(NEW YORK) — A federal judge approved a plan Monday to unconditionally release John Hinckley Jr., who had shot and wounded former President Ronald Reagan in 1981, from all remaining court-ordered restrictions, if he continues to follow rules and agrees to undergo regular mental health examinations.
U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman said he plans on issuing his ruling on the plan later this week, the Associated Press reported.
Hinckley, who was previously granted conditional release in 2016, was allowed to stay at his mother’s home in Williamsburg, Virginia. Since then, he has been kept under regular court-ordered supervision and mandated therapy.
Hinckley, now 66, is not allowed to own a gun, contact Raegan’s children, other victims or their families, or actress Jodie Foster – who he was obsessed with at the time of the 1981 shooting.
Friedman said Hinckley could be released from all court supervision by June 2022, if he continues to follow those rules.
According to the Associated Press, Hinckley has displayed no symptoms of active mental illness, no violent behavior and no interest in weapons since 1983, said Friedman.
(NEW YORK) — Facebook announced Monday that it was pausing development of its controversial “Instagram Kids” platform meant for children under the age of 13.
“While we stand by the need to develop this experience, we’ve decided to pause this project,” Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, said in company blog post Monday. “This will give us time to work with parents, experts, policymakers and regulators, to listen to their concerns, and to demonstrate the value and importance of this project for younger teens online today.”
“Critics of ‘Instagram Kids’ will see this as an acknowledgement that the project is a bad idea,” Mosseri added. “That’s not the case. The reality is that kids are already online, and we believe that developing age-appropriate experiences designed specifically for them is far better for parents than where we are today.”
He noted how YouTube and TikTok have already created versions of their apps for those under 13. Instagram’s goal was to allow parents to supervise and control their tweens’ experience on a version built for users ages 10 to 12, he said.
“We firmly believe that it’s better for parents to have the option to give their children access to a version of Instagram that is designed for them — where parents can supervise and control their experience — than relying on an app’s ability to verify the age of kids who are too young to have an ID,” Mosseri wrote.
While Instagram Kids has been paused, Mosseri said the company will continue to build opt-in parental supervision tools for teens and expects to have more to share on this in the coming months.
The “Instagram Kids” proposal has faced pushback for months. In May, a bipartisan coalition of 44 state and territory attorneys general sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg urging the company to abandon the project, citing the potential for harm to children.
Lawmakers also pressed Zuckerberg over the project during a March hearing, when he argued that there is “a large number of people under the age of 13 who would want to use a service like Instagram” and that it could provide “broadly positive” benefits such as helping young people stay connected with friends and learn about content online.
Monday’s announcement also comes in the wake of a Wall Street Journal investigation that alleged Facebook’s own internal research found Instagram harmful for young users, especially teenage girls. Facebook and Instagram have argued the reporting mischaracterizes what they are trying to do and that research also shows positive benefits.
“Recent reporting from the WSJ on our research into teen’s experiences on Instagram has raised a lot of questions for people,” Mosseri wrote Monday. “To be clear, I don’t agree with how the Journal has reported on our research.”
“We do research like this so we can make Instagram better,” he added. “That means our insights often shed light on problems, but they inspire new ideas and changes to Instagram.”
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle did not seem appeased by Facebook’s announcement.
“Pausing Instagram kids is not enough,” Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colorado, wrote on Twitter Monday. “They need to abolish the program completely.”
Another vocal critic of the project, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said on Twitter, “Facebook is heeding our calls to stop plowing ahead with plans to launch a version of Instagram for kids. But a ‘pause’ is insufficient.”
“Facebook must completely abandon this project,” Markey added
Maybe this is the result of Adele dating a sports agent? One of her number-one hits is now being used by the NFL to promote an upcoming game.
The ad ran during Sunday night’s game between the Green Bay Packers and the San Francisco 49ers, and promoted next week’s Sunday Night Football match up between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New England Patriots. This is a big deal because it’ll mark the first time quarterback Tom Brady returns to Massachusetts’ Gillette Stadium as a member of an opposing team since he left the Patriots in 2020.
That’s why, evidently, the NFL picked Adele’s “Hello” as the music for the ad, which has been edited down to 45 seconds of appropriate lyrics.
“Hello, it’s me,” she sings, as we see images of Brady and Patriots coach BillBelichick.
“I was wondering if after all these years you’d like to meet,” she continues, as we see six Patriots championship banners unfurl.
“So hello from the other side,” she sings, as we see Brady running onto the field in his Bucs uniform. “At least I can say that I’ve tried.”
Then, more scenes of Brady in action as a Buccaneer are shown, followed by footage of Patriots fans, Gillette Stadium and Belichick. One Pats fan holds a sign that says, “We’re still here.”
“It don’t matter, it clearly doesn’t tear you apart anymore,” Adele finishes. Cue Brady looking up expectantly.
The showdown, which the NFL is calling “The Return,” happens this Sunday on NBC at 7 p.m. ET.
Silversun Pickups have announced a batch of headlining tour dates for this fall.
The outing is set to kick off November 1 in Minneapolis, and will wrap up November 21 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tickets go on sale this Friday, October 1, at 10 a.m. local time.
A federal jury has found singer R. Kelly guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking involving interactions with six women, among them the late singer Aaliyah, who died in a plane crash in 2001.
The verdict came in Monday afternoon after two days of deliberations following a six-week trial in Brooklyn federal court. Kelly’s face was concealed by a mask as the verdict was read, making it difficult to see what reaction he may have had.
Kelly, 54, whose birth name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, had pleaded not guilty to all charges and told a Brooklyn judge that he would not testify. He now awaits sentencing.
Kelly previously avoided prison in 2008 when he was acquitted on 14 counts in a highly publicized child pornography case. However, this time around, the jury believed Kelly was the ringleader of a criminal enterprise that bolstered his music, his image and his sexual gratification by recruiting women and girls for sex, holding them against their will and threatening them if they misbehaved.
A federal jury has found singer R. Kelly guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking involving interactions with six women, among them the late singer Aaliyah, who died in a plane crash in 2001.
The verdict came in Monday afternoon after two days of deliberations following a six-week trial in Brooklyn federal court. Kelly’s face was concealed by a mask as the verdict was read, making it difficult to see what reaction he may have had.
Kelly, 54, whose birth name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, had pleaded not guilty to all charges and told a Brooklyn judge that he would not testify. Now, the singer could face up to 20 years in prison.
Kelly previously avoided prison in 2008 when he was acquitted on 14 counts in a highly publicized child pornography case. However, this time around, the jury believed Kelly was the ringleader of a criminal enterprise that bolstered his music, his image and his sexual gratification by recruiting women and girls for sex, holding them against their will and threatening them if they misbehaved.
On Monday’s The View, Joy Behar explained Friday’s dramatic episode, in which co-hosts Sunny Hostin and Ana Navarro were unexpectedly pulled out of the studio ahead of an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.
“It was a mistake of some sort,” Behar said at the show’s open Monday. “I’m happy to report that Sunny and Ana’s Friday results turned out to be false positives and everyone is safe, healthy, and COVID-free. No one got it,” Behar explained, to applause.
On Friday, the pair apparently gave positive COVID-19 tests before the chat with Harris, forcing the sit-down to proceed remotely.
The View‘s executive producer Brian Teta also appeared Monday and apologized for how abruptly the situation came to pass on-air. “It was just an unbelievable set of circumstances,” Teta maintained. “We found out moments before we came back on the air.”
He added, “I really want to acknowledge and apologize to Sunny and Ana…they were in this position where they had this information put out on television, and then to make it even worse it turned out not to be true later on.”
Hostin said the affair was “particularly triggering,” because she’d lost an in-law to the virus. “So you can imagine how I felt thinking that I could possibly be COVID-positive and my family could experience another loss…,” she said, and further explained that her surgeon husband had to be pulled out of the operating room and her children’s school was notified following her false positive.
Navarro said she felt guilty because she’d spent time before the interview with Harris’ family members. “I’m thinking, ‘I’m Typhoid Mary and I’m going to wipe out the entire Harris family in one week,'” she joked.
Britney Spears‘ lawyer Matthew Rosengart has already filed paperwork with the court explaining why Britney’s father, Jamie Spears, should be removed immediately as her conservator at a court hearing due to take place on September 29. But he’s now filed yet another document, obtained by ABC News, citing information in a new documentary that he asserts is further evidence that it’s imperative to get rid of Jamie.
The New York Times reported the claim — also featured in the new FX/Hulu/New York Times documentary Controlling Britney Spears — that Mr. Spears and a security firm he hired secretly bugged Britney’s bedroom and recorded her conversations with her boyfriend, her kids and her former lawyer, and also monitored her phone, email and text conversations.
The New York Times noted, and Rosengart also mentions, that in the state of California, recording conversations in a private place like a bedroom and “mirroring” texts without both parties’ consent could be illegal.
In his filing, Rosengart calls the alleged monitoring “horrifying and unconscionable,” and notes that attorney/client communications in particular are “a sacrosanct part of the legal system.”
“Regardless of the outcome of the allegations, what cannot be genuinely disputed is how deeply upsetting they are to Ms. Spears,” Rosengart adds, pointing out that the only issue the court may consider is whether booting Jamie Spears is in the “best interests” of Britney Spears, which he says it clearly is.
In a statement to ABC News, Rosengart says that the alleged monitoring is a “striking example of the deprivation of [Britney’s] civil liberties,” and adds that if her bedroom was indeed bugged, it “corroborates so much of her compelling, poignant testimony.”
Dream Theater‘s upcoming fall U.S. tour has been postponed because of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.
“This was an extraordinarily challenging decision to make but needed to be done after taking into consideration the varying local mandates across North America,” the prog metallers write in a statement. “In an effort to present the absolute most complete and engaging Dream Theater experience that our fans around the globe have come to expect, we feel we are all best served to postpone all touring activities to early 2022.”
The tour, which was originally scheduled to launch at the end of October, is now expected to kick off in February of next year, although the exact new dates have yet to be announced.
Dream Theater is set to release a new album called A View from the Top of the World on October 22.
The Weeknd and Angelina Jolie were spotted out having dinner together again over the weekend.
In photos obtained by British tabloid The Daily Mail, the two were seen Saturday at Giorgio Baldi restaurant in Santa Monica, California. They reportedly spent over two hours in a private section of the restaurant, before leaving together in the same vehicle.
It’s not the first time the 31-year-old singer and the 46-year-old actress have enjoyed each other’s company. They were previously seen grabbing dinner together at the same restaurant back in June, and attending the same concert in July.
Their outings have sparked questions about the nature of their relationship — are they dating, just friends or working on a project together?
The Weeknd has been getting into more TV and film projects as of late, and sources speculate that he and Jolie could be meeting for business, not pleasure. But if you’ll remember, The Weeknd also once referenced Angelina in his song “Party Monster,” with the lyrics describing a beautiful woman as having “lips like Angelina.”
