive to treat compared with other types of injuries or conditions,” the report stated, citing the average cost of initial treatment for firearm injury patients, whether emergency deaprtment-only or inpatient care, as “more than twice the average cost of treating other patients in the hospital.”
Up to 16% of firearm injury survivors were readmitted at least once to the hospital after initial treatment, and those visits cost an additional $8,000 to $11,000 per patient, the report found.
Gun injury survivors also face hurdles to accessing care after hospital discharge such as insurance coverage, socioeconomic status and provider biases — all of which can affect access to health care more generally, the report said. Some firearm injury survivors may need lifelong care after hospital discharge, the report also stated.
A majority of firearm victims landed in lower-income brackets and the burden of those treatments largely fell on public safety-net programs, according to the report. Over the two-year period studied, more than half of firearm injury patients for both initial emergency department-only and inpatient care visits lived in zip codes with an annual median household income below $44,000.
Firearm injuries also disproportionately impacted the Black community. Although information on race and ethnicity was not available for ED-only visits, patients identified as Black accounted for over half of inpatient stays and costs, the report noted.
“Many firearm injury survivors are from communities of color and are low income. Because of this, they may be more likely than the general population to face access barriers due to systemic inequities that disproportionately affect those groups,” the report said.
Because of “racial bias in the health care system,” providers may not prescribe the “same level” of services to patients from communities of color as they do to white patients; moreover, patients’ mistrust in the health care system which can “stem from negative prior experiences” and a “lack of racial and ethnic diversity of providers within the health care system, among other things,” may hinder patients’ access to care,” the report stated.
Midland’s The Last Resort EP arrives on Friday, and with it comes a quirky, detailed roll-out of the world that the band seeks to create with their new project.
That includes a digital magazine that the band created to advertise their self-created Last Resort Hotel & Day Spa, complete with an infomercial starring the group’s backing guitarist, Luke Cutchen.
“This infomercial has become all of our favorite part of this whole roll-out,” the band’s Cameron Duddy tells Billboard. “At the end of the day, it’s really just us having fun.”
The band owes a fair bit of this return to their playful side to The Sonic Ranch, a documentary about their origin story that they dropped back in March. Revisiting those early days pushed the trio toward “getting nostalgic about where we’ve come from, and reconnecting as friends. So it all emanates from within,” Cameron adds.
Plus, Midland simply had more time to come up with creative album rollout ideas. They were off the road due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and with two successful albums already under their belt, they felt a little more relaxed in their approach to music-making.
“I think historically, a lot of third albums tend to be this way. Typically, album one is you at your purest; album two, you’re on your back feet, and, if you have success, with album three you get to really plan your attack,” Cameron continues. “We’re just applying everything we’ve learned over the years.”
Midland says that they’re headed back into the studio soon to expand their project into a full-length album. For now, though, you can listen to the five new tracks on their just-released The Last Resort EP.
An archival performance video and album capturing a live in-studio session by Bob Marley and the Wailers, recorded and filmed in October 1973 at the Capitol Records Tower in Los Angeles, will be released in multiple formats on September 3.
Bob Marley and The Wailers: The Capitol Session ’73 can be pre-ordered now, and will be available as a DVD/CD package, a standalone CD, a two-LP colored-vinyl set and digitally.
Famed producer Denny Cordell set up a four-camera shoot filming the band playing 12 songs, with most of the material coming from the group’s two most recent albums — 1973’s Burnin’ and 1972’s Catch a Fire. Among the classic tunes Marley and The Wailers performed were “Stir It Up,” “Get Up Stand Up” and “Kinky Reggae.”
The footage from the session was considered lost for many years, but over the last two decades the film was fully unearthed at various storage units, and now has been restored and remastered.
At the time of the October ’73 session, Marley and his group had started to establish themselves in the U.S. They had been touring as Sly and the Family Stone‘s opening act, but had been fired from the trek and so decided to make their way to LA, where the session took place.
In advance of The Capitol Session ’73‘s release, a video of Marley and the Wailers performing “Stir It Up” has debuted on Marley’s official YouTube channel and the audio has been made available via streaming services.
The two-LP set will be available on green marble vinyl and, exclusively from TheSoundofVinyl.us, on Rasta swirl vinyl — that is, red, yellow and green.
Here’s the release’s full track list:
“You Can’t Blame the Youth”
“Slave Driver”
“Burnin’ and Lootin'”
“Rastaman Chant”
“Duppy Conqueror”
“Midnight Raver”
“Put It On”
“Stop that Train”
“Kinky Reggae”
“Stir It Up”
“No More Trouble”
“Get Up Stand Up”
DVD bonus tracks:
“Duppy Conqueror”
“Rastaman Chant”
Veteran rock drummer Jason Bonham, who lately has been playing with the Sammy Hagar-fronted group The Circle, has announced dates for a fall 2021 U.S. tour with his own outfit Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening, which pays tribute to his late father John Bonham‘s famous band.
The MMXXI Tour currently features 29 confirmed shows, kicking off October 15 in Stateline, Nevada, and plotted out through a November 26 concert in Hollywood, Florida. Tickets for all of the dates went on sale to the general public today.
A look at Bonham’s itinerary explains why he won’t be joining Hagar and the other members of The Circle — bassist Michael Anthony and guitarist Vic Johnson — at four of Sammy’s six recently announced Las Vegas residency shows at The Strat. The “Sammy Hagar & Friends” performances are scheduled for October 29-30, November 5-6 and November 12-13, but Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening has gigs on the four November dates.
Meanwhile, Bonham has posted a message about his upcoming Led Zeppelin tribute tour on his Facebook page that reads, “We go deep real deep. Never a short set and always have surprises my love for Zep is only over shadowed by my love for my father.”
To check out JBLZE’s full schedule and purchase tickets, visit JasonBonham.net.
Jackass star Sean “Poopies” McInerney was attacked by a shark while filming a special for Discovery’s “Shark Week,” and now he’s nursing both physical and emotional scars.
McInerney was attempting a wakeboard jump over shark-infested waters and came dangerously close to death, something he emotionally recalled in a graphic video posted to his YouTube channel.
“There was like 10 sharks around me and…I was trying to swim out and I couldn’t,” the daredevil tearfully recalled. “I knew I got bit and I was gonna get attacked by about six more sharks, and luckily I didn’t. I just got my hand bitten.”
“Scariest thing in my life,” he adds, noting that he truly thought he was going to die.
Luckily, a nearby safety medic risked his own life and jumped on McInerney, pulling the surfer and TV star to safety.
The media personality says he’s thankful he only suffered one bite, but admitted it was a “gnarly” hand injury.
According to Jackass‘ Steve-O, McInerney was immediately taken into surgery so medics could “reattach two completely severed arteries and all of his severed tendons.”
Steve-O also assessed McInerney’s injury in comparison to all the injuries collectively suffered by the entire Jackass crew over the years, and declared that his was “the gnarliest.”
Jackass star Sean “Poopies” McInerney was attacked by a shark while filming a special for Discovery’s “Shark Week,” and now he’s nursing both physical and emotional scars.
McInerney was attempting a wakeboard jump over shark-infested waters and came dangerously close to death, something he emotionally recalled in a graphic video posted to his YouTube channel.
“There was like 10 sharks around me and…I was trying to swim out and I couldn’t,” the daredevil tearfully recalled. “I knew I got bit and I was gonna get attacked by about six more sharks, and luckily I didn’t. I just got my hand bitten.”
“Scariest thing in my life,” he adds, noting that he truly thought he was going to die.
Luckily, a nearby safety medic risked his own life and jumped on McInerney, pulling the surfer and TV star to safety.
The media personality says he’s thankful he only suffered one bite, but admitted it was a “gnarly” hand injury.
According to Jackass‘ Steve-O, McInerney was immediately taken into surgery so medics could “reattach two completely severed arteries and all of his severed tendons.”
Steve-O also assessed McInerney’s injury in comparison to all the injuries collectively suffered by the entire Jackass crew over the years, and declared that his was “the gnarliest.”
