(NOTE LANGUAGE) NBC’s sitcom AP Bio just returned for a fourth season on Peacock.
The series stars It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia lead and co-creator Glenn Howerton as Jack Griffin, a former Harvard philosophy professor begrudgingly tasked with teaching at his hometown high school in Ohio.
Instead of teaching, however, he sets his students on a series of missions to get back at a fellow academic who stole his dream job.
The series was never a ratings hit for NBC, but it developed a dedicated core audience who successfully fought to save it season after season.
Howerton explains to ABC Audio that AP‘s creative trajectory is a blessing in disguise. “There is this little bit of sort of like a kamikaze pilot mentality where you’re like, ‘This might be it…So I’m just f***ing going for it, man.”
He adds, “You know…look, I experienced it on Sunny…in those early seasons especially, we were like ‘Nobody’s going [to watch] this. I don’t know if anybody’s really even getting what we’re doing. So let’s just do it.’ It’s like it’s almost like we’re doing it for ourselves, you know?…And then you find out that, like, lots of people are watching and lots of people do love it.”
Stand-up and actor Patton Oswalt, who plays the school’s hysterically powerless Principal Durbin, agrees that this season, they’re going for broke.
“We know our writing staff, we know how willing to push the envelope they are,” he says. “And so knowing that they have yet another season — on a streaming platform where they get even more wiggle room — it was just that anticipation of, ‘Oh, God, what are they going to send us? I cannot wait to read these scripts!'”
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For months now, anyone who watched Dawson’s Creek on Netflix didn’t hear the show’s iconic theme song, “I Don’t Want to Wait” by Paula Cole, play over the opening credits. But on Friday, Netflix finally announced the good news: The song is back.
The reason the song had disappeared, reports Billboard, is allegedly because the show’s production company, Sony Pictures, was trying to save money by not licensing the song for DVD and streaming services. Meanwhile, Paula had re-recorded “I Don’t Want to Wait” and her other hits, similar to the way Taylor Swift is doing, and for the same reason. That cleared the way for the song to return.
As Paula tells Billboard, “This is a result of fans’ protestations, and I’m very touched and very humbled by that. Sony finally listened and contacted me and we made a deal using my new re-recorded master. It supports me, the artist.”
While she didn’t disclose the financial arrangement, Paula tells Billboard, “it’s a good deal” that’s enough to pay her daughter’s college tuition.
Now that “I Don’t Want to Wait” — which peaked at #11 in 1998 — is back, Paula tells Billboard that she hopes it’ll bring attention to the rest of her catalog, as well as her upcoming 12th album. She says what’s happened with Dawson’s Creek proves that that her “work will stand the test of time,” adding, “This is a beautiful testament to that — having patience and letting the fans have a voice. It’s beautiful and I’m very humbled by it.”
(NEW YORK) — The deaths of 13 people, all but two of whom lived in basement apartments, during New York City’s catastrophic flooding this week have renewed attention on the oftentimes illegal dwellings, with city officials looking to bolster evacuation efforts for vulnerable residents in extreme weather.
A record 3.15 inches of rain fell in one hour in the city Wednesday, all but stalling the city’s subway system and prompting dozens of water rescues. At least 13 people have been reported dead in New York City after the remnants of Hurricane Ida swept through the region.
The rapid rainfall inundated residences away from the city’s coastline not prone to flooding, damaging scores of homes and turning at least six basement apartments into death traps.
“The danger came from above,” as opposed to storm surge, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said during a press briefing Friday, while calling for more effective early warnings ahead of “wicked” weather that she said will undoubtedly become more frequent due to climate change.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday the city will be working on a “more severe kind of warning and more severe set of actions that will be a jolt to people.”
“What we saw in some of these basement apartments on Wednesday was people need to be evacuated who are far away from the coast, because of the sheer intensity and speed, the amount of rain that came in such a brief period of time,” he said, calling this extreme weather “a whole new ballgame.”
“We can say now that extreme weather has become the norm. We need to respond to it differently,” de Blasio told reporters.
The mayor said the city would need to impose travel bans more frequently, instructing people to leave the streets and get out of the subways, and evacuate more New Yorkers ahead of future storms.
To target those who live in basement apartments, changes could include cellphone alerts or door-to-door evacuations, the mayor said. But first, the city would need to create a database of what is conservatively estimated at more than 50,000 basement apartments, impacting at least 100,000 people, de Blasio said.
“We need to have an absolute accounting of all of them and then we can apply these door-to-door techniques if we need to,” he said. “We’ve got to have a clear database to work from and certainly begin with knowing the areas, which we do know, where they are prevalent.”
With many of the city’s basement apartments illegal conversions, oftentimes providing affordable housing to low-income New Yorkers and undocumented immigrants, the city would work with community organizations and other trusted messengers to reach residents, the mayor said.
“We have an illegal basement problem and then we have a problem that so many people end up in illegal basements are fearful to communicate for fear they might be evicted or, worse in their mind, deported,” de Blasio said. “It’s just an extraordinarily challenging set of circumstances.”
Five of the six apartments where 11 people died during the storm were illegally converted cellar and basement apartments, according to the city’s buildings department. Four of them were in Queens and one in Brooklyn. The lone legal basement apartment was in Queens, where a 48-year-old woman was found unconscious and unresponsive at a home near Corona.
Those who died in the illegal conversions included a 43-year-old woman and a 22-year-old man at a basement apartment in Jamaica, Queens; a 50-year-old man, a 48-year-old woman and a 2-year-old boy at a cellar-level apartment in Flushing, Queens; and a 66-year-old man at a cellar unit in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, based on statements from the city’s building department and New York Police Department.
City officials encouraged basement apartment residents to call 311 or 911 to report issues without fear of being vacated, unless they are facing life-threatening danger.
The risks posed to those living in basement apartments were raised in the city’s “stormwater resiliency plan,” released in May. It included an initiative to develop notifications for basement dwellings “to keep residents out of harm’s way” during extreme rain events, but the completion date wasn’t until 2023.
When asked about that timeline Friday, de Blasio said, “Clearly we have to change that.”
“This is a new deal we’re dealing with now, a new reality,” the mayor said. “We have to take the very muscular approaches that we have, the very forceful approaches like mandatory evacuation, like mandatory travel ban, and use those in ways we never had before, because events are just changing the paradigm constantly.”
On Friday, New York Attorney General Letitia James called on the city to provide emergency housing vouchers to all New Yorkers living in unregulated basement apartments, as extreme weather events have become “the rule, not the exception” due to climate change.
“We know that New York’s housing crisis has gone too far when tenants have to risk their lives just to have a roof over their heads,” James said in a statement. “To prevent these problems in the future, we must also ensure that basement units are safe for human occupancy and regularly inspected. Overcoming the twin threats of climate change and a housing crisis will not be simple, but we must ensure measures are in place to protect our neighbors and prevent a future catastrophe.”
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards also pointed to the city’s affordable housing crisis in the wake of the deadly flooding while pushing for more infrastructure investments in neighborhoods that have been “historically left behind.”
“The reason people are in basement apartments is because of the failure of New York City to really truly build out affordable housing,” he told Pix11 Friday morning. “I was a basement baby myself. … We lived in basements because it provided an affordable opportunity. So this was a failure on many levels, and we need to make sure we’re never back here again.”
ABC News’ Mark Crudele contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The Arizona man seen sporting a Viking helmet and fur vest during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol pleaded guilty Friday to one felony count related to his participation in the riot.
Jacob Chansley, the self-proclaimed “QAnon Shaman” who entered the Senate chamber and left an ominous note on a desk for then-Vice President Mike Pence, pleaded guilty to unlawfully obstructing an official proceeding — the most serious charge in the government’s indictment against him.
The other five charges against Chansley were dropped as part of a plea agreement he entered into with federal prosecutors.
Chansley is set to be sentenced November 17 and his conviction carries a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison — although another Capitol rioter who pleaded guilty to the same felony charge last month was only sentenced to eight months.
Chansley’s attorney, Al Watkins, said during a Friday hearing that he is seeking Chansley’s release pending sentencing, which a federal prosecutor said the government would oppose.
Chansley is one of the few rioters who has remained detained over the past eight months despite not being accused of participating in any violence against law enforcement during the riot.
Prosecutors argued he posed a danger to the public given his actions on Jan. 6, noting that he was among the first 30 members of the pro-Trump mob to enter the building and that he carried an American flag tied to a pole with a sharp object at the tip, which the government characterized as a “dangerous weapon.”
Upon entering the Senate chamber, Chansley could be seen in videos calling on other rioters to join him up on the dais where Pence was previously presiding over the counting of the electoral college vote.
Before being escorted out, Chansley left a note on the desk that said, “It’s Only A Matter of Time. Justice Is Coming!”
At least 600 individuals are currently facing federal charges in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to an analysis of public court records by ABC News.
As of Friday, approximately 60 accused rioters had either pleaded guilty or have plea hearings scheduled in the coming weeks.
Lauren Alaina is opening up about one of the darkest times of her life, when she battled an eating disorder. The 26-year-old was just 15 when she was on American Idol, quickly getting a harsh taste of life on reality TV after she discovered a blog that called her “Miss Piggy,” complete with a pig snout on her face.
The discovery caused Lauren to resort to bulimia to lose weight, shedding 45 to 50 pounds by the end of the American Idol tour.
“[People] can be really cruel, and I didn’t have tools to deal with that,” Lauren toldEntertainment Tonight.
It was only when doctors told her that her purging could have a permanent impact on her singing career that she found the strength to stop.
“They told me that if I didn’t stop, I would never sing again, and I didn’t want that,” Lauren said. “That was a wake-up call for me, and it took me a few years even after that to really get into a better place. And I still go check in with the therapist every once in a while, specifically for an eating disorder.”
Lauren’s new album, Sitting Pretty on Top of the World, which includes duets with Trisha Yearwood and Jon Pardi, is out now. Her book, Getting Good at Being You: Learning to Love Who God Made You to Be, will be out on November 23.
Most of the categories have already been announced for the MTV Video Music Awards and voting is underway. But nominees in two additional “social categories” were just announced on Friday, with voting on those starting this weekend and next week.
You can start voting for Group of the Year Saturday, September 4 on MTV’s Instagram Story, in bracket style. The nominees are BLACKPINK, BTS, CNCO, Foo Fighters, Jonas Brothers, Maroon 5, Silk Sonic and Twenty One Pilots. Technically, Silk Sonic and Twenty One Pilots are duos, not groups, but MTV seems to be making a distinction between solo artists, and acts with two or more members.
Starting Tuesday, September 7, you can vote for “Song of the Summer” on MTV’s Instagram Story; again, it’ll be bracket-style voting. The nominees are:
Billie Eilish — “Happier Than Ever”
BTS — “Butter”
Camila Cabello — “Don’t Go Yet”
DJ Khaled ft. Lil Baby & Lil Durk — “Every Chance I Get”
Doja Cat — “Need To Know”
Dua Lipa — “Levitating”
Ed Sheeran — “Bad Habits”
Giveon — “HEARTBREAK ANNIVERSARY”
Justin Bieber ft. Daniel Caesar & Giveon — “Peaches”
The Kid LAROI with Justin Bieber — “Stay”
Lil Nas X ft. Jack Harlow — “Industry Baby”
Lizzo ft. Cardi B — “Rumors”
Megan Thee Stallion — “Thot S**t”
Normani ft. Cardi B — “Wild Side”
Olivia Rodrigo — “good 4 u”
Shawn Mendes & Tainy — “Summer Of Love”
The MTV VMAs, hosted by Doja Cat, air live from Brooklyn, NY on Sunday, September 12 at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
(AUSTIN, Texas) — A website seeking anonymous tips on people violating Texas’ new law restricting abortions has been inundated with spam after viral calls from social media users.
The law, which went into effect on Wednesday, bans physicians from providing abortions if a fetal heartbeat is detected (including embryonic cardiac activity). This can happen as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. While the law prohibits the state from enforcing the ban, it instead authorizes private citizens to bring civil suits against anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion.
A “whistleblower” website set up by the anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life calls on community members to anonymously report anyone they think might be violating the law — which can even include a driver taking someone to a clinic.
As the online submission form spread across the internet, scores of social media users from TikTok to Twitter reacted by calling on people to flood the tip line with anything but violators.
One TikTok user said in a video that she had submitted 742 fake reports of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — a proponent of the law — getting an abortion.
“It would be a shame if TikTok crashed the Prolifewhistleblower.com website,” the caption stated. “Real shame.” The video garnered more than 80,000 likes and more than 480,000 views.
Another TikTok user even says he coded an iOS shortcut to let iPhone users submit false reports repeatedly. His video garnered more than 175,000 views.
The calls soon emerged on Twitter, Reddit and beyond — with users sharing images of themselves reporting fictional characters such as “Shrek” to uploading nonsensical memes online.
Diana, a New York-based social media user who asked to be identified by just her first name due to concerns speaking out could make her a target, told ABC News that she submitted an anonymous tip reporting a “Simpsons” character as an abortion physician.
Diana said she felt the law was a “huge blow to women’s rights” and a “huge step backwards.”
“It’s just a little step that I could do with my smartphone, it’s not like I did anything amazing, but there are people out there doing real work and I support them and I wish I was brave enough to do that,” she said.
“The purpose is to clog their inbox because it’s ridiculous,” she added. “You’re making your citizens turn against each other too, so it’s kind of two-fold if you ask me, you’re asking people to tattle on people that are — some of them may be trying to get life-saving services.”
“I think the main goal is to stop them from finding people that are trying to get life-saving services or personal health services,” she added, but said she would also be “happy” if her message even just angered someone on the receiving end.
This is not the first time social media users across the nation have banned together for a digital protest. Last year, TikTok users claimed responsibility for the dismal turnout at a Trump campaign rally — saying they mobilized to reserve tickets at the event they had no intention of attending.
Sidney Poitier poses with his honorary Oscar March 24, 2002 at the 74th Academy Awards; LEE CELANO/AFP via Getty Images
When the $482 million Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opens on September 30 in Los Angeles, it will pay tribute to one of the greatest actors of all time, Sidney Poitier.
The entrance to the new venue, the Grand Lobby, is being named after the iconic Oscar winner.
“It is an incredible honor to name our grand lobby — the nucleus of the Academy Museum — in celebration of Sir Sidney Poitier, whose legacy of humanitarian efforts and groundbreaking artistry continues to inspire us all,” Academy Museum director Bill Kramer said in a statement.
The trailblazing 94-year-old actor’s film credits include Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Uptown Saturday Night, Let’s Do It Again and Lilies of the Field, which earned him an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1964, the first Black performer ever to win the award. Poitier has received numerous honors in his distinguished career, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2009.
“Sidney’s tremendous impact on the motion picture industry, and on audiences around the world, is inseparable from the story of his longstanding, collegial relationship with the Academy, said Poitier’s wife, Joanna Shimkus Poitier. “To be honored now as the namesake of the Academy Museum’s lobby, the place of access to everything that lies within, is almost like receiving a second Oscar, for lifetime achievement.”
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures features six floors of exhibitions covering the history of filmmaking. On Tuesday, September 7, Spike Lee will be featured in a special conversation with Shaka King, director of Judas and the Black Messiah starring Oscar nominee Daniel Kaluuya. The event will be livestreamed at 6 p.m. PT.
(AUSTIN, Texas) — In the wake of a severe new abortion law in Texas, some state lawmakers have said they will attempt to mimic the near-total abortion ban.
Texas’ law makes most abortions illegal after six weeks of pregnancy and encourages anyone to sue a person they believe is providing an abortion or assisting someone in getting an abortion after six weeks.
Although the law is being challenged — and although similar laws have been ruled unconstitutional following Supreme Court precedent — the Supreme Court rejected abortion providers’ call for an emergency injunction to block the law while courts hear the case. It went into effect this week.
This prompted several lawmakers to suggest they would look into similar laws in their own states, while existing similar bills got renewed attention.
Here’s a roundup of the states where these battles are playing out beyond Texas:
Arkansas:
Arkansas Republican state Sen. Jason Rapert, who represents the state’s 35th District and is running for lieutenant governor in 2022, tweeted on Thursday morning, “As the original sponsor of the first #HeartbeatBill to pass in America in 2013, today I have ordered a bill be filed in Arkansas to update our law to mirror the Texas SB8 bill.”
Rapert was a co-sponsor of Arkansas Senate Bill 6 (SB6) that was passed earlier this year and signed into law by Gov. Asa Hutchinson. S.B. 6 would create the “Arkansas Unborn Child Protection Act” and would ban most abortions in the state except to save the mother during a medical emergency.
That bill was blocked by a federal judge in July.
Florida:
Florida’s state legislature is not in session right now, but a Republican state lawmaker currently running for Congress in Democrat Stephanie Murphy’s district (FL-07), Anthony Sabatini, confirmed to ABC News on Thursday that he’s planning to introduce a bill that is the “exact same” as Texas’.
He said the bill is in the drafting stages.
Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis hedged a bit more when asked by a reporter about the Texas law at a COVID-19 treatment press conference on Thursday.
“What they did in Texas was interesting, and I haven’t really been able to look enough about it,” DeSantis said. “They’ve basically done this through private right-of-action, so it’s a little bit different than how a lot of these debates have gone. So we’ll have to look; I’m going to look more significantly at it.”
South Dakota:
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem tweeted Thursday that she’s asked someone in her office to look into Texas’ new anti-abortion law and how it compares to South Dakota’s.
“Following the Supreme Court’s decision to leave the pro-life TX law in place, I have directed the Unborn Child Advocate in my office to immediately review the new TX law and current South Dakota laws to make sure we have the strongest pro life laws on the books in SD,” she tweeted from her official Twitter account.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports reproductive rights, in South Dakota abortion is banned at 20 or more weeks post-fertilization (22 weeks after the last menstrual period) except in cases of “life endangerment or severely compromised health.” The state also has a law on the books, as several others do, that would ban abortion if Roe v. Wade were overturned.
Idaho:
Idaho’s Republican Gov. Brad Little signed a legislature-backed bill in April that, like Oklahoma and Texas, would ban abortions if a fetal heartbeat is detected. But the law would only go into effect 30 days after another federal appeals court allows “a restriction or ban on abortion for a preborn child because a detectable heartbeat is present on the grounds that such restriction or ban does not violate the United States constitution,” according to the bill’s text.
Indiana:
Republican legislators in Indiana expressed interest in mirroring the Texas law, but will not be broadening the upcoming special session of the legislature this fall to include discussing abortion legislation.
“We’re closely watching what’s happening in Texas in regards to their new pro-life law, including any legal challenges. Indiana is one of the most pro-life states in the country, and we’ll continue to examine ways to further protect life at all stages,” Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston said, according to a statement cited by the Associated Press.
If Indiana indeed begins debating similar legislation when the legislature meets in 2022, it will align with what reproduction rights advocates have said could be an upcoming flashpoint.
“Many state legislatures have adjourned and will resume meeting in 2022. This is when we anticipate we will see the majority of copycat legislation introduced,” Elisabeth Smith, Director of State Policy and Advocacy at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told ABC News by email Wednesday afternoon.
Oklahoma:
Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Sitt signed various bills into law in April that would significantly limit abortions in the state, including by deeming performing most abortions to be “unprofessional conduct” that could get a physician’s license suspended, and a “heartbeat ban” similar to Texas’ new law that prohibits abortions if the fetus’ heartbeat can be detected, which can happen even only six weeks into pregnancy.
But on Thursday, in the wake of the Texas law, a group of reproduction rights groups and abortion providers, among others, sued to block the laws before they would take effect on Nov. 1. Before the Texas law, every other “heartbeat” ban was blocked by courts as unconstitutional following Supreme Court precedent.
“If allowed to take effect, these laws would end abortion access in Oklahoma, forcing patients to travel great distances and cross state lines to get essential health care,” Center for Reproductive Rights president Nancy Northrop said in a press release from the organization. “It’s unbelievable that in the midst of a global pandemic, Oklahoma’s lawmakers would have people drive hundreds of miles to access abortion services.”
Fans will have to wait a bit longer for Diana Ross‘ first album of new, original songs in 20 years. Originally scheduled to come out September 10, the album, titled Thank You, will now arrive November 5.
However, a new track from the record, called “If the World Just Danced,” has just been released. As its title suggests, it’s an upbeat song that’s made for dance floors, and seems ripe for remixes.
The song was co-written by Diana with six other people, including Amy Wadge, who’s written many songs with Ed Sheeran, including “Thinking Out Loud.”
As previously reported, Thank You was recorded in Miss Ross’ home studio during the pandemic shutdown, and features producers and songwriters who’ve created hits for Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Usher, Justin Bieber, Sam Smith, Ariana Grande, Beyoncé and Rihanna.
“This collection of songs is my gift to you with appreciation and love. I am eternally grateful that I had the opportunity to record this glorious music at this time,” the diva said in a statement.
Diana’s last album of new, original songs, as opposed to covers, was 1999’s Every Day Is a New Day.
