(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Thursday’s sports events:
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Miami 112, Washington 97
Golden State 104, Cleveland 89
Memphis 120, LA Clippers 108
Minnesota 115, San Antonio 90
Philadelphia 103, Denver 89
Utah 119, Toronto 103
NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE
Pittsburgh 6, Montreal 0
Calgary 5, Buffalo 0
Toronto 2, NY Rangers 1
Florida 4, New Jersey 1
Tampa Bay 4, Philadelphia 3 (SO)
St. Louis 4, San Jose 1
Minnesota 7, Dallas 2
Columbus 5, Arizona 4 (SO)
Edmonton 2, Winnipeg 1 (SO)
Vegas 5, Detroit 2
Carolina 2, Anaheim 1
Nashville at Ottawa (Postponed)
NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE
New England 25, Atlanta 0
TOP-25 COLLEGE BASKETBALL
Kansas 88, Stony Brook 59
Xavier 71, Ohio St. 65
St. Bonaventure 67, Boise St. 61
Florida 81, Milwaukee 45
Top: New Edition; Johnny Nunez/WireImage; Bottom: New Kids on the Block; John Lamparski/Getty Images
On the American Music Awards this Sunday night on ABC, New Kids on the Block and New Edition — hailing, respectively, from the Dorchester and Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston — will pay tribute to their hometown while facing off against each other hit for hit. New Edition‘s Ronnie DeVoe and Michael Bivins say this is something both acts have wanted to do for years.
“It’s going to be amazing — the AMAs are giving us a nice amount of time to be able to showcase our talents,” Ronnie tells ABC Audio. “And we’re able to do that in conjunction with our partners from Dorchester.”
He adds, “[F]or, at least, probably…15 years, we’ve been trying to put the mash-up together, and now is the time!”
In fact, Ronnie and Michael say that if you’ve been waiting for New Edition to take on another group in an episode of the hugely popular web series Verzuz, well, this is pretty much it.
“This is the Verzuz right here!” exclaims Ronnie. “This is like, you know, Apollo Creed and Rocky getting ready to go down on the AMAs!”
Either way, New Edition is giving the people what they want: Their performance will include not just the group’s five original members — Ronnie, Mike, Ricky Bell, Bobby Brown and Ralph Tresvant — but also Johnny Gill, who joined the group in 1987.
“Oh, yeah, we wouldn’t have it any other way,” Ronnie says. “That’s the New Edition that people have been waiting to see since 2017, when [our biopic] came out, and there was this big expectation for the rollout at that time.”
“We’re in a really good space as a crew,” he adds. “So let the battle begin!”
The 2021 American Music Awards, hosted by Cardi B, airs Sunday night at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
Papa Roach may be over 20 years into their career, but the “Last Resort” rockers are still racking up career-firsts.
The band’s current single, “Kill the Noise,” has hit number one on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart. While Jacoby Shaddix and company have certainly achieved that feat before — six times, in fact — this is the first time the Roach has led Mainstream Rock Airplay twice in one calendar year.
Prior to the ascension of “Kill the Noise,” the Papa Roach song “The Ending” spent a week at number one this past March.
“Kill the Noise” is set to appear on the next Papa Roach album, the follow-up to 2019’s Who Do You Trust? The record is also expected to include the singles “Swerve,” featuring FEVER 333‘s Jason Aalon Butler and rapper Sueco, and “Dying to Believe.”
Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
2021 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony took place on October 30 in at Cleveland’s Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, and a TV special featuring highlights of the event premieres this Saturday, November 20, on HBO and HBO Max.
Among this year’s honorees were The Go-Go’s, the first all-female band to play their own instruments ever to be inducted. Go-Go’s drummer Gina Schock tells ABC Audio that getting to take part in the ceremony and the associated induction events was “just magnificent.”
Schock says it was exciting enough just finding out her band was going to be nominated, but “when you get there, your mind is blown by the enormity of it all.”
As she explains, “You’re there in front of all your peers, and it’s the industry recognizing you, basically, in a way that they haven’t [before].”
Schock says that the real focus of the event for her band was playing for their fans.
The Go-Go’s performed three of their biggest hits at the ceremony — “Vacation,” “Our Lips Are Sealed” and “We Got the Beat” — and Gina recalls, “[I]t was cool, because when we played, everybody stood up, everybody was dancing and everybody was singing. And it really was just an incredible feeling.”
Actress Drew Barrymore gave the induction speech welcoming The Go-Go’s into the Rock Hall. Schock says some questioned her why Barrymore was picked to honor the band, but Gina notes, “[T]here couldn’t be a better person inducting us, ’cause Drew’s like a real fan. She’s been a fan since she’s been a kid.”
Schock says another highlight for her was getting to meet Paul McCartney, who was on hand to induct the Foo Fighters.
Among this year’s other inductees were Todd Rundgren, Tina Turner, Carole King and Jay-Z.
A top-secret David Bowie film project being put together by director Brett Morgen from thousands of hours of rare performance footage of the late rock legend is nearing completion, sources have confirmed to Variety.
Morgen, whose previous films include the 2012 Rolling Stones documentary Crossfire Hurricane and 2015’s Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, has been working on the as-yet-untitled Bowie movie for four years.
Variety reports that a source close to the production describes the flick as “neither documentary nor biography, but an immersive cinematic experience built, in part, upon thousands of hours of never before seen material.”
According to sources, in addition to directing, Morgen is involved in the writing, editing and production of the movie, which will focus on live performance footage. The filmmaker also is said to be considering releasing the film in IMAX theaters.
Bowie’s longtime producer Tony Visconti is serving as the movie’s music producer, while the Oscar-winning sound team that worked on the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody is mixing and designing the film.
Morgen personally acquired the rights to use the Bowie footage, and the project is being made with the full cooperation of David’s estate.
Variety notes that the film could possibly get its premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, which is scheduled kick off January 20, less than two weeks after the fifth anniversary of Bowie’s death and what would’ve been his 75th birthday.
Last month, Bowie’s estate launched a planned yearlong celebration commemorating the 75th anniversary of his birth. David was born on January 8, 1947, and died on January 10, 2016, at age 69.
King Richard, the highly anticipated story of Venus and Serena Williams and the plan their father, Richard Williams, had to make them tennis champions hits theaters today.
The film stars Will Smith as the title character and Reinaldo Marcus Green, who directed the film, tells ABC Audio that his movie explores how Richard is a complicated man.
“Look, nobody’s perfect. But I think there is no doubt that that man loved his kids and gave a tremendous amount of time and commitment to their story and to who they are as a family,” he explained.
Venus and Serena’s mother, Oracene Williams, is played by Aunjanue Ellis and she shared the movie is a powerful story about love and family and she hopes it will inspire others.
Recalling one of her “favorite scenes” in King Richard where “Will says to Venus that she’s not just representing her, she’s representing…all the little black girls in the world,” Ellis gets emotional and shares, “I mean, that’s the movie for me.”
It’s not all rainbows and blue skies though, viewers will also see that life wasn’t easy for the family.
“We see that struggle play out for them early on in the film,” says Green. “Five girls living in one bedroom, five girls taking a really tiny VW bus, five girls hanging posters and picking up balls and what that’s like as a family.”
Ultimately, Green says it was important to make a story about an inspirational African-American family who loves and supports each other.
“There’s a huge generation of kids out there that need to see themselves, should see themselves, are worth it,” he declares. “And I think stories like this tell us that we’re worth it. And it’s through hard work and dedication, not through anything else.”
(NEW YORK) — Skywatchers, the longest partial lunar eclipse since 1440 will take place Friday, and you’ll have the chance to view a historic cosmic wonder in the sky.
The partial eclipse is the longest of its kind, and NASA estimates it will not occur again for another 648 years.
This partial lunar eclipse will reach its highest point at 4:03 a.m. ET, for those on the East Coast and 1:03 a.m. PT, for those on West Coast. North America, South America, Eastern Asia, Australia and the Pacific region will be able to see at least part of it.
NASA predicts the eclipse will last for 3 hours, 28 minutes and 23 seconds.
The moon is pictured above Suva in Fiji on May 26, 2021, during a total lunar eclipse as stargazers across the Pacific casted their eyes skyward to witness a rare “Super Blood Moon.”
In a lunar eclipse, the sun, Earth and moon align, and the moon moves into Earth’s shadow.
This time, viewers can expect to see the moon turn red and about 99.1% of the moon will be in the Earth’s umbra, according to NASA.
NASA said the best way to see the eclipse is with binoculars or a telescope to bring out the color, but you can also go outside and just look up.
The longest total eclipse will take place on Nov. 8, 2022.
(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration auctioned off large swaths of federally owned waters in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars from oil and gas companies eager to begin drilling — while stoking the ire of environmental groups.
The auction was held less than two weeks after President Joe Biden pushed countries around the world to make collective sacrifices for the sake of the planet at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.
The timing was not lost on environmental groups, who called for a halt to Wednesday’s auction — and are now slamming the Biden administration for allowing it to happen.
“Today I woke up enraged, but not surprised, that Biden would choose to cater to fossil fuel corporations over our futures,” said Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, an environment-focused political group. “It speaks volumes that days after COP26 … he is approving major lease sales in the Gulf rather than doing everything in his power to stop extracting more fossil fuels.”
Wednesday’s auction yielded hundreds of bids from more than 30 oil and gas companies — including ExxonMobil, Shell, and Chevron — who collectively dished out nearly $200 million for drilling rights in 1.7 million acres of the oil-rich Gulf.
Fossil fuel extraction of this type contributes to toxic gas emissions that are responsible for climate change — a reality at odds with Biden’s pledge to halve U.S. emissions by 2030.
The situation has put Biden administration officials on the defensive. Earlier this week, Interior Department Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau spoke at a panel discussion sponsored by the University of Chicago and tried to deflect criticism of the auction, describing it as a legal requirement engineered by the Trump administration.
“The fact is, the upcoming oil lease sale … is part of the legacy system that we’re here to reform,” he said Monday.
Beaudreau did not directly address a question about why the administration had not done more to prevent the auction from taking place, but instead sought to cast blame on the Trump administration, which initially scheduled the lease sale.
“The administrative process for that lease sale had been completed during the previous administration,” Beaudreau said. “It is not the way that we would prefer to do business.”
Biden promised to end new drilling on federal lands during his presidential campaign, and in his first week in office he issued an executive order pausing the lease sales, pending a review of their environmental impact.
In June, however, a federal judge ordered the resumption of the lease sales, siding with 13 states that sued the administration for overstepping its authority.
The administration appealed the judge’s ruling, but environmental groups say the appeal came too late to impact this lease sale.
Beaudreau said the judge’s ruling left the administration “in a situation of, while we are fully committed to reforming the oil and gas program … we have to deal with the litigation, and we have to deal with the terms that we inherited from the previous administration.”
“It’s beyond frustrating that the administration is forced choose between two awful options: a massive court-mandated and climate-damaging lease sale or violating a court order and having a cabinet Secretary held in contempt of court,” said Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation. “We absolutely must accelerate reform of the leasing program.”
Other environmental groups were not so satisfied with the administration’s explanation.
On Monday, protesters in New Orleans gathered to voice their discontent with the sale. In Washington, D.C., activists projected messages onto the Interior Department building, including “The Gulf is Not For Sale” and “Biden: Keep Your Promise.”
Environmental organizations also collected more than 100,000 signatures on a petition calling on Biden to uphold his commitment to ending new leasing for offshore oil and gas, which it planned to share with the administration.
A coalition of environmental groups is suing the administration to prevent the oil leases from taking effect, which the government said will occur on Jan. 1.
Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images
(PHOENIX) — Republican governors are anything but “tired of winning,” and in Phoenix at the annual Republican Governors Association conference, it became clear that may not be the only point on which the party and the former president diverge.
Fresh off a national upset win in Virginia and a near-miss in New Jersey, the group of high-profile Republican governors and their strategists are now tasked with replicating their momentum across the map in some of the most highly competitive midterm races in decades — a goal actively complicated by former President Donald Trump’s continued endorsement of primary challengers to incumbent governors who have fallen out of his personal favor. And plans on how they navigate the minefield of remaining undistracted by Trump while not alienating him or his supporters remain fuzzy.
Rather than embracing or denouncing the former president, the over a dozen governors present who spoke publicly at the conference stressed that their path to winning lies in drilling down on issues-based campaigning — focusing on things like increasing police funding, combatting higher taxes, curbing immigration, ensuring election security, allowing parents a bigger role in public schools and other cultural issues like so-called “critical race theory.”
And to the highly confident Republican Governors Association, there is no more perfect blueprint than freshly-elected Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, who pulled off a gubernatorial win in a reliable blue state in part by nationalizing local issues while keeping the former president, and his continued gripes surrounding the 2020 election, at arm’s length.
“Before Glen Youngkin, there were 27 sitting republican governors. Today there are 28. We are the only majority Republican caucus in the country. Now, we certainly believe that the United States Senate at the House of Representatives can become majority institutions in 2022,” said RGA chairman Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona. “We saw a road map in the Commonwealth of Virginia. And whatever happens after 2022 will be decided after 2022.”
Ducey side-stepped questions of whether the association was concerned that incumbent candidates might lose their seats due to Trump’s involvement.
“We believe that our incumbents across the country deserve reelection,” he said during a press conference Wednesday afternoon. “Now ultimately, we may believe they deserve reelection, but that will be left to the people of fill in the blank, whatever state they are participating in.”
Ducey himself has been a high-profile target of Trump’s ire, despite being term limited. Trump has previously called Ducey an “unelectable RINO” and endorsed vocal Ducey-critic Kari Lake for Arizona governor. Ducey has not definitively shut the door on a run for Senate — a move Trump would no doubt condemn — though he previously said he had no intention of running. Trump has also endorsed GOP challengers in Idaho, Massachusetts and openly mocked sitting GOP Govs. Mike DeWine of Ohio and Brian Kemp of Georgia.
Still, Ducey declined to paint Trump’s involvement as problematic to the RGA.
“We make decisions state by state, race by race,” he said. “We don’t fund landslides. We don’t fund losers…I will also say the RGA follows the eleventh commandment: we do not speak ill of another Republican.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said it’s a matter of contrasting with Democrats.
“The reasons why Republicans will win even more governorships in this next election cycle is because we will continue to show the contrast of where Republican governors stand versus the leftist progressive agenda that is espoused and promoted by President Biden himself,” he said.
RGA executive director Dave Rexrode sees vulnerability among Biden’s coalition, particularly among the blue collar electorate Biden championed during the campaign.
“More working-class democratic voters are souring on Biden and Democrats at a faster pace. We certainly saw that in Virginia — that working-class Democratic group is working quickly against the president,” Rexrode said.
Speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition meeting last week, former RGA chair Chris Christie stressed that turning away from Trump, and other 2020 baggage, is the only way the party can see massive gains.
“We can no longer talk about the past and the past elections. No matter where you stand on that issue, no matter where you stand, it is over. And every minute that we spend talking about 2020, while we’re wasting time doing that, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are laying ruin to this country. We better focus on that and take our eyes off the rearview mirror and start looking through the windshield again,” he said.
During a press conference Wednesday evening, a slew of Republican governors did not address whether Christie’s stance is the right one.
Only Youngkin, the party’s winning template, chimed in.
“I fundamentally campaigned on looking forward and not looking backward,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Thursday said that his administration is “considering” a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in February.
When a reporter asked Biden during an Oval Office meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau whether he’d support such a diplomatic boycott, Biden replied, “Something we’re considering.”
Members of Congress who have been pressing the issue legislatively say they understand the administration supports the idea, which would keep U.S. government officials, but not American athletes, from attending.
It’s part of an ongoing effort by activists and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to boycott the games over alleged human rights violations by China’s government.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorsed a diplomatic boycott in May and Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Todd Young, R-Ind., are working together on an amendment to a massive national defense bill that would institute the boycott.
“That is my understanding,” Kaine said when asked if his proposal had the administration’s backing. “We’ve been urging it on the White House and they might actually take some steps before we even pass it.”
It’s not yet clear if the proposed amendment will get a vote on the floor. Similar language is included in a Senate-passed bill aimed at shoring up U.S. innovation and increasing competitiveness with China, but that bill is currently being reconciled with the House version and it’s unclear whether all provisions will remain.
Reporters on Thursday pressed White House press secretary Jen Psaki on whether Biden would end up supporting a diplomatic boycott, but she wouldn’t make a firm commitment on where he stands, although she did confirm the administration has been in conversations with lawmakers.
“Of course, we’re in regular touch at a range of levels with members of Congress about a range of issues including our relationship with China and including an issue like this, that there’s been a lot of reporting and interest in,” Psaki said. “But beyond that, I don’t have an update given he just answered the question himself.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has backed his predecessor’s determination that the Chinese government is carrying out a genocide of the Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic minority based for centuries in what is now China’s western province of Xinjiang.
The State Department has restricted exports from the region and sanctioned Chinese officials it has said are leading the campaign of repression, forced sterilization, displacement, and mass internment. Over one million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are said to be in “re-education camps,” according to the U.S. government — facilities that at first China denied existed and has now cast as part of a broader counter-terrorism campaign in the region.
Biden spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday, but the Olympics were not discussed, according to a White House readout of the call.
While a a diplomatic boycott would mean that Biden and other U.S. officials would not attend the games — but athletes would — some lawmakers want to go further.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., called for a total boycott Thursday, citing human rights issues and concerns about surveillance of athletes and their safety. Such a total boycott would sideline over 200 athletes set to compete in February. Cotton also wants corporate sponsorships for the games to be pulled.
Cotton said he supports a diplomatic boycott but called it “the least, the absolute bare minimum that any civilized nation would do.”
“It is probably going to be too little, too late,” Cotton said. “And now it’s not enough, either.”
Such a boycott is not unprecedented. President Jimmy Carter ordered a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan.
The Beijing Olympics are set to open on Feb. 4, 2022.
Psaki said she’ll leave it to Biden to formalize the U.S. official stance.
“I certainly understand the interest,” she said. “But I want to leave the president the space to make decisions.”
ABC News’ Conor Finnegan and MaryAlice Parks contributed to this report
