The Certified Lover Boy showed his love for over 1,000 of his friends and fans with a massive blowout Wednesday in Miami.
Drake rented the Dolphin Mall Dave & Buster’s for a private party, and Future was among his VIP guests, according to TMZ.
The Champagne Papi has much to celebrate: his CLB album has been number one for two weeks on the Billboard 200 chart and has sold over one million units. His single “Way 2 Sexy,” featuring Future and YoungThug, is number two on the Billboard 100 after hitting the top of the chart last week. Two more tracks from the album are in the top ten: “Knife Talk,” featuring 21 Savage and Project Pat, is number four, and “Girls Wants Girls,” featuring Lil Baby, is number ten.
Drake played the album during the party, inspiring several women to twerk on top of video games.
In July, the four-time Grammy winner held a much more intimate event when he rented an empty Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles for a dinner date with model Johanna Leia.
Drizzy also rented SoFi Stadium in LA in May to celebrate winning Artist of the Decade at the Billboard Music Awards. The Weeknd, Chris Brown, DJ Khaled, Doja Cat, family members and other friends joined him at a banquet table set up at the 50-yard line.
The sensuous romantic ballad, which is available now as a digital download and via streaming services, will appear on the famed vocal group’s upcoming studio album, Temptations 60, in celebration of band’s 60th anniversary.
“Is It Gonna Be Yes or No” reunites The Temptations with Robinson, who wrote or co-wrote many of the group’s early hits, including “The Way You Do the Things You Do” and the chart-topping classic “My Girl.”
A behind-the-scenes video looking at the making of the song has been posted on The Temptations’ official YouTube channel. In the clip, Smokey explains, “I wanted to soften them up and write something sweet and gentle. Souful, ’cause they’re soulful singers.”
Otis Williams, the last surviving original Temptations member, then notes, “Because of Smokey, we started with ‘The Way You Do the Things You Do,’ and we’ve been rolling ever since. It’s only that Smokey be on this here album.
Smokey adds, “I’m so happy with the record…I can’t wait to see the public reaction to it.”
Among the musicians who contributed to the track were acclaimed session bassist Freddie Washington and longtime Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers drummer Steve Ferrone.
This past summer, The Temptations launched a yearlong 60th anniversary celebration that will run through June of 2022. Temptations 60 is due out next year, and the group also has a series of tour dates lined up, and is planning a special commemoration of Williams’ 80th birthday on October 30.
You can check out all of the confirmed upcoming Temptation shows at TemptationsOfficial.com.
They were a synth-pop trio, she was a Pop-Punk Queen — can we make it any more obvious?
CHVRCHES has released a cover of the Avril Lavigne song “I’m with You” for Apple Music’s Home Sessions series. In contrast with their usual glitzy sound, Lauren Mayberry and company delivered a more grounded take on the Let Go single, befitting of the original’s vulnerability.
“I’m with You” is the third cover song from CHVRCHES over the past few months — they’ve also shared their versions of Echo and the Bunnymen‘s “The Killing Moon,” and Gerard McMahon‘s “Cry Little Sister,” aka the Lost Boys song.
As for original CHVRCHES music, the band’s new album Screen Violence just dropped in August.
Daniel Craig now has something special in common with his onscreen character, James Bond.
The British actor has been appointed as an honorary commander in the U.K.’s Royal Navy, matching his literary and on-screen alter ego, who’s also Royal Naval Reserve commander.
“I am truly privileged and honoured to be appointed the rank of Honorary Commander in the senior service,” the actor says in a statement, adding that he plans to use the honor as a way to support military families in the U.K.
“Daniel Craig is well known for being Commander Bond for the last 15 years — a naval officer who keeps Britain safe through missions across the globe. That’s what the real Royal Navy does every day, using technology and skill the same way as Bond himself,” said Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, First Sea Lord of the UK’s Royal Navy and Naval Service, in a statement.
Craig reprises the role of Bond in the series’ 25th installment, No Time to Die, marking his fifth and final appearance as the famous character. Equipment from the Royal Navy is featured in the film, including the HMS Dragon warship.
No Time to Diewill be released in the U.S. on October 8.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Friday harshly criticized the action of some Border Patrol agents, mounted on horseback, who confronted Haitian migrants crossing the border into Texas, calling their actions “horrible.”
“It’s outrageous, I promise you, those people will pay,” Biden said.
Biden’s blunt statements came as the situation and the agents’ conduct are still under investigation and the agents have been placed on administrative leave. The use of horses has been suspended in the meantime.
Biden was responding to a question from ABC News Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott, who asked, “You said on the campaign trail that you were going to restore the moral standing of the U.S., that you are going to immediately end Trump’s assault on the dignity of immigrant communities. Given what we saw at the border this week, have you failed in that promise? And this is happening under your watch–do you take responsibility for the chaos that’s unfolding?”
“Of course, I take responsibility,” Biden said, but he then quickly shifted to the controversial images of the agents on horseback. “I’m president but it was horrible to see what you saw to see people treat it like they did — horses family nearly running over people being strapped. It’s outrageous, I promise you, those people will pay. They will be — there is investigation underway now, and there will be consequences. There will be consequences. It’s an embarrassment, beyond an embarrassment. It’s dangerous. It’s wrong, it sends the wrong message around the world, sends the wrong message at home. It’s simply not who we are,” he said.
Democrats, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus, have demanded an end to the Haitians being expelled and the ACLU and other migrant advocates have had the administration is illegally removing them through the use of Title 42, claiming they are justified in doing so for public health reasons because of the pandemic.
The U.S. special envoy for Haiti, Daniel Foote, has resigned in protest over the administration policy, calling the treatment of the Haitian migrants “inhumane.”
Gabourey Sidibe knew she had something special when she took on the role of writer Jenna Clayton in the Realm podcast thriller, If I Go Missing the Witches Did It.
Written by Pia Wilson, the nine-episode series follows Jenna, a woman who “vanishes without a trace” after a summer in Westchester, but leaves behind voice memos as clues to her disappearance. Sidibe tells ABC Audio that she put a lot of “own special brand of sass” into Jenna.
“A lot of the like, ‘I know you didn’t just do that,’ and the ‘Uh-Uh, I don’t like that,'” she notes. “So, that’s a bit of me.”
For Sidibe, who’s previously starred in American Horror Story and Antebellum, making her fictional podcast debut with If I Go Missing the Witches Did It wasn’t a hard decision.
“Psychological thrillers are my favorite,” she says. “I love watching what’s in front of me, but also knowing that there’s an entire world going on around it, a mystery that I need to solve.”
So that’s partly why the Empire actress jumped at the chance to play Jenna, who she describes as “complex.”
“She’s definitely of this generation and has very strong opinions about a lot of things,” Sidibe says. “She seems to have a lot of confidence…but she also has a lot of insecurities at the same time.”
The actress jokes that there are even times when she yells at Jenna in frustration, saying, “Girl, that’s the wrong decision!”
Still, even with Jenna’s obvious flaws, Sidibe says the character was “almost like a real friend.”
“That’s what she became to me,” she says. “And so I tried to breathe life into her that way.”
The first episode of If I Go Missing the Witches Did It premieres Sunday, September 26, on the usual podcast platforms.
(NEW YORK) — The United States has been facing a COVID-19 surge as the more contagious delta variant continues to spread.
More than 682,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.7 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. The average number of daily deaths in the U.S. has risen about 20% in the last week, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The U.S. is continuing to sink on the list of global vaccination rates, currently ranking No. 45, according to data compiled by The Financial Times. Just 64.3% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the CDC.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Sep 24, 6:23 am
CDC endorses Pfizer boosters for older and high-risk Americans
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has endorsed an independent advisory panel’s recommendation for seniors and other medically vulnerable Americans to get a booster shot of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, six months after their second dose.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, also partially overruled her agency’s advisory panel in a notable departure by adding a recommendation for a third dose for people who are considered high risk due to where they work, such as nurses and teachers — a group which the panel rejected in its recommendation. Some panelists said that without further data, they weren’t comfortable with automatically including younger people because of their jobs.
In a statement announcing her decision late Thursday, Walensky pointed to the benefit versus risk analysis she had weighed, and data rapidly evolving.
“In a pandemic, even with uncertainty, we must take actions that we anticipate will do the greatest good,” Walensky said. “While today’s action was an initial step related to booster shots, it will not distract from our most important focus of primary vaccination in the United States and around the world.”
With Walensky’s final sign-off, booster shots will now quickly become available for millions more Americans at pharmacies, doctors’ offices and other sites that offer the Pfizer vaccine as soon as Friday.
Sep 23, 8:40 pm
Leaving nurses out of booster recommendation ‘unconscionable,’ union charges
The nation’s largest union of registered nurses pushed back against the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel’s vote on COVID-19 booster shots, calling not including front-line workers like nurses in its recommendations “unconscionable.”
National Nurses United is urging CDC Director Rochelle Walensky to bypass what the advisory panel, ACIP, recommended and add nurses and other health care workers to the list of eligible booster recipients.
“Nurses and other health care workers were among the first to be vaccinated because of their high risk of exposure to the virus,” Deborah Burger, the union’s president, said in a statement. “Why leave them out of booster shots?”
“It is unconscionable that ACIP would not vote to keep us safer from death, severe Covid, and long Covid,” Burger continued. “We must do everything possible to ensure that the health of our nurses and other health care workers will not be put even more at risk.”
ACIP voted Thursday to recommend a third Pfizer dose for people aged 65 and older, as well as those as young as 18 if they have an underlying medical condition.
In its authorization Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration did agree to make the shots available to front-line workers. But ACIP said there was not yet enough data to support providing booster shots automatically to young people because of their jobs.
Sex and the City star Willie Garson died unexpectedly this week at age 57, but a cause of death was not immediately given.
It was confirmed Thursday in his obituary, which was published in The New York Times, that the actor died at home following a battle with pancreatic cancer.
His adopted son, Nathen Garson, first confirmed his father’s passing on Tuesday by sharing a collage of photos and videos of the late actor while writing, “I love you so much papa. Rest In Peace and I’m so glad you got to share all your adventures with me and were able to accomplish so much. I’m so proud of you. I will always love you, but I think it’s time for you to go on an adventure of your own.”
Garson, who was known for playing Stanford Blatch on Sex and the City and Mozzie on White Collar, was mourned by his former co-stars, including Kristin Davis, Chris Noth, Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon, Matt Bomer, Chad Lowe and many others.
Sarah Jessica Parker previously said in Noth’s tribute that she isn’t ready to publicly comment on Garson’s passing.
The late actor’s family is requesting fans make a donation to the Alliance for Children’s Rights in Garson’s honor.
Imagine having Bruno Mars as your wedding singer. It happened for one extremely rich couple last weekend, according to The New York Post.
Troy Brown, whose dad is the CEO of Motorola, got married to Kristin Ryan at the Chatham Bars Inn on Cape Cod, MA, reports the newspaper. After the dinner part of the evening, a marching bad led guests to a “secret speakeasy,” where they had to give the password “Magic,” along with keys that said “Join us in room 24.”
Of course, that was a reference to Bruno’s hit “24K Magic,” and inside the speakeasy, the Grammy-winning superstar performed for guests. We’re not sure how much Bruno got paid, but according to Scarlet Events, a luxury party planner, his fee for a private party starts at $3 million.
Bruno is currently working with singer Anderson. Paak in the duo Silk Sonic. Their debut album will arrive in early 2022.
(NEW YORK) — One week after getting her first COVID-19 vaccine shot, Bernadette Ann Bowen said she started her period one day early.
Then, Bowen, a 31-year-old Ph.D. student at Bowling Green State University, said she experienced some of the worst menstrual cramps of her life.
“I started getting a headache and then started feeling cramps coming on,” Bowen told Good Morning America. “My nausea and abdominal pain became so severe at the peak of my cramps that I could barely stomach a few sips of water, as I laid there feeling like I was going to pass out from it all.”
After Bowen saw people on TikTok discussing similar changes in their menstrual cycles after being vaccinated, she said she was “stricken with fear” over what could happen when she received her second dose of the vaccine.
“A lot of people I saw said their experience was after the second shot, so I was literally stricken with fear for a whole month wondering what would happen,” she said. “I was so afraid that it would continue.”
Bowen though, like most women who have reported menstrual changes after the vaccine, experienced only the one-time change to her period.
Nonetheless, she described it as “unacceptable” that people who menstruate did not know ahead of time that the vaccine may cause changes to the timing or severity of their menstrual cycles, even if temporary.
“Not getting a single warning is unacceptable,” she said. “It would be one thing if we were given a single consideration, but just knowing the design of medicine is so biased that this wouldn’t have been reported as a warning, it’s telling.”
Now, nearly one year after the COVID-19 vaccines began to be distributed in the U.S., the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has committed $1.6 million in funding to “explore potential links between COVID-19 vaccination and menstrual changes,” according a news release.
The funding, announced last month, comes as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized Pfizer booster shots Wednesday for high-risk Americans and adults over age 65. FDA’s acting commissioner, Dr. Janet Woodcock, said the list of high-risk Americans should include health care workers, teachers and grocery story workers, all industries with largely female workforces.
The research funding also comes months after people began to share on social media their experiences of short-term period side effects after being vaccinated.
Tens of thousands of people documented their side effects in an online database created by researchers Katharine Lee, of Washington University in St. Louis, and Kathryn Clancy, of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who each said they experienced unexpected menstrual cycles after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, and began to collect data.
The newly announced NIH funding, for which Lee and Clancy applied but were not selected, will go to researchers at five institutions: Boston University, Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins University, Michigan State University and Oregon Health and Science University.
The researchers will study everything from menstrual cycle changes reported on period tracking apps like Clue to menstrual changes in people with endometriosis and people trying to get pregnant, people who have not been vaccinated and teenagers. They will be examining how the vaccines may have affected flow, cycle length and pain, as well as exploring why COVID-19 vaccines may cause changes, according to Candace Tingen, Ph.D., program director of the Gynecologic Health and Disease Branch at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
“Exactly like you’d see on a medication, that it may cause drowsiness, we want to say to women, ‘If you get a booster, if you get a vaccine, you might have a slightly heavier period for a cycle or two,'” Tingen said. “That’s what we want when we go in to get vaccinated, so we know how to prepare.”
Data on menstrual side effects was not widely collected during clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines, which were conducted by the companies behind the vaccines, Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, according to Tingen.
She said the NIH was motivated to fund research both from reports of menstrual side effects as well as the misinformation that followed around menstrual changes and fertility.
“There was a lot of misinformation out there, and NIH sees its mandate as countering misinformation with accurate information,” Tingen said. “[Research] is something that we could do to step in and provide some real information about whether or not this is this is accurate.”
Experts in the medical community agree menstrual changes potentially linked to COVID-19 vaccines are likely to be temporary, and current evidence suggests that the vaccine has no impact on current or future fertility.
A possible explanation for temporary changes to period timing, flow and pain may have to do with how the body responds to physical and emotional stresses. Prior studies indicate that COVID-19 itself can be a stressor, leading to irregular menstrual cycles for some people.
Menstrual changes are also controlled by the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland in the brain, along with the ovaries, which use hormones as signals. These hormone signals can be disrupted when the body goes through changes that occur with an infection, and even a vaccine.
The research funded by NIH to help solidify these theories will include as many as 500,000 participants, some of whom are already involved in clinical studies, according to Tingen. She said because of the studies’ reach, transgender and nonbinary people will be included.
Dr. Laura Payne, director of the Clinical and Translational Pain Research Lab at McLean Hospital and an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, is one of the five researchers receiving NIH funding.
She is studying teens ages 14 to 19 to explore why the COVID-19 vaccines may cause changes in periods.
Specifically, Payne is looking at whether the vaccines cause inflammatory markers to be released, which then affect estrogen, which then affects menstrual cycles.
“Right now, the data on this particular mechanism is pretty limited to animal studies so we don’t really know how inflammation affects estrogen,” Payne said. “I think if we can show that inflammation has an effect on the menstrual cycle, that can help us just better understand the different things that affect the menstrual cycle.”
“In the bigger scheme of things, we’re just putting the menstrual cycle and menstrual health to the forefront as an important part of medical research, and it just hasn’t been,” she said. “It’s certainly an additional variable, but it’s really important and it’s important for women even if it’s not causing any kind of dangerous condition, it’s an important measure of health for women.”
Payne called it a “miss” that changes to menstrual cycles were not looked at during the vaccine trials, but said she is hopeful that the work being done now will help prioritize menstrual research in the future.
“In the vaccine trials, what I’m guessing is that they were just looking for indicators of pretty severe health complications that would land somebody in the hospital and they didn’t feel like changes in the menstrual cycle were part of that,” she said. “There’s certainly an argument to be made for that, but I think with the anecdotal reports and with the research that myself and the other [principal investigators] will be doing, hopefully this will inform future trials to say maybe this isn’t a life-or-death situation, but it’s important to women and it’s important to include.”
In addition to speaking out like so many people did when it came to menstrual changes with the vaccines, Payne said people can also volunteer for clinical research in order to move research on menstruation forward.
“Volunteering for clinical research is one of the best things that you can do to support the type of research that you want to see,” she said. “One of the biggest obstacles that we face in clinical research is finding ways to access participants, particularly participants from diverse backgrounds, and that’s something that we really are focusing on and NIH is really committed so we get an understanding from diverse samples of people.”
