Ray J continues his recovery from pneumonia in a Miami hospital, and the rapper/actor wants his fans to know that his prognosis is positive.
“I appreciate all the love and support from everybody,” he says in a message that his manager, David Weintraub, shared with People. “Thank you for keeping me in your prayers, and I will be back up and running soon.”
Weintraub adds that the illness is “not the contagious kind,” and that Ray does not have COVID-19, despite initially being placed in the hospital’s COVID unit. “[The doctors] wanted to keep him there a couple extra days to watch him,” he says. “They gave him multiple COVID tests, and he tested negative for all of them.”
The manager says the illness is a result of the 40-year-old entertainer being a workaholic — shooting Love & Hip Hop, developing and promoting products through his Raycon brand, and producing new music.
As previously reported, shortly after announcing that he was taken to the hospital, Ray J filed to divorce his wife of five years, Princess Love.
The “Wait a Minute” singer filed the new paperwork on Wednesday, citing irreconcilable differences as cause for their separation, according to E! News.
Ray J is seeking joint custody of his and Love’s two children — Melody, 3, and Epik, 1.
Cracks in their relationship started to show last November when the model accused her husband of leaving her “stranded” in Las Vegas and threatened to divorce him.
This latest filing marks the third time that the pair have tried to separate. Their first separation was in May 2020, but the couple patched things up that July and Love asked the court to dismiss her request. Four months later, Ray J was the one to file for divorce.
Back in 1991, Natalie Cole released “Unforgettable,” a Grammy-winning “virtual” duet with her father, the late, legendary Nat “King” Cole. Now, some other other famous singers are getting the chance to posthumously duet with the late crooner.
Gloria Estefan and Johnny Mathis are among the guests on A Sentimental Christmas with Nat “King” Cole and Friends: Cole Classics Reimagined, a collection of Cole’s holiday recordings featuring restored vocals and new arrangements that’s due out due October 29.
The album was co-produced, mixed and mastered by the same guy who mixed the “Unforgettable” duet, and the recordings are mostly sourced from Cole’s 1963 LP The Christmas Song, plus other material from his catalog.
The album, features Gloria singing with Nat “King” Cole on “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” and Mathis lends his voice to a duet of “Deck the Halls/Joy to the World.”
The album also features John Legend adding his vocals to Cole’s signature holiday classic, “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire),” and Broadway star and actress Kristin Chenoweth singing “The Very Thought of You” with Cole.
The Legend duet of “The Christmas Song” — Cole’s original recording of which is marking its 75th anniversary this year — is the first single; it’s available now on all digital streaming platforms.
(WASHINGTON) — A U.S. Navy nuclear-powered attack submarine collided with an unknown submerged object this weekend while traveling through international waters in the Pacific Ocean, according to the Navy.
The Navy describes the submarine as being in “safe and stable” condition and said it is making its way to port for a damage assessment that could help determine what it struck.
“The Seawolf-class fast-attack submarine USS Connecticut (SSN 22) struck an object while submerged on the afternoon of Oct. 2, while operating in international waters in the Indo-Pacific region,” said a statement from the Navy’s Pacific Fleet. “The safety of the crew remains the Navy’s top priority. There are no life threatening injuries.”
USNI News was first to report the incident involving the USS Connecticut.
Two sailors aboard the submarine were treated for what a Navy official described as “moderate injuries” and additional sailors received bumps, bruises and lacerations.
“The submarine remains in a safe and stable condition,” said the statement. “USS Connecticut’s nuclear propulsion plant and spaces were not affected and remain fully operational. The extent of damage to the remainder of the submarine is being assessed. The U.S. Navy has not requested assistance. The incident will be investigated.”
Officials said it remained unclear what the submarine struck while underwater. They said it could include stationary objects like a sea mount, an underwater sea mountain, or an object being towed by a surface vessel.
Two U.S .officials said the submarine is headed to the U.S. Naval Base Guam where a damage assessment of the submarine’s hull could help determine what the vessel struck underwater.
(NEW YORK) — The athletes of the National Women’s Soccer League are refusing to return to “business as usual” after sexual misconduct allegations involving a longtime coach upended their community.
In a show of solidarity that even caught announcers off guard, players paused in the sixth minute of their games on Wednesday night to show solidarity for the former players who waited six years for their allegations of sexual harassment and coercion to be publicly heard.
During all three games — featuring Gotham FC versus Washington Spirit, North Carolina Courage versus Racing Louisville and Houston Dash versus Portland Thorns — players from opposing teams linked arms in the center circle during a moment of silence. The games had been delayed due to the scandal.
In a statement released late Wednesday by the National Women’s Soccer League Players Association, the athletes said they sought to “reclaim our place on the field, because we will not let our joy be taken from us.”
“But this is not business as usual,” added the statement, which included a list of eight fresh demands for their league to do more in the wake of the scandal.
“The reckoning has already begun. We will not be silent,” the players added. “We will be relentless in our pursuit of a league that deserves the players in it.”
Finally, the statement said the the players will refuse to take questions from the media that are not related to the abuse and “systemic change.”
Late last week, sports outlet The Athletic published a bombshell report in which two former NWSL players, Sinead Farrelly and Mana Shim, accused North Carolina coach Paul Riley of sexual coercion and misconduct. Riley told The Athletic that the allegations were “completely untrue.”
Riley was fired shortly after the report was published. League commissioner Lisa Baird resigned a few days later amid accusations, including emails from Farrelly to Baird published on Twitter by U.S. star Alex Morgan, that she did not act forcefully enough on players’ complaints about Riley. The NWSL, FIFA and U.S. Soccer all announced they would launch investigations into the claims.
“On behalf of the entire league, we are heartbroken for what far too many players have had to endure in order to simply play the game they love, and we are so incredibly sorry,” the NWSL’s newly formed executive committee, created in the wake of Baird’s resignation, said in a statement.
“We understand that we must undertake a significant systemic and cultural transformation to address the issues required to become the type of league that NWSL players and their fans deserve and regain the trust of both,” the statement added. “We’re committed to doing just that and recognize that this won’t happen overnight, but only through vigilance over time.”
The scandal is the latest to hit U.S. women’s soccer and reveal the unequal treatment women athletes still face.
In a separate saga, some of the top U.S. women soccer players on the national team have alleged unequal pay for years, despite seeing much more success on the international arena than their American male counterparts.
(JOPLIN, Mont.) — A survivor of last month’s Amtrak train derailment in Montana said he “hung on for dear life” to a restroom handicap bar as the car he was in toppled on its side and skidded along a gravel embankment.
Justin Ruddell said during a news conference on Thursday that he suffered two broken vertebrae and five broken ribs in the Sept. 25 crash, and witnessed “death and destruction around me that I’ll never be able to forget.”
“I thought I was going to die,” said Ruddell, a mechanic from Klamath Falls, Oregon, adding that he also suffered injuries to his jaw and head.
The crash of the Amtrak Empire Builder train near Joplin, Montana, killed three people and injured more than 50. The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Railroad Administration are still investigating the incident.
Ruddell and three other injured passengers filed federal lawsuits in U.S. district court on Thursday against Amtrak and the BNSF Railway Company, which owns and operates the track on which the derailment occurred. The passengers accused Amtrak and BNSF of negligence, saying the crash was preventable.
Seven other injured passengers filed similar lawsuits earlier this week.
“This derailment should not be happening in this country in 2021. It’s inexcusable,” said attorney Henry Simmons of the Clifford Law Offices in Chicago, which is representing the injured passengers. “It should be a never-event and we are going to hold Amtrak and BNSF responsible, and we’re doing it for our clients and for the future of all traveling passengers in the United States.”
It’s the third time in five years lawsuits have been filed against Amtrak for a fatal derailment.
Amtrak and BNSF declined to comment when reached by ABC News, other than the following statement from Amtrak: “We are deeply saddened by the loss of life and injuries due to the derailment of the Empire Builder train on Sept. 25, near Joplin, Mont., on BNSF railroad. It is inappropriate for us to comment further on pending litigation.”
Ruddell said he was returning home after fulfilling a promise to a friend who died: to take a trip together to the East Coast. He was traveling with that friend’s ashes in a glass container.
“It was my first experience on an Amtrak train, and I was looking forward to a comfortable, relaxing ride across the country,” Ruddell said.
Moments before the crash, he said he left the train’s observation car and went into an adjoining car to use the restroom, soon after which the train “suddenly jolted and veered on its side.”
He said it was a “miracle” he survived.
“I could look outside the train and see all the gravel and dirt and everything that was outside along the tracks getting scooped up into the car as it was skidding down the side of the tracks,” he said. “If I were to let go, I would have fallen down and out that door, and got crushed by the train or ground up in the dirt.”
After fellow passengers helped him crawl from the wreckage, he went back to rescue his friend’s ashes.
“I was supposed to start a job after I got back, which I’m not able to. The pain is unreal,” Ruddell said. “I’m not able to sleep at night. I have a hard time eating because of the injury to my jaw. I never thought this was going to happen.”
The lawsuits also seek to challenge an Amtrak policy instituted in January 2019 requiring that legal action against the company be resolved through a mandatory arbitration process. Under the change, customers, upon purchasing a ticket, waive their right to sue Amtrak for any reason.
Simmons, the lawyer, called the Amtrak arbitration clause printed in fine print on the back of tickets “reprehensible” for a rail line funded and owned by taxpayers.
“When you get on a train like Amtrak are you really thinking about a train derailing and you holding on to a handicap bar while the train doors open and you’re looking at death’s door?” Simmons said. “People don’t look at the back of the ticket.”
With Halloween around the corner — and New York Comic Con in town — fans are scouring the Internet to find the costumes and props that reflect the outfits and accessories seen on the Netflix hit Squid Game.
The Korean import show depicts a deadly game in which hundreds of poverty-stricken people are pitted against each other in a series of children’s games, with the winner getting a $38 million jackpot. The losers are executed.
According to the footwear site Sole Supplier, sales for simple slip-on white Vans — the standard footwear of the players/prisoners in the show — have shot up 7,800% since the show’s premiere last month.
What’s more, Etsy shops have been selling replicas of the players’ tracksuits, if you don’t feel like cobbling the simple outfit together by yourself.
Sellers on Amazon are also outfitting wannabe baddies from the show. Fencing helmets complete a simple, PlayStation-like shape on each face plate are for sale, too, as are the villains’ red jumpsuits. Those are already popping up en masse in New York City, worn by Comic Con attendees.
For those costumers with access to a 3D printer, designs for the face masks can be had, too — if other sellers are sold out.
After hitting number five on the Billboard 200 with his debut studio album, The Melodic Blue, Baby Keem is going on the road.
The rapper from Carson, California announced The Melodic Blue Tour on Thursday, which will kick off November 9 in Santa Ana, CA. Keem will perform 14 shows through December 3 in San Francisco. Tour cities also include Atlanta, Houston, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and New York.
The 20-year-old, who performed on the BET Hip Hop Awards, is the cousin of Kendrick Lamar, who released the album on his pgLang label. The 13-time Grammy winner came out of his long hiatus to drop rhymes on the project’s first single, “Family Ties,” and on another track, “Range Brothers. The Melodic Blue also features Travis Scott and Don Tolliver.
Tickets for the tour go on sale Friday at 10 am. ET on The Melodic Bluewebsite.
Illustration by Carlos Lerma/Courtesy of Song Exploder
A new episode of the Song Exploder online audio series focusing on the late John Lennon‘s 1970 solo song “God” debuted this week.
The presentation, which was created by the Song Exploder team in partnership with Lennon’s estate, features a new interview with Plastic Ono Band bassist and longtime Beatles associate Klaus Voormann, as well as archival interviews with John, Ringo Starr and late keyboardist Billy Preston, all of whom played on the track.
To produce the episode, which takes an in-depth look at the creation of “God,” Song Exploder was given access the John Lennon Estate’s extensive interview archives, as well as the song’s master recording, original demo and outtakes.
“I’m a big fan of Song Exploder and the way [host] Hrishi [Hirway] analyzes songwriting and recording using the multitracks and sessions and the creator’s voice,” says John’s son, Sean Ono Lennon. “The shows are always intelligent, well-researched and beautifully edited, so we felt comfortable and confident opening up the archive to them to tell the story of this important song’s creation.”
“God” appears on Lennon’s first solo studio album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, and famously features lyrics in which John declared that he’d put his famous band behind him, including, “I don’t believe in Beatles/ I just believe in me/ Yoko and me.”
The Lennon interview featured in the episode was taken from a December 1970 conversation with Rolling Stone‘s Jann Wenner. Starr’s audio comes from the 2008 Classic Albums documentary about John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.
You can listen to the episode at SongExploder.net, and via Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Coming to theaters this weekend opposite the bullets and espionage hijinks of a certain British super spy is quite possibly the polar opposite of No Time to Die: the Scandinavian thriller Lamb.
The movie is a thriller in only the Icelandic sense of the word: there are no jump scares, no hockey mask-wearing villains. Instead, it’s a haunting film about a couple on their Icelandic farm who are mourning the loss of a child when something very unusual happens to one of their pregnant sheep.
Noomi Rapace, who starred in Alien: Covenant and the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo films, among others, explains she came to this very unconventional movie thanks to a “mood book” of photos and poems given to her by the movie’s director, Valdimar Jóhannsson.
“He just gave me that. And he was a bit blushy and red and he went outside and had a cigarette,” Rapace recalled to ABC Audio, cracking up Jóhannsson. “I’m like, ‘Wait, what? You’re not going to like pitch it?’ Are you not going to try to sell it to me? And he didn’t. He just let the material speak for itself.”
“I started like looking at those images that [were] so addictive,” said Rapace, “and then I knew straight away that I needed to do it.”
Noomi laughed, “Imagine when I call my team, it’s like, ‘So I’m going to do this like very small, no-budget Icelandic movie with a first-time director. And it’s about like a couple farmers that has like a baby that’s half human, half lamb. That’s what I’m doing, like, five months of my life.”
(NEW YORK) — The United States has been facing a COVID-19 surge as the more contagious delta variant continues to spread.
More than 708,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.8 million people have died from the disease worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Just 65.8% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the CDC.
Latest headlines:
-Biden: Vaccination requirements result in more people getting vaccinated
-Hospitalizations drop but deaths remain high
-Pfizer submits kids vaccine emergency use authorization request to FDA
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern.
Oct 07, 4:14 pm
Biden: Vaccination requirements result in more people getting vaccinated
COVID-19 cases are down 40% and hospitalizations have dropped 25% in the last month, President Joe Biden said Thursday during a visit to Illinois to promote vaccinations.
In the month since Biden announced a six-part plan to fight COVID-19, the president said there’s been “real progress across the board,” including with vaccine equity.
Biden said recent data shows Latino Americans, Black Americans, Native Americans and Asian Americans are vaccinated at comparable rates to white Americans.
“Our work on equity isn’t done, but it is an important piece of progress,” he said.
Biden said a new report released Thursday shows vaccination requirements result in more people getting vaccinated.
“In the past few weeks, as more and more organizations have implemented their own requirements, they’ve seen vaccination rates rise dramatically,” Biden said. “For example, the Department of Defense has gone from 67% of active duty forces being vaccinated to 97%. … We’re also seeing this at colleges… We’re going to see it in health systems around the country.”
Vaccination rates are also good for the economy as they help send people back to work, Biden said.
Oct 07, 1:37 pm
78% of adults have had 1 dose: White House
Seventy-eight percent of adults have now had at least one vaccine dose, White House COVID-19 data director Cyrus Shahpar tweeted.
Oct 07, 12:35 pm
Hospitalizations drop but deaths remain high
Hospitalizations in the U.S. have dropped from 104,000 to about 69,000 over the last five weeks, according to federal data.
More than a third of the drop was in Florida, where there are about 13,000 fewer patients compared to just over one month ago.
Daily COVID-19-related hospital admissions are also down nationally by 13.6% in the last week, according to federal data.
But states like Alaska and West Virginia, are still experiencing record-breaking surges, while Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia, Idaho and Texas still have ICU capacities near 10%.
Overnight, the U.S. reported nearly 2,000 COVID-19 related fatalities.
Around 1,400 virus-related deaths are being reported each day, which is nearly 7.5 times higher than in mid-July, according to federal data.
Texas is reporting thousands of deaths each week.
ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Oct 07, 9:00 am
United expects travel surge in December
United Airlines expects a travel surge and plans to fly 3,500 daily domestic flights in December, making it the largest schedule since the start of the pandemic.
Flight searches for the holidays are up 16% on the airline’s website and app compared to 2019.
Florida and ski resorts are expected to be the hottest destinations.
