Ever wonder how The Spice Girls got their iconic nicknames? Melanie C, a.k.a. Sporty Spice, revealed the answer in a recent interview with E!’s Daily Pop.
“Originally, when we were forming as a girl band, we were trying to find out a look,” she explained. However, she says they were “uncomfortable” all dressing alike, as was typical for pop bands at the time.
So one day, she and her singing partners, which included Victoria Beckham, Mel B, Geri Halliwell and Emma Bunton, noticed they all had their own distinctive sense of style — Mel C in her sweatpants, Geri in something quirky and Mel B like “a leopard.”
Mel C says they thought, “We kind of look great as this mish-mash, let’s just do it.”
And subsequently, when a London-based magazine gave each Spice Girl a nickname — Baby, Sporty, Ginger, etc. — based on their respective styles, Mel C says they decided to “embrace them and run with it.”
Mel C is a contestant on this season’s Dancing with the Stars and even channeled her Sporty Spice alter ego for the premiere: She and her partner Gleb Savchenko danced to the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the group’s debut album, Spice.
Dancing with the Stars, now in its 30th season, airs Monday nights at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
Today, Apple TV+ launches Foundation, the sprawling sci-fi epic based on Isaac Asimov‘s groundbreaking book series.
Executive produced by David S. Goyer, the show — which some have dubbed “Game of Thrones in space,” centers on an all-powerful, dynastic galactic empire, and a mathematician who predicts, as all empires do, that it’s doomed to fail.
Goyer told ABC Audio he’d been approached to adapt the Foundation books years ago, but didn’t think a movie could capture it — but for a streaming series, it’s perfect.
“I first read it when I was 13 years old,” Goyer said of Asimov’s seminal work. “My father gave it to me. He said, ‘This is the greatest science fiction work of all time.’ No pressure,” he laughs. “Before he died, he said, ‘I want you to make Foundation.’ No pressure.”
Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Lee Pace plays Brother Day, one in a familial line of Emperors, who sees the math genius, played by Chernobyl Emmy winner Jared Harris, as a threat.
“I wasn’t good at mathematics,” Harris admitted, noting that he still had to deliver long, “challenging” mathematical monologues. Fortunately, he’s a veteran Shakespearean actor, and as such has experience with complicated language. “Yeah, I fell back on a lot of my theater training for that,” Harris says.
For Pace, the role was a blast. “It’s…surreal…to play the Emperor of the galaxy…[He] is someone who has…power over life and death…prosperity and failure. The best metaphor I could find for him is like he is like the sun of the Milky Way galaxy. Everything is spinning around him.”
Pace adds with a laugh, “His ego is the size of the galaxy. Is it fun to play? Absolutely. Absolutely!”
As the lyrics say, they “come from different sides” — of the world, but Coldplay and BTS have managed to blend both of their styles into their upbeat new collaboration, “My Universe.”
The song and its lyric video are out now, with the song’s words in English and Korean displayed in handwritten fonts over a cosmic background.
An official video, directed by Dave Meyers, is “coming very soon.”
“My Universe” is the second single from Coldplay’s upcoming album Music of the Spheres, due out October 15.
As previously reported, on Sunday, September 26, at 8 a.m. ET, a documentary about the song called Inside My Universe will premiere. Later that day, look for the release of an acoustic version of “My Universe,” as well as a “Supernova 7” mix, at 7 p.m. ET.
Both Coldplay and BTS are taking part in the Global Citizen Live 24-hour streaming even that starts on Saturday on ABC News Live and various other platforms.
(WASHINGTON) — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot issued its first subpoenas Thursday to four former senior Trump administration officials, including former President Donald Trump’s longest-serving aide and last chief of staff.
The committee is seeking documents and depositions from Dan Scavino — Trump’s caddy-turned-social media guru and senior White House aide — former chief of staff Mark Meadows, conservative activist Steve Bannon and Kash Patel, who was the chief of staff for the acting defense secretary on Jan. 6.
In the letters, the panel said it was seeking information about Trump’s actions before, during and after the Capitol riot regarding his campaign to overturn the election results.
The committee is demanding records be delivered by Oct. 7, and for all four witnesses to appear for closed-door depositions on Oct. 14 and 15.
“The Select Committee has reason to believe that you have information relevant to understanding the important activities that led to and informed the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021,” Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., wrote in letters to Bannon and Scavino.
The panel’s members have vowed to move aggressively to obtain documents and records from witnesses in Trump’s orbit, many of whom have a history of stonewalling congressional investigators.
“That is a concern, but we have additional tools that we didn’t before, including a Justice Department that may be willing to pursue criminal contempt when people deliberately flout the compulsory process,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told reporters Thursday about the possibility of Trump aides defying congressional investigators.
Trump, in a statement, pledged to fight the subpoenas “on executive privilege and other grounds,” though not every recipient was a White House or administration official.
Meadows, who was Trump’s last chief of staff, was close to Trump before, during and after Jan. 6, and was involved in efforts to challenge the election results — participating in Trump’s call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger when he repeatedly urged him to reverse the presidential election results.
A Meadows aide declined to comment on the subpoena and whether Meadows would cooperate.
Patel, a former GOP congressional aide who worked in the Trump National Security Council before joining the Pentagon, was involved in security preparations for the Jan. 6 counting of the electoral vote on Capitol Hill and mobilizing the response to the riot, according to the committee, citing records obtained from the Defense Department.
Bannon, who remained an outside adviser to the president after helping to lead his first presidential campaign and a short stint in the White House, was at a meeting at the Willard Hotel where lawmakers were encouraged to challenge the election results, the committee claimed in its letter.
He was quoted as saying, “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” the panel wrote in its letter, citing a Jan. 5 episode of his podcast, “War Room.”
Scavino, Trump’s longest-serving aide and one of his fiercest defenders on social media, was with Trump before and after rioters stormed the Capitol, the committee claimed in its letter, citing reporting from Peril, the new book by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.
He also used his Twitter feed to promote the Jan. 6 demonstration in Washington in support of Trump. Some attendees of that event outside the White House later marched on the Capitol and stormed Congress as lawmakers attempted to officially affirm the election results.
(WASHINGTON) — The Environmental Protection Agency announced a new rule Thursday to reduce super-polluting greenhouse gases commonly used in air conditioners and refrigerators as part of the cooling process.
This is a major leap forward in the Biden administration’s plan to combat climate change despite the president’s $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, which includes an overhaul on climate policy, facing broad opposition from Republicans in Congress.
These greenhouse gases, known as hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs, have an impact on warming the climate that is hundreds to thousands of times greater than the same amount of carbon dioxide, senior Biden administration officials said in a call with reporters Wednesday.
The rule creates a legal requirement for companies and manufacturers to reduce HFCs and was first proposed in May under the 2020 American Innovation and Manufacturing Act, or AIM. The AIM Act requires the EPA to phase down the production and consumption of HFCs, manage the gases and their substitutes as well as facilitate the transition to new greener technologies.
Included in the new rule is the creation of a climate protection program that will phase down the production and consumption of HFCs by 85% within the next 15 years.
It’s expected the phase down will reduce emissions by the equivalent of 4.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2050. According to the EPA officials, that’s equal to nearly three years of emissions from the U.S. power sector.
Reducing HFCs is part of the Biden administration’s efforts to reduce the effects of climate change while also generating jobs, a key sticking point of his climate policy initiatives.
“This actually reaffirms what President Biden always says when he thinks about climate, he thinks about jobs,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan told reporters Wednesday. “Because this administration knows what’s good for the environment is also good for the economy. Transitioning to safer alternatives and more energy-efficient cooling technologies is expected to generate more than $270 billion in cost savings and public health benefits by the year 2050.”
The EPA estimated that by the end of next year, the annual net savings of reducing HFC emissions will be $1.7 billion.
The rule also establishes an allowance and trading program to reduce HFCs. In accordance with the AIM Act, companies need an allowance to produce or import any HFCs or HFC-related products. The agency will have the allocation amounts distributed to each company by Oct. 1, according to Joseph Goffman, EPA acting assistant administrator.
According to the EPA, along with five other agencies, it will work to prevent the illegal importation and production of HFCs in the U.S. by creating an interagency task force.
In the 1990s, the value of seizures of refrigerants at the U.S.-Mexico border were second only to marijuana, according to the advocacy group Environmental Investigation Agency.
Stephen Yurek, the president and CEO of the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute, a policy group that represents the interests of manufacturers, said the institute has supported the rule since the beginning.
“It’s great for U.S. industry which are the innovators of the new products. It’s great for the economy for jobs and that, but it’s also great for the environment,” Yurek said. “It’s a win-win for everybody.”
Climate advocates welcome the rule as well and that the Biden administration is moving forward to fulfill the requirements of the AIM Act, but some said this is just a starting point.
“It’s now imperative to adopt additional rules that ensure a swift transition to new technologies and full lifecycle management of these gases,” Christina Starr, senior policy analyst at the Environmental Investigation Agency, said in a statement.
Danielle Wright, the executive director of the North American Sustainable Refrigeration Council, which works to promote the transition to natural refrigeration agents such as ammonia, said there is no doubt that this rule is an important first step.
But the key about the rule is that it is a phase down, not a phase out, she said. It does not create a cost-effective pathway for companies to transition to the gases that have the lowest impact on the climate: natural refrigerants. Switching to these alternative gases for refrigeration and cooling would be the equivalent of switching to electric cars, according to Wright.
“In order to make that an economically viable decision, you need really strong policy,” Wright said. “And so this policy is not strong enough to create those economically viable market conditions. It’s still an environmental win, but we’re not going as far as we could,” she said.
By finalizing this rule, the U.S. will be in line with key components of the Montreal Protocol’s Kigali Amendment — an international agreement aimed at reducing the production of HFCs.
However, the U.S. has not ratified the Kigali Amendment to officially join the treaty, and the White House has yet to send the amendment to the Senate for ratification.
When asked by reporters when the president would send the amendment to the Senate, national climate adviser Gina McCarthy said she did not have a date for when that will happen.
Nonetheless, the EPA is calling this rule a historic step towards reducing the effects of climate change by implementing pollution regulations across multiple industries.
“This is a very proud moment for the EPA, and more importantly for the American people,” Regan said.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Thursday’s sports events.
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Chi White Sox 7, Cleveland 2
Seattle 6, Oakland 5
Cleveland 5, Chi White Sox 3
Baltimore 3, Texas 0
Minnesota 7, Toronto 2
LA Angels 3, Houston 2
NATIONAL LEAGUE
St. Louis 8, Milwaukee 5
Arizona 6, Atlanta 4
LA Dodgers 7, Colorado 5
San Diego 7, San Francisco 6
Washington 3, Cincinnati 2
Philadelphia 12, Pittsburgh 6
When Kenny Rogers tried to record “Islands in the Stream” solo, it just didn’t work. But it wasn’t long before he and producer/writer Barry Gibb of The Bee Gees suspected Dolly Parton might be what was missing. She happened to be nearby in Los Angeles, and a country/pop classic was born.
Last year when CMA and ACM Group of the Year Old Dominion traveled to North Carolina to write and record their fourth album, a similar thing happened on a song called “Lonely Side of Town.”
“We weren’t thinking about having a collaboration on it,” lead singer Matthew Ramsey tells ABC Audio. “We had written it, and we’d tracked it, and were just listening to it and thought, like ‘Man it would be cool to have somebody like Gladys Knight on this thing.'”
“It’s this weird mix of like Motown and the Eagles kind of in one song,” he explains, “and we could just hear her on it. And when we said her name, somebody was like, ‘She lives in Asheville… right down the street from us.'”
“So it was just kinda like this moment of ‘This has to be meant to be then,'” Matthew remembers.
From there, it wasn’t long before the 77-year-old “Midnight Train to Georgia” hitmaker arrived.
“We talked to the studio manager and she was like, ‘Oh, yeah. I’m great friends with them, I’ll call her,'” Matthew recalls in minor disbelief. “And so she called her and Gladys was like, ‘I love those guys. I don’t even need to hear the song. I’ll be a part of it.'”
“So it was amazing,” he laughs.
You can hear Matthew and the soul legend contemplate a trip to the “Lonely Side of Town” when Time, Tequila, & Therapy arrives October 8.
Alessia Cara is releasing her new album In the Meantime today, but tomorrow, she’ll be one of more than 50 artists appearing on Global Citizen Live, which is being held worldwide over 24 hours. Alessia will be in New York with Billie Eilish, Shawn Mendes, Camila Cabello and Jennifer Lopez, while others will be performing in cities from Paris to Sydney. Alessia says she feels that since she does have a platform, she might as well use it to support things that she believes in.
“We have artists and people in the spotlight — whether they’re on TV or on the radio or have any sort of soapbox to stand on — you know, we have access to so many ears and eyes,” the Grammy-winning Canadian star points out. “And I feel like it’s sometimes a waste if you’re just being greedy with it and just doing it for selfish reasons.”
“Not that if you don’t participate in charity things, you’re a selfish person,” she clarifies. “But I always feel like…since I have this platform, like I might as well help out as much as possible.”
She continues, “It’s obviously wonderful to do it in your small community, but if you have access to tons of people, like, why not spread the message further, and do what you can?”
“So I always feel like it’s important to do my part as a citizen of the world and as someone with a platform, to talk about things that I believe in, and that are important to me,” Alessia declares.
Global Citizen Live, which will air on ABC News Live and other platforms, urges people to take action by asking world leaders to come together to end COVID-19, hunger and poverty, and protect the environment.
The four-song collection arrives just six months after the former Beatles drummer’s previous release, the five-track Zoom In EP.
During a Zoom press conference this week promoting Change the World, Starr explained that he hoped the EP would bring his fans “joy.” He also noted that the record’s lead track, “Let’s Change the World,” offers an important message regarding climate change and pollution.
Reflecting on the song, which was written by Toto‘s Joseph Williams and Steve Lukather, Ringo maintained, “[H]alf the world’s on fire, half of it’s under water and [politicians are] still wondering, ‘Well, we can’t do that’…And I think we have to do a lot. So I’d like to change the world for the kids.”
The second track is a reggae tune titled “Just That Way,” which Ringo co-wrote with his longtime engineer Bruce Sugar, and features veteran reggae guitarist Tony Chin and bassist Fully Fullwood.
“I got [a] real bass player and guitar from Jamaica playing on it…which gives it more force,” Ringo said. “And for me, it’s so great, ’cause I get to play with those guys.”
Track three is the country-influenced “Coming Undone,” which was penned by hit-making songwriter/producer Linda Perry. The song features contributions from acclaimed New Orleans musician Trombone Shorty, who added a brass section that, according to Starr, completely transformed the tune.
The EP finishes with a cover of one of Ringo’s favorite early rock ‘n’ roll tunes, “Rock Around the Clock.”
The track features a guitar solo by Starr’s brother-in-law, Joe Walsh, that Ringo said not only “rocked” but was different than any solo he’s heard on other versions of the tune.
The new movie The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain tells the true story of 66-year-old Kenneth Chamberlain, a military veteran who was shot and killed in his apartment by police in White Plains, New York, a decade ago.
Chamberlain’s family says the shooting was unjustified, and his son, Kenneth Chamberlain Jr., tells ABC Audio the tragedy began with a phone call from his father’s neighbor, urging him to “get to White Plains right away.”
“I asked why and he said, the police are banging on your father’s door,” he continues. “As soon as I asked them what was going on, he just yelled out, ‘Oh my God.'”
Fighting back tears, Kenneth Jr. goes on to say, “When I asked him what happened…he said, ‘I think the police just shot your father.’ And here I am, almost a decade later, still fighting to get some type of accountability in his killing.”
Executive producer Morgan Freeman says the movie is yet another reminder of the sometimes callous and cruel treatment of people of color, which was exposed in the more recent cases of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others.
“These sort of things are generally not sensationalized, let’s put it that way. This old black man was shot by the police — No whys, no wherefores,” he said.
Noting police are “first responders…not emergency medical people,” Freeman contends the police should have never been involved in the first place.
“This was inadvertent, but a call from his life alert thing, not somebody saying somebody is breaking into my house,” he explains. “And he called back and said that was a mistake, I don’t need anybody. And they called police and said it’s ok, stand down.”
The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain is playing now in select theaters.
